Don Eppes

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Don Eppes
First appearance	Pilot Episode
Information
Occupation	FBI Agent
Family	Alan Eppes (father) Charlie Eppes (brother) Margaret Mann-Eppes (mother, deceased)
Portrayed by	Rob Morrow

Don Eppes is one of the two main fictional characters in the television show NUMB3RS. He is played by Rob Morrow.

Don is an FBI Special Agent who recruits his mathematical genius brother, Charlie Eppes to help him and the Bureau solve some of their most difficult cases. Don makes great sacrifices in his personal life in order to devote himself to his career, which to him is more of a way of life than a mere job. More important to him than his work is his family, especially Charlie, even though he doesn't understand his brother's way of looking at the world.

Contents 1 Backstory 2 Characterization 3 Evolution over the series 4 Notes 5 See also

[edit] Backstory

Don is the older son of Margaret and Alan Eppes. During the Vietnam War, his parents would take him to sit-ins, and he twice watched his father be arrested (as mentioned in the episode "Protest"). When Don became too attached to his toy gun, his parents put him in Little League, hoping Don would forget his love for guns. Don graduated high school on the same day as his younger brother Charlie, who is five years his junior. He went to college on a baseball scholarship and then played Single-A with the Stockton Rangers (a fictional team) as a utility player. Charlie used to predict the number of walks he would get just from his stance at the plate. Despite the attraction, Don never took steroids, although his backup player did. That player made the major leagues and Don has since wondered if he should have taken steroids to help improve his game. After making a mistake in a game, Don quit the Rangers and signed up for the FBI test the next day.

In the FBI Academy, he dated fellow agent Terry Lake. As he later told his father, his favorite date ever was when he had pizza in a laundromat with her. Terry does not share that opinion. After graduating from the Academy, Don worked in Fugitive Recovery with Billy Cooper (episode "Man Hunt") and was very good at it. He taught at the FBI Academy for a time after Fugitive Recovery to help him come back to civilization (in the episode "Longshot"). After that, he worked in the field office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and dated Kim Hall (Sarah Wayne Callies), and nearly married her.

Don gave up his position as Special Agent in Charge of the Albuquerque FBI office to move back to L.A. when his mother became ill with cancer.

[edit] Characterization

Don is a principled character and very devoted to his job, leaving him not much time for a social life. He enjoys the occasional game of baseball and is also often seen watching hockey, which he played in his youth. Don thought baseball was his first love, though his father Alan Eppes reminded him that a toy gun and playing a cop as a child was actually his first love, and comforted him in noticing that the FBI needs utility players. Charlie said that he was a "born cop." Don's giving up on the game is an emotional subject for him.

He and Charlie have had their differences over the years, and Don finds it hard to go to Charlie for help to do his job. In fact, in "One Hour" Don states that he does not like living in the shadow of his genius brother, though he respects him and his abilities very much and they have become closer. Still, he does often question his brother only to have his faith in Charlie's abilities restored. In "Burn Rate", their father says, "But have you ever known your brother to let his emotions trump his math?" Just because Don gets emotional, he thought this was the case with Charlie and even stated his brother was backing one of his own — a genius.

He is a harsh taskmaster, likes being the boss, and is not very forgiving. One of his former tactical trainees from Quantico, Liz Warner (Aya Sumika [1]), has proclaimed to this and, after Colby confided in her that he made a mistake, she told him that the very fact that he still remains on Don's team means something. She also said that Don never spoke of his personal life while at the FBI Academy and was at the time fresh from the field in hunting fugitives (with friend Agent Cooper). Liz knows he has mellowed with age and he can hold a commitment with a woman for longer periods of time.

[edit] Evolution over the series

After the death of Margaret Eppes, Don moved back to Los Angeles and is Special Agent in Charge of the LA Field Office. He lets Charlie help on some cases and is shocked to learn that his little brother has NSA security clearance ("Vector"). After that, he calls Charlie in to consult on cases as needed.

Don didn't understand how Charlie could lock himself up in the garage with a possibly unsolvable math problem, P versus NP, for the three months before their mother died, never going to see her. It's a point of contention between them (1st season episode "Uncertainty Principle", and a brief mention in "Vector"), and Don is frustrated when he tries to get Charlie to snap out of reverting to solving it after a case goes bad.

