Leverage Primer (part 1)
Table of Contents:
Scavenger Hunt
What Is Leverage? | The Episodes in Broadcast Order | The People on Twitter | Leverage Trivia
Character Introdcutions
Nate | Sophie | Eliot | Hardison | Parker
Season Summaries
Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4
Ten Episodes that Will (Mostly) Catch You Up for Season 5
The Nigerian Job | The Twelve-Step Job | The First/Second David Job
The Two Live Crew Job | The Zanzibar Marketplace Job | The Maltese Falcon Job
The Three Card Monte Job | The Big Bang Job
The Radio Job | The Last Dam Job
Miscellaneous
Our Testimonials | Reasons to Watch Leverage | Meta | Top 10 Moments | Top 20 Quotes
Leverage is literally “twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag”. The show, touted by its own network as a “lighthearted caper drama,” boasts a cast of some of the most screwed up, well-meaning, multi-dimensional characters on television.
Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief and Mastermind - the tags each character receives only begin to scratch the surface. The thread that holds most of the episodes together is the team’s goal to help ordinary people victimized by the powerful - people who the law can’t (or won’t) help. Each episode is peppered with references to a team member’s previous life or experiences, giving viewers glimpses into the kind of people who would be convinced to leave their comfortable - if solitary - lives of crime to become Merry Men to Nathan Ford’s alcoholic Robin Hood.
In the hands of brilliant writers and talented actors, the members of the Leverage team become people we can invest in. By the time the fourth season rolls around, we have our favorites, and we share their hopes and dreams and mourn their failures. We wince when Nate drinks too much (or too little) and says something unforgivably hurtful. We feel for Hardison as he gets to experience the college life that - for but a twist of fate - could have been his. And we hurt for Parker as she realizes how easily she could have missed having him in her life.
We cheer as loners Eliot and Sophie bond with Nate and stand up to defend the little family he’s created - even from him.
It’s hard to deny the appeal of a well-told redemption story. Leverage makes you believe that “sometimes bad guys make the best good guys”.
Season One
Season Two
Season Three
Season Four
The Nigerian Job
The Homecoming Job
The Two Horse Job
The Miracle Job
The Bank Shot Job
The Stork Job
The Wedding Job
The Mile High Job
The Snow Job
The Twelve Step Job
The Juror #6 Job
The First David Job
The Second David Job
The Beantown Bailout Job
The Tap Out Job
The Order 23 Job
The Fairy Godparents Job
The Three Days of the Hunter Job
The Top Hat Job
The Two Live Crew Job
The Ice Man Job
The Lost Heir Job
The Runway Job
The Bottle Job
The Zanzibar Marketplace Job
The Future Job
The Three Strikes Job
The Maltese Falcon Job
The Jailhouse Job
The Reunion Job
The Inside Job
The Scherherazade Job
The Double Blind Job
The Studio Job
The Gone Fishin' Job
The Boost Job
The Three-Card Monte Job
The Underground Job
The Rashomon Job
The King George Job
The Morning After Job
The Ho Ho Ho Job
The Big Bang Job
The San Lorenzo Job
The Long Way Down Job
The 10 Li'l Grifters Job
The 15 Minutes Job
The Van Gogh Job
The Hot Potato Job
The Carnival Job
The Grave Danger Job
The Boiler Room Job
The Cross My Heart Job
The Queen's Gambit Job
The Experimental Job
The Office Job
The Girl's Night Out Job
The Boy's Night Out Job
The Lonely Hearts Club Job
The Gold Job
The Radio Job
The Last Dam Job
@jonrog1
@Electric44
@timhutton
@Ginabellman
@ChristianKane01
@AldisHodge
@BethRiesgraf
@JeriLRyan
@wilw
@nadinehaders
Nate Ford, the so-called Mastermind of Leverage, is an ex-insurance investigator with plenty of reasons to angst. Brought up by Jimmy Ford, Nate didn’t have the happiest childhood and then lost his own son when the company he worked for refused to pay for treatment. He struggles to deal with his alcohol problems and in his role as the ‘honest man’ of the team, switching sides from catching the bad guys to working with them is not something he finds easy at first.
There’s a lighter side to Nate, too. The Nate who gets excited at doing magic tricks for a con or who seems to enjoy driving flashy cars.
Nate Ford is smart. Nate Ford knows his team’s strengths and weaknesses and how best to use them for the con. Ultimately, Nate Ford is a thief and a good man.
Who is Sophie Devereaux? Well, no one is exactly sure. Whether she’s playing a razor-blade wielding South London mob boss or the Chief marketing officer of Mumbai International Limited (or perhaps the eighteenth Duchess of Hanover or a French raver or, well, you get the picture), Sophie’s identity is constantly changing. The Grifter of the fabulous five, Sophie (or Katherine, Charlotte, Alice, Karen-) has a vast array of mind tricks and psychological sleights of hand in her professional arsenal. She’s the best at what she does, and was handpicked for the team by Nate, with whom Sophie has a long and complicated past stretching over a decade and across many foreign backdrops.
Sophie is romantic and dramatic and always a sensual surprise. At the beginning of the series, Sophie is rather guarded with the team - earning distrust from Eliot especially when she uses a team con to her own advantage - but as time goes on, she takes on a mother hen role, nurturing each team member in special ways (Parker in particular). Because of her unique relationship with Nate, she has an insight into his problems and flaws that nobody else does, and she challenges him, is able to hold up a mirror for him that he cannot hold for himself.
Eliot Spencer is the team’s ex-military muscle with a dark and mysterious past. At first glance Eliot seems gruff and impatient once you get to know the character you realize it’s a carefully built façade. He consistently cooks for and plays care taker for the team. He has a soft spot for children and charms women of all ages.
He is extremely smart in his own right. He speaks multiple languages Arabic, Hebrew, German and English are just the few we know of. He’s mentioned playing chess. He is knowledgeable in many things such as combat medicine and can pick up on the littlest but most distinctive of tells from sounds to stances.
He can weaponize anything from duct tape to appetizers.
Eliot is complex yet the most grounded of the team. Eliot is the guy that every man would like to be and the kind of man every woman wants.
Hacker extraordinaire, Alec Hardison, is the foundation the cons are built on. Well, that's what he'd say if asked. There's enough truth in that statement that he wouldn't get too much of an argument from the rest of the team. He researches the marks, he creates government quality ID, makes agency jackets as a hobby and his knowledge of foreign markets brings the team the score of a lifetime in their very first job together. He was raised in the foster system and lucked out when he ended up living with a no doubt formidable woman he calls Nana. Nana helped him hone his people skills and instilled some morals into the boy, though they might be hard to find among the hacking and conning. His biggest loves are his surveillance van, Lucille - all versions of her since she has a tendency to get blown up, science fiction, orange soda and Parker.
Parker is the team’s resident thief, with skills in acrobatics, pickpocketing and safe-cracking. Not much is known about her childhood, other than her being in foster care before being taken under the wing of Archie Leach, another thief who views Parker as his daughter and legacy. Parker is wanted in nine countries, which includes Brazil and Yemen.
Parker is seen to be socially awkward, however she gets along well with children as well as the other members of the team, especially Alec Hardison, as shown by her love of pretzels. Parker’s favourite colour is green, loves chocolate, dislikes horses and has a stuffed rabbit. Parker is very intelligent, as shown by her ability to memorise the security for every bank in Britain as well as her ability to speak Spanish. Parker is fiercely loyal to those she cares about, especially to Archie and the team.
Nate Ford, ex-insurance investigator, becomes a modern day Robin Hood when he teams up with Parker (Thief), Hardison (Hacker), Eliot Spencer (Hitter) and Sophie Devereaux (Grifter) to get revenge on Victor Dubenich, a man who hired them for a fake job and then tried to kill them. Together, the team, all used to working on their own, take down Dubenich and then set up ‘Leverage Consulting’ and take down any corrupt CEOs and businessmen who cross their path. As they get to know each other, the team must learn how to be a family while dealing with rogue security contractors, an adoption ring and the mob. By the end of the season, the jobs get personal as Nate tries to get even with IYS Insurance, the company he used to work for, and the man who refused to help him save his son. The team must outwit James Sterling, deal with Nate’s ex-wife Maggie and completely ruin Ian Blackpoole’s name in order to give Nate the revenge that he needs. After a failed first attempt which sees their headquarters explode, the team scatter but can’t resist the pull of an unfinished con. They regroup and bring Blackpoole down before scattering once more in a will-they, won’t-they style season cliff-hanger.
The Nigerian Job is the first episode of Leverage in Season 1, where Nathan Ford has been hired by Victor Dubenich to manage a team of highly skilled individuals whilst stealing research from a rival company. When they are betrayed by Dubenich, the team plus an additional extra get their revenge.
Nate and the team try to help a charity worker recover lost money. Along the way, they discover that not every bad guy is really bad and they all learn a little something from rehab.
In the two-part finale of season one, Nate and the team go up against Nate’s old boss in a bit to get revenge on the company that let his son die. But, along the way, they encounter Sterling and must decide whether they can really trust each other.
Season Two opens with our intrepid team separated. In Boston, Nate makes a token attempt at getting back into insurance and a slightly more successful attempt at not drinking. Sophie's hitting the boards in town and arranges a team reunion. It doesn't take long for them to find someone who needs their particular brand of help. A single father trying to blow the whistle on a mob bank introduces them to Lt. Patrick Bonanno, a Mass. State Police officer, who becomes an ally of the team, sometimes despite his better judgment. The next few jobs see them stealing an MMA fight, a hospital, a private school, a television station and an agriculture company. The jobs go along as usual until the team runs into a bizarro version of themselves working the same job for less than honorable reasons. An attempt is made on Sophie's life and the team fakes her death to catch the would-be assassin. At Sophie's graveside, she tells Nate she's taking some time off to "find herself." The team ends up lost without her and they keep calling her for guidance. She finally sends them another grafter in the person of Tara Cole. Her approach is very different than Sophie's, but just as effective. With her help, they run cons on sweatshop operators, a loan shark who tries to take over McRory's Pub, the bar downstairs from Nate's condo. In order to help Nate's ex-wife get out of a frame up, the team works with their old nemesis, James Sterling. In helping clear Maggie's name, Sterling so impresses Interpol, he ends up working for them. Lt. Bonanno is shot while working to take down a corrupt mayor. Nate and the team come out fighting for their ally, but hit a snag when there is more to the corrupt politician than they first thought. In the course of the job, Nate has to make some maneuvers to ensure his team's safety, but ends up with him under arrest and admitting to being a thief.
