The Point Radio: SCORPION Stings Monday Night TV

If the response to they first episode is any indicator, CBS TV’s SCORPION might be the first big hit of the new TV season. We talk to the show’s stars, Katharine McPhee, Elyes Gabel and the real life genius who actually experienced these adventures. Plus from runway to courtroom, JUDGE FAITH is handing out some tough justice. Meet Faith Jenkins, star of her own new courtroom reality show.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. Well, it looks like the first big hit of the new TV season may be Scorpion on CBS. We talked to the stars of the show and the real-life genius who everything is based on. Plus from pageant to courtroom, heading out decisions every day on her new TV show.

Plus a new PG-13 Deadpool. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio.

The new CBS series Scorpion tells the story of some misunderstood geniuses who band together to work for the government and solve some various crises that pretty much involve the whole world. Sound a little fantastic? Well, believe it or not, it's based on a large chunk of reality, as co-creator and executive producer Alex Kurtzman explains. It's actually based on the life and the lives of real people. And so, Walter O'Brien is the fourth smartest man in the world with a ranked IQ of 197. And he came into our office and what he told us was, here's how I came to the United States.

I was 12 years old, I hacked into NASA to download the space shuttle group prints to put them on my wall. Knowing full well that when I did that, they were going to come arrest me. When they came to arrest me, I had my immunity papers and extradition waiver ready in exchange for them to bring me to the United States and I'd go to work for the government. I was 12 years old. So when someone starts a story like that, you go, is that real? Yes, okay. The pilot episode, which is about 250 planes that were stranded in the air, also real.

And a lot of our cases are based on the actual events of Walter O'Brien and his team of geniuses. Beyond that, beyond the fact that it's all, you know, a lot of it is based on reality, there's a really interesting emotional component to the show. And Walter talks about it a lot. What he'll say is the higher the IQ, the lower the EQ, meaning the smarter you are, the harder it is to connect emotionally to people. And so these characters who can do things that we can only, you can't even imagine doing, basic things that we take for granted are very difficult for them. And what we're watching is these people not only coming together as a family, as a surrogate family, because their actual families didn't know what to do with them most of the time.

But they are learning how to communicate emotionally with the world. And so when you have exciting cases and characters that you can invest in like that, who are pure underdogs, it feels to us like a really, really winning combo. The real life Walter O'Brien has been involved with the project from the beginning, and along the way, managed to pick up a little showbiz knowledge. Well, I guess that was a strange thing, because this is my first rodeo in terms of TV. I'd worked with the writers, I'd seen the scripts, I thought that was cool. I was on set half the time. I saw them film the same thing 20 times over with cameras at different angles. And I wondered why. And then I sat down and watched it and saw it scored and saw the blurring and the focus and the cameras switched position.

I'm like, ah, that's why they did all of that. And, you know, seeing that whole process has given me a whole new respect for how hard it is to tell a story in this medium. And a huge respect for what these guys do, where they can, as they put the script together, they'll surgically say, you know, we need action here, we need emotion here. We need to make everyone cry here. And I remember them saying that, as I sat in the audience when they played on a big screen. And we came up on the part where everyone cried. And I turned around and looked at the audience. And it's like on cue every time. It's just amazing how tightly that's dialed in. So, you know, I'm fascinated. I'm a guy who's a watcher or a viewer who finally got to go behind the scenes and watch it all come together. And, yeah, it's personally weird for me to see me as a kid and watch my own flashbacks that only until now happened only in my own memory. And I am far better looking on screen than I was.

Actors, Catherine McVie remembers how she met Walter in kind of an unusual way. I think like day two shooting, I saw him and this tall gentleman, his hair flipped back in a ponytail. And I saw him kind of like peering at me periodically, like a table read and on set. And I just, yeah, there's so many people on set usually. You see people pass from far away. You don't necessarily like run up to everybody you don't know and introduce yourself. You just kind of like, you know, figure you'll get to know everybody as time goes by. And he was talking to him in the crafty room and they were having a real nice, expensive conversation. And finally introduced themselves. And he says, I'm Walter O'Brien. And it just took me a second to realize that.

