S02.E19: Ticker

[possibilities]

When Los Angeles' blood supply is hacked and deemed unusable because of fear it's been tainted, Team Scorpion must find the culprit in order to save a young girl in desperate need of a heart transplant.

 

I know it's not rational to ask questions when watching this show, but I thought in an emergency that saline could be used instead of blood during surgery. Does anyone know if that's true? And also, if the blood supply was tainted locally, doesn't the bank move it around rather than just saying: forget it; let everyone in Los Angeles with an emergency just die.

[Big Mother]

Great episode, although everything in the open was so wrong. If this girl is literally dying that she needs an emergency heart transplant, she wouldn't be walking in on her own two feet. As for the doctors, way to break every HIPAA rule in the book by discussing this with this motley crew!

Edited March 16, 2016 by SilverStormm
Duplicated episode topic, so merged with the first.

[Big Mother]

Someone can delete my duplicate thread. I also had issues with HIPAA violations, with the doctors glibly discussing this with Scorpion in the ER, as well as the incongruity of a girl whose heart is failing and needs a heart transplant, walks in on her own two feet? come on.

[rainsmom]

Yeah, I was laughing that she was happily waiting at home for a heart to come available, but during the show she's progresses to death's door. WHAT IF THERE HAD BEEN NO HEART TODAY?

[Free]

Yeah, I was laughing that she was happily waiting at home for a heart to come available, but during the show she's progresses to death's door. WHAT IF THERE HAD BEEN NO HEART TODAY?

 

The down to the wire trope always kicks in.

[Driad]

Choosing a quibble topic at random … I'll take blood:

 

(1) The hospital should know (or be able to find out) which donors have blood that the girl could use.  How about finding the donors, seeing that they are healthy, and asking them for more blood?  Too soon for typical donation rules but might work in an emergency.

 

(2) They said the girl's surgery would need 2 or 3 units of blood.  This source http://www.utahblood.org/blood-facts/donated-blood-uses.htmlsays a heart transplant takes 2-6 units of red blood cells, which would probably mean more than that many units of whole blood.  The girl was smaller than an adult but not that much smaller.

[Big Mother]

I hate when medical stuff on a show is so blatantly wrong. but eh, it's scorpion, what can ya do.

[theatremouse]

(1) The hospital should know (or be able to find out) which donors have blood that the girl could use.  How about finding the donors, seeing that they are healthy, and asking them for more blood?  Too soon for typical donation rules but might work in an emergency.

During the show I was whining about their use of the dreaded "super rarest rare blood type" and the people I was with argued back that apparently, whatever it was they said actually has something like 50 people in the world with that type. So when the doctor said those units were special, I took it to imply that the donor was not actually anywhere in LA county, and probably could not be reached or brought in to donate again quickly enough. If we accept the super duper rare premise.

This of course ignores the magical time travel the Scorpion teams uses to go to four different locations and back, in LA traffic, in under four hours.

Edited March 16, 2016 by theatremouse

[twoods]

During the show I was whining about their use of the dreaded "super rarest rare blood type" and the people I was with argued back that apparently, whatever it was they said actually has something like 50 people in the world with that type. So when the doctor said those units were special, I took it to imply that the donor was not actually anywhere in LA county, and probably could not be reached or brought in to donate again quickly enough. If we accept the super duper rare premise.

This of course ignores the magical time travel the Scorpion teams uses to go to four different locations and back, in LA traffic, in under four hours.

I agree. The medical stuff didn't bother me as much as running around LA and getting on the 58 in such a short period of time.

Saline works for emergency, but the girl needed a heart transplant so figure they need blood. The saline may have worked initially but she needed blood eventually.The quick decompensation made me laugh, as did the quick recovery period. Usually after heart surgery the kids are intubated for a day or so. I did like Walter bonding with the girl.

Edited March 16, 2016 by twoods

[theatremouse]

The quick decompensation made me laugh, as did the quick recovery period. Usually after heart surgery the kids are intubated for a day or so. I did like Walter bonding with the girl.

Oh yeah, at the end when the doctor was all "she'll be fine" I was like FUCK NO, she had a heart transplant yesterday? Making it through the night does not a "everything's ok now, no more worries, lala everything's perfect end of story" make. Seriously, what the fuck, doctor-characters-on-Scorpion. It's not like they took her appendix out and once it's out, you're sore but good to go. It's a heart transplant. Girl has 3 months of keeping close tabs on her before anyone decides she'll be fine as if that were a done deal.

[saInT]

I love the show but slowly it is getting ridicules man, its like the people who constructed and engineered most of the structures do not have a clue that something wrong is going on and the final solution that makes it all go away is always as simple as eating a peanut. Plus Happy really needs to clear up her lisp. Some of the words are mumbles rather than understandable. And the kid is sooooooo robotic man.

 

Well, since we are in the latest episode one major fault..........

 

there was no indication that the main bad guy had any kind of Computer or Technical Knowledge. It was researched that he had been in the medical field and quite extensively trying to remove the Nibori Virus. In what world does a medical field guy is also a world class hacker. Therefore the code or the worm was somebody elses handy work. And since its somebody elses work therefore the Magic Algorithm that was used should not have been related to the CEO. Hence the coder would not use a sequence connected to the CEO.