The job looks like it'll be a milk run when the Leverage crew are hired to steal a WW2 painting from a businessman and return it to it's rightful owners - but when the heist goes down something seems ultimately off. The painting is double booked, apparently, by another crew headed by an old flame of Sophie's; and as if Nate's pride hadn't already taken a hit, the other team gets the painting first - and Sophie is put in grave danger when a bomb is left at her apartment. It's personal now, and the action heats up with each crew trying to outsmart the other. The race is on for a priceless Van Gogh housed in a high security auction; each team member is challenged by their counterpart, while Sophie battles with the ghosts of her past choices.
When Nate's ex-wife is accused of stealing a priceless Faberge egg in Kiev the team find themselves working with an unlikely ally to prove her innocence and bring the real thief to justice. But is everything really what it seems?
The back half of the second season finale find the team on the run from, well, everyone. But this time, the stakes are higher, sacrifices are made, alliances solidified, and the very end finds Nate making a few unexpected confessions.
At the close of season two Nate admits he’s a thief and goes to jail as the rest of the team scatters. In the season three premiere the remaining members free members of the team hatch a plan and pull a job to bust Nate out of jail.
The jail house job having been successful there are a series of episodes where we learn little secrets about the team. Like Eliot’s ability to sing and Hardison’s childhood violinist skills being put to use.
In this season we meet Nate’s father, Jimmy Ford (Tom Skerritt). Parker’s mentor Archie Leech, (Richard Chamberlain) and this season’s baddies The Italian (Elizabetta Canalis) and Damian Moreau (Goran Visjinsic).
The beautiful and nameless “Italian” blackmails the leverage crew to bring down one of the world’s most successful and feared crime syndicate bosses in Damien Moreau. They take down both of the villains in typical flashy and smart leverage style.
However before it’s all said and done we learn of Eliot’s dark past with Moreau. Where Eliot was hired to do some unspeakable thing that Eliot himself says “My hands will never be clean of it.”
The show romances move along this season as well, Parker and Hardison are taking baby steps with “Pretzels” and Nate and Sophie finally end the multi-seasonal arc filled with sexual tension by drunkenly and secretly finally consummating the relationship.
Eliot as always has his typical one episode love interest but it’s very sweet. He also has some great fights but the season ending battle is spectacular if not a little unbelievable. We learn “I said I didn’t like guns, never said I couldn’t use them.”
All in all it’s a great season…I mean they steal a country. Go…now…NOW! And watch.
In "The Three Card Monte Job", the team try to help people who are being forced into committing crimes, only to discover that the person behind the scheme is none other than Jimmy Ford, Nate’s father.
In "The Big Bang Job", the team finally face Damien Moreau after circling around him for months. After ‘stealing’ the Department of Defense, they uncover a plot to sell a bomb and must stop Moreau in an edge-of-your-seat episode that sees secrets revealed, bullets fired and sets up a perfect season finale.
Season four opens on somewhat of a jarring note after the happy resolution of the events of Season 3. Nate is free, but he and Sophie appear to be having second thoughts about where their relationship is heading. Parker and Hardison are growing closer, and there is a lingering friction between Nate and Eliot following the events of The Big Bang Job.
Even before the "Big Bad" of the season states it outright in the finale, it quickly becomes obvious that the theme of Season Four is consequences. Nate has strayed far enough from the path of "the honest man" by now that he is forced to face up to the possibility that he is becoming his father. Sophie's patience is repeatedly tested in her relationship with Nate, as they figure out what they mean to each other, what they want, and how much of Nate's damaged psyche she is willing to put up with.
The trio of Eliot, Parker and Hardison also have their own trials this season - Parker is discovering that the consequences of learning how to work and move in normal society and have normal relationships means risking emotional pain. Hardison gets several glimpses into "the road not taken" over the course of the season - lives he could have had if one or two things had turned out differently. And finally Eliot reveals some of the consequences he lives with on a daily, if not hourly basis.
Four years of jobs helping the helpless also draw unwanted attention from outside forces seeking to profit off the Leverage team's efforts. It is a fascinating ride, culminating in the question: what matters most, and what are you willing to sacrifice to get it?
In the penultimate episode of season four, Latimer makes things personal by hiring Jimmy Ford to do a job in a high level government building. The team have to create a fake hostage situation while fighting to get to the truth about the scheme against them.
Nate, Sophie, Eliot, Parker and Hardison go up against Victor Dubenich and Latimer in the exciting season finale but, to succeed, they must work with old foes and friends alike.
meghan_84
What would I tell my friends to get them to watch Leverage?
It’s an intelligent fun show, with engaging often times poignant and compelling storylines.
The characters are each unique and multifaceted in their own way. Parker with her endearing and very weird quirks, Eliot is gruff and impatient but very understanding of his team mates short comings. He’s willing to help them overcome them too. Some times more than he realizes. Hardison is incredibly smart and yet sometimes so socially awkward it’s painful. He’s so in love with Parker that you pull for them because it’s so vulnerably sweet that you long too see love prevail.
Then there are Nate and Sophie the team mastermind and team grifter. Who carry on a simmering love affair for nearly the entirety of the show while also functioning as the team’s pseudo-parents.
I watch the show less for the cons and more for the character development. I want to see all of these people who are so broken individually become whole as a unit and know that it’s ok to trust people. I want to see them succeed or fail and do so as a family of sorts.
However if you love a good caper show this will be right up your alley. I like to think of as though ocean’s 11 and Robin Hood had a love child and Leverage is the baby.
The cons are fast paced and intelligent. Leverage is fun! So sit back and watch but pay attention to detail is too small!
In closing I will add Christian Kane is gorgeous and he beats people up. What more do you need? If it helps he’s shirtless for most of a particular episode! Seriously go freaking watch and tell em’ Meghan sent ya!
theron09
There are a lot of reasons why I like to watch Leverage but I’d say the main, number one reason is this: it never disappoints me. Even when there are episodes that aren’t as good as some of the others, the standard is still amazing. The characterization is always one hundred per cent spot on and I can always tell just how well the writers and the actors know the individual characters, even the guest stars. The cons are always impressive and there’s always at least one part of them, whether it’s a way that Sophie grifts or a really clever thing that Hardison does with a laptop, that makes me think ‘wow, that was cool.’
The fandom experience never disappoints me, either; I don’t think I’ve had one bad encounter in the Leverage fandom and I think that’s because everyone knows we’re onto a really good thing with Leverage. The dynamics between the characters, the little details that seem to be effortless continuity, the one-liners that everyone remembers, all go together with slick cons and interesting storylines to make a show that definitely doesn’t disappoint me and that’s the reason I recommend Leverage to everyone I talk to.
melpomenethemis
There are many reasons why I personally watch Leverage, reason one would be the individual episodes. Each episode has such an amazing script, all thanks to the writers who are amazing, which never fails to entertain and stir up relevant emotions. The cons are all incredibly clever, which always keep you guessing as to what the outcome will actually be. All of the little details included within the episodes help to make Leverage what it is, as the little details can sometimes be more important than having big special effects.
The second reason would be the characters, which have all developed from the first episode of the first season, and you always see in the episodes the brilliant relationships that exist within the team members. All of the characters have their strengths, but you can also see flaws in the characters, such as Parker’s social skills, but that shows that the characters are not super-human, allowing the audience to relate to the characters.
The third reason is the casting choice for Leverage, as each cast member suits their character to a tee, and know their characters so well that you can believe that they are their characters when watching an episode. The guest stars which are introduced in each episode fit in so well with the regular cast members, that it truly is a seamless production.
The fourth reason is the fandom, the Leverage fandom is wonderful, as everyone is so friendly, and whilst it is such a small fandom, it can put on events such as Leverageland, which shows how amazing Leverage is. The fifth reason why I watch Leverage is because of the production of Leverage. The producers and technical directors know how to get the best shot for the viewer in order to convey the messages from the script and when you get that shot which makes you want to laugh or cry, you know that it is an brilliant show.
irishjeeper
Why do I watch Leverage? The answer wasn’t as easy as I thought, but the more I thought about it, the easier it became to write about.
I original watched it because of Christian Kane’s hotness. Yup, that’s about the only reason I decided to watch it, in the beginning. Then, the more I watched, the more I fell in love with the characters, their missions, and the show.
You see, Christian is a fine, fine man, and a fantastic actor, but the others are just as incredible as well. You have Timothy Hutton as their Mastermind, his character, Nate Ford has issues, to say the least. He lost his son, lost his wife, lost his job. Now he fights for those that are losing everything.
Christian Kane is pure muscle, mystery and talent as the teams Hitter, Eliot Spencer.
Beth Riesgraf is the crazy thief, who really has no social skills and is “10 pounds of crazy in a 5 pound bag.” That’s about the best way to sum up Parker.
Gina Bellman plays the suave Grifter, Sophie Devereaux who can change characters like a person changes socks, despite Sophie’s inability to stage act.
Aldis Hodge plays the teams hacker, who makes it look as simple as snapping your fingers. Plus his character, Alec Hardison, balances Parker’s crazy side.
All in all, you have an amazing cast, with fantastic story lines and an hour of very entertaining television.
ishilde
Why I started watching Leverage
The first reason I began watching leverage was because Megan (theron09) wouldn’t stop going on about it. Perhaps she noticed that I was more easily influenced than the rest of our group with regards to fandom but I found myself one day with a huge amount of university work that I wanted to avoid and thought I’d give it a go. By the end of that evening I’d watched the first 6 episodes and was absolutely and completely hooked.
What made me keep watching leverage (other than just one or two episodes to get Megan off my back…) were, first and foremost, the characters. Just within the pilot they’d managed to create enough intrigue and a dynamic between complete strangers that I couldn’t wait to see develop. As I carried on watching it, I fell more in love with each character, and also realised that the cons were amazing compared to most series that followed that trope. They were always different and it was nearly impossible to guess the twist - so I was never bored when I was watching it, and when you’re seeking distraction, that’s the exact sort of thing you want! I ended up catching up within three weeks, and I don’t regret the endless hours spent in front of my computer screen one bit.
