Leverage“The Mile High Job”
Original Air Date: January 20, 2008
Brittany Wells – TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@twocentscorp.com
Nothing good ever happens on airplanes. I mean, has anyone seen Air Force One, Ground Control, Nowhere to Land, NTSB: The Crash of Flight 323…okay, maybe that’s just me. But when the Leverage team (most of them anyway) get stuck on a doomed airplane, chaos ensues. I’m glad my last flight wasn’t like this.
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[photo: TNT]
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Leverage
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Original Air Date: January 20, 2008
Brittany Wells – TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@twocentscorp.com
Nothing good ever happens on airplanes. I mean, has anyone seen Air Force One, Ground Control, Nowhere to Land, NTSB: The Crash of Flight 323…okay, maybe that’s just me. But when the Leverage team (most of them anyway) get stuck on a doomed airplane, chaos ensues. I’m glad my last flight wasn’t like this.
It all starts with the client briefing, in which grieving parents are trying to sue a company named GeneGrow for including chemicals in their fertilizer that made their daughter ill. The problem is they can’t sue without proof, and the corporate lawyers are blocking their access to the records that they need to find it. The team goes to find them, with Sophie providing a distraction for the guards, and Nate, Eliot and Parker on the hunt. Hardison, however, is not paying attention: he’s back at the office waiting for his Toaster Strudel to be done. This leads to more death threats against our favorite geek (for the second week in a row) as the team is forced to use Parker’s breaking and entering skills since Hardison’s not working on electronically disabling the security. Furthermore, since he’s not paying attention, they don’t know that the CEO of the company is on his way up – and hiding in his office Eliot overhears information about a flight from L.A. that they need to get on in order to stop the company cover-up.
Our team is then off to Ontario Airport. This leads to a hilarious exchange in which Hardison, booking plane tickets, asks Nate which ID’s he has on him and our fearless leader rattles off three of them like he just carries them all the time (and maybe he does). Sophie and Nate end up in first class as a married couple, Eliot just so happens to have a marshal’s badge on him, and Parker literally steals a flight attendant’s luggage. Another classic line occurs when Sophie asks how they knew the flight attendant would have a spare uniform in the bag, and both Eliot and Nate respond with “Slept with a flight attendant.”
As usual, the context of the con allows for crackling dialogue and entertaining moments with each of the show’s characters. Nate and Sophie argue over when they first met; she says it was ten years ago, he says eight, and she becomes offended that he can’t remember. Eliot deals with a guy snoring on his shoulder. Parker may be the worst flight attendant ever, scaring the passengers with the safety briefing, literally throwing peanuts at them and snapping the head off one particularly skittish flyer. Meanwhile, Hardison goes back to GeneGrow, using his geek charm and World of Warcraft knowledge to get ahead. Finding some old charts in the breakroom trash can, he even holds his own fake meeting to extract necessary information. But the biggest clue comes when he finds out which two employees are on that flight: an accountant and the head of security, who’s been getting payoffs from the boss. It doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on: the security guy is on the plane to quietly dispose of the accountant in the middle of nowhere.
Unfortunately for Parker, the accountant is the same woman she’s been annoying all episode, leaving her to actually have to be nice to her. Sophie charms the security guy, while Eliot (with direction from Nate) finds out that the accountant uncovered a scam on the books. Money was being cut for safety studies that didn’t exist; namely, they were never done at all, which is how the toxic fertilizer went by unnoticed. Now she’s being sent out to fix the accounts, or so she thinks. They know she’s the smoking gun they’ve been looking for to bring the company down. The team confronts her with who they are and why they’re there. (Parker: “The guy in 1D wants to kill you. Ginger ale?”) As Eliot confronts the security guy in the airplane bathroom, the plot thickens: Haldeman decided not to pay said security guy. Instead, he’s going to take out both of his employees by…taking down the plane.
Oops.
Parker, with Hardison’s help, discovers a device tapped into the plane’s flight data recorder. Just about that time, the autopilot fails and the plane starts to go down. Hardison, using Haldeman’s computer, isn’t sure that he can save the plane but Nate tells him that he trusts him regardless. Hardison is able to lead the team in saving the plane (after which he makes off with Haldeman’s office contents to boot). Nate tells the accountant if she really wants to repay them, she can testify against Haldeman, who ends up arrested.
Back at Leverage headquarters, Nate points out that while he may have run into Sophie ten years ago, he didn’t get introduced to her until eight years ago. She points out he still confused countries. Touche. And so another caper comes to a close. What did you think?
Technically, Nate's half of how do you know that is "used to work airport security," but it was still funny, especially at the same time as Eliot's "slept with a ..."
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