if we don't stress-test e system circuitry, it could be us melting this place down. what's she talking about? when we upgrade, it will pump a lot of electricity through this junk pile. if this system has flaws-- old wiring, rat-chewed insulation-- we want to know now and where so we can fortify. no, that's a waste of time. we're not rebuilding a motorcycle engine. look, that test alone could overload the system. walter, i know what i'm talking about. not more than i do. would someone make the call here? happy, we've only got one shot. if your diagnostic crashes the system, then we have a meltdown in 17 hours, and we might not have enough time to rebuild the system from scratch. if collins runs the download before the system's ready for it, we have a meltdown now. happy's never liked me. her opposition is personal. it's not based on knowledge. knowledge that i have of this reactor that she doesn't. trust me. i have complete confidence in this. well, you'd better be right, son.

don't do it, walter. sylvester: okay. we are downloading the reactor calibrations. four-minute eta. walt, a minute outside. yeah. you might have just bought yourself some good will for that trespassing charge. i'm just glad to be of service, general. don't ever take someone else's side over me in public again, walter, or i will disappear on you faster than collins did. you're taking this personal. it was business. i was trying to avoid a meltdown. i already stopped a meltdown-- yours.

you were damn near starved, muttering to yourself. i practically had to force-feed you. i remember. when he bailed, it was the best thing for us. and him being back is the worst. and if he stays, and you take another trip down the rabbit hole with him, you are on your own. i am not going through that again. happy... happy! what is this? i know you're upset. the note expresses a few things that might make you smile. are you kidding? i'm going toe-to-toe with walter and you hand me a mash note? when you feel the time is right, read it, and you will understand why i gave it to you. pretend i know a little about the human psyche. "rebuilding a motorcycle engine." collins always loved digging that knife in. you love rebuilding motorcycle engines. it's hardly the breadth of my ability.

we can at least do half this job safely. (typing) sylvester? almost done downloading the old reactor configuration. okay. the others were always very sharp, walter, but they were never us. (explosion) (alarm blaring) oh, no. happy, what do you see? the backup generator in chamber one blew out. walter, i think it's my fault. it happened right after i-i ran the system check. happy, i told you not to! walker: we evacuate now, before all the containment doors close. containment? why am i thinking this isn't a drill? no, this is what you get when an aging system is held together with duct tape and a hail mary for 30 years. (beeping, hissing) cooling system! radiation leak! get out of here now!

o'brien, get your ass in gear! no, we're still downloading. if i leave now, we're all dead. i can still fix this. give me an eta. (beeps) got the reactor configuration. we can upgrade the system in the computer room. if we get out alive. (alarm continues blaring) the containment doors are closing! should we tell them that if the core temp keeps rising at this rate, we're less than 60 minutes from full meltdown? maybe hold that off until they're out. hurry! come on, cabe, come on! go, go, go! get to the door, get to the door! paige: walter! paige, get to the door! walter! (shouts) there's got to be a way to get them out of here. (grunts) guys, there's a door at the end of the walkway over the cooling room. it must be defective 'cause it's closing slower than the others.

(alarm continues blaring) over there, the door! (grunts) cabe! cabe! hurry. cabe! cabe! it's not gonna hold! go now! cabe, it's not gonna... go! go! there's got to be an override here somewhere. ah, damn it! calculate fast, walter! how much time to get me out of here? you hold on tight. i'm gonna figure this out. (classical music)

(rock music) the steakhouse thickburger. onion strings, blue cheese and a1 sauce on a burger.

