Review: Brainy nerds put IQs to use on ‘Scorpion’; adventures ensue
“Scorpion,” an adventure series beginning Monday on CBS, would like you to know, first of all, before a character speaks a word or a camera so much as takes an establishing shot, that it is based on a true story. Producers love this claim, which makes a story seem at once more plausible — implausibility being the point of bringing it up in the first place — and more exciting: This crazy thing really happened, says the amazed viewer to himself.
Still, that sort of reality doesn’t count for much in the end: It’s no guarantee of quality; indeed, facts can interfere with fiction. Ultimately, “Scorpion” seems designed to combine the network’s two main strains of mysteries — the ensemble procedurals (the “NCIS” and “CSI” shows) and the ones centered on crazy-brilliant weirdos (“Elementary,” “Person of Interest”) — into one hot success.
The show does make reference to certain identifying details and life experiences of Walter O’Brien, who as a boy in Ireland is supposed to have hacked into NASA. (“I just wanted the shuttle blueprints for my wall,” says O’Brien as he’s marched off the farm by American shock troops and Men in Black.)
The real-world O’Brien, who claims an IQ 37 points higher than Einstein’s (as does his fictional echo), runs a consulting company, a genius-army brain-trust called Scorpion Computer Services that will mitigate your financial risk, rescue your daughter from a Middle East jail or help you choose the sports car that’s right for you.
The company that Walter (Elyes Gabel) runs in the show is an Our Gang version of that, whose members each has, in the classic style, a specialty: “mechanical prodigy” (Jadyn Wong), “world-class shrink” (Eddie Kaye Thomas), “human calculator” (Ari Stidham). The gag is that, though they are among the world’s smartest people, they are socially incompetent and practically hopeless: “We have a combined IQ of nearly 700, and we can’t even pay our bills.”
And so arrives an agent from Homeland Security (Robert Patrick) to play Jim Phelps to their Impossible Mission Force, and a waitress (Katharine McPhee) who becomes their resident Normal, the Marilyn to their Munsters. She also has a young son (Riley B. Smith) she believes to be mentally challenged, but, no, he’s a genius too.
The pilot concerns a software glitch that cuts communication between LAX and several dozen landing planes — you’d think there’d be backup for this, but whatever. Once the Scorpions come on board, one bright idea after another runs aground, each requiring a crazier, less likely fix, as the clock loudly ticks toward zero and the arrival of the last-minute thing that goes right.
However much of the story may be fact-based or technically possible, notwithstanding life-and-death scenarios and pleas for understanding for the “mentally enabled” (“Sometimes guys like us need repair before we can fit into your world”), the show is almost completely ridiculous. And it is also pretty entertaining, from top to bottom.
Twitter: @LATimesTVLloyd
Updated: This post was revised at 4:20 p.m. Sept. 23 to add the name of the actor who plays Walter O’Brien.
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‘Scorpion’
Where: CBS
When: 9 p.m. Monday
Rating: TV-14-V (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14 with an advisory for violence)
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