Scorpion Review: “Rogue Element” (Season 1, Episode 9)

On top of it all, Rebecca wasn’t that interesting a character. She served a very practical story purpose to fill in the holes to Cabe’s backstory, his almost stubborn unwillingness to move on from the death of his child, and how he’s found a new family as, essentially, the dad of Walter and everybody. I think Robert Patrick did some good work in allowing Cabe to show some emotion as the typically stone-faced special agent, but the details were vexing. For instance, why would Cabe refuse to sell the family home his daughter died in to preserve the memories there and then let it fall apart through neglect? I’m not a behaviorist like Toby, but there are a lot of inconstant details like that in the script.

Another family development that thankfully got little attention this week was the ongoing drama of Drew, Paige’s ex and Ralph’s father. Apparently, Walter’s use of pitching to teach physics was able to put a little more zip in Drew’s game, and as a result he has n try-out with a Double-A team in Portland and is pondering whether he should ask Paige and Ralph to go with him. Drew puts Walter on the hot seat by asking for advice, but the genius gets to hold his peace this week, thus providing melodrama leftovers for the next episode. Of course, Paige and Ralph aren’t about to leave the show! You know it, I know it and the American people know it, so why draw this out?

So far as I can recall from my notes, the best part of this week’s episode was the car chase, which had some thrilling old school antics, like having one guy lean out of the window of the speeding car to shoot his gun at the pursuer, and some some cool new school tricks, like using math to discover the exact speed, angle and location you need to hit one moving car with another to run it off the road safely. Scorpion can be fun, and it can be original, and it sometimes is able to be both of those things, but this week’s episode was not its strongest outing. When you have to bend over logic to make the story work, you’re betraying the show’s core nerdiness. And if your nerd show can’t be properly nerdy, then what’s the point?