Scorpion: Charades Review

“Love is a semi-euphoric temporary reaction.”

Well this is a treat! We got a bonus episode of Scorpion this week, just because we can’t go a single week without it. We need this show just as much as the proud United States need Team Scorpion themselves to ensure their safety week in and week out. This time we see the team having to try and root out a mole within the CIA, lest some very dangerous chemicals get released and cause all sorts of trouble.

One of the problems with this is that the show takes too long to get into all of it, almost throwing away their first act on jargon and exposition. If they just trusted their audience a little more and started off deep with the mole, the episode would have a lot more momentum behind it and could let the ending breathe more. Then again, the show typically has issues with pacing and how long it takes them to move through their story. This is an episode where leanness would particularly help it out though.

The other major issue is that the most unique aspects of this story are barely stayed on, with the bulk of this outing focusing on the espionage and flashy sexiness around it. Of course when we finally get something that’s worth this team investing their time on, it’s almost an afterthought.

Right off the bat things move in a pretty pedestrian direction as we see Paige having sex dreams about Walter while appropriately calling him Drew, giving us the perfect distillation of her conflicted relationship status. Honestly, the show should have just had the guts to have pulled the trigger on this and shown us that not only are Walter and Paige having sex, but that they actually went through with it off screen. But instead we get the oldest trope in the book.  

It’s kind of actually unbelievable when Paige talks to Toby about this dream, asking him what it could possibly mean as she clumsily tiptoes around the parties involved. She might as well say that it’s also for “a friend of a friend of hers.” I guess this sort of laziness shouldn’t exactly be surprising though when we get recycled lines like “purple monkey dishwasher” thrown around later. 

For whatever reason other than convenience, this episode is steeped in talk about love and romance. People have verbose debates about the brain versus the heart. Walter has a big monologue that even breaks love down into its scientific pieces in a very eye roll-inducing fashion. It’s clear that the episode is going to be pushing Paige into a romantic decision soon, with all of this heavy-handed material only hitting that nail on the head. By the time we get to contrived set pieces where Paige has to dirty talk on the phone while Walter listens in bemusement, it’s kind of exhausting. But this isn’t even the extent of it! This is followed by a lengthy scene where Paige coaches Walter in the art of flirting in seduction that is pretty embarrassing and barely a step above fan fiction (gosh, I hope someone’s not funneling their time into Scorpion fan fiction). We get it. Tone it down a little bit. No means no. 

Make no mistake, there’s still plenty of the usual Scorpion fare going on here. We have moments like Happy hanging from the side of the building, Walter getting punched in the face, the typical intense number crunching over kinetic action, and even a plane exploding as Walter jumps out of it (okay, that one kind of works, as do the rest of the closing moments on the plane), but it almost washes over you at this point. All of this connects, but barely, and if there wasn’t an exploding plane to wake you up at the end of all of it, there’d be nothing new to report here. 

Granted, I am being a little harsh, but at this point the show should have learned and moved past these mistakes. It’s past the point of being acceptable. Lines like “Because she’s Happy frickin’ Quinn” should have us cheering by now, not cringing. But I suppose that’s why you never play charades with geniuses. 

You’re just never going to have fun.

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