SCORPION Recap: Pilot

If Scorpion can keep up the pace they set in the pilot episode it should be a fun ride.

We meet Walter as a 9 year old boy who has hacked into NASA because he wanted the shuttle blue prints for his wall. You know, just like every kid does, right? As he is about to be detained by armed soldiers Agent Gallo shows up.

Fast forward to present day and a grown up Walter is at a diner fixing their Wifi. He is also breaking up with his girlfriend of three months. He’s quite the multitasker. She isn’t amused and becomes even less so when Walter hands her a decision tree to help her get through her impending emotions.

Walter heads back to a crappy looking garage of sorts where we meet the team. Despite having a combined IQ of almost 700 they have trouble keeping the power on. Which is no problem really as Happy, the engineering bad ass, just “borrows” power from the grid. Joining them is Toby a Harvard trained behaviorist and Sylvester a human calculator.

Wouldn’t you know Gallo shows up at Walter’s place. He’s with Homeland Security now and Walter is not happy to see him. Gallo tells him to put that aside, he needs Walter’s help. Communications at LAX and all surrounding airports are down thanks to a bug in the software upgrade. There are 56 planes that will run out of fuel and start falling from the sky if he doesn’t help. Walter is not swayed but then Gallo offers them $50K each and his team talks him into it.

Of course now hijinks ensue. They can’t get to LAX because of traffic so they go to the diner where Walter just fixed their Wifi. He’ll just hack in from there. The owner of the diner leaves the waitress and her son there to watch the diner and lock up when the feds are done.

Their next attempt is to get the uncorrupted data from the backup site. This plan goes south. While it is going south though Walter makes small talk with the waitress, like telling her she has anemia. She doesn’t find him charming. Walter does notice that Ralph, the waitress’s child is playing chess with Sylvester. He is using things like a salt shaker and jelly packets and Sylvester, a Grand Master, loses. The waitress who’s name I will learn at some point, thought her son was special slow, not special gifted.

It’s time for one last plan because if they don’t come up with something soon the government will start shooting planes out of the sky to minimalize the damage to people on the ground.
After a so so pep talk from the waitress they have a new plan. Walter needs to get to the closest airport. They pull an Italian Job and hack into the DOT to make the lights work in their favor. Now Walter just needs a ride. Waitress to the rescue. Oh look, her name is Paige. Paige to the rescue. They take off at very high speeds. While this is happening Toby and Sylvester are looking for anyone on a plane with a cell phone on. They find one and get a phone to the pilot. Walter tells the pilot to buzz the tower at the airfield so they can use his wifi to transfer the uncorrupted data. It doesn’t work. Apparently they need to be going as fast as the plane or at least close. So of course they “hot wire” a Ferrari that happens to be sitting at the airfield and get the plane to fly over them. They have 7 seconds of time to be right under the plane to make this work.

This is where it gets a little outside the bounds of reality for me but oddly enough I was okay with it.
Walter syncs with LAX and they take off. They literally have to be plugged into the plane so the copilot grabs a cord and Walter and Paige drive under the plane. The co-pilot is on the landing gear outside of the plane. Paige reaches up and plugs in the cable. It works and the plane ascends at the last moment.

After the dust clears and all the planes are able to land Gallo offers Walter and his team a job, a permanent job as a strategic Response Team. Walter reluctantly agrees. Walter goes to Paige’s house to thank her for her help and offers her a job with his team. He would help translate her son for her and she can help translate them to the people in the public they will be dealing with. She agrees. Especially when she sees how well Walter connects with her son.

Scorpion airs Monday 9/8c on CBS