So, that’s how and why I started watching Leverage; I’ll never complain when Megan pesters me again!
1. The comedy.
2. The team spirit.
3. The characters.
4. The continuity.
5. The show runners who actually love tv.
6. The references to other shows/movies.
7. So you can join leverageland
8. The cast
9. The ten million different meanings you can find behind each line.
10. The awesome fandom.
11. The intricate nature of the plot
12. The technical workings when creating the show
13. The insane and epic costume design
14. The breaking of stereotypes
15. The guest stars
16. The music
17. The visual effects and stunts
18. The roles within the team
19. The online extras
20. The blogs that the producers keep (such as John Rogers)
21. The use of flashbacks to develop the plot further
22. The intro is epic
23. The flaws within the characters
24. The way that the characters have developed as the number of seasons increases
25. Gina Bellman's accents!
26. Sophie's mysterious past~
27. Nate's hair.
28. Gina Bellman's legs xD
29. stress relief
30. the cons
31. it's both intelligent and hilarious!
32. likeable female characters
33. does Christian Kane count as a reason?
34. It has Mark Sheppard
35. "They killed Lucille!... Again!"
36. Eliot's hair
37. After all this time, it's still rocking episodic
38. So the plot bunnies can BREED
39. As a bonding process with friends
40. For Bunny
41. For Christian Kane singing in The Studio Job
42. To feel like, sometimes, the little guy can win.
43. So you can be a Grifter (or Hacker, Hitter, Thief if you prefer)
44. So you can think of awesome crossovers where Sterling is actually Crowley from Supernatural.
45. Because it's the Age of the Geek
46. Nate's angst
47. Everyone's angst
48. For the bad guys who turn out to not be so bad after all.
49. It's an exciting show the whole family can watch (and enjoy!)
50. Awesome guest stars reappear!
51. Where else will you ever hear "I Hacked History!"
52. To learn that "no one can do it alone"
53. Kane choreographs his own fight scenes
54. Two words: Kari Matchett.
55. The little details
56. The very distinctive jokes
57. It's actually quite educational
58. The plot twists that, even after four seasons, always have you holding your breath, still keep you guessing until the very end.
59. That feeling of elation on the rare occasions where you DO work something out even just a few seconds ahead of the characters on the show
60. Actors so good that when the characters are acting you begin to empathise with the characters characters, and its all confusing and glorious at the same time.
61. The enthusiasm of all of the crew
62. To roll your eyes at certain British accents (I'm looking at Hardison)
63. It's a good substitute for chocolate if you need cheering up
64. The meta
65. The show doesn't take itself too seriously
66. When it does do serious, the show does serious well.
67. Richard Chamberlain (Archie)
68. The writers!
69. The fanfiction
70. The characters that the team play on the cons
71. The editing of the show
72. The set design
73. The location choices
74. The portrait of Harlan Leverage III
75. The catchphrase ‘Let’s go steal a...”
76. The way that the team acts as a family
77. “Sometimes good guys make the best bad guys”
78. The cliff-hangers keep you hooked
79. The season finales are always amazing
80. The history of the characters before the crew
81. The fact that the characters are human, not superheroes
82. The overall plots which run through the whole season (e.g. Moreau)
83. The gummy frogs
84. Quirky Portland always seeps through
85. Two of the supporting characters are a van and a stuffed toy
86. The fandom is deep and wide, but friendly and accessible
87. The actors love each other, and their fans
88. Nate is Boston Irish <3
89. They would use Flogging Molly for the intro, if they could afford it
90. Acquire recipe ideas from Eliot
91. Discover a place where geek culture and action collide
92. It's the A-Team for a new Generation
93. It's just a self-aware show
94. There are so very many ways to turn a viewing into a drinking game
95. Because there are no good reasons "why not"
96. The special effects
97. The antics between Hardison, Parker, and Eliot.
98. What else are you going to watch on a Sunday night?
99. Aldis is a hotty
100. Harnesses
1. The payout for the con on Victor Dubenich in The Nigerian Job was $32,761,349 each. (Hardison is very good at what he does!)
2. The electric car that Nate drives off in at the end of The Homecoming Job is a 2008 Tesla Roadster.
3. When the team is changing the name of the horse during the height of the con in The Two Horse Job, the name is changed from "Fei Kuai" to "La Devlin Vita" which translates to "The Devlin Life". The name of one of the show's producers is Dean Devlin.
4. In The Lost Heir Job, Nathan's passport shows his birthday as 16 August 1965. Timothy Hutton is born on 16 August 1960.
5. In The Zanzibar Marketplace Job, Nate's cell phone number is shown as 617-555-0156.
6. In The Inside Job, when Hardison and Eliot arrive at Parker's place at the beginning of episode, there is flashback about the Central Square address. The man in the flashback wears a Sailor Moon costume, which is a well-known anime from Japan. He also bears a striking resemblance to Sailor Bubba, an infamous security staffer at the Chicago based Anime' Central Convention.
7. The Double Blind Job is the first time that a murdered man is seen on-screen in the series.
8. It's suggested in The 10 L'il Grifters Job that Parker's first heist was robbing Imelda Marcos.
9. Nate attends the party dressed as Ellery Queen, a detective famously portrayed on television by Timothy Hutton's father.
10. Archie Leach (played by Richard Chamberlain) is the real name of actor Cary Grant.
How Eliot subverts the role of the muscle
(Submitted by theron09)
‘You know, people underestimate you, Eliot.’
‘That’s kind of the point’
The above quote, in case you can’t remember, is from ‘The Zanzibar Marketplace Job’ and puts into words one of the recurring themes of the show. Eliot Spencer is a lot of things but he is certainly not your average hired muscle and this is made clear in numerous different ways. The hitter isn’t just in the team to hit people or in the show to provide awesome fight scenes. Eliot Spencer, like all of the Leverage characters that we know and love, has layers.
We see this as early as the Pilot when, out of all the members of the team, it is Eliot who first tries to engage Nate in a conversation about his son, about feelings. Eliot doing surprising things considering his role in the team is definitely something that happens often and is flagged up by the writers in episodes such as ‘The Wedding Job’ when we find out that Eliot likes cooking:
‘You think the only thing I know how to do is bust heads?’
‘No. Well, yeah.’
This isn’t the only time that lines like this are said in relation to Eliot; by drawing attention to the way the character defies stereotypes, the writers help to make Eliot, a character who, when it comes down to it, is a killer, more human, more of a character rather than just being there to take part in impressive fight scenes.
Evolution of a Mastermind
(Submitted by telaryn)
“A man isn’t a man until his father tells him so.”
If you need to boil the first four seasons of Leverage down to their most basic theme, it’s an honest man’s attempt to make peace with the less than honest forces that shaped him. Nathan Ford - the central figure of the show - is the only son of a Boston mobster, a “penny ante thief” as Latimer says in the fourth season finale. Over sixty-two episodes we’re shown glimpses of Nate’s past - nothing in any serious detail, since Leverage is ultimately an ensemble piece - but what the show gives us rings very true for a son of Irish immigrants growing up in Boston in the 1970’s.
None of that is in evidence when we first meet Nate however. We’re introduced to our protagonist at what appears to be his lowest point; in one short, expertly acted scene, we learn that while Nate has enough money to be drinking in an upscale airport bar, he’s out of work and is clearly haunted by the memory of a dead son. We’re given a character tailor made for the audience to sympathize with - his sarcastic comments to Dubenich aside, this is a man who’s had his life destroyed by an unfeeling insurance company more concerned with their bottom line than the people they’re supposed to be helping.
On the surface, Season 1 is about Nate recovering from his depression and finding the strength to move on with his life. He continues to hold himself apart from the team with his alcoholism and closely held belief that he is different from them by virtue of the fact that he was once on the side of the angels and intends to someday be able to return to that life. It’s not until Sophie calls him on his hypocrisy during the events of The First David Job that Nate begins to believe that the circumstances of his life are no longer as simple as he once thought they were. Season 1 ends with Nate thanking the team for standing by him and acknowledging the profound difference they’ve made in his life.
The Nate who returns to our screens in Season 2 is probably the closest we will ever see to the man he used to be. He’s sober, steady (at least on the surface), and trying to return to the work he was doing when his life fell apart. It takes only the briefest exposure to that world, however, to convince us as well as Nate that he is no longer the man he was and he can’t be happy going back to that life. Even though he clings to the belief that he is “not a thief”, we can see that when the opportunity presents itself to return to his Robin Hood activities he becomes the very picture of the man who “doth protest too much”.
Season 2 is also where we learn that Nate’s relocation to Boston is perhaps less about getting a fresh start, and more about returning to his roots. The “honest man” comes from a less than honest background - his father was the neighborhood fixer, and a numbers runner with strong connections to the Irish mob. This is the point in the narrative where the true genius of the Leverage creators and show runners is revealed. Even though we are only given glimpses into what Nate’s childhood must have been like, every single note, every gesture, every scrap of dialogue rings true. If you’re familiar at all with New England mob culture in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, it’s hard not to sketch in the empty spaces and decide for ourselves what forces shaped Nate into the man we see today.
As Nate moves farther away from the man we see at the season opener and layers of inhibitions and denial are peeled away by time and circumstances, we are shown a man pretty dramatically coming apart under the weight of his demons and his grief. His actions become increasingly more desperate and risky, until it’s no longer his own life in danger of collapsing in flames.
In the eleventh hour Nate comes to several hard, painful truths about himself, and even as Sophie races to the rescue, makes plans to atone for the damage he’s done and keep the people closest to him from being swallowed up by his mistakes. By the time he declares to Sterling and the surrounding law enforcement that he “is a thief”, both Nate and the viewer have come to see that even though he is no longer an honest man, he’s still a good one.
Season 3 brings us a Nate cut free of society’s rules. He is in jail because he chooses to be, and once the team arranges his escape he is taken in by a force beyond the government that sets him an impossible task as the price for his remaining free. He is given the chance to take down one of the world’s greatest evils and ultimately encouraged to do it on his terms and using his methods. The fact that he is successful only feeds his growing confidence in his new role.
