Thoughts on the tech on the TV show Scorpion?

[TaoPhoenix]

So, another show has appeared about tech geniuses. For this thread, I'm skipping the controversy that Walter O'Brien is hyping himself, or casting problems, or plot cliches, etc.

I figured I'd ask y'all about the tech shown on the show.

Even to lil' ol' me, two categories stand out.

1. Ludicrous situations
In the pilot, supposedly the only way they could get some key software from point A to B was to fly a plane 8 feet above the ground and attach a cable!

2. Making things too hard for themselves
In another later episode ("Cyclone"?), there was supposedly some super incriminating file, and after a bomber blew up a backbone cable, they made it into a long term storage facility and downloaded a copy onto a flash drive and gave it to the govt handler agent ... who got mugged, and somewhere in the mess the flash drive was destroyed.

Uh ... *one* copy of this super-top file? Why didn't they make like seven copies, stash two of them in secret locations buried in the dirt, upload another copy into the darknet in the cloud, and more?

I'll let y'all come up with a third category if y'all think of one.

I do say it has to be a bit tough on writers to write for characters with a combined IQ of 700... I don't mind if they miss little details, but it's the glaring ones that annoy me just a little.

Thoughts?

[Edvard]

From the trailer, I knew it was going to be bad.  Then I read a review of the pilot, and it was even worse than I had imagined.  The best comment was along the lines of "I'm glad for bad shows like this that make my job in infosec look so much more exciting than it really is".  I don't have TV anyway, so by default I can't really comment, but... yeah.

[Renegade]

Uh ... *one* copy of this super-top file? Why didn't they make like seven copies, stash two of them in secret locations buried in the dirt, upload another copy into the darknet in the cloud, and more?

-TaoPhoenix (October 29, 2014, 07:25 PM)

That's just Hollywood having another wet dream on itself - imagining that files can only be moved, and never copied. It's in virtually every single TV show and film. Apparently the word "backup" doesn't exist in Hollywood.

Yeah... I know... It drives me nuts as well.

For the actual show, I've seen some, but it just seems rather bland so far. The entire premise seems stupid to me. But then again, "Person of Interest" started pretty lame and actually has turned out to be somewhat decent. PoI now addresses some actually interesting things, though the underlying premise is still pretty dystopian. Scorpion might pull itself out of the fire. We'll see.

[TaoPhoenix]

Uh ... *one* copy of this super-top file? Why didn't they make like seven copies, stash two of them in secret locations buried in the dirt, upload another copy into the darknet in the cloud, and more?

-TaoPhoenix (October 29, 2014, 07:25 PM)

That's just Hollywood having another wet dream on itself - imagining that files can only be moved, and never copied. It's in virtually every single TV show and film. Apparently the word "backup" doesn't exist in Hollywood.

Yeah... I know... It drives me nuts as well.

For the actual show, I've seen some, but it just seems rather bland so far. The entire premise seems stupid to me. But then again, "Person of Interest" started pretty lame and actually has turned out to be somewhat decent. PoI now addresses some actually interesting things, though the underlying premise is still pretty dystopian. Scorpion might pull itself out of the fire. We'll see.

-Renegade (October 30, 2014, 08:05 AM)

Well, they were in fact talking about a backup, but my gripe was there was only one backup - on a tape drive to start with. Then they only made *one more* backup onto a single flash drive. That's where I started groaning.

But even then, Agent Cabe / Robert Patrick has a decent poker face, so they could have even just had a dummy second flash drive with nothing on it at all and just faked it when he got mugged! (This is why I'd love if studios could get over copyright and do series crossovers - where's Patrick Jane when you need him? He totally would have pulled something like that!)

Patrick Jane is smart, maybe IQ 130, but more to the point he's just *sneaky*. But the scorpion team of 170+ IQ types didn't think of any of that...

Can you imagine some of the crossover possibilities? Monk really does get an extremely rare sickness and has to go see Dr. House?