After Charlie found a classical music composition for the piano (an Etude in G minor) that their mother wrote under her maiden name and his father admits that music was one of Margaret's first loves, Don and his brother remember the piano lessons that she made them take. While Don jokes about the dreadful teacher they had, he and Charlie realize why it was so important to their mother. At the end of "Running Man", Don comes home and finds the sheet music his mother wrote on the table. He sits down and starts playing, hesitantly at first, as Charlie and Alan listen from the garage.

When Megan Reeves was kidnapped, Don pushed his ethics to the limit to get her back. While he did not beat a suspect, he had Special Agent Ian Edgerton torture the man for information on where Megan was being held. Don showed concern to his father. After this discussion, he convinced his father that it is good to have someone to come home to, and that is why he comes around the Craftsman house so often rather than staying at his apartment. Nevertheless, Don's counselor also mentions this event ("One Hour") suggesting the FBI knows of the torture, and no consequences to Don or Edgerton have been revealed nor an update about the suspect disclosed.

In "Provenance," Don began to wonder why their family was not more religious and wanted to get in touch with his relatives, especially his grandmother's cousin who escaped World War II. A victim of the Holocaust found solace when Don had given a stolen painting which held much sentimentality back to her. Prior to this she had said that he knew pain in losing his mother. All of this had surfaced deep emotions in Don. Also in this episode, Don has jokingly stated he was a "lost cause," when his father expressed a failure in parenting him. On the other hand, in the previous season's "Calculated Risk," Don showed a connection to a boy who had lost his mother, giving hope to Alan that he had done something right.

The latter love interest observed that the brothers had "one part exuberance, two parts obsession." He had once dated an ATF agent, and was pained to find out that she called him before she was killed. The prosecutor Nadine Hodges (Sarah Carter [2]) seems to be smitten with him and vice versa. In the episode "Guns and Roses", he decides to investigate his flirtation with AUSA Robin Brooks (Michelle Nolden [3]). In "Blackout," after Robin broke up with him, Don became involved in a brief romance with Special Agent Liz Warner, whom he remembers for having an issue with adrenaline and being wild. He often makes reference to the difficulties in maintaining a relationship, given his career, as do his family. Don is now actively pursuing his love interest in Liz Warner ("End of Watch"), something he has not done in a long time, letting her know that just because they are in the FBI, they can still have an active relationship ("Finders Keepers"). The counselor he's been seeing questioned Don's motives concerning this ("One Hour") relationship, and Don defended his actions. His supervisors in the FBI are aware of the relationship but the consequences have not been revealed.

In "Take Out," Don must see a therapist who is led to believe that he is "trigger happy." His father notes that this may be true, as he often shoots first. Further, Alan recalled how Don would take on others' burdens as a child and told him to get counseling, which he later willingly sought after, especially considering that he viewed his life's work as a series of dirty deeds. In "One Hour", Don expresses that he doesn't have to trust his team (which includes Charlie), they have to trust him. The counselor understood that Don felt he himself didn't matter and made him realize that whenever his team shines then so does he.

[edit] Notes

• According to a prop used at one point on the show, Don Eppes was born on July 15, 1967, his address is 8111 Aguacate, Los Angeles, CA 91021. However, Nicolas Falacci confirmed this date of birth was incorrect as it didn't take into consideration that Don is only five years older than Charlie, who was born in 1975.
• After some initial reluctance, Don and his FBI team welcomed Charlie's innovative methods to crime-solving as they have provided unexpected revelations and answers to the most perplexing criminal questions. In "Uncertainty Principle," he indicates that he now has to rely on Charlie to accomplish his job.
• His knowledge of Occam's razor impresses his father in "Structural Corruption." Charlie elucidates the concept, much to their annoyance.
• His call number is 3695 from "Hot Shots."
• Don, along with his team, is unique in the fact that while he is focused mainly on criminal investigations, he will don SWAT gear for tactical situations as well.
• Don speaks French as "there was a girl once upon a time."
• Don's countdown for beginning an operation with SWAT is "Three, Two, One, Execute, Execute!!"
• Don, like most of the other members of his team, carries a Glock pistol, presumably a Glock 22
• Don is an excellent marksman, as evidenced in the ending of "Two Daughters."

[edit] See also

• NUMB3RS