It’s a Scorpion Thanksgiving, but saving Los Angeles comes first for these geniuses. Paige wants to have a happy family meal, but Walter took a job for them. Paige is frustrated that they have to work on Thanksgiving, but Toby reminds her that their job is to help people.
When they get to the job site, Walter immediately introduces himself to Mrs. Franklin. Paige steps in and asks what this woman is doing there. Everyone is confused until Paige reveals that the woman in front of them is her mother, Veronica Dineen. Paige and her mother have been estranged for at least a decade, and Paige is not happy to see her. Veronica wants them to look at a piece of equipment in the building that she thought looked dangerous. Paige says that they aren’t taking the job, but Walter overrides her and says that of course they are. The piece of equipment just so happens to be a nuclear reactor on the verge of causing a meltdown in the middle of Los Angeles.
Toby reminds Paige that she is letting her emotions cloud her judgment and suggests that they get some air. Paige is embarrassed by her mom and asks to talk to Toby as a patient because she wants the doctor patient confidentiality. She reveals that her mom is a con woman. She was always doing time in prison, and Paige had to tell her friends that her mom was a traveling saleswoman. Her father worshipped her mother but eventually took them away from her because he knew it wasn’t good to have a child around her. Paige is really upset that her father died heartbroken because of her mother. She can’t seem to find any love for her mother anymore.
The team finds a way to lift the reactor out of the basement of this building. Once they do that, they can load it on a truck and take it to a secure facility in order to prevent a nuclear meltdown. They finally get it in the truck and head off to the facility, but all of a sudden they are getting shot at. It looks like Veronica wasn’t telling the truth, and some very bad people are after her. They think that she has the money that she owes them in their truck, but their shooting could cause a meltdown in the middle of the city.
Sly and Ralph work together to get them out of danger, but they still have to find a way to get the nuclear reactor to safety. There’s no way to get them to the facility, so they have to make the reactor safe enough to drop into the ocean. Once there, it can be picked up after the holiday weekend, and Los Angeles will be safe. The team has to use the Super Fun Guy balloon from the parade to life the reactor and carry it to the ocean. Phew, Team Scorpion does it again. But, there’s still the added tension between Paige and her mother.
Because Veronica is a con woman, she is good at reading people. When she first meets her daughter’s boyfriend, Tim, she’s not impressed. He is trying to protect Paige from any pain that her mother might cause, and Veronica is not happy about it. She pulls Walter aside to probe about her daughter. Walter talks about how valuable Paige is to the team, but Veronica knows better. She sees how much Walter cares for her daughter. When the case is over, Veronica probes Walter again. She tells him that she sees how much he cares for Paige. Walter explains that he tried with Paige, but it just wasn’t the right time. Since Veronica doesn’t really like Tim, she says that she’s going to help Walter win Paige back. She thinks that she knows what’s right for her daughter, and she thinks it’s Walter and not Tim. Does this mean that she’s going to be sticking around? And will those bad guys find her again?
