- "Heard you held up like a champ. Better than my first arrest...that was inappropriate."
- —Sylvester to Ralph
"Kill Screen" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Scorpion. It aired on January 5, 2015.
Synopsis[]
Scorpion must help Ralph when he is brought in for questioning by the DOJ after he unlocks a secret level in a dark website video game that unintentionally revealed the location of a CIA safe house in Culiacán, Mexico, resulting in the murders of two agents. Meanwhile, Walter enters an aerospace contest for studying jet propulsion on a dismantled CL-460 rocket engine he purchased to win $15 million for Megan's MS.
Plot[]
In a safehouse in the middle of the desert, a witness against the cartel and two federal agents are shot dead by an unseen weapon. Back in California, Paige finds Ralph playing a computer game at 2 a.m. He explains his game "got weird" and he found a hidden level, but there was no one there. The room looks like the one where the murders took place.
Meanwhile at HQ,Walter accepts delivery of a giant something and gets to work. In the morning, he's still working on it when Paige and Ralph arrive. Happy recognizes the reactor core and Toby pulls off the canvas to reveal a rocket. A billionaire announced a contest for space exploration advancement with a $50 million prize and Walter is working on it. Toby notes Ralph is hooked and suggests Walter has ulterior motives.
Paige takes Ralph to school but black SUVs converge on them outside. Wilson Eckert with the Department of Justice demands they come with him. At the office, Eckert tells Paige they think that Ralph either helped design the game or had information on how to access the secret level that lead to the CIA safe house. Eckert talks to Ralph, who says he just found the secret level. Eckert starts grilling Ralph on how he accessed the game on the dark web. Cabe Gallo and Walter arrive in time to hear Ralph say that Walter showed him.
Paige is furious. Walter tries to explain but Paige isn't hearing it. Cabe gets everybody lawyers and prevents Walter from trying to explain things to the DOJ, who are releasing Ralph for the time being. But they're being very aggressive. The info on the safe house was stolen in a CIA hack three weeks ago, along with details of six other unknown CIA operations. Walter resolves to find the real hacker. When Walter and Drew start arguing about Ralph's situation and Walter's influence over him. Paige intervenes and reminds them the situation is not about them.
Back at the garage, Toby tries to get Walter to chill out. Walter insists he only showed Ralph the dark net because it's where he could find people like him. When Paige brings Ralph back to the garage, Drew worries about the time Ralph is spending with the team. Sylvester reports he thinks he found the game's designer on a chat room. Walter asks Ralph about communicating with him and Ralph says he messaged that the entrance was too easy to find and he changed the game.
Cabe points out the government could see that as Ralph helping design the game. Walter and the gang will need the designer to say the suggestions were innocent. Toby manages to draw him into responding by bashing him in a chat room. They race to trace him. He's at a video game convention. In order to get access to VIP tournament area, someone has to get 30 kills in thirty seconds on a ten year old video game. Sylvester asks if all of them can go in if he gets 30 kills in ten seconds. She states that it's impossible. Sly manages to get 33 kills and everyone, including the rest of team Scorpion, are completely stunned. At first the girl states she's never seen anything like that before, however, she realizes she had seen it before, once. While everyone heads into the room, the girl stops Happy and asks if Sylvester is "El Guapo" to which Happy replies in a way that implies she has no idea what the girl's talking about.
Inside, people are playing a video game on laptops in front of a crowd that is being broadcast on a theatre screen behind them. One gets spooked at the sight of the team and runs towards the back exit. At first they are unable to keep track of him because everyone in the the room is wearing a red cape like him. However, Toby makes an announcement that has everyone pulling their capes off to look for a prize. After a brief second they catch site of the guy again and begin to chase him down. He's running towards Cabe, when Cabe grabs a fake broad axe from a cosplayer and uses it to knock him down.
Back at the garage, the very young designer, Nate, doesn't know anything about a secret level or CIA hack. He ran because he'd been hacking the DMV and taking points off of people drivers licenses. Toby believes him when he mentions a partner named Calvin Thorne. The team thinks the other CIA information might be coded in other versions of the game, for buyers to access with a secret code. Ralph just happened to find it accidentally. Walter insists they go and find Calvin instead of standing around discussing him.
