Tag: electric entertainment

This episode was all kinds of wonderful. From Hardison’s wig to Parker’s awkward interactions with people to the tongue-in-cheek homages to the great thrillers of the ’70s, from start to finish: fun. By switching up roles in an effort to allow Sophie to seek some comfort and excitement after her breakup, everyone got a chance to use some of the skills they’ve been developing in their ongoing effort to become more well rounded thieves and grifters. We’ve seen more of this, extending back to the latter episodes of the first season, and each time the writers have found a way to make it interesting. Sophie isn’t a master planner and never will be; it would be far more boring if she slipped into Nate’s role without some trouble. Likewise Parker scamming and Eliot playing computer geek.

If I were to complain about anything it would be that Eliot didn’t struggle enough finding information on Hardison’s interrogator and that Nate seems too comfortable in the midst of a grift. The weight rests on Beth Riesgraf’s shoulders to be the awkward, uncomfortable one when playing a role; I’d like to see a little more of that from everyone but Sophie.

That small grumble aside, this was good.

Edit: I wrote my review off the screener. I should have waited. During the episode, TNT had cross-promotion of Raising the Bar with *Nancy Grace*. An hour in which Leverage bashes her loosely fictionalized stand-in and they put her smug face right there in the middle of it!

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We talk all the time but it never feels like you’re actually sharing anything. As great as you are, there’s always a mask. I just don’t know who you really are, Katherine.

Bernie Goddamn Madoff. He takes our money, insults our legal system, makes the sick sicker, and the poor poorer. Turns out he (or someone just like him) also treats his stepson like crap and plots to kill hapless FBI agents. Special Agents Taggert and McSweeten return for their third appearance on Leverage and almost get killed for their efforts. ((If you haven’t already seen it, take a look at this great interview with Gerald Downey and Rick Overton, who play the agents, in ifMagazine.))

Tonight the team stretches itself thin as it steals a school. That’s a tough one but they succeed because Nate knows the one true rule of dealing with the rich and powerful: force them to doubt their mastery. By holding himself out as a recognized authority with a book and method that is well known and revered, he challenges the fuming parents to risk looking ignorant by standing up to him. It’s a basic trick of the conman, salesman, hustler, and writer and works best against the people who should be the least credulous. After that, the rest is gravy.

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A dirty, rotten, no good hedge fund manager? I’ve never heard of such a thing!

Tonight’s mark, Eddie Maranjian, was a hedge fund manager of Armenian descent who, naturally, preyed on the weak and walked off with their money. The team is pretty sure he’s got at least $400K liquid stashed away somewhere and offers to help one of the victims. But this is no straight con.

Eddie’s on a plane to a minimum security Federal prison in Florida in an hour. Either the team has to crack him – while guarded by US Marshals – before then or delay his departure. Nate notes that Eddie had a bottle of germ killer at trial and quickly riffs out a plan to delay and crack Eddie at once.

Humor aside, tonight’s episode reminded me most of a classic Mission: Impossible. In a short time the team needs to convince a mark of something wholly untrue to get him to turn over his money. While the cons on the show are usually of short varieties, they are still generally normal cons. The game they played on Eddie by taking him away from all other contact was more on the order of psyops. ((This episode is close kin to last season’s “Comrades” episode of Burn Notice. While watching, I was reminded of the games Sam and Michael played on Ivan to turn him, fundamentally twisting his view of reality.)) And it was a lot of fun to watch.

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Bad things happen to good people. And on TV, interesting bad things happen to and/or near main characters. Timothy Hutton – and by extension Nate Ford – only has a few years on me; perhaps in the next decade or so a sabotaged car will career toward me and flip in the air, landing feet away from me. I can hope.

Significantly, while the inciting event for the second season premiere of TNT’s Leverage stretches plausibility, everything that follows is organic and believable. It doesn’t matter how outlandish the start as long as the succeeding drama is real. ((Alright, maybe a little stretchy, but close to believable.))

In my preview of the new season I discussed the general situation of the Leverage Group: cast to the four corners at the end of last season, they’ve all been adrift and purposeless. The thieves no longer get a thrill from crime, having been infected by Nate and his push to do good. As for Nate, he’s on the wagon (and living above a bar) about to take a staid and very boring job at a Boston insurance firm when he runs.

Just as the rest of the team has been cursed to want to do good, he’s been cursed to seek out the thrill and can’t stomach the thought of cube life. On his way to drown his sorrows, Kerrigan’s sabotaged car flies toward him. Nate doesn’t move. He’s consigned to his fate, whatever that might be. But when the car lands he jumps into action, alive and still kicking.

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After last season’s very big, very destructive finale, the Leverage Group disbanded and went to the four corners. Their operation was in ruins and their names and faces were exposed to the authorities by Jim Sterling; going underground was the logical move.

We return six months later in Boston. Nate has accepted a job working in insurance again and is being taken on a tour of the company’s offices when the walls close in and he runs. Runs right into a case made for the team, if only he were interested in getting the band back together.

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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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