Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Leverage - Recap & Review - The Snow Job

Leverage
The Snow Job

Original Air Date: Jan 27, 2008

Brittany Wells – TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@twocentscorp.com

This week, the Leverage team takes on the case of a military veteran driven out of his home by a shady contractor. It’s going to get personal, because the guy mentions his son, Nate has an immediate flashback to his son’s death, and then proceeds to go and get wasted. He even turns up at the briefing with a hangover looking like the white Ray Charles, which does nothing but further irritate Sophie.

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[photo: TNT]

3 comments:

  1. This week, the Leverage team takes on the case of a military veteran driven out of his home by a shady contractor. It’s going to get personal, because the guy mentions his son, Nate has an immediate flashback to his son’s death, and then proceeds to go and get wasted. He even turns up at the briefing with a hangover looking like the white Ray Charles, which does nothing but further irritate Sophie.

    They decide their way in is through the two sons who work for said contractor. Sophie’s charming of the slacker (by pretending to be a German luge athlete no less) in Colorado works pretty well, until he insists they go to Miami to get his dad and stuffy older brother Dennis to sign the check. Dennis cuts the check, but when he infers they do the same scam to about 399 other people, Nate impulsively tells Sophie not to take it. He wants to go and save everyone like usual. Instead he has her bait Dennis into a new scam, while Hardison finds out the cops are watching the house. Oops.

    It’s time to meet about the bigger scam. Nate strolls in playing himself, more or less. Someone should tell him that a white suit didn’t look good on Rick Pitino and it doesn’t work for him either, especially not when he’s wearing a bright blue shirt with a red tie. He looks ridiculous. He pitches the idea of investing in death – literally – and gets Dennis to agree, as long as Dennis’ own doctor sees a patient and verifies prognosis to prove Nate’s list of dead people is legit. Since he picked a woman’s name off the list, the job falls to Parker, who must hate this job since she’s already faked falling half off a ski lift earlier this episode.

    After the meeting with Dennis goes down, Nate’s on his way drinking yet again when he gets lit up by the cops. It’s not for DUI – it’s a guy from a racketeering task force who wants to know what the game is. Nate proceeds to be his usual smartmouth self, which of course doesn’t get him anywhere, but proves that the cops don’t really know jack. The state guy proceeds to insult him and then belt him one. Really classy for law enforcement. So not impressed.

    At a local hospital the team prepares to fake Parker’s brain tumor in an MRI tube. The look she gives Hardison when he discusses “death and death-like symptoms” is priceless. Eliot proves not only did he sleep with a flight attendant, he also dated a neurologist, when he figures out how to fake said tumor by using two machines – one with Parker in it, the other showing a real brain tumor, whose image would then be transmitted to the station so it would look like she actually has a tumor. Nate tells the team to find him a brain the same way he says he’s having pizza for dinner. The team manages to convince Dennis that she really is dying, but he balks and wants his money, which causes Nate to do the biggest fake tantrum ever. And Parker to have a real one, which means she has to be physically picked up by Eliot and dragged off. She’s annoyed that Nate just cut their perp a hundred grand, and Eliot’s annoyed that Nate’s drunk and in charge. This leads to Sophie trying to talk with Nate, and Nate getting his ‘are you pondering what I’m pondering’ face on. Oh, the angst.

    Dennis decides he wants in for five grand, and he and Nate go to the bank to get the money. Unfortunately, dad and slacker boy Randy have figured this out and are also at the bank to stop him by taking away his corporate authority. As the family brawls, the Leverage team bails apparently empty handed. At least until Dennis reads the documents Randy signed and realizes that his idiot brother signed over 51 percent of the company to the Leverage team. This is seconds before the cops arrest the whole family for their suspicious money transfers.

    Nate, in typical smartmouth fashion, then calls Dennis to taunt him and remind him what he’s done, just before he moves the National Guardsman and his family into the contractors’ big spacious mansion. Sophie reminds him the team might not always be there for him, but Nate seems unruffled. He almost always is. Almost. In typical Timothy Hutton fashion, you know the wheels are still turning in his brain. Makes you wonder where he’s headed. Obviously the mere mention of his son drives him to drink, so he’s got a big demon to confront, and a pretty big vice. It’s been held in check until now, so why now, and what will happen next?

    What do you think? Sound off below.

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  2. I'm glad they looked at the drinking - apparently this episode was shot second and intended to air earlier, which makes a lot of sense. I do wish they'd keep the episode order as intact as possible, it's annoying! You can see the relationships are nowhere near as gelled as in earlier eps so it's a real shame it aired as late it did. Still a good episode; I just hope some of the loose ends get tied up.

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  3. The episode order is glaring a lot -- the conversation between Hardison and Eliot in "The Wedding Job" clearly references Aimee, who we met in "Two-Horse Job," and Hardison would have known that already. Networks meddle in a lot of shows, though -- "Crusade" and "Homicide: Life on the Street" are the first two to come to mind.

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