Scorp Family Robinson

"Scorp Family Robinson" is a continuation of a two-part season finale (I think) for Season 3 of "Scorpion," which begins with our team trapped on a desert island, after a routine mission immediately following Toby (Eddie Kaye) and Happy (Jadyn Wong)'s wedding goes awry. As a result of those complications, Team Scorpion finds themselves stranded with an injured pilot (Rockmond Dunbar, in my opinion the highlight of these two episodes), a destroyed plane, and despite their miraculous ability to work together like a well-oiled machine, suddenly unable to bend the rules of science and logic, and get themselves out a jam they would in any other situation. This time, they just fight amongst themselves, to the point that their human calculator Sylvester (Ari Stidham) gives up and instead chooses to write the tale of what he sees as their final hours, and being his usual negative self. The group splits, coming up with two competing plans: leader Walter (Elyes Gabel) and Happy want to cause a ripple in the magnetic core of the Earth, which is apparently constantly monitored and would thus bring investigators, while Tony and Paige (Katherine McPhee) want to build a raft and use it to escape. The disagreement also leads to a lot of bickering, and threatens to break up the whole group. Will our team escape the island and keep Team Scorpion intact? That's the episode.

And to me, it's one that illustrates much of what's bothered me this season, specifically what I see as a move away from well-explained, and thus plausible hi-tech plans in favor of wrong-headed and unrealistic character development. Regular viewers will recall that this season Paige was romanced by a military man (Scott Porter), who was in every way the kind of man most women would want - smart, confident, and knowledgeable in the norms of courtship - but lost him when he had an opportunity he couldn't pass up, and it became clear to him that Paige really wanted to be with Walter. Walter treated her badly when he didn't see this however, and yet he and Paige recovered, despite no significant change in his personality that I could discern. No scenes of Walter making Paige laugh, no scenes of Paige gazing at him longingly as he took exceptional care of her son, no Walter doing anything but being well, Walter, and she falling in love with him anyway. It's a perfect nerd fantasy to me - "I can be my usual, awkward, self-centered mess that has no idea how to treat a woman, but I get the gorgeous girl anyway." Why? Because he's a character in a television show, of course. None of that ever works for the rest of us.

Worse, we were told at the beginning of the series that Paige's son Ralph (Riley B. Smith) was maladjusted due to his tremendous intelligence, but benefited from being around adults who were as intelligent as he was, particularly Walter. I thought this worked nicely in the beginning, with Ralph struggling with other children but gradually coming out of his shell with these adults, especially Walter, thus giving us a way in for Walter and Paige to get together. Instead, I feel like what's happened over time is that Ralph has become a 100% normal kid that just has amazing intelligence, one that can make sarcastic jokes like "amazing" in this episode when his teammates' plans fizzle out. I use the term teammate because Ralph now strikes me as just an additional genius for the writers to use to get stuff done, even now helping to execute Scorpion's plans rather than bring Walter and his mom together, though as we've also seen this season, he knows how to do that too. The kid is socially and intellectually proficient. I think they might as well give him the team.

Worst of all for me, this episode again struck me as downright childish in the way it teaches its lesson about the team having to work together and the parallels between "Palter" and "Tappy." Two budding relationships, isn't it hilarious that the couples are on opposite teams, but that they (spoiler alert!) help each other in secret. Isn't it adorable how Toby learns outrageous things about Happy but learns to accept her, the way Paige learns to accept and even become sexually attracted to Walter's social awkwardness, how convenient. It all works out of course, leading to a final scene that felt totally unmotivated to me, unless again you count the fact that these are TV characters and the writers have been hitting us over the head with their would-be relationship from day one. As much as I hate "will they or won't they," I hate when characters hook up "just because" even more. Blech.

"Scorp Family Robinson" struck me as by-the-numbers as its unimaginative title, and really made me question if I'll be sticking with the show much longer, and I think that's too bad, because at its best, it really has been one of my favorites, a throwback to "MacGyver," and other TV adventure classics of the past.

At this rate though, I think I might end up just going back and getting those old shows on DVD or something.

Lots of episodes of "Scorpion" are unrealistic and we know it. But this is an entertaining, non-violent and non-crude series which can be watched with children.

But this episode simply sucks... nothing was entertaining, and there was nothing but annoying characters.

Since Scotty did not how to pronounce Biloxi, he's not from there.