A Critical Look At Walter "Scorpion" O'Brien

1729 (581437) writes Back in August, there was speculation that the "real life" Walter O'Brien (alleged inspiration for CBS's new drama Scorpion) might be a fraud. Mike Masnick from Techdirt follows up on the story: "The more you dig, the more of the same you find. Former co-workers of O'Brien's have shown up in comments or reached out to me and others directly — and they all say the same thing. Walter is a nice enough guy, works hard, does a decent job (though it didn't stop him from getting laid off from The Capital Group), but has a penchant for telling absolutely unbelievable stories about his life. It appears that in just repeating those stories enough, some gullible Hollywood folks took him at his word (and the press did too), and now there's a mediocre TV show about those made up stories." Masnick's article is a fascinating look at a man who appears to have conned both TV executives and journalists into believing his far-fetched Walter Mitty fantasies.

Comments

Suspension of Disbelief

[mythosaz]

I'm happy to suspend disbelief for a good show. Scorpion is not a good show. It's impossible to suspend that much disbelief for the junk they threw at us.

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[gurps_npc]

Totally true. They confabulate genius with autistic savant, they misrepresent what genius (or autistic savants) can do, and generally have no idea how "normal" people react.

The basic problem is that the writers are not smart, let alone geniuses, so they simply do not know enough to write a show about geniuses.

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[Reason58]

The basic problem is that the writers are not smart, let alone geniuses, so they simply do not know enough to write a show about geniuses.

Most of the viewers are not smart, let alone geniuses either.

Re:Suspension of Disbelief

[Animats]

It's impossible to suspend that much disbelief for the junk they threw at us.

Painfully true. I saw the pilot. I won't be watching any more episodes. The show didn't have to be that lame. In Tokyo Airport, a Japanese drama, a similar problem occurs. The controllers get out hand-held radios and their final backup, a big hand-held spotlight with red and green lenses.

It's a painful demonstration of the fact that Hollywood has an idea shortage. Almost everything is either a sequel, or awful, or by Joss Whedon. The most successful trend in Hollywood now is mining old Marvel comic books for second and third tier characters who haven't had a movie yet. The second most successful trend is recycling novels from the Teen Paranormal Romance section.

Then there's CBS, the Police Procedural Network.

Re:Then, he's the writer of the series?

[gstoddart]

I don't understand why it'd matter

From the sounds of it ... he's making some pretty deluded statements about his life, passing them off as if they're true, and then selling it to people who are making it into TV which says 'based on a true story'. In many places, that's called fraud when you financially gain from it.

Why, when I first carved the internet out of an old bar of soap, I took the left over soap scraps and molded them into the prototype of the first iPod, but Steve Jobs and I got drunk and I forgot all about it until years later. I told Al Gore he could keep the whole internet thing as long as we made sure to put plenty of porn in it.

And then my wife, Morgan Fairchild (who I've slept with) and I decided to go on an around the world cruise in our giant yacht, and by the time I was done rescuing all the baby seals, Apple was already marketing it. I swear, between the sea-sickness and the size of my giant penis, poor Morgan could barely walk for weeks.

Why only the other week, Warren Buffet was calling me to ask why I never filed a patent, and BTW, what do I think of HP splitting into two companies. I told him I don't have a lot of time to explain market fundamentals to him, and suggested he reads Investing for Dummies" first. And, besides, I'm still on retainer with HP as their shadow CEO, so it would be unethical.

I'd tell you why Kim Jong Il has been out of the public eye for a while, but I'm sworn to secrecy for the next twenty years. Fortunately, me am Obama were chilling over steaks the other night, and he had a good laugh about it. At least I can talk to someone about this. The Secret Service guys are really cool, and sometimes let me shoot the guns, and the airforce pilots let me show them how to do a hammerhead in airforce one. Good times. You wouldn't believe what they've got in the secret fortress under Camp David, though. All I can say is Area 51 isn't where the really cool stuff is.

Basically, it boils down to credibility. Sure, have all the fiction you want. But if you are passing it off as fact, and someone is failing to check if any of it's true, and then subsequently pass it off as fact ... they're morons.

It sounds like this guy has been going around making extraordinary claims, and nobody has had the slightest inclination to challenge him on it.