 

and when all of them were researching the CEO`s past and present, don't you think his parents death would come up sooner..??? Please write better scripts rather than ways to makes geniuses into gods.

Edited March 17, 2016 by saInT

[CoyoteBlue]

The part where a universal donor (O-) is told "No, she's AB, it'll never work!" made my eye start twitching. People with AB blood are universal recipients! They can take anyone's blood! At least make up some rare blood factor other than type that would be critical to the organ not rejecting or something. Or did I miss them adding that kind of caveat? 

[shapeshifter]

The part where a universal donor (O-) is told "No, she's AB, it'll never work!" made my eye start twitching. People with AB blood are universal recipients! They can take anyone's blood! At least make up some rare blood factor other than type that would be critical to the organ not rejecting or something. Or did I miss them adding that kind of caveat?

I don't know exactly what this means, but verbatim from the captioning:

but Olivia has an incredibly rare blood type-- Lutheran AB negative-- which doesn't take Type O.

That's less than .

0003% of the population.

[Shannon L.]

I wanted to jump in again, even though I'm not a regular.  I had the same issues in regards to the little girl walking in when she was getting a transplant that day. You don't even have to know about medicine to raise an eyebrow at that scenario.

 

I had a tiny nit-pick:  Paige and Happy were supposed to be reporters, but they didn't have a recorder or paper and pencil.  Nothing odd about that, girls!

 

About 35 years ago, they typed my mom's blood and when they discovered what it was (I forget the details--I don't even remember her blood type), told her that it was such a rare type, that they asked her to not give blood.  Instead, they gave her a card to carry at all times, and asked permission (she said yes, of course) to put her name on an emergency donor list so that she could be called at any time to rush into the hospital to give blood if they needed it.  She lives in a tiny town in Northern Vermont, so it's possible that it wasn't extremely rare, but that the hospital didn't have the resources to get her type quickly when needed, or whatever, but I remember that conversation vividly.  I haven't asked her recently if she's still on the list or not (now, 35 years later, they may have better resources, if that was the reason they had her contact info in the first place). Anyway, if a list like that was available in Vermont, wouldn't they have some such emergency list in a big city like Los Angeles?

Edited March 18, 2016 by Shannon L.

[theatremouse]

Anyway, if a list like that was available in Vermont, wouldn't they have some such emergency list in a big city like Los Angeles?

Probably, but doesn't necessarily mean there was anyone on it with the right type who was less than 4 hours away. It seemed like the three bags they had probably were the result of just such a list. Edited March 19, 2016 by theatremouse

[marketdoctor]

I was surprised, but "Lutheran AB negative" is a different set of negative antibodies from "traditional" AB negative--in that case the girl would have lacked Lua and Lub antigens, which actually is extremely rare. 

 

Although the other medical things were a mess (HIPPA, the miracle recovery, etc.) it was nice to see them slip a fact in there.

[Voice of Joy]

This one was a real stinker for me. A little girl with a 12% ejection fraction would have been short of breath and swollen.

I can overlook stuff that magically explodes, but the medical incongruities drove me screaming up a wall.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Voice of Joy

[thuganomics85]

Playing catch up, so I just got around to this episode.  It certainly had it's ridiculous moments to say the least.  Normally, I would say that the silliest thing was that the girl was suppose to be close to death's door and yet only looked a bit pale, but I think it was beat out by how traveling works on this show.  I'm not sure where they were exactly when they finally stole back the blood, but considering how big LA is and how much traffic there is, I really find it hard to believe that they were able to et back in 45 minutes.  Especially in the "Nixon era" Winnebago.  I'm telling y'all, I would rather just accept Team Scorpion invented a time traveling device, but that would be more realistic then half of the stuff that is going on here.

 

I'm guessing there is some reason they introduced this lawyer played by Horiato Sanz, other then dealing with Sly no longer being welcome to game shows.  Just felt too random.  And made me think of Saul Goodman.

 

I feel like this the tenth time they've pulled a "Walt looses up at the end", that will end up with him regressing by the next episode.

[Ceindreadh]

Scorpion is one of those shows where I just park my brain in neutral for an hour and sit back and enjoy the ride.

I loved the Scorpi-Olympics and of course Toby would come up with a way to counter the brain freeze.  Although was solving a theorem really a fair game, given that Sylvester is the maths whiz and would surely have solved it before at some point?

[Sarashina]

Hello everyone! I have an important question about "Scorpion" and I hope anyone could give me some help :) I'm working on the Italian edition of the series and I need to know if the "Nibori Virus" of the episode #19 (Ticker) is the name of a real virus/desease or if it's just imaginary. It's really important because I have to translate the episode for Italian dubbing. Please let me know something as soon as possible! Thank you in advance for your help! :)))

[Big Mother]

I believe it's fictional. I think every single plot line in the series is completely made up - the science, the mechanics, the materials, the viruses, even the countries in Africa or whatever.