Scorpion Premieres in the Philippines: The Fast and the Genius
Finally, the underdogs have their own show.
Scorpion opens with a view of the rolling landscape of an Irish countryside. Young Walter O’Brien has managed to hack into NASA, and a team of high-powered security personnel is scrambling to his front porch, armed and ready to arrest him. He does not get arrested on the agreement that he points out NASA’s various security potholes. This was when he was 13 and just wanted blueprints to hang on his bedroom wall. The security personnel came to his house aboard black helicopters.
Packing an IQ of 197 – higher than Albert Einstein’s, Walter O’Brien (Elyes Gabel) is said to be the most intelligent living person, and it doesn’t come without a few responsibilities. His computer hacking skills are golden, called-upon by the government, specifically by Federal Agent Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick) to thwart some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world.
He and his crew of other highly-intelligent people, shrink-extraordinaire Toby Curtis (Eddie Kaye Thomas); expert mathematician Sylvester Todd (Ari Stidham); and master tinkerer/ mechanical engineer Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong), with their total IQ of almost 700 points, muster mental might and beat the clock in reversing an airport software mishap in the first episode, a very appropriate theme for a pilot.
Trade-off: Walter has very low EQ. His personal life is in shambles, looking from a normal-IQ person’s point of view. Paige Dineen (Katharine McPhee), a waitress at a diner that Walter services (Walter has a small tech support company, with him ending up fixing routers most of the time), points this out to him. Paige has a nine-year-old son, a gifted child with whom Walter feels a connection. Displayed is the interplay in between the high-IQ and the high-EQ characters.
She doesn’t know how to connect with her son, and Walter doesn’t know how to connect with people except with other geniuses.
Scorpion takes the usual supporting characters and decides to put them all together and front and center and gives them the right set of tasteful attitudes. Other stereotypes are removed: Walter is assertive and does not have a problem with getting girls (he breaks up with a girl fairly easily in the first episode); the FBI are still assholes but given a little bit of heart (Agent Cabe Gallo trusts Walter at one point, costing him a federal car in the process); and there are cars and high-speed chases and time is always running out. Also, Justin Lin (“The Fast And The Furious” franchise) directs the pilot episode.
Fun fact: Walter O’Brien is a real living person and the story is based on true events. His IQ is really 197 points.
Get stung by Scorpion starting September 23, 2014 at 9PM and every Tuesday after only at RTL-CBS Entertainment HD SKYCable Channels 53 (SD) and 196 (HD).