We also see Nate settling more comfortably into his new position as patriarch of the unusual family. Relationships evolve, deepen and solidify over the course of the season as the team digs in and defends themselves against the outside forces aligning to tear them apart. We learn more about the people Nate has gathered into his life, and we also see that Nate appears to be edging towards happiness and acceptance of what they’ve built.
Unfortunately by the time Season 4 rolls around, we see a Nate whose innate arrogance and dedication to the mission is threatening to overwhelm his empathy and his connection to his family. He’s drinking more than ever, and pushing those closest to him away with nasty comments and emotional distance. Season 4 is the season of consequences, however, and Nate quickly learns that there are consequences to bonding with a family as fiercely loyal as this one is proving to be. They love him - warts and all - and will not abandon him to his baser nature.
These aren’t simple two dimensional caricatures, however, and as Nate becomes more emotionally secure in his relationships with his family, his comfort in working outside the system allows his arrogance and his self-righteousness to grow unchecked. Casual throwaway lines once spoken by a socially maladjusted hacker are now spoken with unshakeable conviction by the mastermind - “I’m very good at what I do.” The penultimate episode of the front half of Season 4 shows us a Nate who has become disturbingly comfortable deciding who lives and who dies.
If a man truly isn’t a man until his father tells him so, as Season 4 winds to a close Nate must deal with the consequences of having received that particular blessing from his own patriarch midway through Season 3. A man in Jimmy Ford’s eyes is a man like him - ruthless, arrogant, who lives life as if none of society’s rules apply to him. It is therefore truly fitting that in the second to last episode of Season 4, as he is becoming that man, Nate is once again forced to deal with his father.
Age and regret have worked their magic on the penny ante thief, however, and as Nate tries to keep Jimmy from being destroyed by forces he had no part in bringing to bear, his father commits the ultimate act of love and validation by sacrificing himself to save his son’s life - everything Nate would have willingly done for his own child if God and Fate had allowed him to choose that path.
The Season 4 finale has Nate on a collision course with destiny. He has one final step to take to pick up the mantle his father has abandoned - and he has his old friends grief, arrogance and self-righteousness urging him on. It isn’t until he has the object of his hatred at gun point and must choose between the satisfaction of vengeance and keeping the love and regard of his family that Nate finally steps away from the edge of the cliff.
Honest man, good man, thief, functioning alcoholic, controlling bastard - the Nate we leave in Season 4 may have a new found appreciation for the good things in his life, but only Season 5 will tell us if he is truly free of the demons of his past; if he’s truly a man at peace with himself and his choices.
Parker and Eliot are forced to deal with the fact that trying to complete their mission would likely cost them their lives. In the midst of their argument, the viewer sees for the first time Parker’s terror that there is something fundamentally broken in her - that no matter how much she tries she is too far gone to ever be “one of the good guys”.
Eliot is the perfect counterpoint to Parker’s rising hysteria in this scene - calm, but practical and firm. He acknowledges and validates her fears, and then tries to help her see the value they have to the team in being the morally grey ones. “We do things they can’t…won’t.”
This is easily one of the best family scenes in the entire run of the show. After a difficult job against a tricky enemy, complicated by Nate battling his own ugly version of holiday depression, the team gathers in McRory’s for a private celebration. After the champagne is poured, Nate reveals that he and Sophie have “acquired” presents for the rest of the team. The gifts they distribute are priceless in nature, but reveal that for all his self-absorbed, drunken behavior, Nate understands and cares for his unusual little family far better than he’s comfortable letting on.
His abilities mean Alec Hardison is rarely on the front line. He’ll grift alongside Sophie or Nate, but more often than not his place is in the van keeping an eye on the rest of the team. Only a handful of times is the team hacker ever in physical danger, but never more than when a con against a family of corrupt funeral home operators goes south. Taken captive by a human smuggler, Hardison is buried alive.
With time and Hardison’s oxygen running out, the team races to the rescue. The ever mounting tension and the satisfying payoff are punctuated by a hundred little moments showing how the team has evolved from a loose collection of damaged loners into a real family.
From the moment Nate receives a call from “the world’s greatest thief” alerting him that Parker is in danger, The Inside Job belongs to the crazy blond girl with the mysterious past. Exciting twists and turns as the team races to beat a state of the art security system and a corporate scientist more focused on the bottom line than the public good, accompany a wealth of insight into the forces that shaped Parker into the woman we know today.
In the final moments of the episode, Parker bids farewell to her mentor Archie Leach - the most stabilizing force of her childhood. Archie commends the path she’s chosen for herself as well as the people she’s chosen to walk it with. Like a true father, he validates her transition from childhood to adulthood, and in the process acknowledges that it was a mistake on his part not being more of a parent to her when she was younger. The scene is a bittersweet one that ties all of the glimpses the viewer has been given of Parker’s past together, carrying her from two dimensional cliché into one of the most multi-faceted characters on television.
For most Leverage viewers, this is the turning point of the series. The second season finale is full of revelations and payoffs, but none more emotionally satisfying or packing a greater dramatic punch than the moment when Nate rejects the title he’s carried since the opening moments of the series and fully and publicly embraces his new life as a thief.
The climax of The Maltese Falcon Job is a tricky balancing act. For every moment where a character says or does something we’ve been waiting as much as two seasons to hear and see, there’s a subtle twist to it - a stumbling block that keeps it from being an entirely happy ending. And in the hands of a lesser actor Nate’s final moment would have been just another one of these. Timothy Hutton infuses Nate’s words with such self-awareness and conviction however, that even though Nate is alone, bleeding, and heading for a future unlike anything he’s ever imagined for himself, we share in his belief of this moment as a personal triumph.
It’s a brief moment - only three sentences total - but it perfectly sums up the truth of Nate’s life and everything he has been struggling with for four seasons. The fact that the exchange occurs with Victor Dubenich - the man responsible for setting Nate on this path and bringing him to this moment of personal revelation - gives what could have been a throwaway moment unexpected resonance.
Everything about his confrontation with Dubenich at the end of the Last Dam Job is about him making this choice. Is he going to embrace his destiny and make peace with the legacy of his heritage, or is he going to return to trying to be the kind of man his son would have been proud to call father?
Or in the spirit of Leverage, will he try to forge a new path - someone who lives his life somewhere between the two extremes? Only season five will tell.
One of the most endlessly fascinating relationships on Leverage is between mastermind and hitter. When Eliot holds a gun on Victor Dubenich and tells Sophie “I’m thinking of saving my friend some trouble”, it’s a sign of how far his relationship with Nate has evolved from the point of their first significant exchange where Eliot offered sympathy for Nate’s situation and Nate rebuffed him outright, saying “we’re not friends”.
This particular conversation is a quiet moment in the chaos of The Last Dam Job. Nate has already stated his intention to seek vengeance on Victor Dubenich for the death of his father; Eliot comes on him practicing with Jimmy’s gun. He cautions Nate against his plans, warning him with the quiet, assured voice of experience that this will change him in ways he hasn’t anticipated. When Nate argues that Eliot has survived a similar rite of passage, Eliot calmly and eloquently reminds him that he doesn’t know the whole story.
“The worst thing I did in my entire life, I did for Damien Moreau.” Up until those words are spoken, the team - and by extension the viewers - have been given hints and clues that in a group of self-confessed “bad guys” he is likely the worst. Without specifics, however, it is hard to reconcile the man who will take on any opponent - rise to any challenge - in order to keep his chosen family safe, with somebody who would willingly ally with the person we’ve been told all season is “the worst of the worst”.
With the exception of a brief emotional aside to Parker, this scene belongs entirely to Nate and Eliot. While Nate struggles with the question of whether or not he can continue to trust Eliot, the hitter lays his soul bare - confessing everything he knows and everything he’s done in order to keep the rest of them from harm.
The eleventh episode of the third season is a brilliantly constructed look at the individual members of the Leverage team. Using the recounting of a past heist as the storytelling framework, we are treated to each person’s version of the crime.
The episode starts off in a fairly ordinary manner, with Sophie telling the others a straightforward, if overly dramatic, version of events as she recalls them. It’s only when Eliot is revealed as the doctor she shared a flirtatious moment with and the hitter launches into his version of events that the episode is turned irrevocably on its head.
In four seasons and fifty-odd episodes, the team and the viewers have gotten used to seeing Sophie change identities as easily as she changes outfits. No matter the job, she has a character ready go - complete with backstory and skill set perfectly suited to the task at hand.
It’s only when the mark jumps the gun and makes their move before Nate even has a plan firmly in place that we’re treated to Sophie’s true genius. The character she pulls out of her hat to make an opening for the team to infiltrate Verd Agra is effective, but unknown to the team and entirely unexpected. It isn’t until later, when they’re listening to her spin her tale to one of the company’s executives, that Eliot realizes this particular alias may have come from a little closer to home than normal.
1. "My name is Nate Ford, and I am a thief."
2. "That's twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag."
3. "Nate, if stealing a country was easy, everyone would do it."
4. "Is Sophie a princess?"
5. "No, no, that - that right there, that's a lie! I love foreplay!"
6. "Did you just kill a guy with an appetizer?"
7. "In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device. But let’s face it, if this thing goes down in the water, more than likely, the impact will kill you."
8. "No stabbing Wednesdays - a new tradition!"
9. "I hacked history!"
10. "Dammit, Hardison!"
11. "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."
12. "It's a very distinctive ..."
13. "Let's go steal a..."
14. "I’m sorry, are we still unclear? I’m a functioning alcoholic. Trick is to not get hung up on the “alcoholic,” really celebrate the “functioning” part of the sentence."
15. "Sometimes bad guys are the only good guys you get."
16. "Look. Hold a knife like this, [holds a chef's knife normally] cuts through an onion. [switches to a backhand grip] Hold a knife like this... cuts through, like, eight Yakuza in four seconds. Screams, carnage. People are like knives. Everything's in context."
17. "It's a fashion show, not Thieves-R-Us!"
18. "Some roads, you start going down, well, you can't turn back, and... I'm about a hundred miles down one of those right now."
19. "You better say something, I swear on my momma I will blow a hole through your bedroom and Spider-man out of the side of this building."