[Renegade]

Patrick Jane? He rocks! Great character! Love 'em! 

Robert Patrick? Great actor! Loved 'em since he was a terminator. He's been kicking ass ever since.

Now, put Patrick Jane's deviousness in a T1000, and... dystoptian HELL!

[Innuendo]

I want to reply to this thread, but not sure how to do it. I am very similar in type to the main character in this series. I have his strengths (high IQ) and all of his weaknesses (off-beat social interaction skills). I found the way the character was portrayed was highly offensive. However, I realize it must be hard for a writer to create and write a character that is vastly more intelligent than they are. It's akin to trying to write in a language you don't know and are incapable of learning. The series is a caricature...a writer's interpretation of what 'scary smart' people must be like. There are so many directions they could have gone with this, but they'd probably need some 'scary smart' writers and there most likely aren't too many of those around.

The Mentalist is a different kind of show. It's not a show about a genius. It's a show about someone who has studied human nature intently. It can lead to some fun entertainment, but the writers have to be clever...and they usually aren't. Just pay attention to the first 10 minutes of the show & you'll guess what's going to happen 99% of the time. I think the writers have realized that because the last season or so they've given up on trying to be super-secretive with the big reveals and have included the audience in with the plotting to catch the bad guy who thinks he's smarter than everyone else but really isn't.

To tie the two shows together, I'll end with this. When Patrick Jane converses with his weekly worthy opponent, one of the lines he likes to trot out the most is, "You are the type who always thinks you are the smartest one in the room." I get the point he's trying to make. There's that one person who is looking down on everyone else with smug looks thinking that they can manipulate everyone in the room to fit their whims. However, anyone who has ever really been the smartest person in the room knows it's nothing like this. It's not a wonderful feeling at all. It's more like a numbing feeling of boredom and dread sweeping over you as you move from one person to the next trying to learn something, trying to ignite a spark of interest in something, anything, before your mind shuts down from no intellectual stimulation.

When someone is the smartest person in the room they aren't mapping out Machiavellian plots to create an army of minions. They're too busy trying to discern if they jump from that two-story window to escape into the night what the chances of twisting their ankle will be.

[TaoPhoenix]

I want to reply to this thread, but not sure how to do it. I am very similar in type to the main character in this series. I have his strengths (high IQ) and all of his weaknesses (off-beat social interaction skills). I found the way the character was portrayed was highly offensive. However, I realize it must be hard for a writer to create and write a character that is vastly more intelligent than they are. It's akin to trying to write in a language you don't know and are incapable of learning. The series is a caricature...a writer's interpretation of what 'scary smart' people must be like. There are so many directions they could have gone with this, but they'd probably need some 'scary smart' writers and there most likely aren't too many of those around.

The Mentalist is a different kind of show. It's not a show about a genius. It's a show about someone who has studied human nature intently. It can lead to some fun entertainment, but the writers have to be clever...and they usually aren't. Just pay attention to the first 10 minutes of the show & you'll guess what's going to happen 99% of the time. I think the writers have realized that because the last season or so they've given up on trying to be super-secretive with the big reveals and have included the audience in with the plotting to catch the bad guy who thinks he's smarter than everyone else but really isn't.

To tie the two shows together, I'll end with this. When Patrick Jane converses with his weekly worthy opponent, one of the lines he likes to trot out the most is, "You are the type who always thinks you are the smartest one in the room." I get the point he's trying to make. There's that one person who is looking down on everyone else with smug looks thinking that they can manipulate everyone in the room to fit their whims. However, anyone who has ever really been the smartest person in the room knows it's nothing like this. It's not a wonderful feeling at all. It's more like a numbing feeling of boredom and dread sweeping over you as you move from one person to the next trying to learn something, trying to ignite a spark of interest in something, anything, before your mind shuts down from no intellectual stimulation.

