LeverageThe Juror Number Twelve Job
Original Air Date: Feb 10, 2009
Brittany Wells – TwoCents Reviewer
brittanyw@twocentscorp.com
I’ve never been all that averse to jury duty. Maybe it’s because I wanted to be a trial lawyer. This episode reminds me more than a little of John Grisham’s novel – and the later John Cusack movie – Runaway Jury. But Team Leverage is a lot more charismatic than Rachel Weisz, let me tell you.
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[photo: TNT.tv]
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I’ve never been all that averse to jury duty. Maybe it’s because I wanted to be a trial lawyer. This episode reminds me more than a little of John Grisham’s novel – and the later John Cusack movie – Runaway Jury. But Team Leverage is a lot more charismatic than Rachel Weisz, let me tell you.
ReplyDeleteAfter nearly getting the whole team killed, Parker ends up being forced to report for jury duty in a wrongful death suit. While there, she spots something a little hinky – a hidden camera – so she interrupts Nate and Hardison’s football to ask for their help. Meanwhile, the Star Trek: The Next Generation fan in me giggles, because Brent Spiner (Data) is in this episode with really bad hair, and Jonathan Frakes (Riker) directed. And the recently-deceased-on-NCIS Lauren Holly is back ordering the former around. In other words, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes: if the company goes under, she loses a lot of money, and the litigation floodgates blow wide open.
Hardison and Eliot go dumpster diving and find out Lauren Holly’s Ernshaw has bought off the jury foreman. Meanwhile, Sophie tries to convince Spiner’s CEO Quint to avoid selling his company to the crazy woman by making a play for it herself – and even harder, tries to teach Parker social skills. Parker manages to make the jury foreman disappear by planting everyone else’s stuff on him and framing him for theft, but then gets appointed forewoman herself. Unfortunately, Ernshaw convinces the plaintiff’s attorney to retire…so Nate gets Hardison to turn up as her new lawyer. He then flails about, bringing in about 100 overhead slides and a high school yearbook, to start. He makes me circa high school science class proud.
Meanwhile, Ernshaw actually buys the fake company Sophie doesn’t really work for, forcing Team Leverage to have to win the trial to succeed. She continues to push Quint to sell her the company, while Hardison stalls as long as he possibly can. Unfortunately, as Hardison laments, he’s not a lawyer and has no idea what he’s doing. The trial is in the hands of the jury and they’re out of options.
Things look bleak for our heroes until Parker delivers a verdict for the plaintiff, decimating the plan. It’s told in flashback that Hardison deceived Ernshaw and her team with some handy video editing to distract her from the impending verdict – making her think they were voting for the defendant when in fact, Parker was just taking a poll to see who wanted pizza for lunch. Meanwhile, Nate turns up just to be smug to her face, because he’s Nate and that’s what he does. Yay for chess metaphors.
Maybe it’s because I’ve read Grisham’s Runaway Jury, and really enjoyed that (the movie not so much), but this episode didn’t ring as true to me as some of the others before it. Especially on the heels of last week’s excellent “Twelve-Step Job,” it kind of pales in comparison. Part of it, I think, I was the big-name (to me, anyway) guest stars that were kind of distracting from the plot with the “isn’t that cool” factor. In comparison, it took me until this week to remember the guy that played the compulsive taco-eater last week was the same guy who played John Cena’s sidekick in the wonderfully awful The Marine (wonderful only for Robert Patrick’s gloriously, charmingly and just-enough-over-the-top performance as a bad guy, but I digress). I didn’t know who he was, and haven’t known who a lot of the guest stars are, making it easier to believe them as the people they play. This time, I was too busy going “Hey, it’s that guy from that show!” Still a good episode – who doesn’t love Beth Riesgraf, really? – but not one of my favorites.
What did you think? And am I alone in wishing TNT would announce a DVD release for this show already so we can own it? Sound off below.
The DVDs are being planned, so at least we know we're gonna get 'em :) John Rogers is soliciting fan opinions on what they'd like on the DVDs over on his blog, if you want to chip in.
ReplyDeleteI loved this episode, mostly because I thought Hardison and Parker were adorable. I've never found big name casting distracting, just fun to watch and it IS nice to see Brent Spiner on TV again. I was kicking myself for not recognising Lauren Holly - I didn't know who it was until I read a review after the show. D'oH!
I still remember her from her brief stint on Chicago Hope, and then of course recently on NCIS. And I forgot one myself - Armin Shimerman as well! It was pretty cool, but I think I was too big a Trek fan, I couldn't see the forest for the trees if you get my drift.
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