20. "I'd tell you if I'd murdered the mark.”
Part 2 | Part 3
Scavenger Hunt
What Is Leverage? | The Episodes in Broadcast Order | The People on Twitter | Leverage Trivia
Character Introdcutions
Nate | Sophie | Eliot | Hardison | Parker
Season Summaries
Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4
Ten Episodes that Will (Mostly) Catch You Up for Season 5
The Nigerian Job | The Twelve-Step Job | The First/Second David Job
The Two Live Crew Job | The Zanzibar Marketplace Job | The Maltese Falcon Job
The Three Card Monte Job | The Big Bang Job
The Radio Job | The Last Dam Job
Miscellaneous
Our Testimonials | Reasons to Watch Leverage | Meta | Top 10 Moments | Top 20 Quotes
Leverage is literally “twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag”. The show, touted by its own network as a “lighthearted caper drama,” boasts a cast of some of the most screwed up, well-meaning, multi-dimensional characters on television.
Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief and Mastermind - the tags each character receives only begin to scratch the surface. The thread that holds most of the episodes together is the team’s goal to help ordinary people victimized by the powerful - people who the law can’t (or won’t) help. Each episode is peppered with references to a team member’s previous life or experiences, giving viewers glimpses into the kind of people who would be convinced to leave their comfortable - if solitary - lives of crime to become Merry Men to Nathan Ford’s alcoholic Robin Hood.
In the hands of brilliant writers and talented actors, the members of the Leverage team become people we can invest in. By the time the fourth season rolls around, we have our favorites, and we share their hopes and dreams and mourn their failures. We wince when Nate drinks too much (or too little) and says something unforgivably hurtful. We feel for Hardison as he gets to experience the college life that - for but a twist of fate - could have been his. And we hurt for Parker as she realizes how easily she could have missed having him in her life.
We cheer as loners Eliot and Sophie bond with Nate and stand up to defend the little family he’s created - even from him.
It’s hard to deny the appeal of a well-told redemption story. Leverage makes you believe that “sometimes bad guys make the best good guys”.
Season One
Season Two
Season Three
Season Four
The Nigerian Job
The Homecoming Job
The Two Horse Job
The Miracle Job
The Bank Shot Job
The Stork Job
The Wedding Job
The Mile High Job
The Snow Job
The Twelve Step Job
The Juror #6 Job
The First David Job
The Second David Job
The Beantown Bailout Job
The Tap Out Job
The Order 23 Job
The Fairy Godparents Job
The Three Days of the Hunter Job
The Top Hat Job
The Two Live Crew Job
The Ice Man Job
The Lost Heir Job
The Runway Job
The Bottle Job
The Zanzibar Marketplace Job
The Future Job
The Three Strikes Job
The Maltese Falcon Job
The Jailhouse Job
The Reunion Job
The Inside Job
The Scherherazade Job
The Double Blind Job
The Studio Job
The Gone Fishin' Job
The Boost Job
The Three-Card Monte Job
The Underground Job
The Rashomon Job
The King George Job
The Morning After Job
The Ho Ho Ho Job
The Big Bang Job
The San Lorenzo Job
The Long Way Down Job
The 10 Li'l Grifters Job
The 15 Minutes Job
The Van Gogh Job
The Hot Potato Job
The Carnival Job
The Grave Danger Job
The Boiler Room Job
The Cross My Heart Job
The Queen's Gambit Job
The Experimental Job
The Office Job
The Girl's Night Out Job
The Boy's Night Out Job
The Lonely Hearts Club Job
The Gold Job
The Radio Job
The Last Dam Job
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Nate Ford, the so-called Mastermind of Leverage, is an ex-insurance investigator with plenty of reasons to angst. Brought up by Jimmy Ford, Nate didn’t have the happiest childhood and then lost his own son when the company he worked for refused to pay for treatment. He struggles to deal with his alcohol problems and in his role as the ‘honest man’ of the team, switching sides from catching the bad guys to working with them is not something he finds easy at first.
There’s a lighter side to Nate, too. The Nate who gets excited at doing magic tricks for a con or who seems to enjoy driving flashy cars.
Nate Ford is smart. Nate Ford knows his team’s strengths and weaknesses and how best to use them for the con. Ultimately, Nate Ford is a thief and a good man.
Who is Sophie Devereaux? Well, no one is exactly sure. Whether she’s playing a razor-blade wielding South London mob boss or the Chief marketing officer of Mumbai International Limited (or perhaps the eighteenth Duchess of Hanover or a French raver or, well, you get the picture), Sophie’s identity is constantly changing. The Grifter of the fabulous five, Sophie (or Katherine, Charlotte, Alice, Karen-) has a vast array of mind tricks and psychological sleights of hand in her professional arsenal. She’s the best at what she does, and was handpicked for the team by Nate, with whom Sophie has a long and complicated past stretching over a decade and across many foreign backdrops.
Sophie is romantic and dramatic and always a sensual surprise. At the beginning of the series, Sophie is rather guarded with the team - earning distrust from Eliot especially when she uses a team con to her own advantage - but as time goes on, she takes on a mother hen role, nurturing each team member in special ways (Parker in particular). Because of her unique relationship with Nate, she has an insight into his problems and flaws that nobody else does, and she challenges him, is able to hold up a mirror for him that he cannot hold for himself.
Eliot Spencer is the team’s ex-military muscle with a dark and mysterious past. At first glance Eliot seems gruff and impatient once you get to know the character you realize it’s a carefully built façade. He consistently cooks for and plays care taker for the team. He has a soft spot for children and charms women of all ages.
He is extremely smart in his own right. He speaks multiple languages Arabic, Hebrew, German and English are just the few we know of. He’s mentioned playing chess. He is knowledgeable in many things such as combat medicine and can pick up on the littlest but most distinctive of tells from sounds to stances.
He can weaponize anything from duct tape to appetizers.
Eliot is complex yet the most grounded of the team. Eliot is the guy that every man would like to be and the kind of man every woman wants.
Hacker extraordinaire, Alec Hardison, is the foundation the cons are built on. Well, that's what he'd say if asked. There's enough truth in that statement that he wouldn't get too much of an argument from the rest of the team. He researches the marks, he creates government quality ID, makes agency jackets as a hobby and his knowledge of foreign markets brings the team the score of a lifetime in their very first job together. He was raised in the foster system and lucked out when he ended up living with a no doubt formidable woman he calls Nana. Nana helped him hone his people skills and instilled some morals into the boy, though they might be hard to find among the hacking and conning. His biggest loves are his surveillance van, Lucille - all versions of her since she has a tendency to get blown up, science fiction, orange soda and Parker.
Parker is the team’s resident thief, with skills in acrobatics, pickpocketing and safe-cracking. Not much is known about her childhood, other than her being in foster care before being taken under the wing of Archie Leach, another thief who views Parker as his daughter and legacy. Parker is wanted in nine countries, which includes Brazil and Yemen.
Parker is seen to be socially awkward, however she gets along well with children as well as the other members of the team, especially Alec Hardison, as shown by her love of pretzels. Parker’s favourite colour is green, loves chocolate, dislikes horses and has a stuffed rabbit. Parker is very intelligent, as shown by her ability to memorise the security for every bank in Britain as well as her ability to speak Spanish. Parker is fiercely loyal to those she cares about, especially to Archie and the team.
Nate Ford, ex-insurance investigator, becomes a modern day Robin Hood when he teams up with Parker (Thief), Hardison (Hacker), Eliot Spencer (Hitter) and Sophie Devereaux (Grifter) to get revenge on Victor Dubenich, a man who hired them for a fake job and then tried to kill them. Together, the team, all used to working on their own, take down Dubenich and then set up ‘Leverage Consulting’ and take down any corrupt CEOs and businessmen who cross their path. As they get to know each other, the team must learn how to be a family while dealing with rogue security contractors, an adoption ring and the mob. By the end of the season, the jobs get personal as Nate tries to get even with IYS Insurance, the company he used to work for, and the man who refused to help him save his son. The team must outwit James Sterling, deal with Nate’s ex-wife Maggie and completely ruin Ian Blackpoole’s name in order to give Nate the revenge that he needs. After a failed first attempt which sees their headquarters explode, the team scatter but can’t resist the pull of an unfinished con. They regroup and bring Blackpoole down before scattering once more in a will-they, won’t-they style season cliff-hanger.
The Nigerian Job is the first episode of Leverage in Season 1, where Nathan Ford has been hired by Victor Dubenich to manage a team of highly skilled individuals whilst stealing research from a rival company. When they are betrayed by Dubenich, the team plus an additional extra get their revenge.
Nate and the team try to help a charity worker recover lost money. Along the way, they discover that not every bad guy is really bad and they all learn a little something from rehab.
In the two-part finale of season one, Nate and the team go up against Nate’s old boss in a bit to get revenge on the company that let his son die. But, along the way, they encounter Sterling and must decide whether they can really trust each other.
Season Two opens with our intrepid team separated. In Boston, Nate makes a token attempt at getting back into insurance and a slightly more successful attempt at not drinking. Sophie's hitting the boards in town and arranges a team reunion. It doesn't take long for them to find someone who needs their particular brand of help. A single father trying to blow the whistle on a mob bank introduces them to Lt. Patrick Bonanno, a Mass. State Police officer, who becomes an ally of the team, sometimes despite his better judgment. The next few jobs see them stealing an MMA fight, a hospital, a private school, a television station and an agriculture company. The jobs go along as usual until the team runs into a bizarro version of themselves working the same job for less than honorable reasons. An attempt is made on Sophie's life and the team fakes her death to catch the would-be assassin. At Sophie's graveside, she tells Nate she's taking some time off to "find herself." The team ends up lost without her and they keep calling her for guidance. She finally sends them another grafter in the person of Tara Cole. Her approach is very different than Sophie's, but just as effective. With her help, they run cons on sweatshop operators, a loan shark who tries to take over McRory's Pub, the bar downstairs from Nate's condo. In order to help Nate's ex-wife get out of a frame up, the team works with their old nemesis, James Sterling. In helping clear Maggie's name, Sterling so impresses Interpol, he ends up working for them. Lt. Bonanno is shot while working to take down a corrupt mayor. Nate and the team come out fighting for their ally, but hit a snag when there is more to the corrupt politician than they first thought. In the course of the job, Nate has to make some maneuvers to ensure his team's safety, but ends up with him under arrest and admitting to being a thief.