When someone is the smartest person in the room they aren't mapping out Machiavellian plots to create an army of minions. They're too busy trying to discern if they jump from that two-story window to escape into the night what the chances of twisting their ankle will be.

-Innuendo (November 02, 2014, 11:58 AM)

Heh there are some smart writers ... on the "wrong" shows! I saw a note elsewhere that several former college mathematicians are now writing for Futurama and the Simpsons! But yes, I recognized that having to churn out episodes because it's a TV show, let's say they only have one "scary" writer on the staff team - so he's burned out writing episodes 2 and 7. So maybe those come out well. So everyone else whacks at the other episodes ... with the results we're discussing.

Meanwhile for the Mentalist, notice the mood change. It was an interesting choice for it to "only" be the Cali Board of Investigation, because they had a fairly low-tech approach. Look up a couple of things from DMV, check a few surveillance cameras, then off to work the people angle.

Then when some of the actors wanted to leave and people began to tire of the exhausting Red John theme, they traveled sideways over to the FBI.

And a medium peeve is now shows are practically commercials / warnings about what all the sexy billion-dollar homeland security tech can do.

Sideways, Harlan Ellison once pointed out long ago, that networks mess with the writer's scripts all the time, so even if the writer had it right, the end show could come out demolished because some exec wanted Their Thing in there!

[J-Mac]

This is another one of those "based on a true story" shows. There actually IS a Walt O'Brien who supposedly did do tech work/hacking (their word, not mine) for the government (not sure whose government) when he was a teen. Here's a link:

http://www.cnet.com/news/the-origin-of-scorpion-the-real-world-story-behind-cbss-new-drama/

Of course his "story" is having some authentication problems.   

Jim

[Josh]

[40hz]

I tried watching the pilot. I think I made it through ~20 minutes before the techno-nonsense overloaded my brain. I switched off and went and played some guitar with my GF. (And here I thought NCIS was bad!)

[40hz]

This is another one of those "based on a true story" shows. There actually IS a Walt O'Brien who supposedly did do tech work/hacking (their word, not mine) for the government (not sure whose government) when he was a teen. Here's a link:

http://www.cnet.com/news/the-origin-of-scorpion-the-real-world-story-behind-cbss-new-drama/

Of course his "story" is having some authentication problems.   

Jim

-J-Mac (November 05, 2014, 12:15 PM)

Yep..."I really done it - but I really can't talk about it!"

That's the civilian's version of our government's old "State Secrets" and "National Security" dodge.

Right up there with: "I knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy who..."

Apparently the "BS" emanating from that show isn't just confined to the TV screen.

[TaoPhoenix]

I think I saw the NCIS clip before. It brings up the whole Fridge Logic / Plot Hole debate.
(Warning - TV Tropes link coming - you may not escape for an hour!)
http://tvtropes.org/...php/Main.FridgeLogic

In the interest of "Media Science", maybe we can establish "levels of fridge logic".
- Most viewers don't even know until either really long after, or being told by friends
- It's still garbage, but at least the props dept stuck them on two machines and two screens side by side so they can pretend they are at least working together to stop the hacking threat
- Issue a Coding Snack to DC so that each side can use their left and right control and alt keys so that commands on their half of the keyboard are somehow independent of the other one's, and that whoever is working on the left gets their own remapped enter key, possibly using the caps lock key!
   

[Vurbal]

Based on my extremely scientific sample of the first 10 minutes of the first episode (I couldn't watch any more) plus occasionally walking past the TV while my wife was watching it, I dispute the premise that there's any tech or intelligence on the show.  All I saw was a bunch of magic.

[40hz]

All I saw was a bunch of magic.

-Vurbal (November 05, 2014, 02:05 PM)

And that, in a nutshell, is what the core concept behind this show is.

[J-Mac]

Me?  I love magic!

