Scorpion (2014) TV Series Pilot Review

The New CBS Series Scorpion has an interesting concept: 4 Super Geniuses are working together in a warehouse trying to make money, but are not doing so well and are setting up routers and doing other odd jobs to make ends meet.

When their headquarters are visited by  Cabe Gallo from Homeland security (Robert Patrick – Terminator 2, X-Files) they are thrust into a “job” to save thousands of people on flights stranded in the skies due to a software bug.

Cabe Gallo and our leader of Scorpion Walter O’Brien (Elyes Gabel) have a past that didn’t end well for Walter. When Walter was a little boy he hacked into NASA to download the Shuttle’s Blueprints for his bedroom wall, and that’s when he met Cabe and began working with him.

Walter has an issue trusting Cabe but the team decides to take on the task.

 

The Premise of the episode is that the team needs to get an Uncorrupted version of data to LAX so that the tower control can communicate with all the planes in the air with no contact.  Needing to Find a WiFi signal that won’t go down, and fast, they stop into the Diner that Walter fixed their internet just this morning and had met the waitress Paige (Catherine McPhee) and her troubled 9 year old son.

Here we see the team jump into action, Walter talks with LAX to find out where a uncorrupted version of the file is and the team speeds to recover it.  Here we see Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong) the Mechanical engineering prodigy and Toby Curtis (Eddie Kay Thomas) the “World Class Shrink” (with a gambling problem) do their thing.  Through a cool sequence we see them get the backup and it gets returned to Walter.  One problem though, Toby mistakenly kept it in the door panel compartment and the magnet from the speaker corrupted the data!  Back to Square one.

At this point our last of the group Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham) The “Human Calculator” lets our guys know that there is now a less than 1% chance of success.

Walter wants to quit, but Paige tells him that just because he doesn’t know what to do doesn’t mean he can give up, then they come up with a plan to get the uncorrupted data off a plane that took off before the update.   Paige jumps in to rush them to a nearby airfield, while Happy arms all the lights to turn green to speed their journey (All except one that won’t change) but Cabe swoops in for the assist!

Once at the airfield they direct the plane to drop to 100 feet and fly-by  so they can transfer the data wirelessly.  This of course fails because the plane is traveling too fast.  So Walter gets one more Bright idea Drive alongside the plane at 8 feet, in a Ferrari at over 200MPHand transfer the data via Ethernet cable (Yep not ludicrous at all)

 

This of course works (just barely) and they are able to upload the uncorrupted data and save the day.

Here’s my problem with this scenario:  The planes early in the episode are unable to land because of no communication, now in fairness they are able to communicate with THIS plane by calling a passenger with an old Analog phone.  Fine so then why don’t they JUST LAND THE PLANE at the airstrip then?  Because it wouldn’t be nearly as cool looking I suppose.

As the crisis is now averted, Cabe offers Water & his team Permanent jobs, which Walter saw coming and has a list of demands to sign them.

One of which is to include Paige on the team as a person to help them interact with people as they all have trouble with that.  It also gives Walter an opportunity to connect with Paige’s son who we find out is also a Genius and to help Paige interact with him as well.

Overall for a first episode, Scorpion delivers a lot of action and is something different in the hour long Action Genre, despite some cliche’s and a few really?? moments, the cast works well together and it is definitely something different.

After watching the Second episode dealing with someone Infecting a deadly virus specifically to 4 children and the team having to figure out who and how they did it, this show seems to have an interesting way to switch gears, and make you care about its characters.