TV Review: SCORPION: Season 2, Episode 2: Cuba Libre [CBS]

CBS’ Scorpion Cuba Libre TV Show Review. Scorpion: Season 2, Episode 2: Cuba Libre takes us to a place many of us have not seen in decades. With the renewed U.S.-Cuba relations, this visit is right on time. And many of the taken-for-granted help the team is used to having at its fingertips is not available in a less-sophisticated electronic environment. The age-old battle of emotion vs. logic turns up frequently with everyone weighing in on the argument.

To catch everyone up, Walter O’Brien (Elyes Gabel) appears to have a healed body (no longer a hand brace) and brain (his mental powers seem to be back up to speed).  Speaking of speed, there is legal fallout from the accident that ended Season 1. Was Walter driving in an emotional state after having a fight with Paige Dineen (Katharine McPhee)? Thus begins the first of the emotion vs. logic discussions. The legal clock is tick, tick, ticking…..And did I miss Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong) sidelining Toby Curtis (Eddie Kaye Thomas) when spying Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham) focusing on Megan O’Brien (Camille Guaty) – emotion is in the air, even if Sylvester’s approach is not up to Toby’s level.

Enter Sonia Balasevic (Izabella Mikoto) directing the attention to Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick)’s 20-year-old good deed. She knows that Cabe is the best person to get the DNA of a Serbian war criminal that will bring in many more of them.  But the target is not around the corner. Communist Cuba – here we come.

Under the guidance of the new Homeland Director Adriana Molina (Alana de la Garza) who publicly and “blindly” cannot support the mission, she has the best contact in her back pocket – no passports needed for any of them as her unwilling contact flies the team into Cuba in an un-American airline. A few bumps do not hinder their ability to put wings on their special coding while flying and then ready to land, or is that a drop without packed parachutes a mere 20 feet into the water below. Wet T-shirts can turn a young man’s fancy to illogical thoughts.

Making contact with the comic-relief locals seems to get the ball rolling for them to find the criminal’s DNA and then the team gets out. Unfortunately the Cuban contacts’ part in the mission was over too quickly so the task is given back to the team realizing that the technology gods in Cuba are not in the 21^st century. The team has to punt with local chemicals to test the blood while steady hands shave and nick the target for the blood but also not be detected when a hot-headed Sonia has the razor. The tension is high until the criminal realizes the barber’s touch is different. They get control of the criminal but do not know where the ledger is, wondering why Walter is picking flowers at a time like this. Toby’s medical knowledge always comes in handy to use the flowers as a homemade relaxant for the criminal – flower power can really knock someone out.

A rope, a roof, a rat’s nest, and rust are the components of a formula to disintegrate the roof’s concrete, giving the most-lithe Happy her recreation of Tom Cruise’s well-known drop into a vault. How does one magically get the criminal’s thumb print in the van into the bank vault? By powdering his thumb print onto a street vendor’s famous hot sausage. Works every time in cooking class Sausage 101.

In this balance of humor and drama and the bonus of local scenery, Molina took credit for the success of the mission, and Walter admitted to his real reason for the accident and took his punishment – Orange is the old Orange. Libre means free so in this episode the team liberated the ledger, a sausage, emotions, and the middle ground between Walter’s logic and Sonia’s emotions. We also learned that Paige’s son, Ralph Dineen (Riley B. Smith) is back home. We hope to catch up with him in the next episode.

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