8 Unexpected Lessons I Learned from Watching One of My Favorite TV Shows—Scorpion
09 Dec 2024 #misc
Imagine The Big Bang Theory marrying MacGyver. That’s Scorpion.
Scorpion, aired between 2014 and 2018, follows a team of four geniuses (and two or more “normal” people depending on the episode) solving impossible cases for the Department of Homeland Security. Walter O’Brien, the guy with one of the highest IQ in history, 197, leads the team—allegedly, based on a real character.
In every episode, they solve all sorts of crazy and impossible cases to save the day, the U.S., or the world:
- Saving a small county in the middle of nowhere from a fire approaching a nuclear waste facility.
- Dismantling an old nuclear warhead in a secret military base.
- Saving a kid trapped in a cave from drowning by raising tides.
And those are only the cases I remember off the top of my head.
After binge-watching all four seasons of Scorpion, these are 8 lessons I learned:
1. Soft skills take you further
A team of four geniuses can get around any situation. But the team is in trouble when Paige isn’t around.
Interestingly, Paige isn’t a genius by conventional standards. She isn’t a mathematician or mechanic. She has excellent social skills and is brilliantly at connecting with people.
In one episode, while Paige wasn’t around, Toby, the doctor, and Happy, the mechanic, made things worse.
They needed to collaborate with the local police to save Walter but their poor social skills and egos got them arrested. They ended up insulting the police chief instead of coordinating efforts. They had to call Paige to fix the misunderstanding.
Hard skills open doors, but soft skills take you further.
2. Find something that gives you meaning
Before joining the team, everyone was a mess:
- Toby, the doctor, was a gambling addict.
- Paige was an underpaid waitress with no purpose.
- Paige’s son, Ralph, was misunderstood as a weirdo. He was another genius, living in his own world.
- Happy, the mechanic, had no friends or family.
- Sylvester, the Math genius, was bullied or something. I don’t remember exactly.
- Walter, the leader, had 0 social skills.
- Agent Gallo, the government handler, was a widower and workaholic.
Solving those near-impossible cases gave them meaning. Being part of something and working together was what they needed to bring meaning to their lives.
3. A simple framework tells many stories
Almost all Scorpion episodes are the same.
The team is hanging out in the garage. Then, Agent Gallo or an external client comes with a case. They quickly come up with a plan. But, mid-case something unexpected happens that complicates the case. They have no clue how to solve it, but a non-genius (Paige, Gallo, or somebody else) says something unrelated. An “aha” moment leads to a new solution. And, finally, they’re back at the garage to end the episode.
A simple storytelling framework gets you hooked on every episode from start to end.
4. Find who’s best at every job
No matter who is leading a case, the team shines when everyone is working on what they’re good at:
- Sylvester, mental math.
- Toby, medicine and psychiatry.
- Happy, mechanics.
- Paige, connecting with people.
- Walter, leading and connecting the dots.
- Gallo, speaking the government lingo.
As a leader, your job is to find out who’s best at each task, split the goal into smaller tasks, and assign each task to the right person.
5. But, be willing to take the back seat
From time to time, someone has to stay at the garage and oversee the entire case: monitoring and reporting, passing context, and coordinating efforts with local authorities.
As a leader, you’re not there to shine, but to make others shine and get the work done.
6. Be ready to have uncomfortable situations
As the series progresses, the team has to face their own challenges.
Gallo has childhood trauma. Walter has unresolved issues with his father. Happy can’t express her feelings. Sylvester is afraid of pretty much everything.
They all overcame their issues when they opened up and talked to someone they trust.
7. Learn to let go of what you can’t control
Spoiler alert…
Happy and Toby missed their wedding ceremony while solving a case. They lost the flight back home because the case took longer. They couldn’t control that and couldn’t do anything about it.
But they controlled what they did after that. Again, Paige saved the day by improvising a wedding ceremony for them. She’s the real genius in the team.
Life keeps changing its rules. You can’t control it. Learn to adapt to the new rules and keep playing.
8. Your favorite show could end anytime
The show was canceled and the last episode ended with a cliffhanger. Damn! Where’s season 5? Arrggg!
I guess the lesson here is to always end our stories or writings with a cliffhanger.
I didn’t believe a TV show could teach that much about leadership, storytelling, and psychology…Well, I don’t feel that guilty about watching four seasons with 93 episodes. At least, I took some lessons away and wrote about it.