TV Review: Leverage 3.12 – “The King George Job”

The team goes after Keller, an associate of Moreau

Episode: Leverage 3.12 – “The King George Job”
Original Air Date: August 29, 2010

The team finally starts to go after Moreau by going after one of his henchmen, Keller (played by James “Thomas Cromwell / Franklin Mott” Frain). The plan is to stop him from smuggling an artifact out of an airport, but it turns out he’s using young girls to smuggle for him.

Sophie realizes that Keller wants to claim one of the Lost Baronies in the UK (“And does it come with a castle?” Parker asks) based on his overzealous purchase of a nearly worthless ring owned by the Prince Regent, the future King George IV. She convinces him she can get him the proper introduction since she is the 18th Duchess of Hanover (and she’s either set up the cover really well or she truly is royalty — it’s actually deliberately left ambiguous).

Hardison creates a fake journal to fool Keller (“I hacked history,” he declares after researching 18th century book-making techniques online) so that he can claim a relationship to the King George III. Unfortunately for Keller, the box the team placed the journal in turns out to be a real relic (stolen from the auction house) which is discovered when he tries to board a plane. And the bobbies show up at “his” (really Sophie’s) storehouse which contains even more stolen items (and one of them even says, “What’s all this, then?” Love it!). Keller’s in big trouble, and the team has another lead on getting to Moreau.

Is Sophie royal? Her "aunt" thinks so...

Something that I really enjoyed in this was getting some more of Sophie’s story. Although it’s not clear if she truly is the 18th Duchess of Hanover (admittedly it’s unlikely, but she did have an aunt who believed it), she definitely played the part quite well and knew quite a lot about how royals act and talk. It was also interesting to see how she reacted to Keller’s use of children to smuggle his stolen goods. She thinks that there’s a good chance that some of the items she stole in the past may have ended up in similar situations. This disturbs her greatly, although Nate’s attempts to reassure her do seem to help. Back story on the characters is always good, and this was no exception.

Hardison hacks history in more ways than one

Most of the fun stuff in this episode occurred in and around the auction house where Sophie convinces Keller to buy the fake journal. First up are the computers that Hardison encounters: “Apparently the computer system is also an antique. Possibly steam powered. Which would be cool.” Yay, steampunk reference! Hardison also has to use his hacking skills to hack real files instead of computer ones. While reading off a list of places in Scotland to help fool Keller, he runs across one that’s trickier than the others: “I’m not even gonna try to pronounce it. It’s just a bunch of g’s and n’s.” Gaelic is hard!

Parker the auctioneer knows a bit too much about the items...

The best has to be Parker as the auctioneer. She definitely knows a bit too much about each of the items. Nate has to keep reminding her not to go off track discussing the poor security of the places they were originally stored. It seems she recognizes them because at one time she probably stole them. And there’s also Nate’s attempt to get Keller to bid enough money on the journal so that Hardison can track the money (thus giving them their lead to Moreau) by pitting another guy against him. Nate tells a man who has been checking out Parker that she really likes it when guys bid big. But not too big, of course, because then Keller wouldn’t win the auction. Parker is, of course, basically oblivious to his attraction, caring far more about the items in the auction.

Rating: 4 / 5 stars