when things look the bleakest, heroes find a way. one way or another... something's wrong. i'm gonna getcha getcha, getcha, getcha... oh, my god. one way

i'm gonna getcha, i'll getcha... i knew you'd save the day. (laughs) one way. what's going on? walter's safe. cabe's trapped in there. (alarm blaring in distance) thanks to you. hey, how about you settle down? oh, that's cute. the tell-it-like-it-is shrink making up for his pal's mistake. all right, i got it-- layout of the entire power plant. there's got to be an escape route for cabe in here somewhere. no. no! the monitor won't let me see the full size. print it. okay, good idea. (printer whirring)

come on, you slow bastard! (printer buzzes) okay, i'm sorry i yelled. guys, where are we? the reactor blueprints won't print, the monitor's frozen. this is bad. (explosion in distance) happy: it just got worse. that's radioactive steam escaping. walter? cabe? a pipe just broke. i need to know if that steam's contaminated. the structural integrity of the building you're in may be compromised. answer the question. it's a large room; if you're out in ten minutes, it won't be worse than a couple of x rays. what's the likelihood i'm gonna get out of here in ten minutes? (microphone beeps) he knows the greater good would be to forget about him and concentrate on stopping the meltdown. we can't let him die. you're actually worried about a man's life? that's not the walter o'brien i remember. you can help him. doesn't need all of us to upgrade the system. we could solve two problems at once. the effluent pipe.

he could get in it and ride it out away from the power plant. which one is it? i don't remember off the top of my head. i recorded radio chatter about it last cooling system check. june of '04. it's back at my house. it's five minutes away. take him. under guard. happy, go with him, translate the schematics. toby: hey, collins, you lay off her, or we have an issue. happy and collins might not play nice together. can you... i'll go with them. walter, do i want to hear the stats on how this might turn out? cabe. walter? i'd say, best guess, you have a one-in-three chance. walter, if my life is in the hands of this collins guy, i need to know if you're hiding something.

fantastic. (panting) june 2004. (tape rewinding) three minutes until cabe gets radiation poisoning. listen to this. man: effluent channel, outbound to ocean, pipe 6, chamber 19-a. paige: walter, pipe 6, chamber 19-a. how certain are we? totally certain. unless they changed it in the last ten years, which is possible. cabe, we found the one pipe that's gonna get you out to safety. cabe: what'll the other pipes do? don't think about that right now. okay. but for the record, if you're wrong and i get killed, i'm gonna be very pissed off. yeah, i'll be pissed off if you don't start running now.

and the pipes have access hatches. you drop in it, it should carry you out to safety about a hundred yards from shore. okay, i'm ready. hey, listen, kid, if this doesn't work out... i'm glad i got to know you. okay. a man gives you what could be his last good-bye, and you say "okay"? you could use some time on the couch. i may be seeing you soon, sweetheart. he's in. gonna say a little prayer for him right now. i don't really believe in death. first rule of physics: energy can't be created or destroyed; it just changes shape.

ladies. mister, are you okay?

cbs monday, february 15, it's the grammys with superstars... plus, welcome adele back to the grammy stage. hello from the other side.

pancakes and eggs. bacon and sausage. coffee and oj, and a killer price. that's a win, win, win, win, win. denny's grand slam slugger, part of the 2, 4, 6, 8 value menu. denny's.

give me an update. less than 30 minutes to stop the meltdown. now, step one was the reactor calibrations, which we downloaded. this is step two-- we're programming scada update. when we're finished, we can send it to the reactor remotely. the moment this update hits the reactor, it's programmed to drop all of the core temperatures to a normal level. which means the meltdown is 100% no longer a threat, correct? correct. and then i get hammered. what if this doesn't work? you got roughly 45 minutes. take your car, get ralph, drive like hell past the santa monica mountains. radiation cloud should pool up in the san fernando valley basin. you might be okay. no one would blame you if you wanted a head start. if it doesn't work, i'll go get ralph. but it will. i believe in us.

(phone ringing) tell me it's done. the reactor's safe? yeah, i can talk you through the reboot. hold on. collins: numbers are my photo albums. days elapsed since significant occurrences. i change them every morning. that's my birthday. my mother's birthday. so, i'm still trying to piece out your role here. no offense, but you're clearly not a genius. no. but my son is enabled, like you. oh. walter's trying to repair his youth through your son. no, he cares about ralph, and ralph is crazy about walter. of course he is. walter's the pied piper of geniuses. we all worship him. what he's capable of, how he makes us feel special for being special. that's why it hurts so much

walter would never do something like that. i was his experiment, once. the highest iq that he'd ever seen, other than his own. until i couldn't color in the lines the way that he wanted me to, and then i was gone. how many times has he avoided conflict by telling you he's fine? you get about 1,000 "i'm fines" before you realize that nothing is fine and you are getting shown the door. and then you realize that you're an experiment, too. you... and your son. update's complete. now we just need to compress the file, send it from here to the reactor computer and no more nuclear meltdown. sylvester, can you start the compression? i can do that, yeah. this is like war games. when matthew broderick avoided nuclear calamity with minutes to spare? that film had a grouchy general, too.