I felt so bad the evening and night. I had no idea. And then honestly, I really liked the pilot, but I then loved the pilot. Like I got even more excited about the fact that I was a part of something that was rooted in truth and reality. And like that was like when I had this moment where I went, wow, people are going to love the show because I think there's something fascinating about telling stories to people. You know, with things that we don't really, we really shouldn't have information that we shouldn't be privy to, but want to be privy to. So for me, that's what like made me go, wow, this is not only do I get to be in the show, but I would watch the show.

Actor Elias Gable plays O'Brien in the series. And he said the real Walter is a constant source of inspiration for him. Doing a show where you're playing a real life character means that anything that you're garnering from him is kind of work. It's like being an actor and be able to write off lots of goodies for him. Everything that I was talking to him about helped me kind of understand the way that he thinks. And I suppose the clever dramatization in means that you can make hopefully more nuanced and slightly contrary choices that might be more interesting. I like that kind of drama.

Catherine, this type of series is a little something different on her resume, but she said it wasn't just the action that drew her in. The emotional scenes are quite rewarding in the pilot. If those weren't there, I don't think that I would have been drawn to something like this. Because you can't… I think that last anchor scene in the pilot between Walter and my son and Paige, it's kind of… But you need those scenes to kind of anchor the kind of high action moments. They make those sort of action scenes more rewarding, I think. Because they're coming off of something that's really real. The real relationships.

So we've been told that our show has three great agents, Heart, humor and heroes. Which I think is really true about the show. Long time genre star Robert Padrigg plays agent Gallo in Scorpion, and he says this character just might surprise you. You're going to get a lot of surprises from Kade, I think. A lot of humor that I mentioned before, but it's going to be a different kind of humor. He's got a good heart. But also with my guy, I can bring in, as an actor, I bring in this baggage that I can very easily turn into a bad guy. We're going to have to wait and see what's going on, but I think he's got a lot of heart and he's a good guy.

And hopefully it's going to be interesting for him, seeing how I can relate to each of the different members of the team. And I'm very interested in the stuff that I'm going to be doing with Kat McPhee, because she's the only other normal one around. It's me and her and all these incredibly bright people. Robert says he may have been around for three decades, but he continues to feel there's a lot left out there for him to explore. Well, it's interesting. I love both meetings and I've been on the road. I've been doing this for 30 years.

So every once in a while, I had a very busy last two years and I'm very grateful for it. It's nice to every once in a while kind of settle into something. And I think the writing on TV is so good. And Nick Santour and all these guys, it was very appealing to me. Justin Lin coming to TV. So many great stories. We're actually living in the golden age of television. We really are. There's so many talented people coming to television.

So once we got in with the Sopranos and the X-Files and we started doing all that, I find myself aligning with some real good writers like Nick and Luke. It stays exciting to me. You know what I mean? Sometimes I can do some films and I'm like, ah, shit, man. You know what I mean? You have to kind of juggle. I think you get a career, you got a man. New episodes of Scorpion every Monday on CBS. You can always see more, of course, at CBS.com. Let's roll right into the latest in pop culture.

Kim Stanley Robinson's much beloved Mars trilogy is headed to a scripted series for television. It's being called Red Mars and it's picked up by Spike TV and Vince Garedes, who's a co-executive producer of HBO's Game of Thrones. Things are still in very early stages, but it looks like Spike TV will be the home of the series when it's produced. Fresh on the heels of the controversy involving Ed Spider-Woman varied. It looks like two of the planned variant covers. Milo Monera, done for books for Marvel in October and November, won't be coming along.

Wannabe Avengers and X-Men, Access No. 1 and the other is November's Thor No. 2. Those will both be done by other artists, however the rest of the Monera variants still planned and still should be in the hands of retailers over the next couple of months. The miniseries Steve Niles did for Dark Horse a year or so ago called Breath of Bones looks like it could be headed to the big screen. Andrew Adamson, who directed the first two Chronicles of Narnia movies, will be attached to direct the adaptation. He also directed the first two Shrek movies, but when the production gets underway the folks at Dark Horse, Mike Richardson, in fact, will be involved as producers.

