Scorched

Charlie seeks out an engineering professor to help him recreate a fire scenario to solve an arson case.

Plot
Someone is filming a car dealership. They break into a nearby phone booth and attach a lit cigarette to some matches to set it on fire as well as Molotov a vehicle. A junior salesman at the dealership arrives at work as the vehicle is burning. He goes to call 911, but doesn’t have his cell phone so he opens the door of the phone booth causing an explosion. Emergency services are there when Don arrives, meeting up with Colby. The Earth Liberation Movement (ELM) has struck again. It’s the fourth eco-fire they’ve lit recently. Charlie arrives at Don’s request. Paul Stevens, an arson investigator is introduced to Charlie. He wants to use Charlie’s math skills to help with the case.

Larry is staring at a candle in Charlie’s office. Charlie is having difficulty with the problem. Larry isn’t being very helpful by focusing on social issues rather than the math. He explains more explicitly and Charlie gets on board with Larry’s thinking eventually. Megan and Colby talk to members of ELM. They deny having anything to do with the recent fires, stating that ‘anybody can put three letters on a wall’. They won’t cooperate any more than they have.

Megan supposes that somebody could be using the ELM logo, but four fires is more than she’d think they would use it for if it wasn’t really them. Colby is looking at a photo he took from the ELM office after recognizing one of the people in it. He looks at footage from the four fires to see if he can find him. He spots him at two of the four fires. Megan and Colby go to the college that he (Jake Edwards) attends to try and find him. Colby is about to go into the open dorm room, but Megan stops him so they only ‘break one law a day’ and talks to his roommate, Ethan Powell. The roommate gives permission to look in their room. They are able to get onto Edwards’ laptop and find the ELM website and the Glendale Chamber of Commerce website among his search history. Megan notices a map with areas in Glendale marked and Colby finds a brochure for Verdugo Ridge, a developing property that fits the usual ELM targets, on the desk. The team goes to check it out. Edwards’ car is found at the site. Don finds him and he heads towards Colby. They find cigarettes, a lighter, and spray paint in his bag. They interrogate him at the site. He denies involvement in the last fire. They put him under surveillance so he can’t start anymore fires. Megan suggests they talk to Powell again.

Charlie is at the dealership site with Stevens and Larry to take a better look at things and to get more data. The next day Megan gets Charlie to help her talk to Powell as they have a similar past – geniuses in college with a lot of people a few years older than them around. Powell doesn’t want to talk to them. Charlie gets him to open up. Megan wants Edwards’ contact.

Back at CalSci Professor Bill Waldie works with Charlie and Larry to see what happened with the backdraft at the dealership. After recreating the conditions of the initial fire the experiment fails. Charlie comes to the conclusion that it was not caused by a backdraft.

Don wonders what it was if it wasn’t a backdraft. Charlie says that there had to be an accelerant, but Stevens stops him as there wasn’t any found. Charlie points out that industrial strength peroxide could be used and he agrees in the end. It’s also something a college student could get access to.

Megan isn’t sure that ELM is behind the phone booth fire. None of their other fires were targeted at people, all of their protests have been linked to environmental issues, and any injuries at their protests were accidental. Powell had said that Edwards was in touch with people outside of ELM, but Colby couldn’t find any trace in e-mails, IMs, etc. Don and Megan suggest checking chatrooms.

In the garage Charlie and Larry are working away. Alan comes in bemoaning the lack of space in the garage. He chats with them about the case and they start to look at it as two separate fires with two separate arsonists rather than one arsonist setting both.

Colby was able to get the chat information from the ISP. Edwards has two user names. One that is easy to get to and one that is heavily encrypted. They believe that the important data is behind the wall of encryption. Megan recognizes the user name – NanoTube - as something related to Powell’s work, not Edwards’. Charlie brings Don up to speed on his findings as Megan and Colby enter the room. He compared the 'fireprints' of the two fires at the dealership and found they didn’t match, however the SUV fire matched the three previous ELM fires. Somebody else most likely set the booth fire. The booth fire did match the prints of 17 fires from the past five years that had no environmental agenda whatsoever. They think that Powell and Edwards are working together. Don gets the call of another fire. With Edwards being under surveillance Colby is confused, but since Powell hasn’t been it’s likely he set it.

The fire is at a high rise on the sixth floor with ELM written everywhere. There was a flashover and some firemen were injured. Charlie supposes that if the arsonist can create a backdraft then couldn’t they also create a flashover, meaning that they now have a serial killer on their hands using fire as a weapon.

Charlie brings Larry to the site so they can figure out what happened. Stevens tells them how everything was by the book so he’s not sure what happened and lets them look into things further. Powell gives Colby his written statement claiming that he set all of the fires. Megan doesn’t believe him. She thinks he’d rather be blamed and seen than ignored.

Charlie and Larry are working in the Eppes' bathroom to use the tub. Alan enters wearing a bathrobe and carrying towels and is surprised to see the two grown men in the tub. They ask for his help with their experiment. Charlie gets a brainwave. They think that the hose may have been tampered with. Only a few people would know how the fire suppression and stand pipe systems would work and Charlie rushes off to tell Don what they figured out.

Charlie and Megan realize that the targets were firemen, not random people. While Powell would have the engineering know how to commit these crimes, Megan is not convinced that he did them because his personality doesn’t match what happened. She brings him in again along with Edwards. He convinces Powell to give them the information he has.

They’re back at the computers and find that the person that Powell was chatting with was communicating from an arson investigator’s office. It turns out that Stevens investigated all 17 fires that matched the print of the two most recent fires. The team looks into his past. His application to be a firefighter was rejected eight years previous. He got in in a smaller city and worked his way to LA from there. Colby sends an APB out to other law enforcement branches. Megan doesn’t think he’s going to run. They go back to the Glendale property development to see if they can find Stevens as they believe it’s his next target. Stevens is at the development setting up his equipment as the FBI arrives. Don and Megan track him down. As he tries to escape he drops a glass bottle of white phosphorous and it ignites, killing him.

Alan is trying to fix the shower, but not having any luck. He wants to call a plumber, but Don steps in and offers his help to fix it.

Main

 * Rob Morrow as Don Eppes
 * David Krumholtz as Charlie Eppes
 * Judd Hirsch as Alan Eppes
 * Alimi Ballard as David Sinclair
 * Navi Rawat as Amita Ramanujan
 * Diane Farr as Megan Reeves
 * Peter MacNicol as Larry Fleinhardt

Recurring

 * Dylan Bruno as Colby Granger

Guest

 * Loren Dean as Paul Stevens
 * Blake Bashoff as Ethan Delp
 * A.J. Trauth as Jake Edwards
 * Bill Nye as Bill Waldie
 * Sophina Brown as Bianca Styles
 * Susan Beaubian as Stendhauser
 * Ian Unterman as Alex Dewitt

Trivia
Sophina Brown, who plays an ELM member, joins the cast full time as FBI agent Nikki Beancourt in season 5.

Bill Nye makes his first of several appearances in this episode as a CalSci professor.

The song playing at the beginning of the episode is Prodigy- Firestarter.

Crazy Credits
[This appears on the beginning of the episode] 6013 Fires, 30,000 BTU's, 700 Arson Deaths, 1 Match