Scorpion recap: Hard Knox

Oh, Scorpion. You’ve tried to sell me on a lot of farfetched plotlines, but the hardest one to swallow so far is that Walter and Linda are dating and kissing in public and having a good time.

The Backstory

That’s where we are tonight — on their date, waiting on a giant flower to bloom while Paige is off doing GOD KNOWS WHAT with Shadow Cabe. But after their date, Walter is giving Toby the rundown about the date, and Toby drops a truth bomb and tells Walter that Linda’s not actually into him. He argues that Walter is just trying to compensate for not dating Paige, and Linda is just trying to drum up the same feeling she got when Walter saved her life. Little harsh, Toby.

But the bigger issue tonight is that we’re in court. If you remember, Ralph is taking his college professor to court for stealing the same project he failed Ralph for. Haywood (Horatio Sanz) steps in for Ralph but seems to be crashing pretty hard. Right as the judge nearly rules in Ralph’s professor’s favor, Haywood buys time for Ralph to go through his professor’s backup files so that he can prove that his professor actually did rip him off. In trying to help, Walter snapped on Ralph and Paige snapped on Walter and I snapped in the air because I have weird reactions to dramatic situations.

The Mission

This week’s mission takes us to Fort Knox, and in a turn of events, Scorpion isn’t being asked to stop a hacker or a thief. A man named Agent Cook is asking Scorpion to be the thief. To prove that the chain of command protecting Fort Knox is unstable, Team Scorpion has been asked to break in and steal a Prussian scepter (because no gift this holiday season will be hotter than a Prussian scepter). The only issue is that the mission is off the books, meaning they will be breaking in as actual thieves, and if caught, they’ll be punished as such. But if they pull it off, they get (insert Dr. Evil accent) $1 million.

The Execution

Scorpion decides they’re going to send a submarine through the water system, which will help to flood the base. They’ll call in a plumbing issue, but the call will be intercepted by Sly and Paige back at the warehouse. They’ll send in disguised military plumbers (Happy and Toby), which will allow them to release knockout gas to make all the soldiers pass out while Cabe and Shadow Cabe distract the man who is overseeing Fort Knox in a different part of the base. In the 30 minutes that the guards are passed out, Toby, Happy, and Walter will steal the scepter. The only issue is, like most Scorpion plans, there’s always a thing or two that goes unaccounted for — you know, like an armed guard that holds the trio at gunpoint.

Of course, the trio doesn’t figure that out until it’s too late. Walter turns off the lights, and they blind the guard with flashlights. Walter and Toby seize the opportunity and tackle him, removing his mask, causing him to pass out with the rest of the group. Happy is left to crack the safe, but the artillery testing on base is interfering with Happy’s ability to get the combination. To stop the testing, Cabe and Armstrong drive through the range, causing the soldiers to stop shooting off their test bombs. Of course, that also means they come running at them with guns because that seems to be a theme this episode. It allows Happy to break in and make their way closer to the scepter.

Once Happy makes it to the scepter, she has to remove it from a pressure plate. I’m not going to try and mess with you guys and attempt to explain how that works, but I can tell you that apparently that scepter weighs about the same as Happy’s toolbox. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, I’m just a Paige, recapping a Ralph type of show. Anyway, as they steal the scepter, it seems that an additional trap gets set off that releases enough water into the scepter room to fill it and kill Happy, Walter, and Toby. They manage to find a sword and pry the steel door open, but Happy immediately notices the scepter’s weight isn’t what she estimated it to be. She opens it up to find a vial, but before she can identify what it is, the team is attacked by a group of armed soldiers.

NEXT: What cell service does Walt have? Definitely not AT&T

The Revised Execution

Happy, Toby, and Walter lock themselves back into the vault and attempt to figure out what that stuff is inside that scepter. And of course, it’s just your everyday vile of polonium, which is highly toxic. And then, of course, it’s also worth noting that the amount of Polonium in that scepter is enough to kill about a quarter of the world’s population, or in layman’s terms, every American Idol contestant and then, like, all of China. The team attempts to escape out the air vent, but once they get to a roadblock, Walter realizes that the only way to escape is to have Sly and Paige hack the system at Fort Knox, fire a bomb toward the vault that the trio is trapped in, and blow a hole in the room for them to escape. Meanwhile, Linda keeps calling Walter’s cell. I’m not even going to dive into my feelings about Walter and Linda, but I do want to talk about how Walter gets cell service in a vault 3 feet underground, and I can’t post a tweet once I’ve stepped on the escalator into the Metro. WHATEVER SCIENCE.

