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 Scorpion is loosely based on the life of genius and computer expert, Walter O'Brien. He and his crew of super smart fumbling bumblers are recruited by the U.S. government as a brainy SEAL Team 6 to tackle problems that only their mix of intelligence and awkwardness can solve. Sound like The Big Bang Theory as a procedural? CBS agrees, and the show is getting the ultimate pimp slot, directly following TBBT. Stars include the T-1000 and the guy who hosed Stifler's mom in American Pie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_hJscvdXU Meet The Team Walter O'Brien (Elyes Gabel) is a former Dothraki and genius hacker with an IQ of 197:  Toby Curis (Eddie Kaye Thomas) hosed Stifler's mom and is a world-class shrink:  Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham) is not the guy from The Book of Mormon, but he is a human calculator:  Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong) is the token minority and a mechanical prodigy:  Agent Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick) recruits Scorpion to Homeland Security:  Paige Dineen (Katharine McPhee) is a waitress whose son is a genius:  My hope is the show will be like Numb3rs 2.0; it'll probably be more like Transformers 1, but that's not the worst thing in the world. To that end, the pilot was directed by Justin Lin who helmed The Fast and the Furious 3 through 6. Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 14:56
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So the first episode's plot hinges on some computer malfunction that means all the autopilots turn off for an airport and the planes are just circling overhead until they run out of fuel and crash. Meaning none of the pilots know how to land without the computer, so they'll just all die?
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Sep 22, 2014 15:01
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blue squares posted:So the first episode's plot hinges on some computer malfunction that means all the autopilots turn off for an airport and the planes are just circling overhead until they run out of fuel and crash. Meaning none of the pilots know how to land without the computer, so they'll just all die?
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Sep 22, 2014 15:10
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Ok makes sense
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Sep 22, 2014 15:16
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Can we just agree that this show's connection to reality involves chewing gum and scotch tape, and that we should probably judge it on other merits?
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Sep 22, 2014 15:53
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DivisionPost posted:Can we just agree that this show's connection to reality involves chewing gum and scotch tape, and that we should probably judge it on other merits? But the CBS promo clearly states it's based on a true story!
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Sep 22, 2014 15:58
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GaussianCopula posted:But the CBS promo clearly states it's based on a true story!
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Sep 22, 2014 16:18
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Josh Lyman posted:I think the problem is that the air traffic control tower can't communicate with the planes and the pilots don't know what's going on with the airport - terrorism, ebola outbreak, etc. With 50+ planes in the sky, they need guidance for orderly landings. Given how busy the average airport is this is a real issue in the world. Why radio wouldn't work I don't know.
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Sep 22, 2014 16:34
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I got the opposite impression: what if NCIS was quirkier and nerdier?
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Sep 22, 2014 17:20
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blue squares posted:So the first episode's plot hinges on some computer malfunction that means all the autopilots turn off for an airport and the planes are just circling overhead until they run out of fuel and crash. Meaning none of the pilots know how to land without the computer, so they'll just all die? Isn't that the plot of Diehard 2?
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Sep 22, 2014 20:12
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I like to pretend DieHard 2 doesnt exist
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Sep 22, 2014 20:26
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Rewatching the part where Robert Patrick pitches the team, he says, "Incoming flights, 56 of them are out of comm range. Without landing guidance, those planes run out of fuel." In order for air traffic control to guide those low-fuel planes into visual landings, they need access to a VHF radio that can communicate on the same frequency as the planes. The team is surely able to fix LAX's computers but not before one plane runs completely out of fuel and has to land. Assuming all of LAX's radios are down, the logical solution is to use the radio at one of LA's smaller airports. The problem is that I don't believe airports have overlapping radio coverage, and it's unlikely the smaller airports' radio are powerful enough to reach the planes approaching LAX. However, there's an abandoned airport that can, so main guy and Katharine McPhee steal a Ferrari to race there and use its radio to land the plane that's completely out of fuel. Hah, I didn't intend to, but I probably just wrote the summary for the pilot. Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 21:53
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So a pet peeve of mine is people who whip out their IQ and are really smug about it so based on the previews I'll probably hate this show. "Let me tell you about how big my mind penis is"  Should be a fun time.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:16
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LeafyOrb posted:So a pet peeve of mine is people who whip out their IQ and are really smug about it so based on the previews I'll probably hate this show.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:25
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He's actually said it like 4 more times since he made that post.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:35
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Not a bad show so far; intellectual smugness aside.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:38
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Aphrodite posted:He's actually said it like 4 more times since he made that post. I actually really like how they're handling the technical challenges of the problem. Everything seems reasonable to me, if unlikely. Then again, I'm an electrical and computer engineer, not an aeronautical engineer. I just hope they branch out from just tech problems. That's something I liked about Numb3rs.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:47
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Okay, so now they're in contact with the pilot of one plane. Why don't they have him land and make this data transfer much easier?
