Thursday, March 2, 2017

Scorpion 3x18 Review: “Don’t Burst My Bubble” (When This is Over, I Am Getting to the Bottom of Your Latest Insanity) [Guest Contributor: Yasmine]


“Don’t Burst My Bubble”
Original Airdate: February 27, 2017

It’s official — any episode that focuses on Happy will end with me in tears. There is just something about getting so much emotion from a character who’s usually closed up and unemotional that makes everything so raw and vulnerable.

This week’s episode focused mainly on Happy and Sylvester. The first has made a friend on an online forum for female mechanics while the latter has his biggest test yet — election day. And the week’s case involves the friend that Happy has made. When the other forum user fails to reply to a message, Happy senses something is off and hacks the website to find the name and address of the user. When she does, Happy discovers that she is a teenager, Ada, who has spent the last few years of her life living inside a NASA designed bubble inside her home due to a medical condition that has left her without an immune system. Unfortunately, a storm during the night has caused the roof of the house to collapse and hundreds of pounds of debris to fall on the ball, threatening to collapse it and, thus, kill Ada.

Like every week, Scorpion keeps you at the edge of your seat wondering if the team will make it in time or not. But this week it takes an extra emotional toll because it’s about a young girl’s life — a young girl who has suffered enough, whose father has dedicated his entire life to her, and this family literally does not get a break until the very last minute. Ada’s story is already heartbreaking, and with Happy’s attachment to her, I doubt there was a dry eye left after watching the episode.

When they manage to get Ada out of the bubble for a short time and she and her father hug for the first time in years, or when she steps out of the protective suit and feels the sun on her face for just that one second... it was just all too much. Scorpion may not be a show that puts too much weight on breaking its viewers’ hearts, but this week they did one heck of a job at it.

What was especially powerful were the parallels made to Happy in this storyline. For starters, this girl is the first real friend that Happy has ever made outside the team. Even if she takes her time admitting that, she finally does so with the help of Toby. Happy has spent her life in a metaphorical bubble as well, without a mother and without a real relationship with her father. She may have had the physical freedom to move around, but she has kept herself locked up, closed off from others and “sterilizing” her world from anything that may harm her — mainly friendships, connections, and anything that might break her heart again.

Both Ada and Happy were heartbreaking in this episode, but they manage to end it on a high note. The team uses VR technology to give Ada the winter formal she couldn’t attend in a very adorable and heartwarming ending to the story.

But Happy wasn’t the only one with a big change in her life this week. Election day for the Alderman of West Altadenia was Sly’s big day and he was doing very, very well. Unfortunately, his opponent (and Allie’s boss) plays dirty and manages to sway the election his way. The bad news is double for both Sly and Cabe, because Allie’s involvement in her boss’s political tactics is not something that Cabe can live with and he promptly ends his relationship with her. The good news is that Sly can still save the Warlock’s Chest — the reason he started this whole thing to begin with — because it is a historic building after all. So in way, Sylvester gets what he wanted all along. More importantly, the growth that he had during this entire campaign is absolutely tremendous. He is by far, in my opinion, the character with the most satisfying journey this season.

Finally, even though Walter was sidelined slightly since Happy took charge of the case, still gets a few moments that highlight his own journey to become a better man. And he has taken things into his own hands to not lose Paige as a friend. Throughout the episode, he shares suggestions of friendship wisdom with Toby, and that drives the latter crazy. Eventually, Toby finds out where Walter has been getting his new friendship trivia: it turns out the genius has been reading “girly” magazines and educating himself on all things friendship-related.

I think it shows great initiative and growth on Walter’s end, even if it is done comically. But Paige herself wasn’t having a great a week, considering her break-up with Tim, who has taken the promotion overseas.

So, it was a big week for a lot of people on Team Scorpion. Happy made a real friend, Sly lost the election but still got to save the Warlock’s Chest, both Cabe and Paige end their relationships, and Walter finds a new way to better himself.

All in all, it was a pretty good week for the team.

0 comments:

Post a Comment