The job looks like it'll be a milk run when the Leverage crew are hired to steal a WW2 painting from a businessman and return it to it's rightful owners - but when the heist goes down something seems ultimately off. The painting is double booked, apparently, by another crew headed by an old flame of Sophie's; and as if Nate's pride hadn't already taken a hit, the other team gets the painting first - and Sophie is put in grave danger when a bomb is left at her apartment. It's personal now, and the action heats up with each crew trying to outsmart the other. The race is on for a priceless Van Gogh housed in a high security auction; each team member is challenged by their counterpart, while Sophie battles with the ghosts of her past choices.
When Nate's ex-wife is accused of stealing a priceless Faberge egg in Kiev the team find themselves working with an unlikely ally to prove her innocence and bring the real thief to justice. But is everything really what it seems?
The back half of the second season finale find the team on the run from, well, everyone. But this time, the stakes are higher, sacrifices are made, alliances solidified, and the very end finds Nate making a few unexpected confessions.
At the close of season two Nate admits he’s a thief and goes to jail as the rest of the team scatters. In the season three premiere the remaining members free members of the team hatch a plan and pull a job to bust Nate out of jail.
The jail house job having been successful there are a series of episodes where we learn little secrets about the team. Like Eliot’s ability to sing and Hardison’s childhood violinist skills being put to use.
In this season we meet Nate’s father, Jimmy Ford (Tom Skerritt). Parker’s mentor Archie Leech, (Richard Chamberlain) and this season’s baddies The Italian (Elizabetta Canalis) and Damian Moreau (Goran Visjinsic).
The beautiful and nameless “Italian” blackmails the leverage crew to bring down one of the world’s most successful and feared crime syndicate bosses in Damien Moreau. They take down both of the villains in typical flashy and smart leverage style.
However before it’s all said and done we learn of Eliot’s dark past with Moreau. Where Eliot was hired to do some unspeakable thing that Eliot himself says “My hands will never be clean of it.”
The show romances move along this season as well, Parker and Hardison are taking baby steps with “Pretzels” and Nate and Sophie finally end the multi-seasonal arc filled with sexual tension by drunkenly and secretly finally consummating the relationship.
Eliot as always has his typical one episode love interest but it’s very sweet. He also has some great fights but the season ending battle is spectacular if not a little unbelievable. We learn “I said I didn’t like guns, never said I couldn’t use them.”
All in all it’s a great season…I mean they steal a country. Go…now…NOW! And watch.
In "The Three Card Monte Job", the team try to help people who are being forced into committing crimes, only to discover that the person behind the scheme is none other than Jimmy Ford, Nate’s father.
In "The Big Bang Job", the team finally face Damien Moreau after circling around him for months. After ‘stealing’ the Department of Defense, they uncover a plot to sell a bomb and must stop Moreau in an edge-of-your-seat episode that sees secrets revealed, bullets fired and sets up a perfect season finale.
Season four opens on somewhat of a jarring note after the happy resolution of the events of Season 3. Nate is free, but he and Sophie appear to be having second thoughts about where their relationship is heading. Parker and Hardison are growing closer, and there is a lingering friction between Nate and Eliot following the events of The Big Bang Job.
Even before the "Big Bad" of the season states it outright in the finale, it quickly becomes obvious that the theme of Season Four is consequences. Nate has strayed far enough from the path of "the honest man" by now that he is forced to face up to the possibility that he is becoming his father. Sophie's patience is repeatedly tested in her relationship with Nate, as they figure out what they mean to each other, what they want, and how much of Nate's damaged psyche she is willing to put up with.
The trio of Eliot, Parker and Hardison also have their own trials this season - Parker is discovering that the consequences of learning how to work and move in normal society and have normal relationships means risking emotional pain. Hardison gets several glimpses into "the road not taken" over the course of the season - lives he could have had if one or two things had turned out differently. And finally Eliot reveals some of the consequences he lives with on a daily, if not hourly basis.
Four years of jobs helping the helpless also draw unwanted attention from outside forces seeking to profit off the Leverage team's efforts. It is a fascinating ride, culminating in the question: what matters most, and what are you willing to sacrifice to get it?
In the penultimate episode of season four, Latimer makes things personal by hiring Jimmy Ford to do a job in a high level government building. The team have to create a fake hostage situation while fighting to get to the truth about the scheme against them.
Nate, Sophie, Eliot, Parker and Hardison go up against Victor Dubenich and Latimer in the exciting season finale but, to succeed, they must work with old foes and friends alike.
meghan_84
What would I tell my friends to get them to watch Leverage?
It’s an intelligent fun show, with engaging often times poignant and compelling storylines.
The characters are each unique and multifaceted in their own way. Parker with her endearing and very weird quirks, Eliot is gruff and impatient but very understanding of his team mates short comings. He’s willing to help them overcome them too. Some times more than he realizes. Hardison is incredibly smart and yet sometimes so socially awkward it’s painful. He’s so in love with Parker that you pull for them because it’s so vulnerably sweet that you long too see love prevail.
Then there are Nate and Sophie the team mastermind and team grifter. Who carry on a simmering love affair for nearly the entirety of the show while also functioning as the team’s pseudo-parents.
I watch the show less for the cons and more for the character development. I want to see all of these people who are so broken individually become whole as a unit and know that it’s ok to trust people. I want to see them succeed or fail and do so as a family of sorts.
However if you love a good caper show this will be right up your alley. I like to think of as though ocean’s 11 and Robin Hood had a love child and Leverage is the baby.
The cons are fast paced and intelligent. Leverage is fun! So sit back and watch but pay attention to detail is too small!
In closing I will add Christian Kane is gorgeous and he beats people up. What more do you need? If it helps he’s shirtless for most of a particular episode! Seriously go freaking watch and tell em’ Meghan sent ya!
theron09
There are a lot of reasons why I like to watch Leverage but I’d say the main, number one reason is this: it never disappoints me. Even when there are episodes that aren’t as good as some of the others, the standard is still amazing. The characterization is always one hundred per cent spot on and I can always tell just how well the writers and the actors know the individual characters, even the guest stars. The cons are always impressive and there’s always at least one part of them, whether it’s a way that Sophie grifts or a really clever thing that Hardison does with a laptop, that makes me think ‘wow, that was cool.’
The fandom experience never disappoints me, either; I don’t think I’ve had one bad encounter in the Leverage fandom and I think that’s because everyone knows we’re onto a really good thing with Leverage. The dynamics between the characters, the little details that seem to be effortless continuity, the one-liners that everyone remembers, all go together with slick cons and interesting storylines to make a show that definitely doesn’t disappoint me and that’s the reason I recommend Leverage to everyone I talk to.
melpomenethemis
There are many reasons why I personally watch Leverage, reason one would be the individual episodes. Each episode has such an amazing script, all thanks to the writers who are amazing, which never fails to entertain and stir up relevant emotions. The cons are all incredibly clever, which always keep you guessing as to what the outcome will actually be. All of the little details included within the episodes help to make Leverage what it is, as the little details can sometimes be more important than having big special effects.
The second reason would be the characters, which have all developed from the first episode of the first season, and you always see in the episodes the brilliant relationships that exist within the team members. All of the characters have their strengths, but you can also see flaws in the characters, such as Parker’s social skills, but that shows that the characters are not super-human, allowing the audience to relate to the characters.
The third reason is the casting choice for Leverage, as each cast member suits their character to a tee, and know their characters so well that you can believe that they are their characters when watching an episode. The guest stars which are introduced in each episode fit in so well with the regular cast members, that it truly is a seamless production.
The fourth reason is the fandom, the Leverage fandom is wonderful, as everyone is so friendly, and whilst it is such a small fandom, it can put on events such as Leverageland, which shows how amazing Leverage is. The fifth reason why I watch Leverage is because of the production of Leverage. The producers and technical directors know how to get the best shot for the viewer in order to convey the messages from the script and when you get that shot which makes you want to laugh or cry, you know that it is an brilliant show.
irishjeeper
Why do I watch Leverage? The answer wasn’t as easy as I thought, but the more I thought about it, the easier it became to write about.
I original watched it because of Christian Kane’s hotness. Yup, that’s about the only reason I decided to watch it, in the beginning. Then, the more I watched, the more I fell in love with the characters, their missions, and the show.
You see, Christian is a fine, fine man, and a fantastic actor, but the others are just as incredible as well. You have Timothy Hutton as their Mastermind, his character, Nate Ford has issues, to say the least. He lost his son, lost his wife, lost his job. Now he fights for those that are losing everything.
Christian Kane is pure muscle, mystery and talent as the teams Hitter, Eliot Spencer.
Beth Riesgraf is the crazy thief, who really has no social skills and is “10 pounds of crazy in a 5 pound bag.” That’s about the best way to sum up Parker.
Gina Bellman plays the suave Grifter, Sophie Devereaux who can change characters like a person changes socks, despite Sophie’s inability to stage act.
Aldis Hodge plays the teams hacker, who makes it look as simple as snapping your fingers. Plus his character, Alec Hardison, balances Parker’s crazy side.
All in all, you have an amazing cast, with fantastic story lines and an hour of very entertaining television.
ishilde
Why I started watching Leverage
The first reason I began watching leverage was because Megan (theron09) wouldn’t stop going on about it. Perhaps she noticed that I was more easily influenced than the rest of our group with regards to fandom but I found myself one day with a huge amount of university work that I wanted to avoid and thought I’d give it a go. By the end of that evening I’d watched the first 6 episodes and was absolutely and completely hooked.
What made me keep watching leverage (other than just one or two episodes to get Megan off my back…) were, first and foremost, the characters. Just within the pilot they’d managed to create enough intrigue and a dynamic between complete strangers that I couldn’t wait to see develop. As I carried on watching it, I fell more in love with each character, and also realised that the cons were amazing compared to most series that followed that trope. They were always different and it was nearly impossible to guess the twist - so I was never bored when I was watching it, and when you’re seeking distraction, that’s the exact sort of thing you want! I ended up catching up within three weeks, and I don’t regret the endless hours spent in front of my computer screen one bit.