Jim

[Deozaan]

I don't really watch TV, so I'd never heard of Scorpion aside from this thread. But I just looked into it on IMDB. The user-reviews are pretty telling. Sorry for the Spoiler boxes; I can't figure out how to link to specific reviews on IMDB.

Here's one that is especially biting:

Spoiler

http://www.imdb.com/...le/tt3514324/reviews
149 out of 169 people found the following review useful:

This show operates in it's own reality. That's not a good thing.
1/10
Author: veruszetec
23 September 2014
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Just watched the pilot of /Scorpion.

If you're thinking of doing the same, don't. I beg you, don't.

I'll just start with the plot:

*Four or five "Geniuses" with personality disorders (you can't be smart and well-adjusted, duh!) are recruited by the government to solve an impossible problem: LAX air traffic control software has crashed.

I call this an impossible problem not because it's tough to solve, but because it's impossible for this to be a problem. Air Traffic Control software *does* crash, and there are procedures, including manually-operated light signals, in place at every major airport around the world to handle situations exactly like these.

Oh, well, why don't they just patch the software? Because the company that made the software went out of business twenty years ago. (Yet somehow they just released an auto-update? And they didn't provide the source code to such critical infrastructure software in a software escrow deal, as is standard industry practice for infrastructure applications?) So, they have to get a copy of the old software from a backup.

Oh no! It's about to backup again! Our intrepid team has only five minutes to get into the backup datacenter to pull the hard drive!...Because nobody has ever heard of differential backups. They literally only have one backup of this critical software, and they write over the same tape every day. Again, any IT professional should be pulling out their hair at this -- this is a textbook example of what DOESN'T EVER HAPPEN because only someone as stupid as a /scorpion writer hasn't considered the possibility of a backup failure.

So, half the team heads to the datacenter to retrieve the backup hard drive before LAX -- which is completely dark, and doesn't have communication with any systems -- somehow uploads it's software backup and overwrites the 'good' version of the software. Yes, they're blacked out from communications, but still have a link to their off-site- backup center. And they can't pull software from it, they can only send. And they can't just unplug the line to the datacenter, they have to go and rip out the hard drive.

*Sigh*

Still with me? It actually gets worse.

So, a car audio speaker that's in the car being used to transport the hard drive -- physically -- back to LAX managed to wipe the hard drive, because magnets. Possible? Yes. Plausible? Not unless you decide to store the hard drive on top of your subwoofers, instead of, oh, I don't know, maybe your LAP?

So, our team is screwed. But wait! There's another chance! If they can get one of these 777's to fly low enough, they can wirelessly ( I thought that was broken?) transmit the software on the plane to ground control. This plane flew from a different time zone! It still has the old software!

...

Yes. We're supposed to believe that planes carry the same software that LAX uses for Air Traffic Control, and that it's small enough to be transmitted in a fly-by. Oh, wait, that doesn't work, because of the "Speed differential" of about ~200mph. Those are some slow freaking radio waves, that's all I'm saying.

The obvious solution? Hotwire a random Ferrari 458 sitting on the tarmac. Blow the roof in dramatic fashion. Get the Ferrari up to 200+ mph on a 4000-foot runway. (For reference, the 458's reported top speed is 201mph. It takes a lot more than 4000 feet, though.)

But that's not all! The 777's pilot must descend to 8 feet off the runway, and rather than land, download the software, and sort everything out, they decide that the best course of action is to send the co-pilot down into the wheel well, open the well at 200+ mph, and THROW A FREAKING ETHERNET CABLE INTO THE FERRARI.

I SWEAR TO GOD.

I couldn't finish it. I had to turn it off. (This was the climax, so I only missed the ending. Frankly, I feel I was generous.)

This is a show for dumb people. It is a show for dumb people to feel good about themselves because all the "smart people" in the show have weird personality disorders, and say things that dumb people think smart people actually say. It's a show for people so completely devoid of rational thought that they can look at this show and not see the swiss-cheese style plot holes.

