So Scorpion debuted last night on CBS, bringing us the thrilling tale of "geniuses" who help DHS by setting up wifi access points in restaurants. Yes, that is a true plot point. It all leads to this scene, whose true meaning I will unfold for you so that you can appreciate the full amazing awfulness.


All you need to know about the main character is that he's a genius who is "on software," which means he tells people things like "open your email and click the link." He has trouble communicating his emotions because he's a geek who only understands machines, and he has a dusty warehouse space that's shared by a tough hardware expert, a hat-wearing psychology master, and a nerdy "human calculator."

This week, the DHS brings him an emergency! There is a bug in the local airport's software and now 200 planes are going to crash if he doesn't do something! So he decides that the best thing to do is reboot from a backup version (yes that is the ACTUAL SUPER ELITE HIGH TECH THING HE'S DOING). But where is the backup? Ohhhh, it turns out EVERY PLANE has it, and if only they could download it from one of the planes, everybody could land and nobody would crash. The only way to get that backup, though, is USING AN ETHERNET CABLE DANGLED OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF THE PLANE AND PLUGGED INTO HIS LAPTOP.


Oh I know, I know — you think that's ridiculous, right? But it's not! Because they ALREADY TRIED A WIFI CONNECTION and it didn't work. So obviously the next thing is the ethernet cable.

Also, the best way to do all this is to fly the plane low over the car that is racing ON THE LANDING STRIP. No, don't LAND THE DAMN PLANE on said strip and then reboot from the plane's backup (note that I am not even getting into the sheer dumbfoundery of the notion that the planes all have a backup of the software, or that the entire airport is run on "a piece of software," or that you can't land without software EVEN THOUGH WE ACTUALLY INVENTED PLANES BEFORE WE INVENTED COMPUTERS).

Oh and also? At one point, we see that all the computers are running VMware. Which — did VMware pay for product placement? Did Scorpion hire somebody with a job title like "cybersecurity ninja" from VMware to advise them? We may never know.

So anyway the guy gets some random chick from the diner where he installed some wifi to drive with him in his car and hook up the ethernet cable and save the airport. Yay! Airport rebooted! Hacker triumph! Next week, the geniuses will help a guy whose pants keep falling down.


I apologize for all the caps but I had a lot of feels.