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Sep 23, 2014 02:49
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They could have removed that panel in advance, he just wanted to do that. Hope the plane is using DHCP.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:50
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Zoran posted:Okay, so now they're in contact with the pilot of one plane.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:51
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Josh Lyman posted:Don't think the airport is big enough. Short runway = firery death. Yeah, but they could just land at LAX…
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Sep 23, 2014 02:52
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Zoran posted:Yeah, but they could just land at LAX… No time, I think. I'm curious how they work Katharine McPhee into the regular cast from here. Oh, there it is. A little forced.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:53
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Aphrodite posted:No time, I think.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:56
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That was pretty entertaining. Acting is fine, plotting is well-paced. Definitely meant to appeal to a wide audience, as exemplified by the dialogue discussion above, but I can dig it. Unfortunately, we're unlikely to see much live posting since the show airs opposite Sleepy Hollow, but hopefully goons watch it on delay.
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Sep 23, 2014 03:01
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Holy poo poo plugging in an Ethernet cable from a plane to a laptop in a sports car racing underneath the aforementioned plane has to be one of the gloriously stupidest things I've ever seen. And that's coming immediately after I watched Ben Franklin trying to destroy a key to purgatory with lightning. But then it was revealed that Katherine McPhee is going to stick around to chide nerds for being rude to dumb people every week and that's when I decided to not give this show a second chance.
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Sep 23, 2014 03:45
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I really enjoyed it. I thought the cat-5 hanging out of the plane was completely stupid, but the show was entertaining enough that I'm willing to let it go. I'm in.
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Sep 23, 2014 03:53
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So overall this pilot wasn't quite as terrible as I was expecting, but it wasn't very good either. The plane Ethernet was loving stupid and half the poo poo they did straight up wouldn't work but our main characters aren't terrible and there's some potential there. That said I do think the show requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief that these geniuses would both already be together, poor and jobless instead of being richer than god. I also have to say the business with Paige's kid is both incredibly forced and quite a bit misguided as well. The show doesn't seem to realize that there is difference between not be able to relate to people because you're smarter than them and just being autistic. The way they talked about the kid's issues made him just seem autistic and smart rather than just being a genius who only speaks genius language. The show seems to be conflating the two and is generalizing a whole bunch with how "Geniuses" supposedly are. That said it's only the first episode so we'll see where it goes. LeafyOrb fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 05:32
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lelandjs posted:Holy poo poo plugging in an Ethernet cable from a plane to a laptop in a sports car racing underneath the aforementioned plane has to be one of the gloriously stupidest things I've ever seen. And that's coming immediately after I watched Ben Franklin trying to destroy a key to purgatory with lightning. Wow, Winston Zeddamore was in this episode and even he couldn't save it. This show really stretches the whole "super genius who can do anything" aspect but the smart people constantly spouting out specific details about things is just awful, awful writing. Plus the plot point with "Oh, just kill the power and all the secure doors just open right up" was stupid, but then expert psychoanalyst guy predicting exactly where to look from the photo of the boss was even worse. And holy gently caress, Katherine McPhee was annoying as poo poo. She just constantly reprimands them for not being normal, and then is able to figure them out and lecture them to work better.
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Sep 23, 2014 05:40
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lelandjs posted:Holy poo poo plugging in an Ethernet cable from a plane to a laptop in a sports car racing underneath the aforementioned plane has to be one of the gloriously stupidest things I've ever seen. And that's coming immediately after I watched Ben Franklin trying to destroy a key to purgatory with lightning. quote:But then it was revealed that Katherine McPhee is going to stick around to chide nerds for being rude to dumb people every week and that's when I decided to not give this show a second chance. LeafyOrb posted:So overall this pilot wasn't quite as terrible as I was expecting, but it wasn't very good either. The plane Ethernet was loving stupid and half the poo poo they did straight up wouldn't work but our main characters aren't terrible and there's some potential there. pentyne posted:Wow, Winston Zeddamore was in this episode and even he couldn't save it. quote:And holy gently caress, Katherine McPhee was annoying as poo poo. She just constantly reprimands them for not being normal, and then is able to figure them out and lecture them to work better. ----- Shows like this will always attract the ire of goons, and it's your prerogative to think it's unrealistic. But to me, that's looking for a nit to pick. Let's compare to goon favorite Sleepy Hollow, which I also watch. The conceit of that show is that we shouldn't think twice about supernatural elements; the conceit of Scorpion is that not everything shown is necessarily possible in real life. Sleepy Hollow also has a "super genius who can do anything" in Ichabod. Anything, that is, that doesn't involve modern technology. To be fair, Ichabod is more likeable than Walter, but we've only spent 1 hour with Walter. If you gave the pilot an honest chance and are unconvinced, that's fine. But I like to think I'm pretty even-handed about TV as I watch an extremely wide variety and large number of shows, and I thought this was entertaining and fun. And that's all I can ask for.
