Scorpion - "Pilot" (1x01) CBS, Mondays, 9 p.m.
If you combined "The Big Bang Theory" and "Numb3rs," you would get the new CBS crime procedural "Scorpion," which features a group of super geniuses who will presumably stop terrorist attacks or solve bank robberies and the like on a weekly basis.
Now I'm a fan of both "The Big Bang Theory" and late, great "Numb3rs," so this one was pretty high on my list of potential new shows to pick up this season. Lead Eleyes Gabel, who plays hacker extraordinaire Walter O'Brien, even looks a bit like David Krumholtz, who in turn played math genius Charlie Eppes for six season on "Numb3rs."
The question early on with that show was just how many crimes could the FBI solve with math? Turns out quite a lot, even if they stretched the premise on more than one occasion.
Here we have four geniuses, with human behavior specialist Toby Curtis (Eddie Kaye Thomas), electronics expert Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong), math savant Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham) and Walter.
When we first meet this group, they are working with Walter performing mundane jobs to support themselves in a world in which they struggle to function. Along comes Government Agent Cabe Gallo (the always wonderful Robert Patrick) to give them a mission of utmost importance, saving around 20,000 people flying on some 70 airliners trapped in the sky without communication after a software patch shuts down air traffic control in the region.
Needing some stable WIFI, the action moves to a diner, where Walter installed a new system earlier in the episode, putting him and his friends in contact with waitress Paige Dineen (Katharaine McPhee) and her son Ralph (Riley B. Smith). What should be a simple hack and software switch job grows increasingly difficult through a terribly inconvenient setbacks.
