Tonight on CBS Scorpion premiers with an all new Monday September 22, season 1 premiere episode called, “Pilot.” On tonight’s episode computer genius Walter O’Brien and his equally brilliant friends investigate high-tech crimes. In the opener, Walter and his misfit colleagues are hired by the government to solve a crisis at the Los Angeles airport that leaves dozens of planes unable to land.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, SCORPION, inspired by a true story, is a high-octane drama about eccentric genius Walter O’Brien and his team of brilliant misfits, who comprise the last line of defense against complex, high-tech threats of the modern age. As Homeland Security’s new think tank, O’Brien’s “Scorpion” team includes Toby Curtis, an expert behaviorist who can read anyone; Happy Quinn, a mechanical prodigy; and Sylvester Dodd, a statistics guru. Pooling their extensive technological knowledge to solve mind-boggling predicaments amazes federal agent Cabe Gallo, who shares a harrowing history with O’Brien. However, while this socially awkward group is comfortable with each other’s humor and quirks, life outside their circle confounds them, so they rely on Paige Dineen, who has a young, gifted son, to translate the world for them. At last, these nerdy masterminds have found the perfect job: a place where they can apply their exceptional brainpower to solve the nation’s crises, while also helping each other learn how to fit in.
On tonight’s episode when a crisis at LAX leaves dozens of airplanes unable to land, the government enlists a team of misfit geniuses to save the day.
This is definitely one series that you don’t want to miss. Don’t forget to stay tuned to Celeb Dirty Laundry where we will be live blogging every episode of Scorpion’s first season.
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page for Updates
In Callan, Ireland, three helicopters land. #TeamScorpion is starting. A man shouts for Walter. A team busts into a house and a kid holds out a paper and says if they’ll sign the immunity agreement he’ll tell them how he hacked into NASA. The team leader radios in that they have Scorpion and that he’s just a kid. They escort him outside in cuffs, His family is horrified. He says he just wanted shuttle blueprints for his wall. Humvees pull up and Agent Gallo gets out and asks his name. Present day, Walter’s girlfriend, says she can’t believe he’s breaking up with her. He has a document for her showing a decision tree of how to handle the break up.
She’s angry that he scheduled the break up on a job – he’s supposed to be fixing a network. She stomps out. He checks out the waitress Paige who’s helping an old customer. Her boss complains about her son being there. He’s playing with shakers and creamers. Walter comes over and moves some around. Paige asks if she can help him and he says she should help him. He then tells her boss not to yell at the boy. Walter drives and listens to the radio. There’s a call in contest asking which month has 28 days. The caller says February. Walter says – all of them.
He gets out and heads inside. Sylvester is doing some math when Walter comes in figuring out how to steal electricity. Happy is helping wire it. Sylvester forgot to pay the power bill. He asks where Toby is. We see him running from a car and jumping over trash bins. He hops a curb and slams inside. They ask if he has a Lynnwood payment. He says he beat them in payment. Walter says they have a combined IQ of 700 and can’t pay their bills. Walter is freaking. He says they are a million miles from normal.
Some guys are beating down the door when black SUVs with sirens pull up. It’s Agent Gallo and he tells them to beat it before he plants enough pills on them to put them away for life. He shoves a badge under the door and says it’s Homeland Security looking for Walter. He tells Gallo to get out. He tells Walter he needs him. He says there’s a bug in the navigation system in LAX and incoming flights – 56 – are out of comm range – and they need him on software before the planes run out of fuel and cash.
He offers them each $50k to help out. He says they’re brilliant minds working at half capacity. He says people will fall from the sky in less than two hours if they don’t help. Walter says he’s not dumb enough to believe him twice but Happy pulls him aside to talk. Toby stands beside him and adopts his position. Gallo asks what he’s doing and he says mirroring to help him relax. Gallo glares and he stops. Happy tells Walter they need to help out. He caves.
Sylvester says they need to go to LAX and reload the old software. Walter asks Gallo if he’s been keeping tabs on him and Toby says his body language suggests that’s only half the truth. Walter says if he crosses him, he’ll go online and erase him. The pilot on one plane reassures the passengers and then talks to his co-pilot. They wonder what’s going on and when they’ll get comms back. Gallo tells his guys they have the smartest people on this.
There’s a traffic jam around LAX. Sylvester says to get them a helicopter but air traffic is shut down. Walter says they just need a good wireless that won’t go down and he says he just fixed one a mile away. They head to the diner. Gallo comes in and commandeers the diner. He tosses down a pile of money and the owner kicks all the customers out. Sylvester starts wiping down counters – he’s a germaphobe. The owner tells her stay and says his immigration status makes him nervous. Walter tells her son Ralph that it’s good to see him again.
Paige asks Sylvester what’s going on at LAX. He says it’s top secret and she asks how that can be true if the guy that works on their wireless is working on it. The team is on it and Paige tells them to watch their language around her nine year old. Gallo brings the air traffic solution up online. Walter says he’s hacking into their security and the chief says he’s not comfortable with that. Walter tells them not to make it so easy.
They find Randy, a computer geek, and tell him to take a seat. They have no hard copies of the old software because it’s been so long. And within 20 minutes the last copy will be overwritten. They have to move fast. Paige brings Walter a drink and he tells her she has anemia and needs iron. She calls him Einstein and he says his IQ is higher. He diagnoses that she’s in cheap sneakers and her son is in orthotics.
