Scorpion Season 2 (the season premiere and Waige meta)
I’ll try to do this disc by disc, after this post, but a guest asked a question about the characters’ choices at the end of this ep in response to my fic about it, and this seemed like a good opportunity to get my thoughts about Walter and Paige at the end of this episode down.
‘Satellite of Love’
Reaction:
While this episode re-establishes the team, the two main ships and Cabe’s father-son relationship with Walter for the new season, it’s truly excellent at following through the previous season’s finale. I was also trying to work out if I’d seen it before, I definitely hadn’t seen the weather balloon stuff, but had seen the kissing out of context in fanvids and what-have-you.
First off, they’ve updated and improved the voice-over intro, incorporating cool shots of characters from season 1.
There’s meta humour as Cabe is reduced to telling actors how to play cops until Homeland Security rehires him and team Scorpion to save Pasadena from a satellite. In a fakeout scene, Paige is having a daymare about waitressing again and being bad at it. Walter is still in rehab, suffering woozy moments and a dodgy hand after all that business in the cliff-hanging car. After not really seeing anyone but Cabe over the summer, he pretends he’s FINE to help on the case.
Merrick is gone and there’s a new director who’s a bit of a hard case (I was aware Molina wouldn’t last, so didn’t get too interested.) Paige soon susses that Walter is not himself. Later, when Cabe calls him out on the same, Walter is surprised he noticed and thinks Paige blabbed. Oh Walter, you’re nowhere near as stealthy as you think you are.
We learn that Happy usefully speaks Japanese (but why not Spanish then? I complain. It’s only the second most widely spoken language in the US.) Toby has to treat Happy’s eye (ew, not the eye!) while trying to woo her…by describing himself as mould!?!? Sly is nearly thwarted from saving Pasadena by another agency, while a 70% himself Walter and an oxygen-deprived Paige are on the aforementioned weather balloon, setting off an EMP, then they’re in the satellite’s new trajectory with only one parachute. AS YOU DO.
The show seemed to have decided to go bigger and bigger-hearted after season 1, although granted this is a season premiere seeking to impress. There’s no Ralph or Megan, but that’ll come, and I found it a delight - although Paige has transferred from the humanities to business studies.
The Waige is epic in this one. I loved that the show confronted my issues with her kissing him while he was unconscious at the end of last season, by having her admit she’d done it pretty quickly. (What I then have been obsessing over, even though it doesn’t really matter, is when Walter hacked into the hospital footage to see it for himself. I think I’ve plumped for him only doing so after she told him, which of course led to him infecting his computer and endangering the mission and much mortification. Heh.)
Anyway, after this admission, Walter jumps on her babbling that they should remain professional except Paige clearly doesn’t mean it, and he clearly wants her to fix his ties forever.
There’s then the nice nod/reversal of ‘I love your voice in my ear’ from ‘Charades’ with Paige having to become Walter’s hacking amanuensis because he can’t type quickly, and him sitting all close to her as he dictates code. Until he got too embarrassed to because his rewatching the kiss obsessively became public knowledge. This in an episode where the running gag is Toby (for once, not Sly) overhearing them.
And then, giving the fans who may also rewatch kissing scenes a lot what they want, Water makes the suggestion, enthusiastically taken up by Paige, that they test the theory about what’s going on between them and kiss. And it is awkward and fervent and hot, but they break off, pretend it didn’t mean anything, except we can see that’s a lie. I focused on Paige’s response in my fic, but Walter’s all Quantum Leap referencing and equally affected.
Waige meta
The question I referred to was why they both stopped kissing and lied and pretended it meant nothing to them. And my best guess is they’re scared. They both have their own hang-ups, Walter that he can’t connect enough or maintain a romantic relationship based on his past, and because his top security blanket lie is that he doesn’t have feelings, he’s in denial. He doesn’t want the disaster of the last relationship ending to happen again, and Paige means more to him already. That, more than Drew, is what stopped him from making a move in season 1. It’s also somewhat not having the tools to do it. He knows the externals, the idea of what a date should be, but how to navigate that situation emotionally? Not much of a clue.