I wanted to like this show. In 100 words, the premise sounds good. In production, it's so bad that it's actually offensive. It's like the writers are deliberately trying to make the show this bad. The acting was as good as can be expected. The action was very action-y. But there was no rational or logical explanation for the bullshit in the script that the writers are trying to pass off as a television show. A fourteen-year-old could write a better show than this.

Here's another:

Spoiler

20 out of 24 people found the following review useful:

So much wrong... Where to start?
2/10
Author: Matthew Christian from Albuquerque, NM, USA
27 September 2014
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

* The characters talk about how socially inept the "geniuses" are yet they're well dressed in hip clothes (even the nerdiest is retro chíc) and cool hats and speak with lots of snarky urban slang and they're more confident than used car salesmen. And they're all rather short for some reason. What's up with that?

* The butthole genius leader responds to every damn question or comment with, "Don't worry, it'll work... maybe" or "It's OK, you'll be safe... probably" or "Of course I'll follow his orders... mostly".

* The writers completely misunderstand that KNOWLEDGE is the accumulation of information but INTELLIGENCE is the ability to organize knowledge to synthesize solutions, explanations, understandings, etc. The genius characters are all data banks of insanely diverse information (sure, I know top-of-head how to break into and start a filthy expensive sports car I've probably never seen in real life and which has a complex encrypted RFID transponder anti-theft circuit) and other minutia that they instantly recite. But they do no actual problem solving.

* Lame stereotypes like the genius man-child who get so wrapped up in his math that he forgets to pay the utility bill. They have many other geniuses loitering together but none of them is smart enough to say "set up automatic online bill payment" or "put a Post-It note reminder on the toilet, you'll be sure to see it there".

* The butthole genius leader tried to do a rapid file exchange by connecting to a jet's wi-fi signal as it flew low over the control tower. But if he was such a genius why didn't he calculate the less-than-a second time span the jet and tower wi-fi would be within range of each other, or the Doppler shift, or the time the wi-fi would take to handshake and connect? Or set up a Pringles "cantenna"? Or better still, why not USE THE FAA AIR-TO-GROUND PACKET RADIO DATA LINK THAT ALL U.S. JETS HAVE?

* Pairing the starched, straight-laced Homeland Security agent with the devil-may-care genius who plays by his own rules is the same kind of "oil and water" TV buddy pairing that died with the 1980's and stayed dead for good reason. I can't believe someone brought it back.

* Where did the butthole learn high-performance high-speed driving in a car he's probably never touched before let alone ever driven?

* Why would a passenger jet have such a long ethernet cable on board?

* When the butthole driver tells the waitress to hit the roof release button, why did she slam the roof off with her hands? What part of "button" was hard to understand?

* Why did the flight office have to climb down on the landing gear? Couldn't he have tied the cable to a metal coffee pot or something and just drop it out the hatch?

* At 250 miles per hour, wouldn't the unweighted ethernet cable have been whipping around wildly in the wind?

* If they were in a car that could match the speed of the jet, and could get 20 feet away from the jet, why didn't the butthole try the wi-fi again now that he was in better, faster range?

* How the Hell was a laptop dangling from an ethernet cable able to relay thesoftware package to the tower by wi-fi that was somehow faster than the ethernet cable, then install the flight control software, poll all the tracking sensors and radar, and update the flight status displays, in less time than it took to brake a high-performance car going at 250miles per hour?

What the Hell... the 1960's Batman TV series was more realistic.

Or how about this one, which I assume is ironic.