She tells him that he hurts her feelings and she says her son is challenged and he should have empathy. He stands up and tells her that he son isn’t challenged. He says he’s playing chess with the condiments with a grandmaster and winning. Sylvester calls out that the kid is amazing. He tells her that he doesn’t like to paint her nails, he’s trying to make physical contact but can’t process it. He tells her he’s sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but says her son is a genius.
Happy and Toby are at the data center for the backup. They find the doors shut. They tell her to pick the lock. She says they only have six minutes. Gallo tells Bates to get them in. Happy tells him to stop and says a ricochet will kill them. Walter says they need a new plan. Paige is shocked they’re willing to let two planes go down. Walter says that Gallo is taking the greater good theory. Paige says with his 190+ IQ he can use his big brain and reset.
Walter tells Gallo to focus a power surge on the data center to reset the lock. He tells them to find a junction box. They do. They tell Sylvester to calculate it. There are too many pieces of chalk and he has to put them in order first. Paige takes them all but the longest and solves that problem. He does the math. They’re in. They have just a couple of minutes to figure it out. The shrink goes to work – they have less than a minute to figure it. He snatches one out.
He got the right one. Happy is impressed. Ralph is clock watching. His mom is watching him. Sylvester tells her that he doesn’t know that they are there and tells her all the things he could be thinking about. She asks if he let her son beat him at chess earlier and he said no. He says it’s hard for most parents to deal with kids like that. She asks how his parents did.
Gallo tells Walter he kept tabs on him. Toby comes in with the back up. Walter tells Brooks he’s sending the file to his email. The hard drive is frozen – the file is corrupted. Walter asks if there was an audio speaker in the door. They ruined the door. Sylvester says they are down to a one percent success rate. Walter storms outside and Gallo follows. He says there is a fourth team of fighter jets prepared to shoot the planes down. Gallo asks if there is anything they can do and Walter says no.
Paige tells Walter that he’s panicking like her son. He says he has no right brain and that pep talks don’t work on him. She says he’s scared. She says he’s giving up. Ralph is staring up at the sky and she asks him to go back inside. Walter looks up also then comes in and tells Gallo there’s still a chance. He says there should be a duplicate copy on board the planes. Gallo says there is no way to get in touch with them but Walter say there is.
He tells Gallo that he can download the software from the smaller Klenner Airfield. Walter tells Gallo he’s trying to cover his butt but Gallo tells him to try and make the calls. Walter asks Happy if she can hack the traffic signals. She says she can. Toby say he can find a passenger with their cell phone on. He needs someone to drive him. Ralph hands his mom her car keys. Paige says she can do it and has always fantasized about driving through LA with all green lights.
She says her son is connecting with then in a way she’s never seen before so she needs to help them. He says she’s a good mom or a bad one. Gallo is on the phone when he sees the car take off. Happy is on the phone with them as she changes the signals and them speeding away. They are at 100 and Paige says they have no airbags. Walter says at that speed they’re useless anyway.
Toby is trying to find someone who doesn’t have their phone on airplane mode. Gallo is chasing them. He runs interference and crashes into a truck so it doesn’t hit them. He tells Walter to get to the airfield and make sure he doesn’t regret it. Sylvester and Toby are scrambling and then they decide to find someone who has an older phone and look for a salesman because they never turn their phones off. They call the guy’s phone and he answers. They tell him to listen carefully. They tell him it’s Homeland Security. They tell him about the F22s and tell him to get a flight attendant and take his phone to the pilot.
Walter tells them to buzz the tower at Klemmer at 100 feet. They get ready to do so since the WiFi on the plane has a limited signal. The captain asks for confirmation. Walter says there is too much speed. Paige tells them to try again. The captain says to try again. They find a Ferrari and Happy tells them how to hack into it. They break into it. They figure logistics. They have to drive the Ferrari 200 miles Walter tells Paige she has to stand up out of the sun roof and promises he won’t let anything happen to her.
They’re ready. The plane drops down. The Ferrari revs up. They’re in sync. Paige is freaking. Walter tells her to hit the roof top and the co-pilot dangles a cable out a hatch. The plane gets low almost on top of them. She grabs the cable as the co-pilot sits on the landing gear. She connects it to the laptop. The file downloads and transmits. It makes it to the tower. The plane pulls up at the last minute but clips the small airfield tower.
The Ferrari skids to a stop barely missing the end of the small runway. The tower gets their software back up and they reassure the planes they’ll have them landed ASAP. Walter tells Gallo that Paige deserves a share and he says he’ll see to it. The others tells Ralph that his mom helped save all those people. Gallo tells Walter that he hoped they could have a better relationship going forward. He says he came to LA to start a strategic response team – missing kids and nukes and counterfeit cash. He says he needs his team and they need a home.
Walter hands him a list and Gallo says he saw this coming. Walter says it was his only logical move. They shake on it. Gallo leaves. Toby says he can tell by his body language that he has something to tell them and he fills them in on the job offer. Next Walter goes to Paige’s place. He thanks her for the help. He offers her a job. She says she’s not a genius. He says she’s raising one. He says he can translate her son for her if she can translate the world for them. He offers her salary plus benefits. He says it’s a second chance. She says it’s a second chance for him and Gallo too. He tells her when he was 16 that Gallo asked him to design a system to drop aid packages and they were used to dropped bombs.
He tells her that Ralph will find it difficult to make friends and will feel like no one likes him. Ralph comes in and says – Hi Walter. She says he never talks to anyone but him. Walter says he recognizes one of his own. Walter sits down and they start a video game. Walter asks if he ever pauses his dreams and he says yeah. He asks if he ever rewinds them and the boy says yeah. Walter says me too.
THE END!