Previous shows, catching up: Leverage season 5
To a large extent, Leverage was a victim of its own success. Not just externally -- the show was enough of a hit to run probably one season longer than it should have -- but internally. By the time the fifth season of Leverage starts up, the team has taken out major corporations, powerful political figures, the Irish mob, and even the government of a small country. They also, by the final episode of the fourth season, took out pretty much all of their major enemies. Parker and Hardison have hooked up; Nate and Sophie have hooked up.
What's next?
Since it's pretty much a given that the Leverage team will triumph unless the show has a two part episode, and even then, in previous seasons, the show kept up suspense by focusing on how the team succeeded, not if they would, and also by running season long arcs: Nate's struggle with alcohol, Sophie's struggle with identity, Eliot's struggle with his past, Parker's struggle with understanding regular people, and Hardison....Hardison didn't really have a struggle beyond trying to get the group to take him seriously. Later seasons also had a Big Bad who was more or less connected to some of the episodes, and a few returning characters here and there -- Nate's wife, Hardison's hacker nemesis, antagonist Jim Sterling, and some returning cops.
The fifth season really can't do much with any of this. Partly because a couple of the characters were scheduled on other shows (notably Captain Bonanno, who moved over to Grimm to play literally the exact. same. character. over there only dealing with monsters instead of conmen) but mostly because of the show itself.
By this time, we've seen pretty much every scam and twist the team can run. Season five tries a few variations on this -- but most of them were done in earlier seasons. Show us a past scam where the Leverage actors all take on different roles, with a bonus bone thrown to any Parker/Eliot shippers by putting their actors' new characters in a romantic relationship? Mostly done in the previous season (minus the Parker/Eliot bits). Separate the teams into two groups, showing that they can now work without all five characters? Needed for the final episode -- but also already done in a previous season. The one new narrative technique, giving Parker an episode of her own, did more or less work, but was somewhat marred by constant scenes showing the rest of the group having a seemingly more interesting adventure over in Japan.
Try to pit the team against an opponent they can't possibly defeat? Besides Sterling, who exactly can possibly be in this last category? As the characters themselves note, they took down the government of a small country. In the Parker episode they run a scam that involves the actual emperor of Japan. So when Nate tries to tell the crew that they can't possibly go against Company That Is Clearly Wal-Mart But We Don't Want the Lawsuit because said company is too big, it rings completely false. It rings even more false when they are initially unable to stop the Big Box Store not so much because of the Big Box Store's Resources but because the store manager is almost their equal at manipulation. Which makes the final payoff of that episode all the less convincing.
Try to create unbelievable, over the top scams? Well, again, been done -- and the ones for this final season were either particularly unbelievable or just fell flat. Take, for instance, the very first episode, where the team cons an experienced pilot into believing that he's flying the Spruce Goose. Actually they are still on the ground. Only one, well, ok, two slight problems with this: 1) the Spruce Goose took off from water, not the ground (and the mark, obsessed with Howard Hughes, would know that) and 2) an experienced pilot would certainly know the sensation of lifting off from the earth and know when he was not, in fact, feeling the sensation. Other cons were equally, er, no, or "done that already" (Eliot infiltrates a hockey team, the same way he infiltrated a baseball team.)
That leaves just the overreaching season arc, which is in two parts: one, Nate's Great Secret, introduced in the first episode and then pretty much forgotten about until the last episode, and two, the sense that the team is moving on to become something new. The first really falls flat: Nate's great secret that he's been hiding all season turns out to be -- he wants to rob Interpol? Which, since the rest of the team is all ready to do, was necessary to lie about...why, exactly? That gets handwaved.
So that leaves the show with only one remaining possible story arc: to convince viewers that yes, the characters have all grown up, that yes, Nate and Sophie are ready to leave the group, and that Eliot, Parker and Hardison are capable of running Leverage without them (though I suspect Nate and Sophie will still get called in for occasional consulting.) That's not a bad arc, and several episodes work on that level, but it does give the overall season a rather melancholy feel, at odds with the show's initial, light-hearted premise.
No episode was terrible, and I still enjoyed it, but if you want to see how very good Leverage could be, stick to earlier seasons.