Spoiler

36 out of 54 people found the following review useful:

It's a good joke, I get it.
8/10
Author: Ratatosk73 from Netherlands
23 September 2014
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Good show that takes a p1ss at series like House and CSI. A lot of people don't seem to get the joke but I thought it was pretty funny. One or two errors could be bad writing but for this number they really must have been trying hard. The nice thing is they aren't all that obvious because people have already been fed loads of science BS in other shows. Hard disk gets wiped by a car speaker (almost no magnetic field) Girl stands up through roof at 200 mph (just try doing that with your hand) Almost all of the computer interactions take about 1 second. Looking at a photograph lets you find out where the hard drive is. And the characters are just as funny. The kid doesn't talk to anybody but his mom but somehow went to a normal school till recently. Fat guy is a chess grand master that loses a game to a kid in 8 moves. Hat guy totally understands people but makes them want to kill him (masochist I guess), China girl is tech wizz that almost electrocutes herself and forgets about the magic car speakers and the main character isn't smart enough to understand that things can be used for multiple purposes at 16 and goes around telling people he has met for 5 minutes that his IQ is 187 (police code for murder, I really liked that one!). The list goes on and on. Add a 00:07 bomb-moment about every minute and you got a very funny subtle parody disguised as a regular show. Nice one!

Ohh and btw, scrambling some fighter jets to escort the 'blind' planes would solve the problem without all the fuss. I guess my IQ is murder too.

Hope they add a sociopath on steroids to the team for the enforcement jobs.

[J-Mac]

Deozaan,

Why none of that matters even a little bit:  Television "dramas" are not considered to be serious or anything at all like reality. They are pure escapism, nothing more, nothing less.

To wit: Baywatch lasted on the air for 11 seasons - that's 242 episodes! - and was one of the most watched shows in the world. (And that isn't counting the spin-offs Baywatch Nights or Baywatch Hawaii).

Jim

[TaoPhoenix]

Hooray for Deozaan! I started the thread, because even lil' ol' me was suspecting this kind of hilarity / smh head-shaking, I just don't have the right vocabulary to not sound as dumb as the writers!

This is an evolving post (because Mouser put a REALLY long time-out into DC so you don't croak and lose your whole post just because you were typing for more than eight minutes!)

Numbering is based a bit on the point that Deo (Deeeeo!!) used multi-hides.

(Section zero: General stuff)
0a: Fridge logic: "I went to pull my chicken out of my fridge, but someone broke into my house, stole it, and shipped it to someone else!"
0b: http://xkcd.com/859/
So, we have a close tag without an open tag?!


1a: We're talking hardware - so do we also have lots of problems where Happy made cascading mistakes? (I haven't read all the spoilers yet, and I actually have seen all but tonight's episode - they pull the "ohmygawd I don't know how to backup software" *again* in another episode. But given the shenanigans they pull, wouldn't Happy have gone all Stern-Face and ripped out the speaker "just in case"? Example dialog: Cabe: "Hey! That's someone's property! You can't do that!" Stern-Happy: "You didn't read your script and see that we'll end up dropping an ethernet cable from a plane 8 feet above the ground and you're worried about a $300 speaker?!")

1b: "The acting was as good as can be expected.". I actually don't think it is - I think there are some casting problems, though hard to pin down - maybe reminds me a bit of ST TNG early 1st season. That aside, I bet at least one of the actors *does* know some tech, and they look at the script and beg and plead to try to patch it on the fly from dying-on-the-floor-from-a-knife-in-the-heart to at least in-critical-condition-in-the-ER.

2a: Compared to the "GovernTizements" of Homeland Security on other shows, (funny or not), Cabe and gang seem ridiculously incompetent. Straight-Laced Buddy, fine, if you make it work - when the "geniuses" are half way through some undercooked fish of a plan that could kill people, Cabe should be interjecting stuff like "good attempt to read the morse code through the victim's finger tapping, that narrowed it down, but we checked (insert equipment here) so we would go to the right building the first time and not arrive 10 minutes late because we closed our eyes and didn't use any dollar of our billion in tech we spent." (Yes, plot point from another episode!)

2b: "...genius man-child...". If they're going to those lengths, and I'm some 5 episodes in, *they haven't used the Genius-Child-Child once* to do *anything at all*! Shades of Wesley-Terror! Yes, he's so quiet he was mistaken for a Child Left Behind, but he hasn't ever asked an Insightful Question *once* yet in the entire season so far! (Or maybe just one - in five episodes it's easy to miss one, but I've been looking!)

