Monday, September 1, 2014

Summer TV Rewind: Leverage 1.13: “The Second David Job”

“Twenty years at that company and they wouldn’t help save our son.”
- Nate

And we’ve finally made it to the season finale, folks. I don’t know about you but I’m excited. I forgot how intense the 2-parter actually was, not having watched it in a long time. We begin again with an in media res shot of Ian holding Nate at gunpoint. We then jump to three days earlier where Ian is introducing Sterling as the newest Vice President thanks to the two David recovery three months earlier. Yeah that isn’t going to be a good thing. Down at the museum, we find Sophie casing the joint. And not far away, Parker is doing her own surveillance. Up a floor, we find Eliot working security and Hardison posing as a construction worker. It’s a little hard to tell if they’re working together or not. Sophie almost runs into Maggie, too. Oops. After the shareholder meeting, Ian brings Sterling to his new corner office where Nate is waiting. He warns them that he’s going to steal from the exhibit and offers to forego the theft if Ian hands over all his assets to charity. Apparently Ian is such a hard-ass he has a policy that automatically denied insurance claims and that’s why Nate’s son died.

It becomes pretty clear very quickly that the gang is not working together. And their sudden reactions to seeing each other almost gets them caught. But Nate pulls up with a car to speed them away to safety; a huge foreclosed mansion. The team is still pissed at each other, specifically Sophie for getting them into this mess but Nate lures them into the con. They’re going to stealing the two Davids back and screw over Sterling in the process. But they’ve made it that much harder because Nate told them they were coming. Good job, Nate.

They are going to need an airtight plan though because Sterling has upped security immensely. Parker makes the suggestion that they get Maggie to help since she’s already on the inside. Eliot calls as Dr. Sinclair and she agrees to coffee. She starts really bad mouthing Nate while he and the rest of the crew are observing in the van. She’s not a stupid woman though. She notes that she gave the button camera Eliot is wearing to Nate three years ago for Christmas and she busts in on the van action. She’s kind of awesome and I wish she was around more. She and Nate have a heart to heart back at the temporary HQ and he explains that Ian denied the coverage for the experimental treatment for their son. We see a little more of the flashback this time where Nate busts into the hospital room and cradles his son’s lifeless body while Maggie watches from the doorway. But now, Maggie is on the plan.

It all sounds super complicated as Nate explains about concrete and rebar. Maggie’s role is to find something big enough to get a person out. She identifies a sarcophagus and then says they need to convince the curator to move it to the restoration room 9below where the David exhibit is). So Sophie and Parker go undercover at the museum. Parker spikes the curator’s allergy meds with some really trippy psychotropic drugs and Sophie strings him along with a mummy’s curse. Sterling spots Parker and he has security follow Maggie after a hand off but they don’t see Sophie. A little tech magic from Hardison convinces the curator to put the piece down in the restoration room. The plan seems to be slowly falling into place. Back at HQ, Eliot and Sophie have a much needed chat. She doesn’t really apologize until the other two show up and complain that she didn’t apologize to them either. So they’re all good once she does, even though Sophie is a little confused.

And now it’s time for the plan to unfold. Sterling has distributed all of the team’s photos to his security staff and running through which countries they’re wanted in so he can get the biggest profit for turning them in. He’s an interesting character but such an asshole sometimes. Little does he know but the team is already inside the museum and working their magic. Sterling pulls the curator into the security office to ask about his meeting with Maggie. They head down to the restoration room and Sterling thinks he’s figured out that they’ll drill into the base of the display case with the statues and that someone is hiding in the sarcophagus. To be fair, I kind of thought that might have been the plan so bravo writers for pulling one over on me. It turns out they just needed the actual mummy inside to turn to dust and trigger the sensors upstairs that fill the display case with gas. The crowd panics when the curator mentions something about a chemical attack and they start stampeding out of the museum. Things then get weirder when Sterling sees all the guests holding statues. They corral the masses outside and Hardison locks down the doors. Sterling had men tailing Nate when he showed up and he gets into the gallery via the roof. All of Sterling’s security measures kick in, sealing them inside the room. It’s time to go to work now.

Sterling and Ian get back into the museum and they are quite pleased that they’re going to get all the crew. But Nate’s the only one in there. He gets to gloat about how he was the bait, no the master mind this time and all the paintings that his old company and Ian insured have gone missing. Ian’s on the hook for $150 million. He doesn’t take it well. In fact, he grabs a guard’s gun and threatens to shoot Nate. Nate isn’t too bothered by this. He has his anger about his son to fuel him. He also instructs Sterling to get Ian out of the company and they’ll be even and maybe Sterling won’t lose his job. Sterling takes it and Maggie even gets her lumps when she gets to deck Ian in the face. The crew returns all of the art and Maggie parts ways with Nate, saying she likes this version more than the old one. It looks like the crew has had their run. They’re all going to find new paths on their own. I have to say, I really like the way the creative team has established certain emotions with visuals. The roundie-round shot circling them is a great way to do it and show everyone. And we pull up to get a bird’s eye view as they all start to walk away. They all pause and then we cut to black. I really enjoyed the creativeness of this storyline and how it played out. And I liked the call backs to the pilot. The writers are very cognizant of things like that. They know their fans are smart and like a challenge. Overall, I had a blast getting to know these characters again and I hope you had some fun with this little con and heist show.

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