http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/arts/television/awkward-geniuses-battle-online-terrorism-in-scorpion.html 2014-09-22 00:41:46 Awkward Geniuses Battle Online Terrorism in ‘Scorpion’ “Scorpion,” a new show on CBS, features a group of awkward geniuses who use technology to battle wrongdoers. === Technology is taking over our televisions. Not technology as in DVRs and Amazon Fire. Technology as a plot device. Tales of Silicon Valley (like “Silicon Valley”) and start-ups and cyber-smarties are all around, and on Monday night CBS introduces another, The series is about a group of socially awkward geniuses who help battle the high-tech horrors of our age. In the premiere, terrorists have hacked into the West Coast’s air traffic control system, and dozens of flights are going to crash. Elyes Gabel, who has logged time on “Body of Proof” and (hasn’t everybody?) “Game of Thrones,” plays the leader of the misfits, Walter O’Brien, whose history with Homeland Security types stretches back to long before there was a Homeland Security. It hasn’t always been a happy pairing, as we learn in Episode 1. Robert Patrick — you’ll always think of him as the T-1000 in “Terminator 2” — is the agency official who recruits the brain trust, which also includes a behaviorist (Eddie Kaye Thomas), a stats guy (Ari Stidham) and a super-mechanic (Jadyn Wong). Before the first episode is over, serendipity has introduced them to Paige (Katharine McPhee), who agrees to be their interface with the nongenius world and who — what a coincidence — also has a savant of a son. The series is supposedly inspired by “Scorpion” tries to compensate for this with a high-adrenaline pace, but that can lead to its own kind of weariness. The most interesting parts of the premiere are the ones involving Paige and her son and actual human interaction.