SCORPION Recap: Father’s Day

The genius members of Scorpion spend their days like any other group of people, betting on super charged Simon Says games and running mice through mazes. Like I said, just a normal day. Then the phone rings, it’s Drew, Ralph’s father. A father he hasn’t seen in 7 years. Lucky for Paige he is in town. This should go well. Case in point, Walter offers to hack his credit information and Toby suggests she should watch him eat fruit to find out what kind of person he is now. So…that’s a thing? Fruit eating as it equates to personality. Huh. Paige is having none of it.

They don’t have time to discuss it though because Gallo shows up. Three convicts escaped from jail and he needs their help to figure out how they did it. Sylvester is less than thrilled at the idea of going inside a prison. Once in prison they get the files of the inmates that escaped. One of them, Percy, is a borderline genius hacker. Walter figures he is the mastermind since the other two inmates wouldn’t have been able to pull off the escape. They of course figure out how he did it, hacked access signals, drones dropping cell phones to prisoners, etc…

Walter then hacks into a satellite, China’s not ours, and sees two of the convicts pulling along Percy, the hacker. They wonder why a model inmate with 10 months left would break out with Russian mobsters. Now they think he must have been forced.

Happy and Sylvester find the drone and analyze it. No video. Gallo gets a call that the inmates just carjacked someone sending them to the hospital. They head out to investigate. All the while Toby, who is a nosey pants is investigating Drew, Ralph’s father. Paige is going to be pissed when she finds out!

At the carjacking site they find a message from Percy. The inmates are headed East on I-15. Walter and friends rig the freeway signs with number patterns to alert Percy. While they are waiting for Percy to pick up on the code Toby relays his finds about Drew. He doesn’t like Drew and Walter likes what he hears even less. Walter is awfully protective of Ralph and Paige. There are a few flashbacks to Walter as a child interacting with Gallo in this episode and you can see how difficult it was for him back then.

No sooner does Toby get finished when Drew himself walks in. Paige looks surprised and Walter looks annoyed. Toby hides. Drew tells Paige he wants to see Ralph. Paige says she will think about it and ushers him out when Walter hollers that Percy is making contact on their secure message board.

In order to confirm it is Percy that sent the help message the team heads out to find the safe house. They bring the drone along to help with surveillance. If they see Percy they will call Gallo. Of course Toby and Sylvester get in a tug of war over the controls to the drone and it crashes into the house. They hide in the bushes and watch as the Russians throw Percy in the trunk and take off. Walter quips that this will be difficult to explain. As they managed to explain burning a multimillion dollar painting last episode I think they will be fine.

Gallo isn’t pleased. At least the drone got a glimpse at Percy’s computer when it crashed. It looks like Percy is modifying code to hack a bank account or something money related like that. They of course come up with a plan that will use an IP address to give them access to Percy’s web cam. Once they are in they will watch to see what Percy is being forced to do and maybe figure out where he is.

Back at the “office” Paige sits down to talk to Ralph about his Dad. She decides she can’t tell Ralph yet and sends him off with the babysitter. Walter pulls her aside to see how it went and accidentally lets it slip that they looked into Drew. Paige, as predicted, is pissed. She storms into the office and tells the team this isn’t their decision. She is Ralph’s mother and it is up to her. It is an emotional issue making them ill equipped to help her.

They don’t have time for any discussion though because Percy is back online. There is no sound with the video image though so what do they do, they hook up their wave imaging software. Basically they are going to record sound waves off a potato chip bag and compare them with the sound waves they can see coming off of a potato chip bag in the video with Percy. They will use that comparison to figure out what they are saying. Read it as many times as you want – they are using a chip bag to gain audio.

The audio gives them the answer to what Percy and fellow felons are up to. Percy’s code will exploit a weakness in the stock exchange. They will make billions and no one will know. It had to be done now though because next month the system gets an upgrade and Percy’s code will be useless.

Using the web cam light on Percy’s computer they signal him. He lets them know his location using Morse code. They are ready to ride to his rescue when Gallo gets a text. The treasury department traced the account that the money is going to siphon into. It is in Percy’s name only. Toby says it is brilliant really, Percy knows this code of his will be useless in a month but he doesn’t have the wherewithal to get a phone smuggled into prison, have a safe house set up, etc…so he teams up with the Russian guys who do. Now Walter is pissed. He wants to capture this guy.

The team watches from a hill while Gallo and very well armed SWAT guy’s head towards the building. Only Toby decoded the Morse code incorrectly. Gallo is heading to building S not H and with the coms off, so they can run a silent approach, there is no way to tell him.

Walter decides they are going to go rescue Percy themselves, so they can look him in the eye when they arrest him. They get some gas from an old tractor and use it to start a fire, after they use micro frequency waves to blow the circuit breaker. That is exactly what I would have done. Exactly.

Happy also has an idea; she uses the laser from the DVD player in Toby’s laptop to fake a laser sight on a gun. It works until the battery starts to die. Then the Russians figure them out and start shooting. Toby and Happy say they are there alone but Sylvester bumps into something and makes a noise. Walter tells Sylvester to get Paige out of there. She doesn’t want to leave him but he says Ralph needs her so she has to stay safe. Paige watches as Walter gives himself up to the Russians.

Before too much can happen Gallo and his team show up and take the criminals down, saving Walter, Happy and Toby.

Happy who has kept quiet about Ralph and his Father the whole episode tells Paige she has something to say about the situation. She knows how Ralph feels, she waited her whole childhood for her Dad to come home, watched for him out the window of one foster home after another. So if there is any chance Paige can put an end to Ralph’s waiting then she should do it.

In a very touching moment Happy, with the help of Toby, tracks down her Dad and talks to him, without telling him who she is.

At the end of the episode, Paige and Ralph sit down with Drew while Walter watches from across the park. Gallo finds Walter and sits with him. Gallo even brought cookies for them to share.

Scorpion airs 9/8c on CBS