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Sep 23, 2014 06:37
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I really wanted to like this show. It was OK. My biggest issue is that this episode just wasn't very exciting. At no point in the show did I think that any of the planes would actually crash. I don't know how they are going to make an action show exciting without any action in it. It might be intellectually stimulating but there was no excitement for me. The other big issue for me was that I didn't like Walter, at all. I don't know if it was the actor or the script but, I just didn't have any empathy or compassion or feelings for him. He wasn't a bad actor; it was just a blaahhh character to me. I kind of think that's going to be a killer for the show because you want your main character to have some pizzazz to him. I'll continue to watch but I just get the feeling that this is a nice 2.5 hour movie that has been turned into a TV show.
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Sep 23, 2014 07:41
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The show was bad and won't make it to next season. So many plot holes and not a single character in the team that wasn't bland.
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Sep 23, 2014 08:41
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The plot of this pilot was terribly ridiculous, although admittedly I know far too much than any non-pilot should about airplanes and ATC (pilots land at airports without a tower all the time, they have a plane-to-plane UNICOM channel, and once it was obvious they couldn't get anyone, they'd head to their alternate airports before running out of fuel). It's sort of like all those episodes of TV that have a computer in them ("The IP is coming from inside the firewall!"). I may give it a second shot next week, because I like some of the stuff, but if all the plots are that dumb... no.
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Sep 23, 2014 11:27
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Colonial Air Force posted:The plot of this pilot was terribly ridiculous, although admittedly I know far too much than any non-pilot should about airplanes and ATC (pilots land at airports without a tower all the time, they have a plane-to-plane UNICOM channel, and once it was obvious they couldn't get anyone, they'd head to their alternate airports before running out of fuel). It's sort of like all those episodes of TV that have a computer in them ("The IP is coming from inside the firewall!"). You are telling me that a corrupted update of some computer system that ATC uses would not result in 57 planes crashing unless some super smart guys who are all socially akward, because obviously smart people are not allowed to be socially well adjusted, connect to one of the planes via ethernet cable while driving below it in a Ferrari, who were the only people smart enough to come up with the idea of "lets restore to the last working configuartion from our backups" but are contacted to late to use the backups because those are only stored for 12h and have to be physically taken from that serverfarm to a dinner? But I can deal with all that, my problem is Walter O'Brian. First of all, who casts a former Dothraki Bloodraider as walter O'BRIAN who lived on a farm in Ireland? Sorry if that sounds terrible racist but that guy does not look like a Walter O'Brian to me. Not only that but he is incredibly annoying with his emo-mentality he got from writing some kind of code that was supposed to guide aid packages that was used for BOMBS? Like holy gently caress, what kind of aid packages get delivered the same way bombs get and need special code? But thats not enough, he has to "connect" with this kid (sidenote: anyone who gets check-mated in 8 turns is no grandmaster in chess) in an obviouse ploy to get naked with the single mother of that boy. Let's hope that Walter O'Brian dies because I really like this show that is based on a true story.
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Sep 23, 2014 12:15
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A promo spot for this show told me that Plato's IQ was 170. Thank you for that, show.
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Sep 23, 2014 13:14
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McPhee was hardly the worst actor in this show, I don't know what you're all talking about.
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Sep 23, 2014 22:39
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Aphrodite posted:McPhee was hardly the worst actor in this show, I don't know what you're all talking about. Her lines were excruciatingly bad. The show sets up Walter as this super genius without equal and when he's struggling all it takes is a good old talking to by a waitress who knows a thing or two about people. Plus the fact when the show has all these federal agents around them and yet the waitress is the one who goes with them to the other airport and is dragged along to help in the crazy scheme. The show had to find a way to shoehorn her in, but they did it in the worst way imaginable. Oh, and maybe it's just me, but if she's gone 8 years without realizing her son is a "genius"(but lets face it, autistic) then she's a pretty oblivious person so she shouldn't even be able to do all her common sense explanations to the super-geniuses.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:13
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pentyne posted:Her lines were excruciatingly bad. The show sets up Walter as this super genius without equal and when he's struggling all it takes is a good old talking to by a waitress who knows a thing or two about people.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:19
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Josh Lyman posted:I don't understand why she keeps getting parts. I'm not saying it's not the script's fault, but she keeps getting put in high profile shows. I hope this show isn't always over the top like the pilot was. The whole plane thing was ridiculous. I guess it's fortunate airline builders waste money to add another 50 feet to all CAT5 cables for no other reason than to just do it because space on an airlines isn't limited at all, right?
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Sep 24, 2014 00:29
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pentyne posted:Her lines were excruciatingly bad. The show sets up Walter as this super genius without equal and when he's struggling all it takes is a good old talking to by a waitress who knows a thing or two about people. Sure, but she's not the writer.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:50
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Actually, one thing that REALLY bothered me was that Walter initially thought it was going to be a normal backup job. He expected it to be a simple reinstallation job from a CD. Surely the writers could have had the IT guys at the airport already having done that.
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Sep 24, 2014 03:52
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