Courtesy of Scorpion
Warning: Spoiler Alert
Happy drives recklessly, but not recklessly enough for Walter’s liking. This driving plays like a high-speed chase, including Toby shouting out shortcuts with zero notice and Cabe setting up LAPD assistance. All to get to the airport in time to meet Walter’s parents. Whom he hasn’t seen in 15 years. Beyond the downright adorable Irish accents, there is one major detail that made itself known. There are issues between Walter and Sean O’Brien.
As they walk through the hospital, Walter excitedly tries to explain his research to his mother. The research he plans to lean on in order to save Megan. His father wants no part of it, not even to hear it. He even drops a ‘God’s will’ to which Walter replies, there’s my will too. Sylvester’s attempt to make a good impression on his parents in-law could have gone a lot better. The use of Super Fun Guy as room decor suggests that Sylvester has kids, apparently in Ireland, grown men don’t collect comic book stuff.
Toby and Happy stay out of the O’Brien family drama but in doing so catch wind of our problem for this week. The hospital has fallen under temporary lock down. Happy identifies fungus on the wall near a collapsed kitchen worker. Toby, ironically, is well versed in the species of fungi that apparently took down the cook and has begun spreading on the walls. They are locked down in the middle of an outbreak. Toby is able to stop a doctor passing by and spit out enough information so she knows that he knows something.
Walter tries to leave the hospital to get back to his research for Megan. Paige quickly identifies this as Walter avoiding the situation at hand, namely Walter’s parent’s and Megan’s deteriorating condition. Toby calls Walter to inform him of the developing situation downstairs. Walter gets Happy to find that doctor’s (Dr. Castillo) phone extension. She finds it and Walter calls it. Naturally, Dr. Castillo rejects his help.
Right about the time Dr. Castillo hangs up on Walter, Toby discovers their cook was sifting for gold nearby before work. His open leg wound became an ideal breeding ground for a very ancient, more resilient fungal species. No, I’m not going to attempt to spell it. Dr. Castillo’s infectious disease team believes it to be a much tamer species and begin spraying it with fungicide which on angers the stronger species. As a predicted behavior, the fungus increased reproduction and sent a massive amount of spores into that air. Most if not all of the infectious disease team are knocked out.
Whatever issues Walter and Sean have, they find a way to put them on hold. Sean brings out two clipboards with Doctor info on them while Walter quickly tries to smear drywall spackle over the door seems to keep the toxins out. Walter talks down to his Dad like he thought the lists on the clipboards would’ve helped when his father’s intention was to use them like a trowel. A tool used to smooth spackle over drywall. Sean points out that the spackle won’t be air tight when it dries. Good thing Paige found liquid nitrogen.
As things get worse and Megan seems to begin to do the same, Sean turns his frustration to Sylvester, wanting to know exactly who he is, what kind of man he is, and why he plays with toys. For a moment it appears that Sylvester will retreat to avoid confrontation. Then, his affection for Megan overpowers his flight instinct.
Sylvester: I’m Sylvester.
Sean: What kind of man are you?
Sylvester: The kind of man who’s been caring for your daughter. The kind that hasn’t left her side in three weeks. The kind that loves her. So you will just have to accept that.
The next step in the plan is to use an MRI machine to slow the power of the main circulation fan long enough to insert a series of metal poles removed from IV stands. The hope being that the poles will prevent the fan from cycling the air. This plan fails almost immediately. The poles fly out from the fan and one penetrates the door. Megan is getting worse and that pole just compromised the door they need to leave out of.
To make matters worse, a woman’s water just broke. Delivery is imminent and the room she and Toby are in could not be a worse location for bringing a child into the world. Toby believes without certain precautions the baby won’t survive in this fungal environment. While trying to sterilize the area Happy notices a large imprint of a hand on a sugar dispenser. That imprint belongs to Sylvester. Sylvester’s compulsion for hand sanitizer may be the break they need. Sylvester wipes his hands with a paper towel. He walks out into the hallway and using a straw propels his hand sanitizer spit ball at a concentrated area. Instantly that area of about 2″ inches looks clean.
Sylvester: I have super powers. I’m bacteria man.
This creates on some level a cure or at least a way to minimize the fungus. Problem is replicating it takes a certain type of mind and all the genius’ Cabe knows are locked in a hospital building. Paige reminds him that there is one remaining genius they know who is not in the hospital. Ralph.
