Monday’s episode of Scorpion on CBS took the team to new territory — Area 51, to be exact. While on what was slated to be a simple CIA operation, the team discovers that the only true fear lies in the unknown, especially in the prospect of the death of one of their own.
The premise of this episode is that the team is offered a hefty paying job with the CIA and Walter jumps at the opportunity because he is in desperate need of some fast cash. And no, it’s not because he owes anyone more Ferraris. It’s actually because the MS that has plagued his sister Megan’s life has progressed at an alarming rate and with just a little more funding, Walter believes he could save her.
This episode brings out some intense emotional scenes involving Megan (Camille Guaty), in which she asks her boyfriend, the mathematical genius Sylvester, to respect her wishes not to continue with the extremely painful treatment when it is clearly not helping and she has only weeks to live. Sylvester is caught between Megan wishes and Walter’s insistence that he convince Megan to carry on the treatment, because he believes he will soon have a solution. Meanwhile, the rest of the team is not so convinced that Walter will be able to save Megan. The episode progresses with looking at how each character reacts to the death of a loved one. Paige soon realizes that the geniuses do not know how to emotionally cope and instead perceive death as a purely scientific and inevitable.
It’s certainly intriguing to watch these characters deal with something as horrible and traumatic as the death of a close friend. Cabe tries to convince Walter to give up his research and say a proper goodbye to Megan, or else he will miss his chance while he’s buried in his work. Paige attempts to console the rest of the team and asks them to open up about how they’re feeling emotionally. She says that they are all afraid because death cannot be scientifically explained, it the one thing that not even geniuses can understand. At the end of the episode, she pushes a little too hard and forces Walter to see that he doesn’t always have the answers when it comes to issues like this, resulting in a fallout. Walter becomes even more upset when he learns that Sylvester has disobeyed him. But Sylvester, who is deeply in love with Megan, explains that it is better to think of Megan’s quality of life at the end.
What makes Megan’s eventual death so heartbreaking is that the team has had to watch her health deteriorate and for perhaps the first time, they feel totally out of control. Toby attempts to predict the future through psychology (and is actually pretty accurate) as a way to cope with they cannot manipulate. As the episode takes place in Area 51, Paige suggests that it is the unknown that they all truly fear.
That sounds like a pretty famous quote from Dumbledore…I guess we could figure Paige is a Harry Potter fan.
While Team Scorpion doesn’t actually find any aliens in Area 51, they did find some super high-tech equipment and a band of bad guys looking to use special government technology against the US. Oh ya, this episode actually did have a case in it too. But honestly, with the drama and the heartbreak with Megan’s story, it made the case easy to forget. I’m not entirely sure what they were trying to accomplish. At some point it switched from a simple programming mission to a kidnapping case. I’m not really sure. All I know is that Paige used aliens as a metaphor for death somehow.
Actually one of the best scenes in this episode came at the very end when Happy, who had spent the whole case seemingly annoyed by Paige’s immature belief in aliens, actually geeked out and asked the CIA to explain some strange happenings in the sky. It was adorable because sometimes we forget that Scorpion is actually just a bunch of nerds.
But aside from a few moments of comedy, the episode was emotionally intense. It is inevitable that Megan will die, and likely within the next episodes. So how will the team, mainly Walter and Sylvester react? Time will only tell.
Overall, this episode sets us up for some big events to come and lots of character emotion. It will be interesting (and likely heart wrenching) to watch how the team is affected.
