A car literally flips over Nate's head
Episode: Leverage 2.01 – “The Beantown Bailout Job”
Original Air Date: July 15, 2009
In this episode, which takes place six months after the end of the first season, Nate is finding it difficult to get a real job. He just doesn’t have it in him, as much as he might try, and as much as he might claim he doesn’t want to be the White King again. Of course, it doesn’t take long for him to get back in the game when he rescues a bank employee (Matt Kerrigan) and his daughter Zoe from a car that literally flips over his head while he’s leaving a job interview. It turns out there’s a lot more to the story, but more on that later.
Nate then attends a performance by Sophie of The Sound of Music. Can she sing? Not as well as she acts, she tells the rest of the Leverage team when they all “coincidentally” meet in the lobby (I assume Sophie invited them all, though it’s not made clear). “Never before has a production of The Sound of Music made me root for the Nazis,” says one review read by Parker later that night in Nate’s apartment. Ouch!
Sophie in The Sound of Music?!
The con for this episode is a “Turn Around,” which requires five people (that’s how the rest of the team gets Nate involved despite his initial misgivings. It’s also a nice “turn around” of the first episodes of the series in which Nate is the one convincing the rest of the team). The plan is to get O’Hare, a mobster who’s laundering money for Kerrigan’s boss, to turn on each other. They are using an eminent government bail-out to get rich and launder even more money. Of course there’s a complication — Kerrigan’s boss doesn’t react the way he’s expected to when Hardison, posing as a state trooper, tries to trick him into confessing to a real police officer, Lt. Bonnano. They have to improvise, which also involves Sophie pretending to shoot Eliot and O’Hare escaping because Nate’s set him up to appear to have called the state police. In one of the best scenes in the episode, Hardison drives up to “rescue” O’Hare, saying, “Get in if you wanna live!” Awesome! But then Kerrigan’s boss shows up at the hospital where Kerrigan is being treated in order to finish the job. Unfortunately for him, Bonnano is there and the boss just happens to have incriminating evidence against him in Kerrigan briefcase which he somehow ended up with (Eliot had found it previously). He claims he was tricked, to which Bonnano replies, “Somebody tricked you into bringing a briefcase full of evidence of your own crime straight to the police. Come on, Mr. Leary, nobody’s that smart.” I guess he doesn’t know Nate.
Bonnano may not know Nate, but he knows evidence when he sees it
A great start to a new season. The best parts of this episode took place in Nate’s apartment above McCrory’s bar. While consoling Sophie on her bad reviews, Eliot and Parker use the potential con to cheer her up: “I like this, get right back up on the bike,” Eliot says, to which Parker responds, “The bike of crime.” Okay…
When trying to convince Nate to rejoin them, Parker and Eliot have their own ways: “Yeah, well, I stole the Hope Diamond, and then I put it back. Yeah, because I was bored. Didn’t care.” That’s Parker, obviously. And then Eliot, the hitter: “This is the problem with being the good guy. It gets under your skin.” Nate finally agrees, just this once (again echoing everyone else in the first episode of the series), but hastens to point out, “And I am not a thief.”
Shouldn't Nate have been the priest?
And then there’s Parker’s costume to help her break into the bank so they can get the evidence they need for later. I’ll let Eliot and Nate’s dialogue (and the picture above) spell it out:
Eliot: “She’s dressed that way ’cause she’s doin’ a con.”
Nate: “What, you thought she was dressed like a nun for no reason?”
Eliot: “It’s Parker.”
Nate: “Oh, fair enough.”
Classic!
The last scene, too, occurs in Nate’s apartment. Hardison actually bought the building, making him Nate’s landlord, as Nate finds out when he discovers the team remodeling. Hardison is rewiring, of course, and Parker brings in the portrait of “Harlan Leverage III” — “Hi, I’m old Nate and I live here too.” And of course Eliot is cutting holes in the wall with a chainsaw. The team is back together again for another fun filled season!
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
