Recaps for Leverage

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Leverage Review: "The Cross My Heart Job"

When Nate Ford makes a promise, you can rest assured that he will keep it even when his team has nothing to work with and only 108 minutes to do it as exampled in " The Cross My Heart Job ." Ok, lets all agree that the production team took some serious liberties with their representation of airport security. If anyone has traveled recently it will really stand out. I was ok with it (as it was an entertaining episode,) I just wanted to mention the elephant in the room. Read More... //

Leverage Review: "The Boiler Room Job"

This episode could have had a few different names. "The Chocolate Job," "The Moonwalking Bear Job," or "The Mako Job" as it shifted from story element to story element. What was great about "The Boiler Room Job" was how well it did the shifts and still blended together in the end to make a truly well told story. Did anyone else expect the civilian actors were actually Sherman’s other victims? That reveal hit me as hard as finding out that Darth Vader was Luke’s father, I was just blown away. My hat is off to Mr. Devil and his team for that touching and heart warming surprise. Read More... //

Leverage Review: "The Grave Danger Job"

There aren't many times when a job doesn’t go exactly as Nate planned. This week, things went very sideways as the team had to race to save Hardison’s life in "The Grave Danger Job." Five minutes into the episode when Parker and Nate were talking about faith, I knew this was going to be an emotional rollercoaster ride for Parker.   I adored Beth Riesgraf performance in showing Parker’s emotions that she hides so well normally. There were so many subtle body motions and facial expressions that spoke volumes if you were watching for them.   Read More... //

'Leverage' 4.08 'The Boiler Room Job' Review

The bad guy is Greg Sherman ( The Shield  star David Rees Snell), who gives bombastic speeches about being "on top of the food chain" because he's that corny. Unfortunately, Hardison's cover gets blown quickly - it's really not a good week to be Alec Hardison! - and he's forced to spin a tale about a faux play with Sophie playing a mark known as "the chocolate whisperer." Now that would be a TV show I'd watch. Soon we're talking about chocolate cafes in China (yay alliteration) and making our way to Ecuador, where Eliot looks like he took time off from the Indiana Jones franchise. You have to hand it to the Leverage  writers: they do come up with some crazily unique setups. Once the team gets Sherman wound up, he takes off running. David Rees Snell drips arrogance as the bad guy who keeps trying to give himself a nickname. In my opinion, he lays it on a little too thick, almost more of a loudmouthed caricature than an actual villain to be taken seriously. Read More... //

'Leverage' 4.07 'The Grave Danger Job' Review

It has something to do with a funeral home run by Darlene Wickett (Anne-Marie Johnson, last seen on Fairly Legal ), who likes to swipe money at the most inappropriate time and hide it in her spiffy wall safe. The team's attempt to search the funeral home takes a turn when they realize Darlene is also stealing the identities of the deceased. Nate decides to give Darlene a not-so-helping hand, but her greed puts everyone on the wrong side of some nasty drug runners who kidnap Hardison as their own kind of leverage. There's a whole final act between Hardison's abduction and the end of the episode, which is some good organization on the part of the  Leverage  writers. They don't play their strongest card so late that we've lost interest, but when there's still enough time left to actually do something with it. As a result, there's real, palpable tension in the end of the episode - not so much whether or not Hardison will survive, but because we get the time to really see what he is going through, and get inside his head. Read More... //

LEVERAGE “The Grave Digger Job / The Boiler Room Job” Review

LEVERAGE   "The Grave Digger Job" and "The Boiler  Room Job" Season 4 Episode 7 & 8 – Leverage is back with a double episode after a weeklong hiatus. These two episodes are completely unrelated to each other, which is a pity, since  Leverage  is the kind of show which could benefit with a multi-episode arc, given that it has a habit of neatly wrapping up episodes much too quickly. Having these two episodes, which are completely unrelated to each other, back to back is a little jarring, especially since they were tonally very different. The first episode involved a dastardly scheme of identity theft by a funeral home director. Over the course of uncovering the scheme,  Leverage  crew find themselves in grave (pun fully intended) danger as Hardison is kidnapped and put into a casket and buried, á la Ryan Reynolds  and  CSI ’s Tarantino etc. This season of Leverage seems to be pretty bent on the Hardison and Parker  relationship, which I’m happy about since they are the two most intriguing characters and their relationship is the most unconventional, which was a bit of a flaw with the second episode. Read More... //

LEVERAGE “The Carnival Job” Review

LEVERAGE  "The Carnival Job" Season 4 Episode 6 – It has taken quite a while but finally we have an Eliot-centric episode of  Leverage , the first, really, of the season. And I gotta say, it was worth the wait. When the  Leverage  team are called to steal a hi-tech gadget that controls like, everything, back from a bigshot CEO, they find themselves in a moral quandary when their initial investigation makes them realize that the CEO is not greedy, but a man dealing with grief by lashing out at others after the death of his wife. The only person who is not on the receiving end of his anger is his young daughter, whom he generally tries to ignore. There was a line early on which I thought interesting: "I thought we were supposed to hate the bad guys" and it’s something Leverage has done quite well: setting themselves up as the righteous heroes against caricature villains, generally CEOs, is a trademark of the show. Sometimes it works-who doesn’t love a caricature villain, like the one Michael Gladis so gleefully embodied a few weeks ago? But it is also one of Leverages weaknesses, and why the shows’ various attempts to heighten the stakes never work, because you always know that the characters are never in real danger. Read More... //

Leverage Review: "The Carnvial Job"

We get to see exactly how very good Nate and the team can be, when a young girl is kidnapped in the middle of a job in this week’s episode  "The Carnvial Job." I’m calling this an "Eliot episode" if there ever was one! While there was some great interaction between Hardison and Parker, we’ve not seen as much ass-kicking being done by (and to) Eliot in a single episode in a long time. Was it just me or did anyone else adore the relationship that Eliot formed with Molly and how protective he felt for her? While we have seen Eliot softer side before, this time it was more paternal or big brotherly than it was previously. It makes me think that Eliot might make a good father, a  scary and deadly father.   Read More... //

'Leverage' 4.06 'The Carnival Job' Review

It's impossible for every television episode to be novel. This week, Leverage tries to put a spin on a fairly common idea, and only half succeeds. //

Leverage Review: "The Hot Potato Job"

After last week’s emotionally charged flash-back episode, this week we returned to what the team does best, running a con to save the innocent in "The Hot Potato Job." With the episode featuring a "super tuber," I had expected the hour to be full of spud humor. Instead, we got a well planned and executed con that could have had the team going after a diamond, gold, or cash. Who wants to start a pool on how long it will take Nate to realize he has really fallen for Sophie? While he may say he doesn’t want a relationship, it was pretty obvious that he likes being "friends with extras" (as Sophie put it).   Read More... //