Scorpion was one of the few new pilots that really drew me in as soon as I heard about it. I had pretty high expectations, and the pilot certainly delivered, providing us with a great starting point that got straight to the point about everything and left me ready to watch this show for the next nine months (and beyond).
For those of you that didn’t know, the show is based on a real life person named Walter O’Brien, who is a computer genius and actually helps stop terrorist attacks. This in itself is pretty cool, if you ask me.
The pilot followed the crisis of LA X losing contact with dozens of planes due to a bug in the automatically updating software, and Homeland agent Cabe Gallo had to recruit Walter and his ‘team’ of geniuses to help land the planes safely. I thought this was a great story to start off with, and some great writing made it a really good episode.
I particularly liked how fast-paced it felt. Watching it, you could actually feel the tension of situations and I felt rushed off my feet by the time the episode ended. A show clearly has promise when you feel as if you’re in the show (to a point) from the very opening minutes.
The geniuses were so great to watch. I particularly loved Sylvester, whose apparent form of OCD means that he has to organise things before he does tasks, and in that stressful situation, it cooled the scene off a little, which was great. Obviously, you don’t want to completely take away the tension from a scene, but equally you don’t want to have no humour whatsoever, because then the show just becomes too dramatic (and yes, I consider that to be a real thing on a drama).
Anyway, back to the characters. Learning about Walter was great to watch. The flashback was also based off the real story, though dramatized slightly, for obvious reasons. Though not perfect, his social skills were far and away better than the rest of his group. However, that didn’t mean they were good – as evidenced by his break-up towards the beginning of the episode. Breaking up with someone with a list of issues while on a job?
Happy and Toby weren’t as good as the other two, however. Toby seemed very self-absorbed in what he did, particularly in the scene in the server room. Though I enjoyed watching that scene, Toby bugged me a little bit in his confidence – it was bordering on cocky. Happy had a reasonably minor role in the episode, but I had no real issues with her. Hopefully the writers utilise her more in upcoming episodes.
I was glad that we got to find out about the Gabe-Walter backstory in the pilot. I would have hated it had they dragged it out for a number of episodes, considering how minor it is. It does make me wonder whether or not Walter will ever properly trust Cabe after what he did, but we will see in due course.
The only real loose story point for me was Paige. I loved Ralph, particularly his chess game and gaming with Walter at the end, and really do hope that he appears very often this season. Paige, however, seemingly went from being a waitress who didn’t think her son needed help in any way, to being some sort of genius psychologist that (albeit rightly) thought she needed to help the team to connect with Ralph.
Though the offer for Paige to join ‘Scorpion’ was more on a “translate the world for us” basis, I still can’t comprehend how she has been invited onto this team of geniuses when she isn’t the brightest in the bunch, even as a non-genius as it were. If anyone in the comments can make sense of this, please do so.
As for the actual resolution to the plot… it was so far-fetched that I abandoned all sense of reality and went along with it. With scenes like that, there is little you can do except to just go with it. I hope they don’t consistently use scenes that ridiculous in the future.
Overall, I really enjoyed this episode. Things worked well with each other and it was a really fun pilot to watch. Hopefully the writers can churn out more great episodes throughout the season for us to all enjoy. For now though, let me know what you thought of the pilot. Also, though I have no notes for this episode, I need a cool name for my notes/odds and ends section – though it has to relate to the show somehow. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments!