3a: "One or two errors could be bad writing but for this number they really must have been trying hard." Problem is, it's spun wrong to be a super-parody of the-show-that-revolves-around-genius(es). The tone just really feels off. The Genius Detectives in other shows are at least playing 20-questions with multi options. If this is a parody, the types of mistakes would feel different - they'd do stuff like "I protected the drive! Honest!" met with "Yeah, well, none of us counted on it being hit by scary ass terrorist flame grenade radioactive bombs. Godammnit, now I'm going to lose my hair."

3b: (This point intentionally left blank. See, that's what parody looks like - call backs and inside jokes. We're looking at you, old IBM manuals!)

Extra credit: The Scorpion drinking game! Take a drink every time they say the word "I.P. Address" like it is a minor deity to be worshipped!
(But be careful to already be safe at home!)

[mwb1100]

To wit: Baywatch lasted on the air for 11 seasons - that's 242 episodes!

-J-Mac (November 05, 2014, 11:19 PM)

Baywatch had other things besides making sense to keep your interest.

[J-Mac]

Not for me! Too many other ways to see such "other things" without having to put up with David Hasselhoff.

Jim

[Edvard]

[mwb1100]

That Knight Rider clip may have been unrealistic, but it was still awesome.  Scorpion had no "awesome".

[Stoic Joker]

That Knight Rider clip may have been unrealistic, but it was still awesome.  Scorpion had no "awesome".

-mwb1100 (November 07, 2014, 12:01 AM)

+1 - Good point. 

[Vurbal]

I guess the problem I had with the show really wasn't the magic tech in and of itself, although solving the real problem would probably fix that as well. The core problem is that you really need a higher level of intelligence behind the scenes. It's the same reason I disliked the one episode of Elementary I watched.

It may not even be the intelligence of the writers per se as much as the reliance on typical studio formulas. What sets really smart people apart from the norm is primarily that they think differently than other people. It's fundamentally just cognitive creativity. Scorpion tries to simplify that by writing smart people as being mostly like other people, but just knowing a lot more stuff and having some personality quirks that mark them as nerds.

For example, in the first episode the main character looks at a group of air traffic controllers and just knows one of them is a coder because he looks like a nerd. That's the sort of conclusion somebody who sees computers as PFM (pure @#!%ing magic). Either that's representative of the writers' perspective, or perhaps some network or studio executive who won't sign off on anything that goes over his head. In either case, it's not something I can bring myself to watch.

The rare exception would be shows which go so far over the line they come off as satire. I watched CSI Miami for a while for exactly that reason.

[Innuendo]

What sets really smart people apart from the norm is primarily that they think differently than other people. It's fundamentally just cognitive creativity. Scorpion tries to simplify that by writing smart people as being mostly like other people, but just knowing a lot more stuff and having some personality quirks that mark them as nerds.

-Vurbal (November 07, 2014, 12:07 PM)

I can't speak for the other characters, but the main fellow is 'supposed' to be a high IQ INTJ type. I've spoken a bit about Myers-Briggs elsewhere, but in the first episode the main guy makes a painfully obvious point to describe INTJ character traits to the other characters, mostly to the the young boy. Speaking as a person who happens to be the INTJ personality type with a high IQ, that character in that role with that writing is the equivalent of writing a live-action version of Groundskeeper Willie into a network drama and attempt to pass him off as what Scottish people are really like.

Of course, if they did that there would be a great uproar because of so many people proud of their Scottish heritage. In this case, they'll probably get away with it. There's less than 2.5% of the world's population who are classified as being INTJ. Less than 2% of the world's population has an IQ over 135. Factor in how many of those people have actually seen the show and that really wouldn't make much of a letter-writing campaign user base.