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Nathan Ford, Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, Parker, Sophie Devereaux, Harry Wilson & Breanna Casey (Leverage)

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Chris Downey and John Rogers

“Get ready to get even”
“Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys.”
“The rich and powerful take what they want — we steal it back for you.”
— assorted promo taglines

Mission Impossible goes downscale? Vengeance Unlimited plays nice? Search for hire?

However you want to spin it, there’s nothing terribly original in the TNT show, Leverage (2008-12). Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing…

Fallen Boston insurance investigator NATHAN FORD (Timothy Hutton) is a struggling alcoholic whose son died because his own employers wouldn’t cough up for his son’s treatment, and has a new-found hard-on for fiscal injustice and corporate greed. He sets up a high-tech gang of scam artists and “former” criminals who pool their talents to right — usually at the expense of huge corporations, insurance companies, politicians, gangsters and other scumbags, and return the money (or liberty or reputation) to its rightful owners — usually honest, hard-working people. Think of it as a grass-roots bailout system; a case-by-case economic stimulus plan.

And, of course, they work pro bono, skimming just a little off there top for “expenses.”

Suffice it to say that it hits a certain vibe.

But it’s oh-so-TV-ish. For one thing, did the whole cast of purportedly seasoned criminals — except for a slightly weathered Hutton — have to be so predictably young and so predictably good-looking?

Come on! A super-smart black guy, a hot-tempered jock, and a cute babe with issues? That’s the team? Was the show written, or photocopied?

Except…

Except…

Except…

Despite the show’s tendency to favour glib over sharp, to smother things in cuteness and too much reliance on formula schtick, implausible schemes and sometimes cartoonish characters, there’s a dark heart underneath it all and an occasional burst of tongue-in-cheek wit. And any show that so routinely makes a point of sticking it to The Man is okay by me.

ELIOT SPENCER (Christian Kane) is the muscle and designated hunk, a fearless and occasionally explosively violent thug with a soft spot for kids, dogs and hurt women. In some promos, he’s referred to as “The Hitter.”

ALEC HARDISON (Aldis Hodge) is the geeky-cool, quietly study super-smart Black tech whiz. He’s “The Hacker.”

PARKER (Beth Riesgraf) is the designated young, blonde babe — a cold, controlled bank robber/pickpocket/safecracker  and second-story man (well, woman). But she’s comes off not so much as a hard-boiled professional as a developmentally challenged problem child. She’s “The Thief.”

Rounding out the team is SOPHIE DEVEREAUX (Gina Bellman), a con artist and reluctantly aging actress (something  age-appropriate for the dads?) who has an on-again/off-again thing with Nathan. She’s “The Grifter.” The hook here is that Sophie is the only here who’s worked scams before — as opposed to being a hacker, a thief, a thug or an insurance investigator.

And Nathan, of course, is “The Brains.”

It’s cool that the team is not one smooth, frictionless ensemble, and that they all have their little quirks — and a healthy distrust of each other. But did so many of the conflicts have to be ripped off directly from old Archie comics? At times Nathan seems less like the team’s leader and simply their homeroom teacher. Or maybe their court-appointed guardian.

Still, let’s give credit where credit’s due. The actual scams, while not up to the level of, say, The Rockford Files, are often quite clever, and the suspense deftly handled.

And someone somewhere involved in the production of the show seems to really know their crime fiction. In one episode, two members of the team go into an office claiming to be detectives. Their names? Marlowe and Archer. In another, Hardison and Parker are impersonating FBI agents and introduce themselves as Agents Elmore and Leonard.

But it’s the call-outs to the late, great Donald Westlake/Richard Stark that really stand out.

One episode, “The Bank Shot Caper,” actually begins with the scam already over, and the gang on their way out of a bank with a briefcase full of loot when — in a moment straight outta a Dortmunder caper, the bank is robbed by another gang. The plot twists and turns and winds its way to a clever, sly ending — every move and every wink and nudge is like something right out of one of Westlake’s comic capers, making it easily one of the best episodes of the show to air so far.

But it’s not mere coincidence of plot that had me thinking about Westlake — the episode’s title is as obvious a wink to Westlake’s 1972 Dortmunder novel, Bank Shot, as you can get. In fact, the show’s whole episode-naming convention, where every episode is “The Such-and-Such Job,” fairly smacks of Westlake.

And just in case anyone missed the point, the head of the other gang is named Stark — the name, of course, under which Westlake wrote about his unflappable professional thief, Parker.

But the most obvious, head-smacking, how could you miss it? homage is in the name of the all-business, no-nonsense (ie: mostly humorless) member of the team; the unflappable professional thief whose professional expertise is called upon so heavily in almost every episode?

Parker.

All in all, Leverage may not be essential viewing, but it’s certainly a clever and fun enough way to kill an hour. The scams are sharp enough, and there are enough zigs and zags (and a seemingly infinite number of corresponding counter-zigs and zags) to keep things hopping.

Apparently enough people agreed with me that the show was revived in 2021 as Leverage: Redemption, with most of the main cast returning. Nathan, though, is gone, survived by his widow, Sophie. He’s replaced in the team by HARRY WILSON, an former corporate lawyer based in New Orleans who has had an abrupt change of heart, and feels to need to set things right by going after the folks he used to defend in court. Meanwhile, tech whiz Hardison was showing up less and less, eventually replaced by BREANNA CASEY, a young hacking prodigy who grew up with the same foster mother as Hardison (he thinks of her as his kid sister and occasionally pops up to see how she’s doing). Sophie is now the clear leader of the team, stepping easily into Nathan’s shoes, but Harry turns out to be a valuable asset to the team, even scoring them a dilapidated bar in the Big Easy to serve as their Bat Cave-like headquarters.

The show premiered on Freevee, Amazon’s freebie station, and was ran for two seasons.

I’ve watched a few of the new ones, and while the budget seems a little lower, and the dialogue and outlandish scams a little less zippy, the show’s still fun. The quirks of the main characters seem to have all been turned up a notch, but with a show this deliberately broad, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith, with thanks to Mark and Stephen and all the others for spotting some of the shout-outs I missed.

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