Forty-four minutes is not enough.
When you bring the always delightful Sara Rue on as a guest star – freaked out to fly and the target of a Very Bad Man – you need to give her some room to breathe. ((Or hyperventilate.)) Where was the awkward flirting scene with Eliot? Where was the confused three-person conversation with Parker and Hardison where she can’t see or hear Hardison? I wanted more of Sara Rue. Otherwise, this was yet another solid, entertaining episode.
So much joy in Mudville tonight. FNL returned. Pushing Daisies returned. I’ve only got one more day at my job. All in all, a pretty good day.
And you know what? My first day at my new/old job on Monday won’t be nearly as bad as Tami’s.
For those without DirecTV (and those who are out for the next week because some nimrod screwed up,) don’t read the rest. For those who got to see the episode legally or otherwise, more below the fold.
Oh hell, you give me Dan Lauria ((Interesting – to me and no one else – sidenote: Dan Lauria went to college and played football with my high school coach. Coach was the class advisor for my girlfriend’s class and got Kevin Arnold’s dad as their graduation speaker. He gave a fantastic speech that managed to incorporate Bruce Willis and Ed O’Neill. Afterwards? The girlfriend told me Lauria was a hottie. That was weird.)) and Nicole Sullivan as comedy standins for James Gandolfini and Edie Falco? Point Leverage. Add to that a script from Chris Downey loaded with subtle character humor and a slick turn behind the camera from Jonathan Frakes ((Number 1 calls the shots on *this* enterprise, bub.)) and you’ve got another solid hour from the gang.
Considering this episode was the third one shot, I was pretty pleased with the smoothness that ended up on screen.
One of the complaints some critics have laid on Leverage is its reliance on common settings for a con/scam/mission show: bank robbery, horse track, etc. Personally, I not only find those locales comforting, but believe that specifically avoiding those settings would be unrealistic. These are thieves, after all. But tonight breaks the mold in a big way and goes somewhere I don’t believe any heist show has gone before.
My knowledge of the strife and suffering in the countries formerly composing Yugoslavia is sketchy, mostly consisting of what I’ve gleaned from features about the region’s basketball tradition. In fact, if not for tall men with names like Vlade and Drazen and Peja, I might not be able to remember the names of all the republics that split off from Yugoslavia. The fighting during the ’90s was intense and the toll is still being felt to this day. I don’t know how common the practice of using orphanages to front for gunrunners is, but there are certainly enough orphans in Belgrade to make it feasible. (more…)
Ah 2008, you sorry, piece of shit excuse of a year. So happy to see you skittering across the floor toward the door. You will NOT be missed. What, after all, did you give us? Tina Fey playing the dumbest woman in America and…nothing. Or damn close to it.
But it’s not just what you failed to give us, but how you failed us. Here’s what the bench at DreamLoom think.
Ai-ight. That’s more like it. At this point, I’m wondering whether Rogers, Downey, and Devlin have a mind probing satellite in geosynchronous orbit. A satellite tuned to my brain waves so they can put a show on the air specifically tailored to my tastes. Because this one? This one was exactly up my alley.
Look, man! You’re lucky on this deadline I didn’t give you a baking soda volcano.
Remember in last week’s review, when I expressed my concern that Leverage might wear out its welcome if every episode involved helping out someone from the team’s past? That’s because I’d already seen “The Miracle Job” and knew that two consecutive episodes had done that very thing. It’s a small complaint, but I would really rather see strangers taking advantage of the services of Leverage Consulting & Associates.
However, if they were all going to be as much fun as this one, I wouldn’t make much of a fuss over it.
Oh Jiminy Jehoshaphat! I went out on a limb for you people. A tree limb, jutting from a cliff with my limbs dangling over certain death. So don’t leave me dangling with Dwight’s disappearance.
In a break from format, tonight’s episode of Pushing Daisies eschewed the MoW and was all the stronger for it. Tying up loose threads, before dropping some new ones, tonight was all about Charles’s disappearance and Dwight’s death.
Vivian, as innocent and naive as ever, asks Emerson for help tracking down her missing paramour, Dwight Dixon. But Emerson already knows where Dwight can be found, six feet underground where he left him. But treating Vivian roughly to convince her she’s been abandoned doesn’t work: she hires The Norwegians.
Sophie: I don’t know what comes of chasing the past, Eliot.
Eliot: Well Sophie, sweetie, I don’t think you and Nate get to serve me that particular meal.
If I had to highlight one concern I have about the legs on Leverage, it would be on display in tonight’s episode. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a finely crafted hour of television with some twisty goodness, but its entire premise is that someone on the team has to help someone from his past. I don’t want to spend every week learning about Eliot’s lost love or Hardison’s old buddies in the AV club, or Parker’s…whatever psychiatric nurse she really liked in her youth. Instead I want strangers tracking down Leverage Consulting & Associates – preferably talking to Nate while he wears kooky disguises – and asking for help.
Eliot’s got history with Willy and Aimee Martin, a history of a future derailed. He was engaged to be engaged to Aimee, guest star Jaime Ray Newman (Heroes, Veronica Mars,) but hit the road and never returned. Eliot’s chosen profession doesn’t lend itself to domesticated bliss, and he apparently spent some time undergoing “enhanced coercive interrogation techniques” when he should have been back home tending his relationship. Ain’t that always the way? You meet a girl, give her a promise ring, and then get captured and beaten over a monkey.
A pie is simple it’s limited. Just a bit of pastry and filling. Cake is complex, layered with treasures waiting to be discovered. Which one do you choose?
Pushing Daisies is just bold enough that I believed there was a small chance Chuck would leave with her father tonight. Not forever necessarily, but at this late date it might as well be. I honestly did not know whether Chuck would choose cake or pie, so when she told Ned her spoon landed right where she was, I was glad. But I didn’t buy that her father was going to be happy about it. He’s chosen too, and his spoon is taking him, and Ned’s car, elsewhere.