MONDO EXTRAS

After being tapped to cover a show that makes my math-professor husband suffer head explosions, I subjected myself to all of Season One, all of Season Two, and all of Season Three. My conclusions? I don't hate the show. Moreover, I am surprisingly bloodthirsty when it comes to Don threatening to blow someone's head off, Megan saying "on your knees, bitch," or any of them physically taking down a bad guy, all of which result in me screaming triumphantly and beating my couch. The thing is, I do despise -- and will therefore poke large amounts of fun at -- the "math." Or, to be quite honest, the Evil Dr. Mathra will tell me what to poke fun at, and I will clean up the language and grey matter and write it down.

(The redoubtable Strega pioneered this form; I just applied it.)

I. The show opens with people you don't know becoming victims of, or witnesses to, a crime, after which the FBI is called to the scene to diagnose the felony with world-weary banter.

II. Called to consult, Charlie comments on how he:

• developed something related to the case
• wrote "one" of his dissertations on something related to the case
• pioneered a theory on something related to the case
• by chance has something on his blackboard that day that is related to the case
• has a patent on the process related to the case
• understands probability

and boldly asserts that the whole case could be resolved by:

• a "highly precise" Fourier analysis
• a "highly intricate" social network analysis
• "applying" probability theory
• "applying" "complex" graph theory
• solving one of the most famous unsolved problems of modern "abstract" number theory

while needlessly name-dropping

• Riemann
• Feynman
• Fermat
• Gauss
• Archimedes