The plan works, but the team gets buried under an avalanche of silt and debris. Eventually, they break free and escape out the top. As they’re being chased by soldiers, Sly and Paige relay some pretty crucial information. Agent Cook was a secret U.S. operative in East Germany back in the day. And as it turns out, he hid his polonium stash in that scepter once the Berlin Wall came down because what else do you do with souvenir radioactive material? Once Walter and team escape the soldiers, Agent Cook comes out of nowhere for the scepter. Happy passes it to him, but Toby stops Cook to “give him a diamond.” It doesn’t make any sense, but we have to trust our team, ya know?

As Agent Cook gets away, Walter develops a new plan using two pine cones and a bullet. They use the sap on the pinecone and lace it with the gunpowder. It will simulate gunfire to distract the soldiers from the entrance to that giant hole that Sly and Paige made with their bomb. Walter sneaks back in and drops down a badge — whose badge? Oh, just Agent Cook’s. Where did they get it? Toby lifted it off him when he passed the scepter to him because if Scorpion is good for anything, it’s for implementing some Scooby Doo level planning. Oh, Toby. Agent Cook can’t leave the base without his badge, but he does get caught with that scepter. THE DAY IS SAVED!

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In Conclusion

Back in court, Haywood is brought back in to defend Ralph after being held in contempt earlier in the episode. He works with Ralph, who has figured out the coding and can prove that his professor ripped him off. Ralph launches into his reasoning behind each date, and it’s one of my favorite moments in Scorpion history, “[His birthday] Important because I enjoy my life. [Paige’s birthday] Important because her mothering instincts are superlative. [The day he met Ralph] Important because it’s the day I realized I wasn’t alone.” Walter verifies it because if he doesn’t chime in, he’s going to cry, and you know Walter isn’t going to cry, y’all.

Back on the rooftop of celebration, Walter admits to Ralph that he was wrong and the day he met Ralph is very important to him, too. And then Walter has the most fatherly moment with Ralph. I’m not sure what happens after that because I can’t stop crying…well, that is until that woman shows up. Yep, Linda can’t stay away, but then Walter calls her out and asks her if she really likes Walter or if she just likes the feeling that Walter gives her because of the time that he saved her life. Confused by his logic (this happens to me all the time, so I feel you, Linda), she doesn’t know what to say, but Walter does. He tells her that it’s okay and they can still be friends.

Meanwhile, Armstrong is about to leave on a trip, but before he goes, he asks Paige on a dinner date. She glances over and sees Water still talking to Linda and then agrees to a date with Shadow Cabe because situational irony is important. But the most important part of the episode? Sly and Toby working together to use Happy’s napkin to extrapolate her ring size. Again, I can’t tell you exactly how that works, but I can scream in excitement because the main reason you get someone’s ring size is to PROPOSE, Y’ALL!! I can tell you about feelings all day long — that’s Paige’s and my specialty.

Paige’s Feel Board

• Every Ralph/Walter scene was on point tonight. More specifically, Walter almost crying made me cry, practically forever.
• In any other situation, I feel like Linda and I would be best friends, but I’ve been confused about her presence on this show ever since she blew up in that box of gel.
• That inspirational Paige speech was so important, but like most pleas using emotions, Haywood ruined it and got put in contempt. CLASSIC HAYWOOD.

So that’s it! We have Paige dating Armstrong, Walter dumping Linda, Toby (maybe) proposing to Happy, and then Ralph ruling all of them with an iron fist of specialized coding. With only two episodes left this season, do we think an official Waige reunion is on the horizon, or are we just going to have to ride out our romantic hopes on Quintis. Ponder on it, hit the comments, and I’ll see you soon as we head into the final two episodes!