So, that’s how and why I started watching Leverage; I’ll never complain when Megan pesters me again!
1. The comedy.
2. The team spirit.
3. The characters.
4. The continuity.
5. The show runners who actually love tv.
6. The references to other shows/movies.
7. So you can join leverageland
8. The cast
9. The ten million different meanings you can find behind each line.
10. The awesome fandom.
11. The intricate nature of the plot
12. The technical workings when creating the show
13. The insane and epic costume design
14. The breaking of stereotypes
15. The guest stars
16. The music
17. The visual effects and stunts
18. The roles within the team
19. The online extras
20. The blogs that the producers keep (such as John Rogers)
21. The use of flashbacks to develop the plot further
22. The intro is epic
23. The flaws within the characters
24. The way that the characters have developed as the number of seasons increases
25. Gina Bellman's accents!
26. Sophie's mysterious past~
27. Nate's hair.
28. Gina Bellman's legs xD
29. stress relief
30. the cons
31. it's both intelligent and hilarious!
32. likeable female characters
33. does Christian Kane count as a reason?
34. It has Mark Sheppard
35. "They killed Lucille!... Again!"
36. Eliot's hair
37. After all this time, it's still rocking episodic
38. So the plot bunnies can BREED
39. As a bonding process with friends
40. For Bunny
41. For Christian Kane singing in The Studio Job
42. To feel like, sometimes, the little guy can win.
43. So you can be a Grifter (or Hacker, Hitter, Thief if you prefer)
44. So you can think of awesome crossovers where Sterling is actually Crowley from Supernatural.
45. Because it's the Age of the Geek
46. Nate's angst
47. Everyone's angst
48. For the bad guys who turn out to not be so bad after all.
49. It's an exciting show the whole family can watch (and enjoy!)
50. Awesome guest stars reappear!
51. Where else will you ever hear "I Hacked History!"
52. To learn that "no one can do it alone"
53. Kane choreographs his own fight scenes
54. Two words: Kari Matchett.
55. The little details
56. The very distinctive jokes
57. It's actually quite educational
58. The plot twists that, even after four seasons, always have you holding your breath, still keep you guessing until the very end.
59. That feeling of elation on the rare occasions where you DO work something out even just a few seconds ahead of the characters on the show
60. Actors so good that when the characters are acting you begin to empathise with the characters characters, and its all confusing and glorious at the same time.
61. The enthusiasm of all of the crew
62. To roll your eyes at certain British accents (I'm looking at Hardison)
63. It's a good substitute for chocolate if you need cheering up
64. The meta
65. The show doesn't take itself too seriously
66. When it does do serious, the show does serious well.
67. Richard Chamberlain (Archie)
68. The writers!
69. The fanfiction
70. The characters that the team play on the cons
71. The editing of the show
72. The set design
73. The location choices
74. The portrait of Harlan Leverage III
75. The catchphrase ‘Let’s go steal a...”
76. The way that the team acts as a family
77. “Sometimes good guys make the best bad guys”
78. The cliff-hangers keep you hooked
79. The season finales are always amazing
80. The history of the characters before the crew
81. The fact that the characters are human, not superheroes
82. The overall plots which run through the whole season (e.g. Moreau)
83. The gummy frogs
84. Quirky Portland always seeps through
85. Two of the supporting characters are a van and a stuffed toy
86. The fandom is deep and wide, but friendly and accessible
87. The actors love each other, and their fans
88. Nate is Boston Irish <3
89. They would use Flogging Molly for the intro, if they could afford it
90. Acquire recipe ideas from Eliot
91. Discover a place where geek culture and action collide
92. It's the A-Team for a new Generation
93. It's just a self-aware show
94. There are so very many ways to turn a viewing into a drinking game
95. Because there are no good reasons "why not"
96. The special effects
97. The antics between Hardison, Parker, and Eliot.
98. What else are you going to watch on a Sunday night?
99. Aldis is a hotty
100. Harnesses
1. The payout for the con on Victor Dubenich in The Nigerian Job was $32,761,349 each. (Hardison is very good at what he does!)
2. The electric car that Nate drives off in at the end of The Homecoming Job is a 2008 Tesla Roadster.
3. When the team is changing the name of the horse during the height of the con in The Two Horse Job, the name is changed from "Fei Kuai" to "La Devlin Vita" which translates to "The Devlin Life". The name of one of the show's producers is Dean Devlin.
4. In The Lost Heir Job, Nathan's passport shows his birthday as 16 August 1965. Timothy Hutton is born on 16 August 1960.
5. In The Zanzibar Marketplace Job, Nate's cell phone number is shown as 617-555-0156.
6. In The Inside Job, when Hardison and Eliot arrive at Parker's place at the beginning of episode, there is flashback about the Central Square address. The man in the flashback wears a Sailor Moon costume, which is a well-known anime from Japan. He also bears a striking resemblance to Sailor Bubba, an infamous security staffer at the Chicago based Anime' Central Convention.
7. The Double Blind Job is the first time that a murdered man is seen on-screen in the series.
8. It's suggested in The 10 L'il Grifters Job that Parker's first heist was robbing Imelda Marcos.
9. Nate attends the party dressed as Ellery Queen, a detective famously portrayed on television by Timothy Hutton's father.
10. Archie Leach (played by Richard Chamberlain) is the real name of actor Cary Grant.
How Eliot subverts the role of the muscle
(Submitted by theron09)
‘You know, people underestimate you, Eliot.’
‘That’s kind of the point’
The above quote, in case you can’t remember, is from ‘The Zanzibar Marketplace Job’ and puts into words one of the recurring themes of the show. Eliot Spencer is a lot of things but he is certainly not your average hired muscle and this is made clear in numerous different ways. The hitter isn’t just in the team to hit people or in the show to provide awesome fight scenes. Eliot Spencer, like all of the Leverage characters that we know and love, has layers.
We see this as early as the Pilot when, out of all the members of the team, it is Eliot who first tries to engage Nate in a conversation about his son, about feelings. Eliot doing surprising things considering his role in the team is definitely something that happens often and is flagged up by the writers in episodes such as ‘The Wedding Job’ when we find out that Eliot likes cooking:
‘You think the only thing I know how to do is bust heads?’
‘No. Well, yeah.’
This isn’t the only time that lines like this are said in relation to Eliot; by drawing attention to the way the character defies stereotypes, the writers help to make Eliot, a character who, when it comes down to it, is a killer, more human, more of a character rather than just being there to take part in impressive fight scenes.
Evolution of a Mastermind
(Submitted by telaryn)
“A man isn’t a man until his father tells him so.”
If you need to boil the first four seasons of Leverage down to their most basic theme, it’s an honest man’s attempt to make peace with the less than honest forces that shaped him. Nathan Ford - the central figure of the show - is the only son of a Boston mobster, a “penny ante thief” as Latimer says in the fourth season finale. Over sixty-two episodes we’re shown glimpses of Nate’s past - nothing in any serious detail, since Leverage is ultimately an ensemble piece - but what the show gives us rings very true for a son of Irish immigrants growing up in Boston in the 1970’s.
None of that is in evidence when we first meet Nate however. We’re introduced to our protagonist at what appears to be his lowest point; in one short, expertly acted scene, we learn that while Nate has enough money to be drinking in an upscale airport bar, he’s out of work and is clearly haunted by the memory of a dead son. We’re given a character tailor made for the audience to sympathize with - his sarcastic comments to Dubenich aside, this is a man who’s had his life destroyed by an unfeeling insurance company more concerned with their bottom line than the people they’re supposed to be helping.
On the surface, Season 1 is about Nate recovering from his depression and finding the strength to move on with his life. He continues to hold himself apart from the team with his alcoholism and closely held belief that he is different from them by virtue of the fact that he was once on the side of the angels and intends to someday be able to return to that life. It’s not until Sophie calls him on his hypocrisy during the events of The First David Job that Nate begins to believe that the circumstances of his life are no longer as simple as he once thought they were. Season 1 ends with Nate thanking the team for standing by him and acknowledging the profound difference they’ve made in his life.
The Nate who returns to our screens in Season 2 is probably the closest we will ever see to the man he used to be. He’s sober, steady (at least on the surface), and trying to return to the work he was doing when his life fell apart. It takes only the briefest exposure to that world, however, to convince us as well as Nate that he is no longer the man he was and he can’t be happy going back to that life. Even though he clings to the belief that he is “not a thief”, we can see that when the opportunity presents itself to return to his Robin Hood activities he becomes the very picture of the man who “doth protest too much”.
Season 2 is also where we learn that Nate’s relocation to Boston is perhaps less about getting a fresh start, and more about returning to his roots. The “honest man” comes from a less than honest background - his father was the neighborhood fixer, and a numbers runner with strong connections to the Irish mob. This is the point in the narrative where the true genius of the Leverage creators and show runners is revealed. Even though we are only given glimpses into what Nate’s childhood must have been like, every single note, every gesture, every scrap of dialogue rings true. If you’re familiar at all with New England mob culture in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, it’s hard not to sketch in the empty spaces and decide for ourselves what forces shaped Nate into the man we see today.
As Nate moves farther away from the man we see at the season opener and layers of inhibitions and denial are peeled away by time and circumstances, we are shown a man pretty dramatically coming apart under the weight of his demons and his grief. His actions become increasingly more desperate and risky, until it’s no longer his own life in danger of collapsing in flames.
In the eleventh hour Nate comes to several hard, painful truths about himself, and even as Sophie races to the rescue, makes plans to atone for the damage he’s done and keep the people closest to him from being swallowed up by his mistakes. By the time he declares to Sterling and the surrounding law enforcement that he “is a thief”, both Nate and the viewer have come to see that even though he is no longer an honest man, he’s still a good one.
Season 3 brings us a Nate cut free of society’s rules. He is in jail because he chooses to be, and once the team arranges his escape he is taken in by a force beyond the government that sets him an impossible task as the price for his remaining free. He is given the chance to take down one of the world’s greatest evils and ultimately encouraged to do it on his terms and using his methods. The fact that he is successful only feeds his growing confidence in his new role.