He and Paige are also both scared about what acting on their feelings and getting it wrong could mean for Scorpion. (Hence the no fraternisation rule that Walter made, but was willing to break.) Scorpion matters to them as much as it does to any of the team members. It’s a lifeline for them both, both as an enterprise and its people, including Ralph. The only thing that made Paige walk away was concern over Ralph’s safety and well-being. They rationalise that what they’ve got is working, so they shouldn’t endanger it. They’re scared of breaking this support network and channel for their abilities that Walter created.
It’s also been at the back of my mind that there’s an element of boss-employee going on here, although there’s a non-hierarchical informality in the team. Everyone feels free to pile in on Walter when he fails, e.g. over the local TV news interview, but he is the boss, he’s usually the one who gives the orders, invested in Scorpion and owns the garage. The show hasn’t gone into this and was made pre MeToo or I think it would have had to.
And for Paige, Ralph would be a consideration before embarking on any new relationship. He looks up to Walter, who has always known they’re a package deal, but if it didn’t work out between Paige and Walter, that would have an impact, probably harmful, on Ralph.
She’s also fairly conventional, and carries the breakdown of her relationship with Drew around with her. She was open to rekindling things with Drew because of past feelings and the fact he is her baby’s father until she realised she’d moved on. Basically, as Ralph’s mother, she isn’t going to be gung-ho about romance.
And Walter is so different and she knows acutely what all his emotional failings are.
But taking the Doyleian view, the kiss was fan service, confirmation that yes, this is our central couple, yes, we raised the stakes at the end of last season with Paige kissing Walter on the lips in response to nearly losing him, so we’re kind of making up for that by having them both conscious and fully engaged. I think they created a rod for their own backs by doing this and the characters’ immediated reaction, given what we’d just witnessed. It adds a whole level of incredulity about their denial. Starting the season with this (and I didn’t know all thi had happened when I started watching the show and shipping them) makes them one of those frustrating canon couples in terms of handling the UST with enough credible drama. (And I think they managed it better with Quintis’s development, based on what I’ve seen of seasons 1 and 2, even though I’m more invest ed in the lead couple.) Was there network involvement or did it all come from the writers?
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/433267.html.
‘Satellite of Love’
Reaction:
While this episode re-establishes the team, the two main ships and Cabe’s father-son relationship with Walter for the new season, it’s truly excellent at following through the previous season’s finale. I was also trying to work out if I’d seen it before, I definitely hadn’t seen the weather balloon stuff, but had seen the kissing out of context in fanvids and what-have-you.
First off, they’ve updated and improved the voice-over intro, incorporating cool shots of characters from season 1.
There’s meta humour as Cabe is reduced to telling actors how to play cops until Homeland Security rehires him and team Scorpion to save Pasadena from a satellite. In a fakeout scene, Paige is having a daymare about waitressing again and being bad at it. Walter is still in rehab, suffering woozy moments and a dodgy hand after all that business in the cliff-hanging car. After not really seeing anyone but Cabe over the summer, he pretends he’s FINE to help on the case.
Merrick is gone and there’s a new director who’s a bit of a hard case (I was aware Molina wouldn’t last, so didn’t get too interested.) Paige soon susses that Walter is not himself. Later, when Cabe calls him out on the same, Walter is surprised he noticed and thinks Paige blabbed. Oh Walter, you’re nowhere near as stealthy as you think you are.
We learn that Happy usefully speaks Japanese (but why not Spanish then? I complain. It’s only the second most widely spoken language in the US.) Toby has to treat Happy’s eye (ew, not the eye!) while trying to woo her…by describing himself as mould!?!? Sly is nearly thwarted from saving Pasadena by another agency, while a 70% himself Walter and an oxygen-deprived Paige are on the aforementioned weather balloon, setting off an EMP, then they’re in the satellite’s new trajectory with only one parachute. AS YOU DO.
The show seemed to have decided to go bigger and bigger-hearted after season 1, although granted this is a season premiere seeking to impress. There’s no Ralph or Megan, but that’ll come, and I found it a delight - although Paige has transferred from the humanities to business studies.
