Author: R.A. Porter

Grifter, hitter, hacker, thief. You were all trying to solve your version of the crime instead of just trying to solve the crime. There’s a reason we work together.

Even amongst critics who enjoy Leverage, it doesn’t get a lot credit for style. Dean Devlin established a house style in the pilot that has been enhanced and codified through this first season that serves the show well, but few bother to note those things it does well. One of them is on display tonight.

The opening scene closely mirrors the opening of last week’s “The First David Job”, all the way down to Nate’s line to Blackpoole: “Are you here to kill me, Ian?” And the crane shot in the closing scene mirrors the same shot of the team scattering in the final scene of the pilot. These callbacks establish a through line from the pilot, through last week’s setbacks, and into next season.

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His cover’s blown. Faces of his people have been sent to every law enforcement agency in the state. We’ve taken their money, their base of operations, and now Nate Ford will never, ever, get his revenge. They will do the only smart thing to do. They’ll scatter.

Leverage rarely plays around much with time, generally running straight through from beginning to end with only occasional detours for con explication or character asides. Tonight is a little different. We open in the present with a completely blitzed Nathan crashing a party dedicating a new museum wing to his old boss at IYS, Ian Blackpool. Offering to sell Blackpool something, we finally realize this is a con when he calls over Sophie, posing as Portia, a representative from the Vatican. We also realize Nate is not as drunk as he appears, at least not as incapacitated.

Jumping back to two weeks earlier, we get the setup – an intervention for Nate, who wants them “not to get hung up on the alcoholic” part of him being a functioning alcoholic. But since this is a Leverage-style intervention, the team just wants to help Nate get revenge. ((Good for Nate. He didn’t have to say, “no, no, no.”))

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When I was a kid, I was like eight-years old, I had a foster mom who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Used to dress me up in a suit and a bowtie, take me door to door to spread the word. Black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, didn’t matter. I would kick, I’d scream, or whatever, but she would say, “Alec, you need to learn to talk to people.” See, everything I learned about people, I learned ringing doorbells in a bowtie. Parker never had that.

You think you know a show…you think they’re pulling out a jury show because they want to save a few bucks and do a bottle episode. And then they whip name guest stars at you with reckless abandon – a Brent Spiner here, an Armin Shimerman there, and what the hell, let’s top it off with a Lauren Holly for good measure – and dress a bunch of sets we’ve never seen before. What I’m saying is, this isn’t your usual jury episode.

It’s a little lighter on the action – not a fireball in sight – than some other episodes, but Jonathan Frakes manages to keep the pace brisk from behind the camera. Even courtroom scenes, which are normally the bane of any action show with all their talky-talky, don’t feel like they’re slowing down the proceedings at all.

By the way, if you didn’t catch our interview with Jonathan Frakes yesterday, be sure to go clicky-clicky right here with your mouse, touchpad, rollerball, or alternate pointy device.

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