Scorpion – Strife on Mars

By: Kim Olson

It’s the day of Toby (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Happy’s (Jadyn Wong) joint bachelor and bachelorette parties, but first… Scorpion has a case!

Kapper Aerospace Industries hires Scorpion to fix the power grid in its Mars Simulation Biodome – a state of the art facility perfectly replicating the environment and experience the first intergalactic settlers will encounter on the red planet. The premiere Earth replication habitat is supposed to be Eden, with research ready labs and the capability of growing a variety of foods. But, as Kapper (Patrick Fischler) reveals to Paige (Katharine McPhee) too little too late, he wasn’t big on the upkeep. Eden lost some of its luster when, half-way through the project, he ran into funding issues so the dome isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The Jewel of Kapper Industries instead looks like an attraction from an abandoned amusement park. It’s a mad pigsty with leaves EVERYWHERE! It isn’t very safe and it isn’t very secure. The place is held together by spit and chewing gum. “It couldn’t withstand the impact of a salt shaker!” says Paige, watching the facility on Kapper’s security cameras, which Ralph (Riley B. Smith) hacked into to keep an eye on the team from the garage. This is why, when Walter (Elyes Gabel), Happy and Toby try to repair the sensitive reactor, the grid overheats, explodes and creates a small earthquake that throws them back and damages the doors!

They’re trapped in a slow cooking oven at 110 degrees and rising! It’s humid as hell in the dome, literally! They are so hot they’re going to pass out so they have to strip out of their clothes! To make matters worse, it’s also deadly. In moist air, heat levels of 122 degrees are acutely fatal because the water vapor condenses in lungs.During the quake a pile of soils falls in the doorway to the room Toby is in, trapping him inside. To free him, Happy and Walter have to freeze the soil with nitrogen so they can break up the ice and Happy can pull Toby through to safety. Seeing the team is in trouble, Ralph dismantles the time setting, which is realistically 20-minutes delayed (as it would be from Mars) so he and Paige can watch and communicate with the team in real time. While waiting for Cabe (Robert Patrick) and Sly (Ari Stidham) who are nearby, after Sly’s first Alderman meeting,to rescue them by manually opening the doorsammonia from the ruptured waste tank starts seeping in through the vents. That’s also not good. When concentrations of ammonia mix with humid air it creates a cloud that’s deadly if inhaled.Walter, Happy and Toby spackle the vents shut inside as Cabe and Sly, wearing custom-made piñatas that look like Happy and Toby over their heads as protective masks, step out of the party bus that Paige rented for the night to fix the waste tank. After stopping the leak, Cabe and Sly make Molotov cocktails from the champagne on the bus and the air from its tires to blow the door to the biodome open and free their teammates. Paige is never getting her $500 deposit back and Kappner, who would rather Scorpion die than risk his science project, will never see the billions of dollars he expected NASA to pay him to build his biodome on Mars. His experiment failed when he cut too many corners, barely keeping his biodome running just to impress NASA. The small prices he paid came back to bite him, hitting him with over a million dollars in environmental fines. NASA will never work with him!

While in the biodome, Walter gets lost in olfactory triggered memories of his (hallucinated) time in space star-hopping with Paige. He remembers dancing with her and kissing her, which Toby tries to convince him was just a sex dream. In a precarious situation, standing on makeshift scafolidng, Walter’s shnozz sniffs out the ultimate truth: Walter and Paige admitted they love each other! Walter falls from the ledge and gets caught dangling in mid-air! Hanging there, Walter rats out Paige, calling her “deceptive.” Happy cuts Walter loose and he crashes to the ground.

Toby and Happy are, finally, officially moving in together! But the excitement is quenched when arguments over what stays and what goes in their new home quickly start. Happy calls Toby’s keepsakes worthless junk that belongs at a garage sale or in a fireplace. Their perspectives change though once they meet Jennifer (Elisabeth Hower) and Sal (Benjamin Burdick), the biodome’s inhabitants who fell out of love once they moved in together. Jennifer tells Toby, “When you work with someone all day and live with them all night there’s no space to yourself. Not healthy.”  Now all the exes do is fight and call each other names like “Oscar the Grouch.” Not wanting their relationship to die and end up like Sal and Jennifer, Toby and Happy make compromises in their new living situation to prevent getting on each other’s nerves.  To start, Happy gets Toby a housewarming present. She has his favorite painting “Toby Dick” (a painting of Moby Dick wearing Toby’s iconic fedora) framed.  “My way of saying we’ll make room for your crap,” says Happy. Toby smiles happily and is genuinely pleased and excited.

What was supposed to be the geekiest co-bachelor/bachelorette party for Toby and Happy, akin to an eighth grade field trip with stops at the science center followed the planetarium, a quick visit to the Natural History Museum, before ending the day at Salton Sea for its avian biodiversity, turns into an even bigger buzzkill. It’s just six adults, one kid, a mathemagician named Abra-Cadabricus (Guilford Adams) and a bowl of pretzels. This sad shindig could go down in history as the worst bachelor party ever! This is so not the traditional celebration Paige was planning and Toby was hoping for at the start of the day – with a party bus and piñatas custom made to look like the bride and groom!

During the bachelor party, Walter fires Paige from Scorpion for no good reason! He tells her, “You’ve taught me so much over the past three years. I can deal with human beings much better now and relate to others thanks to you. And that’s why your services are no longer required at Scorpion. You’ve done your job incredibly well and it’s time to move on to a new challenge.” He’s lined up new employment for her with Richard Elia, who has always been impressed by her, for twice the money and secured her a year’s severance – double salary in 12 months. That’s good for her and Ralph. Paige yells at him, “Go to hell!” Walter tells her she’s acting irrationally after he just fired her and continues to fire her. He says, “You’ve done great work here. The job is over.” Walter is still so confused as to why Paige is mad at him. “The fact that you think you’ve made progress when you are pulling something like this! I am getting off this crazy train for good!” she yells before grabbing Ralph and storming out! EVERYONE is disappointed in Walter! EVERYONE, even Cabe, won’t talk to his “son.” He just leaves, somberly. “Man, this party sucks,” says Sly. Walter sure knows how to kill a party!

Walter fired Toby’s best mam (and best friend) during his bachelor party, just mere moments before his wedding. Plus, with the wedding just around the corner Walter and Paige definitely won’t be attending as dates now, if they’ll get together ever. Paige might not want to date Walter ever after he fired her and humiliated her! If she ever might have meant it when she said “I love you too Walter,” that feeling might be kissed goodbye for good.

Best Lines:

• Toby: It’s worthless if it’s not complete. Happy: Could have stopped at worthless.
• Toby: Didn’t you two promise to help me move? Cabe: Yeah, keep your pants on. We’re turning onto… Sly: Woah, that’s a lot of boxes. I don’t want to move all that stuff. Cabe: …into traffic, real bad traffic right now. We’re not gonna be able to make it. Happy: Hey, I see you suckers! Sly: What? Bad. Connection. SCHHHH. Cabe: hahaha. Smooth.
• Kapper: You are certainly a smart fellow (Ralph). Walter: Smartest one in the room.
• Toby: Hotter than a street-corner Rolex.
• Walter: I kissed Paige on the rocket. Happy: Should’ve kissed her on the mouth.
• Walter: What am I remembering? Toby: Maybe you had a sexy dream? Ralph: Gross. Toby: No, it’s very normal for adults. Happy has them about me all the time. Happy: Gross.
• Sal: I can’t believe I had two tons of dirt and a shovel and you’re (Jennifer) still here.
• Toby: He’s (Walter) a little spaced out on account of what happened in space. He needs his space.