Drew and Paige are up in the loft when Drew tries to bring up the way the team behaves with Ralph. He's upset because, despite Ralphs age, the team treats him like an adult. Paige argues that the team is good for Ralph but Drew states that they are keeping him from being a kid and having a normal childhood.
Cabe and the team return from Calvin's place with his safe, and Toby, offended from earlier when Happy called him clumsy, insists that he can crack it without her. He starts to turn the dial and purple paint sprays him in the face when he picks the wrong first number. Happy comes in and cracks the safe quickly with a glass of water, just like the criminals did in Revenge. They access the only item in the safe, a two terabyte hard drive, and find the CIA files, but they're too encrypted to access quickly.
Nate offers to help and at first they refuse. However, Nate convinces them to try to let him get a confession and they head to Calvin's favorite coffee shop. With the DOJ on the way, Nate goes to talk to Calvin, who says he's an hour away from finishing six new levels. While they are talking Walter gets a call from saying that Calvin is not the man's real name. He's actually Donald Chang and has numerous records of criminal activity. The team makes the deduction that the six new levels that he's inserting into the game, are actually the CIA files. When Nate asks about the secret level, Calvin leads him out back and stabs him, then disappears. Walter recognizes the bridge and warehouses in the places around them from the game and states that it's the perfect place for Calvin to disappear because he knows the area, down to the last detail. Walter states that Ralph knows the game just as well and tells Cabe that Ralph has to play the game again to help them find Calvin.
In the van on the way to the hospital, Toby works to stop Nate's bleeding, asking Happy if she has a tampon. When Happy questions it, Toby explains that it will absorb the blood and expand, thus placing pressure on the wound. Happy tells him to look in the bottom of her tool box. He inserts it and it starts to work.
Ralph starts on the game, directing Cabe and Walter through the warehouses. Calvin jumps out and cracks Cabe on the head with a pipe and Walter chases after him. In the van, Toby states the bleeding's under control, only to realize it's because Nate's heart stopped. Toby uses a quick jump for cars to restart Nate's heart. When they reach the hospital, Happy states she's impressed at Toby's ingenuity and how he kept Nate alive.
Back in the warehouse, Ralph leads Walter to a shortcut and tells him to jump. Walter can't see the bottom, but Ralph "scoop" promises it's only a seven foot drop. Page quickly explains that a "scoop" promise is about one of their afternoon ice cream traditions and that it's the strongest promise that he can make. Walter jumps and lands safely in a puddle of water. Ralph directs him to open a lever for a storage bay as Calvin runs away. The doors open and Calvin drops onto pallets below.
Back at the garage, Toby gets a report that Nate will be OK. Walter commends him for the job he did keeping Nate alive. Toby jumps up and states that Walter could use the same system he used to save Nate on his rocket, and allow for an adjustable fuel flow and increase throttleability. When Walter agrees and states his idea is good, Toby also reminds Walter to be the grownup in his relationship with Ralph, not just his friend.
Happy comes in stating they have a celebrity in their midst. To Sly's horror, Happy pulls up a video on one of their screens of a young Sylvester, labelled "El Guapo sets another record", dancing and celebrating for winning the same game that he'd played at the convention.
Drew tells Paige he wants her and Ralph to move to Portland to be safe. Walter joins them and apologizes for getting Ralph into everything, then he points out that there was information on hundreds of people in the stolen CIA files and Ralph helped save them. Walter assures them they're just trying to show Ralph how to be a grown-up genius someday.
Cast[]
Main[]
- Elyes Gabel as Walter O'Brien
- Katharine McPhee as Paige Dineen
- Robert Patrick as Cabe Gallo
- Eddie Kaye Thomas as Toby Curtis
- Jadyn Wong as Happy Quinn
- Ari Stidham as Sylvester Dodd
Recurring[]
Trivia[]
TBA