There's two interesting but non-related stories about Deadpool this week. First of all when it comes to the Deadpool film, we're being told that more than likely it'll end up with a PG-13 rating that was a compromise studios had to make to get the film made. Fans unhappy about that, but if that upsets them, when will they find out that more than likely in March Marvel's planning on killing off the character? Rumors are being placed right now that more than likely point toward a Deadpool death, much like Wolverine, that to take place in Marvel Comics that'll be in stores in March. A shout out to our friends and neighbors at synopsis.com for something they've put out called Watcharoo. It is a TV guide for digital programming.

Want to know when your favorite web series are coming and what's out there that you might not know about? This is the place to find it out and it is really cool. Take a look, I think you're going to agree. Go to synopsis.com slash watcharoo. The premiere episode of Gotham hit some pretty high marks on Fox when it debuted with a 3.2 rating and just about a million total viewers, up about 39% in the time period that was occupied by Bones last season. The big winner of the night was the CBS debut of Scorpion which came in with 14 million total viewers. However, keep in mind that both these new series face some pretty heavy competition from ABC's Dancing with the Stars and The Voice on NBC. Faith Jenkins may have been a former beauty pageant winner and even a Miss America runner up. Right now she prefers her wardrobe to be in black. She's the host of a new reality courtroom drama called Judge Faith.

Since leaving the runway, she's known for her extensive legal analysis in places like Fox News, MSNBC and CNN reporting on some of the nation's most high profile cases. Can I ask her what got her first involved with the law? Well, I always wanted to be an attorney so I was in law school when I won the Miss Louisiana competition and went to compete in Miss America. So after I finished my year of service as Miss Louisiana and placed the first runner up to Miss America, I actually went back to finish law school. And then I started practicing in New York. I started doing some legal commentary on some high profile cases a couple of years ago on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

And one day I got an email. This show, Judge Faith, I mean this was not something that I thought about doing. It had never crossed my mind and I love court shows. Why choose to be a reality TV judge? I think you have to have a certain temperament to do this and you have to be fair. You have to be tough and you have to be a good listener. Most of these people who file these are real cases, real people, real cases. Most of our cases have already been filed in the small claims court around the country. And we go and we look for those cases. And that's how we get most of our cases. Most of these people have never been to court before and they don't have lawyers.

It's not allowed in small claims court. So when they come in, they're arguing their cases themselves. I love listening to people present their cases and obviously, you know, there's a dispute and you have to get to the heart of the dispute. And I love doing that. That's why I wanted to be a lawyer. So I take my former prosecutor experience from the Manhattan DA's office or my big law firm experience as a litigator. And I bring that into the courtroom. And even I would say my passion experience is traveling. Meeting so many people from different walks of life because those are the people who come to court.

And so I love it. It's about resolving disputes and we laugh. We cry. It's entertaining. It's fun. And then you sometimes you hear some really tragic stories from people in the past few decades. There have been no shortages of judges on television. And I asked Faith what separates her from who's come before. Well, I like I said, I've watched court shows too. So I have my favorite judges, but I made a decision early on. I can't be anyone else and I can't be like anyone else. I can only be myself. And so I think I bring there. There's certainly a level of toughness and you know, you have to be tough, especially with some of the issues that are before you.

But also a level of compassion and empathy. And we want to. There are hardcore courtroom watchers. They love court TV and they watch all the shows every day. But I also want to reach a broader audience and address some more contemporary issues on my show and broaden the base of courtroom viewers. So that's really what I'm hoping to do. I want to the people who love court. I want them to watch my show. But the people who haven't watched court before, I want them to watch my show because they do see me as something new and different. New episodes of judge faith every Monday through Friday. Check your local listings to find out when it's on in your area.

And does it for the podcast. But like they say, pop culture never sleeps around here. Well, we only nap a couple of times a week. But we managed to crank this out for you on websites like ComicMix dot com. Michael Davis world dot com and get the point radio dot com. And the iTunes podcast directory as well. We're getting geared up for the New York Comic Con. You don't want to miss a minute of that. So plan right now to follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook under the point radio. See you in a few days. Get the point radio dot com. You.