good work. usually saving millions of lives gets a bigger response. just thinking. yeah, well, you're always thinking. you're worried about collins. i'll make sure the authorities know that he was cooperative. no... that's not it. when i had him committed, i did it because he needed help, and for the team. but there's a part of me that knows... that i did it for myself. how's that? when he and i would get into that state, where nothing exists but thought... it can be a wonderful place, but it can be terrifying. because you don't know if you can come out of it. part of me knows that i had collins committed to see if other people could pull him from that place... in case i ever got to the point where i couldn't be pulled out on my own. bull. you did the right thing. this collins fella? he's got you questioning yourself, making you think you did the wrong thing, but you didn't.

oh, no. what's going on? this override was just switched to manual 20 minutes ago. he knew happy would run the diagnostics, he made her think that she did something wrong when she didn't... just like he does in chess. makes you doubt your every move. he wanted to show up the team. yeah, to prove his worth. mark... no. what the hell's he done now? there's a piece of gear called an rf dac. it converts digital signals into analog and we need it to send the update from this computer to the control room. collins set this all up. walter: it's how collins structured it. he planted a trojan horse he knew would be triggered once happy ran the system test. general, i'm sorry to say there's a third step. we need analog antennas. we've got them at the base. but that's a half an hour away. we need to get to mark's house. good god, how many times are you going to play right into his hands? we should figure something out here. i do not want to go to him.

but please trust me.

they're television's smartest team. we do not do dangerous. we do calculations. announcer: but cbs tomorrow... there is an earthquake! ...these geniuses will face... this is as bad as it gets.

or stream it live or on demand. rrator: how do we top the biggest season ever? with the biggest big bang secret ever. thursday can't get here soon enough.

(alarm whooping, tires squeal) warning system! three minutes till a meltdown! it's two minutes and 12 seconds, actually! walker: what the hell is this? this is our only chance. paige: walter! happy: why is an alarm going off? because we have two minutes to avoid a meltdown. i need your access codes for the antennas to send an analog signal. (typing) didn't work, mark. mark, it didn't work. why you looking at me like that, walter? i need the code. that's all we need.

that the ambulance came to take me away for two years. the code, collins. nine-five-one. no, that's not it. could've sworn it was 951. walter: 951 days ago, mark and i disproved a section of the higgs boson theory. collins: excellent work! it's 1199. what is happening here? collins: i know walter found out that i set this whole thing up. i was listening to your conversation at the reactor base. the whole place is mic'd. just over a minute left! what the hell's the holdup? just give us the damn code! or what? you'll shoot me? that only guarantees you'll fail. walter, how do you stand for such intellectual inferiors? the code! collins: i told you. it's 1199. walter : one-one-nine-nine. 1,199 days ago-- it was may 20, it was a thursday-- we stayed up all night in a diner discussing the quantum mechanics of time travel.

but you ruined that. you hate me for what i did. i get it. and i always debate my decision, but this isn't the right solution. and having me locked up was? do you have any idea how badly that hurt me? (alarm whooping sharply) there's less than a minute. do you think i'm afraid to die, walter? i'm not afraid to die. my life ended the day that you destroyed our partnership, our friendship. i just wanted to show you that i could save everyone. i just wanted back on the team. paige: walter, that's it. the day his life ended, the day he lost you. seven hundred and eighty-two days. what's the date?! august 22, 2012! no! (gunshot) (collins groaning) look out, sylvester! come on, come on... all right, code's in, signal's up. did it work? walter?