In the meantime, a skeptical father-in-law watches his son-in-law impress in ways he didn’t think possible. Without even thinking, Sylvester ropes Sean into being his assistant in preparing a skin sample, placing it inside a stress relief ball and constructing a sling shot. Under the circumstances, even Sean is a little impressed.
Cabe and Ralph use a leaf blower engine in reverse to create a vacuum through a series of air ducts. Sylvester, using his little slingshot propels the sample ball through the ducts and the leaf blower pulls it through. Ralph did his part and now the sample is safely outside the hospital.
With all the pieces in place, Walter lashes out on a metal rod on the floor. Megan is the most important person he’s ever known and she’s dying while Walter is trapped. He refers to her as the only family he’s got, despite his parents being three floor above them. He even opens up to Paige that he cannot talk to his parents without Megan. Megan is the Paige to his family. She understands him and can translate to their parents, essentially.
Sylvester watches as doctors rush into Megan’s room, she’s seizing. Sylvester reports to Walter who takes it the way you might think. Calm and collected. That is until his second attempt at the door fails. Walter begins screaming at the door and punching it, displaying a level of emotional reaction he has not shown to this point. Paige is at a complete loss as to what to do.
The medical team gets Megan stabilized long enough for Sylvester to make a request of Sean. He wants one moment alone. Sean looks him in the eye and out of a newfound respects, grants Sylvester’s request. A week ago, Megan was depressed because she thought she’d never see the stars again. So Sylvester constructed a small apparatus that projects the stars onto her room’s ceiling. He then very matter of factly confesses his love for her in her present state. Adding that falling in love with her was the smartest thing he’s ever done.
Upon Cabe and Ralph’s arrival, they are barred from entering the building. There are no real holes in place to slide them through. Walter needs to find a way to get the cure inside the building. He begins brainstorming about the pipe access out loud and poses the question, how to get it inside a quarantined building. How to get the liquid mixture to all of the floors? Paige throws out the first thing that comes to mind.
Paige: Boil it. Use the pipe to distribute the vapor. (Walter stares blankly) Bad idea…?
Walter: No that is brilliant.
In order to boil the liquid, Happy will need to access a pipe in the kitchen to heat the other pipe. One problem, the kitchen is covered in fungi. Using aprons, hair nets, and scrubs, Happy covers as much of herself as possible. Wedged between two walls of fungi, Happy successfully creates a flame from one pipe up to the other.
In a last-ditch effort to save everyone in the hospital, Walter reaches out to Sean. He needs Sean to leave Megan’s room and do something that Walter can’t. Sean eventually agrees. Sean gets on the PA system and gives the entire building instructions on how to let the vapor in.
Toby is very close to delivering the baby outside the kitchen. The umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck, which is not a terrible thing to overcome, medically speaking. Toby will need help from Happy, who should’ve returned already. Toby looks over his shoulder and Happy appears. Then collapses. She came in contact with the fungus.
As the vapor billows in reviving doctors, nurses and even Happy. Using a laundry chute, Walter and Paige, back to back crawl up the chute. Sylvester and Sean punch through the drywall to give Walter and Paige a chance to exit the chute. Toby successfully delivered the baby. Megan is not getting better. Her face has become blue and she’s fighting for every breath she can get. Walter appears just in time. She tries to speak. “Walter don’t be afraid to…” Walter calmly tells her to relax and take a moment, then say what she needs to say. She exhales, closes her eyes…for the last time.
When they return to the garage, Walter’s sense of failure is palpable. He begins to unplug everything when his computer makes a notification sound. He sits down and clicks on the message. Megan has Sylvester send the message when she passed. Megan and Walter sitting on the beach. Both looking healthy and happy. Walter (in the video) gets up to grab another blanket. Megan looks into the camera and gives her brother her final words. “Walter don’t be afraid to love.” Everyone in the garage can hear. Mother and Father, Paige, Sylvester. Walter descends the stairs.
Walter suggests that everyone gets some rest. Cabe offers to give Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien a ride to their hotel. Sean stands before Sylvester, looks him in the eyes and offers for him to join them. As Sylvester is now family. Before they leave, Sean even apologized for discounting Walter’s efforts as Science Fiction. A monumental step for a man like that with a son like Walter. Everyone is about to depart when Walter asks if they ever heard the story of the time Megan pulled a fire alarm to get Walter out of trouble (Season 1 episode 2 if memory serves). Everyone does a 180 and comes back into the garage. A makeshift Irish wake in the making. Walter sits and Paige sits next to him. As he begins to tell the story he subtly clutches her hand. He tells the story as the shot fades to black.
