SCORPION 4x05 "Sci Hard"

Scorpion has juggled numerous arcs throughout the past three and a bit seasons, but season 4 continues to impress with how tightly knit the writing and continuity is. In "Sci Hard", while Walter, Paige, Toby, Happy and Cabe deal with a hostage situation at a tech convention, Sly flies out to take the bar exam that will allow him to represent Cabe at his trial. Alongside that, Cabe continues to be asset-stripped by Homeland Security: now they have taken his car, leading him to purchase a $500 rustbucket that even Happy's mechanical prowess can't polish to look respectable; and Toby and Happy have strategised a "conception plan" to optimise their chances of falling pregnant. And the canon continuity is as excellent as ever, with callbacks to both Sly's cameo on a gameshow in season 2, and Paige being fired and working for tech billionaire Richard Elia in season 3.

   I'm most impressed by how the episode slipped in Paige's firing. Elia's appearance at the tech convention to launch a new convenient banking app provided the basis for the robbery that occurred, but it was smart to callback to Paige's time spent in his employ by suggesting that this was the project she worked on while there. It's a shame, then, that the only criticism of the plot is that it took such a generic turn: while all eyes were on the robbers' demands that all the data Elia's company had collected from users was to be deleted, they secretly prepared to steal the money from Elia's banking app.

   But no Scorpion plan goes off without a hitch. While the thieves have apparently no clue what financial reward they expect to gain (Sly plucks $1 billion out of thin air), nobody foresees that Elia had gone to the convention before completing the app, leaving Scorpion to struggle to falsify transaction data in order to save the hostages' lives.

   None of this could have been achieved without Sly's help, which is unfortunate considering he is in the midst of taking the bar exam. Rather interestingly, though, Sly isn't dismissed from the bar exam altogether when caught on the phone to Scorpion by the exam invigilator (I've no idea if they're called invigilators beyond secondary school); instead, the invigilator assists Sly despite how crazy his story sounds.

"You are either telling the truth - or that is the coolest lie I've ever heard."

The final dimension to this story comes in the form of an old "friend" of Walter's, a man named Vadat who serves as a member of Vor, an elite group of the 1% of the 1% of tech creators, who dismissed Walter from their ranks after he performed an experiment upon them that hospitalised nine members with E.coli. Vadat provides a much lighter antagonistic hand - a character antagonist rather than the plot antagonists that are the thieves.

   When collated altogether, these various elements serve to put all of our characters not only in excellent positions for storyline development, but in positions that create absurd laughs. (For the 1% of the 1% of laughs, look no further than Toby in tighty whities after robbing a bank with Happy.) It was the most consistently funny episode of the season so far and offered the most natural humour, with punchlines seamlessly flying off the page without affecting the serious moments.

   And it also stuck the landing, wrapping up the episodic storylines with ease. Sly passed the bar, Elia passed some advice to Walter about not caring what others think of him, and Cabe's rustbucket gave out on him - just like Happy said it would.

RATING: 9/10

POINTS OF NOTE

• After Paige told Walter she would continue to act in her role at Scorpion as Walter's communication adviser, she did just that by helping Walter interact with Vadat. Another example of excellent continuity - Paige doing Paige's job.
• Hands up if you're tired of the intern jokes yet. Nobody? Scorpion, as you were.
• It's always nice to see Richard Elia.
• "She is my girlfriend. We've been intimate."
  "Unnecessary detail ..."