The Well-Worn Couch: Leverage S1E5

The Well-Worn Couch presents:
“Leverage”

“The Bank Shot Job”


Reviewed by Dan Brottman
Airdate: December 30, 2008
Timothy Hutton, Christian Kane, Gina Bellman, Beth Riesgraf, Aldis Hodge
Created by: John Rogers, Chris Downey
Written by: Amy Berg
Director: Dean Devlin



Synopsis: (Warning: Spoilers may cause irritableness, rashes, bunions and dry mouth.)

The mark for the job is Judge Roy (played by Michael O’Neill, who I have a difficult time separating from his role as Secret Service Agent Ron Butterfield on The West Wing), a corrupt judge in a tiny Southwest town. The audience comes into the action as the crew is wrapping up their con of Judge Roy. Nate accompanies the Judge to a bank where Sophie has been planted as an employee. Before they can get out, however, a pair of bank robbers appears. Nate could have gotten out, but stayed because of Sofie.

In order to protect their con and themselves, they decide that they need control of the situation, and have Hardison and Parker pose as FBI agents to deal with the local authorities. After Hardison identifies the robbers they find out the robbers are a father and son, Derrick and Michael Clark. The son got in trouble with local drug dealers, who have kidnapped his mother and are demanding a ransom. Eliot goes to inspect their home, and finds it has been broken into.

Parker steals the Judge’s money from out of the bank (which is still in the process of being robbed). When the Judge notices the briefcase containing his money is gone, he struggles with Michael (played by the kid who plays Dexter as a teenager on “Dexter”), and winds up shooting Nate in the shoulder. After hearing Sophie call Nate by his real name, instead of his alias, Carl, Judge Roy holds everyone in the bank hostage until his money is returned.

Eliot gets Mrs. Clark back from the math dealers, and starts to head back to the others. With some computer wizardry from Hardison, a pizza delivery and some costume changes, they manage to fool the authorities into thinking the Judge has been the robber all along. Everyone in the town hates the Judge, so no one sets the record straight. The Judge is arrested, the meth dealers are arrested, and matters are arranged so that it appears the Clark’s were never involved.

Thoughts:

This episode changes up the routine in that we never actually meet the client the Leverage team is working for. They are mentioned, but never appear on screen. Apparently, Judge Roy cut lose the murderer of a young girl, Beth Delgado, whose parents hired the Leverage team.

This episode marks the first time Parker and Hardison adopt the personas of FBI agents Elmore and Leonard (ha. ha.), who we will see several more times. One of the oddities that arises from the order the episodes aired in versus the DVD order is the presence of two recurring characters presented only for moments here – FBI Special Agents Taggert and McSweeten. In “The Wedding Job” we see a lot more of these characters and Hardison and Parker’s FBI alter-egos interacting with them. So, in the DVD chronology, those characters have already met. As we’ll see later on, Special Agent McSweeten is sweet on (yeah… sorry) Parker/Agent Elmore, but only interacts with Hardison here, so it isn’t as big of a deal that they should already know each other.

Anyway, in terms of other long-term developments besides the FBI personas, we see more of Sophie and Nate’s feelings for each other coming through in this episode. They both jeopardize the job because of each other. Sophie completely breaks character when Nate gets shot (which is tips off Judge Roy). Despite knowing how competent Sophie is, Nate stays in the bank when he notices the robbers, when he could have gotten out and done what they came to do.

One problem this show has in terms of reviewing (though not in terms of viewing) is that the “heist-of-the-week” format doesn’t leave us with much in the way of long term developments. Unfortunately, I’ve become spoiled by all the great television of the past decade and have come to expect that sort of thing. Still, there’s something to be said for accessibility for new viewers and for just sitting back and enjoying a good heist.


Favorite exchange (along with Hardison’s invented list of crazy demands):

Alec Hardison: You know, I had to re-task two satellites just to get a lousy internet connection. Took more than an hour to torrent the last episode of Doctor Who.

Parker: Hey! Illegal downloading's wrong.