"Amazing awfulness" is how our sister site io9 described the pilot episode of CBS' new show Scorpion, which is ostensibly about a team of hackers who help the Department of Homeland Security. (At least it's not the NSA.) But the pilot's amazingly awful chase scene is even dumber than we all realized.
Here's the context of this clip from Annalee's recap:
This week, the DHS brings him an emergency! There is a bug in the local airport's software and now 200 planes are going to crash if he doesn't do something! So he decides that the best thing to do is reboot from a backup version (yes that is the ACTUAL SUPER ELITE HIGH TECH THING HE'S DOING). But where is the backup? Ohhhh, it turns out EVERY PLANE has it, and if only they could download it from one of the planes, everybody could land and nobody would crash. The only way to get that backup, though, is USING AN ETHERNET CABLE DANGLED OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF THE PLANE AND PLUGGED INTO HIS LAPTOP.
Of course, if you're going to chase a plane down a runway, you need a fast car. And the main character opts for a black Ferrari 458 Italia, a fast car indeed.
But something is critically wrong with the way this scene is depicted, and it happens right about 40 seconds in. Go ahead, check it out. I'll wait.
You all set? Okay, you probably noticed that the 458 Italia in Scorpion somehow, impossibly, inexplicably has three pedals and the dash from a 360. You see them again a little later in the clip.
It also has a roof that flies off and the ability to do burnouts at about 380 MPH. Impressive.
The problem is that the 458 Italia has never had a traditional manual gearbox. In any of its trims. Ever. It has never had three pedals or a stick shift. It's always had a seven-speed dual clutch paddle shift transmission.
This means that in order to make this scene more exciting, or more Fast and Furious-y, or some other bullshit, the show edited a manual gearbox into a car that has never, ever had one. I'm not really sure how the act of the hacker clutching in and out is supposed to make this scene more thrilling, but all it does is make it come off as incredibly dumb. "Amazingly awful," even.
Scorpion is an even dumber show than we thought.
Hat tip to BULArmy, Shady Balkan Subject in Oppo for pointing this out!