Inspired by a true story, Scorpion is a bright, high-octane drama about an eccentric hacker (Elyes Gabel) who forms a network of super-geniuses to act as the last line of defense against threats facing the modern world. “You’re essentially looking at the creation and story of a group of people who really exist today who help the government and high-powered Fortune 500 companies to solve problems,” says Katherine McPhee, who plays a waitress and single mother who helps the team interact with the everyday world in exchange for help in understanding her isolated and brilliant son. Because while the Scorpion team — behaviorist Toby Curtis (Eddie Kaye Thomas), mechanical prodigy Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong) and Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham), a human calculator — has brains in abundance, they lack social graces. Robert Patrick also stars as a U.S. Marshall who enlists the Scorpion team to help solve problems that no one else can, and he (and McPhee) serve as “normality” amid the peculiarities of the geniuses.
The show’s pilot is fast, funny and, above all, exciting. With the clock ticking on an impending airline disaster, the team has mere minutes to complete a series of hacks and fixes that, although completely far-fetched, create an absolutely thrilling hour of TV. I couldn’t even fathom the amount of plot that was crammed into a single hour of TV; it’s frenetic in the best possible way and left me absolutely breathless by show’s end.
Scorpion faces tough competition in its Monday time slot, but if the procedural can keep finding exciting fixes to outlandish problems (and perhaps tone down Wong’s distracting voice) the show should become another hit in CBS’ arsenal.
Scorpion > CBS > Mondays at 9pmET/PT, beginning Sept. 22
Image: Robert Voets/CBS ©2014 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved
