TV Series Review: Leverage – Season 1
Posted on | May 11, 2010 | 6 Comments
Leverage, Season 1
http://www.tnt.tv/series/leverage/
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An alcoholic insurance investigator teams up with five world-class criminals to play Robin Hood, ripping off big companies and corrupt, powerful figures to help out the little man.
The name of the game is sting. Or possibly con. Swindle. Heist. Think Ocean’s 11, Once a Thief or well, The Sting, in a handy job-per-episode serial packaging. With quirky, nigh-superpowered characters pulling off labyrinthine cons, the show is definitely entertaining, suffering only of a lack of an overreaching arch. The premise of the show doesn’t vary much from one episode to the next. Character growth throughout the first season is subtle at best, but is replaced by the slow reveal of details of the characters’ pasts and personalities. Leverage is still more character-driven than your regular cop show (such as Law & Order or Cold Case).
It’s a question of taste whether or not you mind this. I generally prefer shows that would not function if the characterization was switched around, but I have to admit that Leverage is entertaining, and its characters are not dull. Nate, the mastermind, has a need to control his surroundings that is challenged by his drinking problem. Sophie, the grifter, keeps the group together but is herself torn between the excitement of the heist and trying to live a normal life as a terrible, terrible actress. Eliot, the hitter, struggles with his need and talent for violence. Parker, the cat burglar, lives on the edge, unable or unwilling to connect with people. She and Hardison, the hacker, seem to be the only ones who truly enjoy their lives; Parker needs nothing but the thrill, and Hardison unlimited access to the best technology money can buy. These disparate personalities’ interaction (and Sophie’s acting) provides the humour of the show, which is necessary for that fun experience that is so central to heist stories.
The only episode of the first season which I felt really got its hands dirty with characterization was episode 10, “The 12-Step Job”, in which Nate gets enrolled in rehab as a part of the con. Sophie uses the opportunity to challenge his addiction, to no avail. Though Nate’s issues are addressed in the first episode as well as the later in the show when his ex-wife is introduced into the plot, this was the episode I thought went beyond cliché to show the mastermind as unreliable and potentially dangerous. That sort of thing is why I prefer character-driven shows: the main character cannot always be trusted to save the day, or even himself.
The shows politics are ambiguous. Corporations and the rich and mighty are presented as the villains and crime an acceptable antidote to their machinations. The Leverage team shaves their income off the top of the heist while also doing right by their clients, which leaves them in a curious moral situation where stealing something is only okay if the person they’re stealing from is considered morally reprehensible. Once on the job, the team shows no mercy, ripping down their marks with an occasionally disturbing – and sometimes heartening – degree of glee. There are few things more interesting than moral dilemmas, though this adds to the whole delicious mix.
In conclusion, it’s not deep, but quite a lot of fun.
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6 Responses to “TV Series Review: Leverage – Season 1”
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May 11th, 2010 @ 4:11 pm
Seeing as I lost my comment virginity, and actually do have an opinion on this one… ‘The 12-Step Job’. While I enjoyed that episode very much (I adored Parker in this one), I did not at all like Sophie. Yes, the story did give us more characterisation, but is was this episode that established my dislike for Sophie. Her behaviour was imo irresponsibly unprofessional. Instead of concentrating on the job and focussing on Hurley, or concentrating on the job and paying attention to all her ‘patients’, she used the convenient set-up to try and therapy Nate, ignoring and risking the success of the job. Her motivation for doing so aside (and I’m not sure it’s only his well-being she has at heart, but also at least partly a desire to ‘save’ him so he’ll stop being contrary and recognize/confess his love for her), that situation was neither the time nor the place, and a grifter of her calibre should not let her feelings get in the way of the job like that.
May 11th, 2010 @ 6:27 pm
Really?? That’s interesting, because I LOVE Sophie, and though she may have been irresponsible, she seemed to be doing as much good as the regular treatment (which is deeply flawed). Come to think of it, of course, she is not a professional nor responsible, being a thief. I didn’t notice her actually endangering the job, though. I may have to watch it again.
Also I don’t really think what she and Nate have is love so much as wanting-to-love, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for a TV show to acknowledge such subtleties. And I really doubt that Sophie goes around fixing people just to expand her dating pool. Oh well.
May 11th, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
To clarify: Sophie may have been irresponsible in pretending to be a therapist; like I said I didn’t notice her endangering the job. Nate was still the really dangerous one – he’s also the one who decides at the end of the episode to continue drinking and not seek help even though his alcoholism could potentially put all of them in danger.
May 11th, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
It’s the trying to treat Nate and focussing on him instead of working on Hurley, who was her target and the whole reason for the therapist ploy in the first case, that I see as her endangering the job. The team must address Nate’s alcoholism, I agree, he is after all their decision maker and him being drunk on the job, as we frequently see him, is a risk for all of them. But it was the timing, during another job, when her thoughts should have been elsewhere, that makes me see Sophie’s behaviour as unprofessional and irresponsible here. Due to the set-up of her being the only one to freely move between the in- and outside world she was the only one who had control over all aspects of the operation, making her the one who could least afford to go off and crusade against something not directly related to the matter at hand.
As for the fixing people thing, no, I don’t think so either. But she likes shiny things, and she likes Nate, and making Nate shiny would make liking him so much better. If that makes sense.
May 12th, 2010 @ 4:40 am
I adore this show, and I will choose to read “character development is subtle at best” to mean “and that’s deftly done”. I love the way that we almost never have to have Very Special [Character] Episodes, but learn so much from offhand comments and reaction shots. This is a show that is (rightfully) confident in its cast.
I agree that the morality is a bit wobbly sometimes – the Serbian orphans episode, in particular – but I think the way the group reacts to and argues about what is right or wrong makes this usually a point of interest rather than problematic. Usually.
May 12th, 2010 @ 8:24 am
There’s nothing wrong with having a show with a focus away from character development, and in any case Leverage does have some, which just happens slowly and isn’t all that profound. In an episodic show focused on the gig-of-the-week you don’t usually even want the characters to change too much.
I like character development, but I also enjoy cop shows like Law & Order which have none of it, and the way I can just drop in at any time, miss as many episodes as I like, and still be entertained and not feel lost. One of these shows had a bit of an arch when one of the main characters had cancer and I just thought it a pointless distraction; I wasn’t watching the show for the characters!
Leverage is not like that, just like The Mentalist wasn’t – it seems the case shows built around a concept or quirk tend to be a little more character-oriented. And that’s cool.
I’m not expecting the characters to always act in a moral way, but I kind of want to re-watch the first series to pay more attention to what the writers are saying with their set-ups. I’ve been watching the second season and the commentary on the economic crisis and infotainment have been so pointed that it’s kind of throwing me.