The Waige is epic in this one. I loved that the show confronted my issues with her kissing him while he was unconscious at the end of last season, by having her admit she’d done it pretty quickly. (What I then have been obsessing over, even though it doesn’t really matter, is when Walter hacked into the hospital footage to see it for himself. I think I’ve plumped for him only doing so after she told him, which of course led to him infecting his computer and endangering the mission and much mortification. Heh.)
Anyway, after this admission, Walter jumps on her babbling that they should remain professional except Paige clearly doesn’t mean it, and he clearly wants her to fix his ties forever.
There’s then the nice nod/reversal of ‘I love your voice in my ear’ from ‘Charades’ with Paige having to become Walter’s hacking amanuensis because he can’t type quickly, and him sitting all close to her as he dictates code. Until he got too embarrassed to because his rewatching the kiss obsessively became public knowledge. This in an episode where the running gag is Toby (for once, not Sly) overhearing them.
And then, giving the fans who may also rewatch kissing scenes a lot what they want, Water makes the suggestion, enthusiastically taken up by Paige, that they test the theory about what’s going on between them and kiss. And it is awkward and fervent and hot, but they break off, pretend it didn’t mean anything, except we can see that’s a lie. I focused on Paige’s response in my fic, but Walter’s all Quantum Leap referencing and equally affected.
Waige meta
The question I referred to was why they both stopped kissing and lied and pretended it meant nothing to them. And my best guess is they’re scared. They both have their own hang-ups, Walter that he can’t connect enough or maintain a romantic relationship based on his past, and because his top security blanket lie is that he doesn’t have feelings, he’s in denial. He doesn’t want the disaster of the last relationship ending to happen again, and Paige means more to him already. That, more than Drew, is what stopped him from making a move in season 1. It’s also somewhat not having the tools to do it. He knows the externals, the idea of what a date should be, but how to navigate that situation emotionally? Not much of a clue.
He and Paige are also both scared about what acting on their feelings and getting it wrong could mean for Scorpion. (Hence the no fraternisation rule that Walter made, but was willing to break.) Scorpion matters to them as much as it does to any of the team members. It’s a lifeline for them both, both as an enterprise and its people, including Ralph. The only thing that made Paige walk away was concern over Ralph’s safety and well-being. They rationalise that what they’ve got is working, so they shouldn’t endanger it. They’re scared of breaking this support network and channel for their abilities that Walter created.
It’s also been at the back of my mind that there’s an element of boss-employee going on here, although there’s a non-hierarchical informality in the team. Everyone feels free to pile in on Walter when he fails, e.g. over the local TV news interview, but he is the boss, he’s usually the one who gives the orders, invested in Scorpion and owns the garage. The show hasn’t gone into this and was made pre MeToo or I think it would have had to.
And for Paige, Ralph would be a consideration before embarking on any new relationship. He looks up to Walter, who has always known they’re a package deal, but if it didn’t work out between Paige and Walter, that would have an impact, probably harmful, on Ralph.
She’s also fairly conventional, and carries the breakdown of her relationship with Drew around with her. She was open to rekindling things with Drew because of past feelings and the fact he is her baby’s father until she realised she’d moved on. Basically, as Ralph’s mother, she isn’t going to be gung-ho about romance.
And Walter is so different and she knows acutely what all his emotional failings are.
But taking the Doyleian view, the kiss was fan service, confirmation that yes, this is our central couple, yes, we raised the stakes at the end of last season with Paige kissing Walter on the lips in response to nearly losing him, so we’re kind of making up for that by having them both conscious and fully engaged. I think they created a rod for their own backs by doing this and the characters’ immediated reaction, given what we’d just witnessed. It adds a whole level of incredulity about their denial. Starting the season with this (and I didn’t know all thi had happened when I started watching the show and shipping them) makes them one of those frustrating canon couples in terms of handling the UST with enough credible drama. (And I think they managed it better with Quintis’s development, based on what I’ve seen of seasons 1 and 2, even though I’m more invest ed in the lead couple.) Was there network involvement or did it all come from the writers?
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/433267.html.