Scorpion Review: “Risky Business” (Season 1, Episode 8)

Another romantic predicament is Toby’s attempt to woo Happy with monster trucks, or rather his aborted attempt to woo Happy with monster trucks after she takes a shine to Temple. I was fine with Toby and Happy when it was a friendly, flirty teasing kind of relationship, but if the writers are trying to make this the show’s secondary ‘ship after Walter and Paige, and I’m so not interested. One of my pet peeves about modern TV is that when you put and a man and a woman with measurable chemistry together, the show tries to force them together romantically, forgetting the words of another genius Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm: “they’re so concerned thinking about whether or not they can, they don’t stop to think whether or not they should.”

But these issues seemed to be exacerbated by the tepid case of the week, which starts promisingly with a dead blogger and a secret code, but was ultimately rather lightweight with many thinly veiled references to real world music luminaries. The case might have been fine for your average police drama, but the rationale for involving Homeland Security and its team of genius consultants was a little thin. But wait! A former American Idol contestant is the female lead of the series, and we learn this week that Paige does have a very nice singing voice indeed. So I guess it’s not a total loss if Katharine McPhee gets to exercise her vocal chords a little.

I know I’ve commented before that Scorpion doesn’t work as well when the mission is too consequential, but as “Risky Business” proves, when the mission isn’t consequential enough the show still suffers. Scorpion will have to walk a very fine line between giving us something important that’s an actual threat, but allows the cast to maximize their humor and charm to be entertaining. And if there’s an opportunity to have Toby become a semi-effective master of disguise weekly, that would be great too. He’s done 80s action movie cop, and now a TV lawyer, so if he could next be a strung out ER doctor or a 1930s newsie, then that would be a much better use of Toby than pining for Happy.