Monday, March 5, 2018

Scorpion 4x17 Review: "Dumpster Fire" (Make Things More Bad) [Guest Contributor: Yasmine]


"Dumpster Fire"
Original Airdate: February 26, 2018

With this episode, Scorpion gave a us a little role reversal situation mixed in with a slight AU scenario. If you’ve ever asked yourself the question, “What if the team was not a group of geniuses, but just a group of normal people with average IQs? What would that look like?” then this episode is your answer.

Although some parts of it went a little over the top trying to portray the geniuses as dumber than normal and had them laugh a few too many times at fart jokes, it still provided an interesting shift and helped certain truths come to the surface.

First and foremost, it showed Walter, Sylvester, Happy and Toby that — although they might not be geniuses — Cabe and Paige are still valuable members of the team with their own strengths and intellect that is just as dependable and important to what they do.

The episode had started with Walter and Paige hanging out with a group of her friends and Walt refusing to “dumb himself down” just to fit in with them. The fact that Walter is not willing to put in an effort there upsets Paige, visibly so, but Walter fails to notice that.

And Paige is not the only one upset by Walter’s behavior recently. Cabe also has beef with the whole team for the way they’d been treating him and Paige about the case they’re about to head out on. Apparently, it’s far too complicated for a non-genius and when they do eventually explain it — once again — they don’t “dumb it down” for him. But the gist of it is that a particle accelerator station in Colorado, the world’s deepest lab, has to have the results of a recent test verified by the team before they can apply for funding to avoid any falsification of results.

Paige and Cabe are not the only two feeling attacked about their lower IQs. Toby is right there with them. Being the genius team member with the lowest IQ, he finds himself the butt of every joke that day and is also made to feel less adequate than the other three.

But none of that matters. Or actually, it all does and comes as a wake-up call to the geniuses once they get to the job site. As simple as the assignment seems — verifying experiment results — there is one very clear warning: staying too long in the underground lab will cause cognitive abilities to decline, and — beyond a specific time limit — the IQs start to fall off a cliff.

So of course after verifying the results, the team find themselves extending their stay beyond that time limit to explore around the particle accelerator because it is their one chance to do so. And if breaking that one simple rule is not enough, one of the prairie dogs used in the lab escapes and chews through the wiring. In typical Scorpion fashion, this goes from a simple electrical malfunction to a full-on disaster situation, where the best case scenario is that the lab blows up and the worst case scenario is that they create a black hole.

And that is the exact situation one wants to find themselves in when the smartest people in the room are suddenly acting like ten-year-olds who’d rather make fart jokes than put their minds to the task at hand.

Luckily for them, Cabe and Paige are up top with their brains intact and they manage to help keep the team focused and on task. Paige and Cabe are there with all the ideas and they guide the team to stop the particle collider from exploding, bringing them back up safe and sound — and these ideas include putting Toby’s brain in a sealed vacuum when he loses consciousness, which proves Paige and Cabe have learned a lot about thinking outside the box from these geniuses.

Back in L.A., Flo and Ralph are attending a Chemistry Expo and Ralph is working as Sly’s wingman. Having realized he has feelings for their chemist neighbor, Sly is still wary of making a move. But luckily for him, the young genius is there to tell Flo all about how absolutely amazing Sly is. To a certain extent, Ralph does do a great job, eventually managing to pair the two up to work on Sly’s water filtration system that he hopes will decrease the amount of plastic waste in the world.

However, Sly is not the only one who Flo shares a moment with. In his declined IQ state, Walter’s EQ had made a rare appearance and he had apologized to Paige for his earlier behavior and promised to make more of an effort with their relationship. However, the minute he gets his IQ back, he forgets all that and blows her off to focus on work. He then goes on to share a moment with Flo over an experiment he’s working on. And honestly, I hate how all this is pointing towards a potential love rectangle between Walter, Paige, Flo and Sly. This is literally the last thing this show needs. The drama that comes with that is absolutely unnecessary and will ruin the precious relationships and bonds between the members of this team, who are more family that team at this point.

One relationship that I love how the writers are dealing with is Quintis. After finding out why they haven’t been able to get pregnant so far, the couple are looking for a doctor to start the treatment. And of course, the selection process is exhausting because it’s Happy and Toby and they are going to pick only the best. After studying all their options, they finally choose one — and much to Toby’s annoyance, he finally admits that the best option is the Brown-trained doctor, which is huge coming from Toby, the Harvard-trained doctor.

This episode had its ups and downs. Watching the role reversal and the geniuses lose their IQs was funny and fun, Ralph as Sly’s wingman was awesome and as always, for me, Toby and Happy and their relationship are everything. Unfortunately, the fact that Walter fails to learn anything from this experience and that after all they went through he still failed to truly appreciate Paige and Cabe was a huge disappointment.

And do not get me started on the potential love rectangle.

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