One flesh
Realized I missed an episode of Leverage this season, so finally caught up with “The Wedding Job”--and, boy, was it dreadful. I should've skipped it. Though it's full of logical inconsistencies (five people just show up to run a wedding that already has people running it two days before the event? The pastor shows up two days before the event and just hangs around for no reason? The FBI really doesn't notice that two people who said they were agents have been going and coming from the house as wedding planners?) and shoddy storytelling (the wedding is just an excuse to get inside the mobster's house to find the cash he has hidden-what? Why waste a wedding setting for that? And how convenient-the mobster has some random dudes coming for the cash, so it'll be available in a conveniently stealable package! And also one of the random dudes, whose name is, I believe, Third Act Plot Complication, somehow has a beef with Eliot), the worst of it is really how they've written the women. Are we surprised? Even putting aside the shrill stepmother, who's so unlikeable Parker calls another woman fat twice and makes her cry by guessing her weight (and somehow acquires the acting skills to play an FBI agent, even though in other episodes, she can't act her way out of a paper bag) -and while this might be technically in character for Parker, the line is played for laughs.
Worst of all is Sophie, who spends the entire episode acting like she walked out of the pages of He's Just Not That Into You. One clunker of an exchange (this occurs in the middle of the job, apropos of nothing):
Nate: “Sophie, where are we at?
Sophie: “Huh? I don’t know, Nate. I think you need to ask yourself that question. You called me, remember? And now we’re working together every day. I don’t know what you want. And to ask me that dressed like a Vicar. You’re a very strange man.
Nate: “No, no, no. I meant where are we at with finding the money.”
Later in the episode the bride tells Sophie she just realized that her stepmother made her wedding all about her, and Sophie replies with another entirely irrelevant rant about how women don't know what men want. Are we supposed to think it's funny that Sophie does the same thing as the loathed stepmother (who Sophie calls a shrew later on)? Early Sophie convinces Nate to take the job not because-as others point out-this is exactly the kind of case they take, but by implying she knows what it's like to wait to for a man (the client's husband is in jail). Really, writers? The only reason Sophie and Nate aren't together is because Nate doesn't want it? Not because Sophie might not want to be involved with a raging alcoholic who's also a control freak? In some episodes the tension between them is written much more subtly-they have a shared history, but the timing and circumstances were never right. This is not one of those episodes.
Props to Gina Bellman for managing to be still be funny and likeable through all of that. I think she and the woman who plays Parker are written far more inconsistently than the men on this show, and both actresses try to give their characters continuity where there is none. The unfortunate thing about this episode is that I think we actually do get a little insight into Eliot, who's such a cartoon hunk in some episodes (like, say, “The Two Horse Job,” where he's frankly laughable). One of the creators, John Rogers, keeps a blog and says this was the third episode shot and they were still working out the characters-fine, but “The Bank Shot Job” was the first episode shot and was infinitely better in terms of characterization, at least of Sophie, and handled the Nate/Sophie subplot much more gracefully. And, you know, less offensively.
Worst of all is Sophie, who spends the entire episode acting like she walked out of the pages of He's Just Not That Into You. One clunker of an exchange (this occurs in the middle of the job, apropos of nothing):
Nate: “Sophie, where are we at?
Sophie: “Huh? I don’t know, Nate. I think you need to ask yourself that question. You called me, remember? And now we’re working together every day. I don’t know what you want. And to ask me that dressed like a Vicar. You’re a very strange man.
Nate: “No, no, no. I meant where are we at with finding the money.”
Later in the episode the bride tells Sophie she just realized that her stepmother made her wedding all about her, and Sophie replies with another entirely irrelevant rant about how women don't know what men want. Are we supposed to think it's funny that Sophie does the same thing as the loathed stepmother (who Sophie calls a shrew later on)? Early Sophie convinces Nate to take the job not because-as others point out-this is exactly the kind of case they take, but by implying she knows what it's like to wait to for a man (the client's husband is in jail). Really, writers? The only reason Sophie and Nate aren't together is because Nate doesn't want it? Not because Sophie might not want to be involved with a raging alcoholic who's also a control freak? In some episodes the tension between them is written much more subtly-they have a shared history, but the timing and circumstances were never right. This is not one of those episodes.
Props to Gina Bellman for managing to be still be funny and likeable through all of that. I think she and the woman who plays Parker are written far more inconsistently than the men on this show, and both actresses try to give their characters continuity where there is none. The unfortunate thing about this episode is that I think we actually do get a little insight into Eliot, who's such a cartoon hunk in some episodes (like, say, “The Two Horse Job,” where he's frankly laughable). One of the creators, John Rogers, keeps a blog and says this was the third episode shot and they were still working out the characters-fine, but “The Bank Shot Job” was the first episode shot and was infinitely better in terms of characterization, at least of Sophie, and handled the Nate/Sophie subplot much more gracefully. And, you know, less offensively.