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As I noted in my review of the first season of TNT’s series Leverage, at its heart, this is a procedural show, substituting con artists for the usual array of doctors, cops, and/or lawyers. Of course, these are con artists on the side of the angels, taking from the rich to give to the poor because, as one of the prominent ad lines goes, “sometimes bad guys make the best good guys.”
On the level of procedural, Leverage works pretty well, much like an episode of House or one of the CSIs. The victim/client and target are identified, and an initial plan gets set in motion, only to get snarled up midway through, forcing the team to improvise their way to a happy ending. When done well, it can make for highly entertaining television, as one of the producers notes frequently during the DVD commentaries. Sometimes it’s fun just to watch smart people do interesting work well.
The second season opens with the team reuniting in Boston, where former insurance investigator and recovering alcoholic Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) is living above a bar that his father used to frequent. None of them have really enjoyed going back to their previous lives, so it takes about five minutes for them to set up shop in Nate’s apartment and start running cons again on the behalf of the little guy.
After a solid first season, I had hopes that they might start playing with the procedural structure of the show a bit more than they did, but they still manage to pull off a few interesting episode variations and weave in a couple of interesting character arcs. The high point of the season comes midway through, in “The Two Live Crew Job,” which pits our familiar team against a mirror-image rival crew. Besides giving enjoyable guest spots to Griffin Dunne, geek favorite Wil Wheaton, and the show’s own con artist consultant, Apollo Robbins, it provides some choice character work for Gina Bellman’s grifter extraordinaire Sophie—especially considering how the actress’s pregnancy essentially removed her from the back half of the season.
But since the team setup of grifter-hitter-hacker-thief-mastermind doesn’t really work with a part missing, new grifter Tara Cole comes in temporarily, to fill in for Sophie. Her introduction to the series provides one of the best episode-closing surprises of the year, so I won’t say much more about it—just that it’s one of the better uses of a guest star that I’ve seen this year.
The lead actors continue to turn in strong performances throughout the season, anchored by Timothy Hutton’s Nate. While his mannerisms during the cons can come off pretty broad, there are many subtle and well-played touches that show the character’s gradual self-destruction without leaning into “very special episode” territory. It’s another reminder of how series television has benefitted from becoming more able to cast experienced film actors in lead roles.
Overall, the second season of Leverage builds well on the first without changing too much of what worked the first time around. I’d still like to see a little bit less of the “let’s go steal a…” plot structure, but considering the staying power of procedurals on television, maybe it’s for the best that they stick with what works. In the meantime, it’s a lot of fun to watch these bad guys gone good.
DVD Review:
The DVD set for season two includes all 15 episodes with commentary tracks, along with a handful of bonus features, including a show creators’ Q-and-A session, a gag reel, a music featurette, and a mini-spoof with cast member Aldis Hodge that runs a little bit too long for its own good. The best thing going for the DVDs are the commentary tracks, each of which manages to offer some genuine insight into the episodes without getting too dry and technical.
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