We also see Nate settling more comfortably into his new position as patriarch of the unusual family. Relationships evolve, deepen and solidify over the course of the season as the team digs in and defends themselves against the outside forces aligning to tear them apart. We learn more about the people Nate has gathered into his life, and we also see that Nate appears to be edging towards happiness and acceptance of what they’ve built.
Unfortunately by the time Season 4 rolls around, we see a Nate whose innate arrogance and dedication to the mission is threatening to overwhelm his empathy and his connection to his family. He’s drinking more than ever, and pushing those closest to him away with nasty comments and emotional distance. Season 4 is the season of consequences, however, and Nate quickly learns that there are consequences to bonding with a family as fiercely loyal as this one is proving to be. They love him - warts and all - and will not abandon him to his baser nature.
These aren’t simple two dimensional caricatures, however, and as Nate becomes more emotionally secure in his relationships with his family, his comfort in working outside the system allows his arrogance and his self-righteousness to grow unchecked. Casual throwaway lines once spoken by a socially maladjusted hacker are now spoken with unshakeable conviction by the mastermind - “I’m very good at what I do.” The penultimate episode of the front half of Season 4 shows us a Nate who has become disturbingly comfortable deciding who lives and who dies.
If a man truly isn’t a man until his father tells him so, as Season 4 winds to a close Nate must deal with the consequences of having received that particular blessing from his own patriarch midway through Season 3. A man in Jimmy Ford’s eyes is a man like him - ruthless, arrogant, who lives life as if none of society’s rules apply to him. It is therefore truly fitting that in the second to last episode of Season 4, as he is becoming that man, Nate is once again forced to deal with his father.
Age and regret have worked their magic on the penny ante thief, however, and as Nate tries to keep Jimmy from being destroyed by forces he had no part in bringing to bear, his father commits the ultimate act of love and validation by sacrificing himself to save his son’s life - everything Nate would have willingly done for his own child if God and Fate had allowed him to choose that path.
The Season 4 finale has Nate on a collision course with destiny. He has one final step to take to pick up the mantle his father has abandoned - and he has his old friends grief, arrogance and self-righteousness urging him on. It isn’t until he has the object of his hatred at gun point and must choose between the satisfaction of vengeance and keeping the love and regard of his family that Nate finally steps away from the edge of the cliff.
Honest man, good man, thief, functioning alcoholic, controlling bastard - the Nate we leave in Season 4 may have a new found appreciation for the good things in his life, but only Season 5 will tell us if he is truly free of the demons of his past; if he’s truly a man at peace with himself and his choices.
Click to viewParker and Eliot are forced to deal with the fact that trying to complete their mission would likely cost them their lives. In the midst of their argument, the viewer sees for the first time Parker’s terror that there is something fundamentally broken in her - that no matter how much she tries she is too far gone to ever be “one of the good guys”.
Eliot is the perfect counterpoint to Parker’s rising hysteria in this scene - calm, but practical and firm. He acknowledges and validates her fears, and then tries to help her see the value they have to the team in being the morally grey ones. “We do things they can’t…won’t.”
This is easily one of the best family scenes in the entire run of the show. After a difficult job against a tricky enemy, complicated by Nate battling his own ugly version of holiday depression, the team gathers in McRory’s for a private celebration. After the champagne is poured, Nate reveals that he and Sophie have “acquired” presents for the rest of the team. The gifts they distribute are priceless in nature, but reveal that for all his self-absorbed, drunken behavior, Nate understands and cares for his unusual little family far better than he’s comfortable letting on.
His abilities mean Alec Hardison is rarely on the front line. He’ll grift alongside Sophie or Nate, but more often than not his place is in the van keeping an eye on the rest of the team. Only a handful of times is the team hacker ever in physical danger, but never more than when a con against a family of corrupt funeral home operators goes south. Taken captive by a human smuggler, Hardison is buried alive.
With time and Hardison’s oxygen running out, the team races to the rescue. The ever mounting tension and the satisfying payoff are punctuated by a hundred little moments showing how the team has evolved from a loose collection of damaged loners into a real family.
From the moment Nate receives a call from “the world’s greatest thief” alerting him that Parker is in danger, The Inside Job belongs to the crazy blond girl with the mysterious past. Exciting twists and turns as the team races to beat a state of the art security system and a corporate scientist more focused on the bottom line than the public good, accompany a wealth of insight into the forces that shaped Parker into the woman we know today.
In the final moments of the episode, Parker bids farewell to her mentor Archie Leach - the most stabilizing force of her childhood. Archie commends the path she’s chosen for herself as well as the people she’s chosen to walk it with. Like a true father, he validates her transition from childhood to adulthood, and in the process acknowledges that it was a mistake on his part not being more of a parent to her when she was younger. The scene is a bittersweet one that ties all of the glimpses the viewer has been given of Parker’s past together, carrying her from two dimensional cliché into one of the most multi-faceted characters on television.
For most Leverage viewers, this is the turning point of the series. The second season finale is full of revelations and payoffs, but none more emotionally satisfying or packing a greater dramatic punch than the moment when Nate rejects the title he’s carried since the opening moments of the series and fully and publicly embraces his new life as a thief.
The climax of The Maltese Falcon Job is a tricky balancing act. For every moment where a character says or does something we’ve been waiting as much as two seasons to hear and see, there’s a subtle twist to it - a stumbling block that keeps it from being an entirely happy ending. And in the hands of a lesser actor Nate’s final moment would have been just another one of these. Timothy Hutton infuses Nate’s words with such self-awareness and conviction however, that even though Nate is alone, bleeding, and heading for a future unlike anything he’s ever imagined for himself, we share in his belief of this moment as a personal triumph.
It’s a brief moment - only three sentences total - but it perfectly sums up the truth of Nate’s life and everything he has been struggling with for four seasons. The fact that the exchange occurs with Victor Dubenich - the man responsible for setting Nate on this path and bringing him to this moment of personal revelation - gives what could have been a throwaway moment unexpected resonance.
Everything about his confrontation with Dubenich at the end of the Last Dam Job is about him making this choice. Is he going to embrace his destiny and make peace with the legacy of his heritage, or is he going to return to trying to be the kind of man his son would have been proud to call father?
Or in the spirit of Leverage, will he try to forge a new path - someone who lives his life somewhere between the two extremes? Only season five will tell.
One of the most endlessly fascinating relationships on Leverage is between mastermind and hitter. When Eliot holds a gun on Victor Dubenich and tells Sophie “I’m thinking of saving my friend some trouble”, it’s a sign of how far his relationship with Nate has evolved from the point of their first significant exchange where Eliot offered sympathy for Nate’s situation and Nate rebuffed him outright, saying “we’re not friends”.
This particular conversation is a quiet moment in the chaos of The Last Dam Job. Nate has already stated his intention to seek vengeance on Victor Dubenich for the death of his father; Eliot comes on him practicing with Jimmy’s gun. He cautions Nate against his plans, warning him with the quiet, assured voice of experience that this will change him in ways he hasn’t anticipated. When Nate argues that Eliot has survived a similar rite of passage, Eliot calmly and eloquently reminds him that he doesn’t know the whole story.
“The worst thing I did in my entire life, I did for Damien Moreau.” Up until those words are spoken, the team - and by extension the viewers - have been given hints and clues that in a group of self-confessed “bad guys” he is likely the worst. Without specifics, however, it is hard to reconcile the man who will take on any opponent - rise to any challenge - in order to keep his chosen family safe, with somebody who would willingly ally with the person we’ve been told all season is “the worst of the worst”.
With the exception of a brief emotional aside to Parker, this scene belongs entirely to Nate and Eliot. While Nate struggles with the question of whether or not he can continue to trust Eliot, the hitter lays his soul bare - confessing everything he knows and everything he’s done in order to keep the rest of them from harm.
The eleventh episode of the third season is a brilliantly constructed look at the individual members of the Leverage team. Using the recounting of a past heist as the storytelling framework, we are treated to each person’s version of the crime.
The episode starts off in a fairly ordinary manner, with Sophie telling the others a straightforward, if overly dramatic, version of events as she recalls them. It’s only when Eliot is revealed as the doctor she shared a flirtatious moment with and the hitter launches into his version of events that the episode is turned irrevocably on its head.
In four seasons and fifty-odd episodes, the team and the viewers have gotten used to seeing Sophie change identities as easily as she changes outfits. No matter the job, she has a character ready go - complete with backstory and skill set perfectly suited to the task at hand.
It’s only when the mark jumps the gun and makes their move before Nate even has a plan firmly in place that we’re treated to Sophie’s true genius. The character she pulls out of her hat to make an opening for the team to infiltrate Verd Agra is effective, but unknown to the team and entirely unexpected. It isn’t until later, when they’re listening to her spin her tale to one of the company’s executives, that Eliot realizes this particular alias may have come from a little closer to home than normal.
1. "My name is Nate Ford, and I am a thief."
2. "That's twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag."
3. "Nate, if stealing a country was easy, everyone would do it."
4. "Is Sophie a princess?"
5. "No, no, that - that right there, that's a lie! I love foreplay!"
6. "Did you just kill a guy with an appetizer?"
7. "In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device. But let’s face it, if this thing goes down in the water, more than likely, the impact will kill you."
8. "No stabbing Wednesdays - a new tradition!"
9. "I hacked history!"
10. "Dammit, Hardison!"
11. "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."
12. "It's a very distinctive ..."
13. "Let's go steal a..."
14. "I’m sorry, are we still unclear? I’m a functioning alcoholic. Trick is to not get hung up on the “alcoholic,” really celebrate the “functioning” part of the sentence."
15. "Sometimes bad guys are the only good guys you get."
16. "Look. Hold a knife like this, [holds a chef's knife normally] cuts through an onion. [switches to a backhand grip] Hold a knife like this... cuts through, like, eight Yakuza in four seconds. Screams, carnage. People are like knives. Everything's in context."
17. "It's a fashion show, not Thieves-R-Us!"
18. "Some roads, you start going down, well, you can't turn back, and... I'm about a hundred miles down one of those right now."
19. "You better say something, I swear on my momma I will blow a hole through your bedroom and Spider-man out of the side of this building."
20. "I'd tell you if I'd murdered the mark.”
Part 2 | Part 3