I want to take a brief moment to introduce myself. Since the airing of the first “Leverage” episode, I’ve loved the show for its complex characters, caper-style plots, and its heart.
Beginning with the Season 3 premiere, I’ll post a recap/review of each episode. I welcome comments. It will be nice to discuss one of my favorite shows with others who love “Leverage.”
Although it’s old news now, as a small taste of things to come, I’ve written a short recap of the last episode of Season 2, “The Maltese Falcon Job.”
YOU GOTTA LOVE THE CLASSICS
First off, you gotta love that title. The Oscar-nominated 1941 version of “The Maltese Falcon” is one of my favorite Bogart movies.
Throughout S2, we’ve seen Nate begin his spiral out of control. His actions (an alcoholic returning to drink and taking cases that put his team at risk) had alarmed the team: deliciously crazy Parker, macho man Eliot, tech wizard Hardison and the long-legged former 7-of-9, Tara Cole.
In this episode, Nate once again accesses his team’s leverage to help someone—a policeman who got in the way of Albanian gunrunner Tony Kadjic’s operation.
WHERE DO I GET ONE OF THOSE?
In a stolen FBI car, the team escapes a warehouse surrounded by FBI agents and lands at The Governor Hotel in Boston where Nate hatches a plan to kidnap hotel guest and FBI snitch Mayor Culpepper, played by the incomparably neurotic and funny Richard Kind.
Special agent Amy Nevins isn’t interested in Culpepper’s “business partner” Kadjic but instead employs Culpepperr to get the goods on other ethically challenged mayors and congressional members.
He does such a good job for the Bureau that she looks the other way when Kadjic (with Culpepper’s help) imports guns on ship, Il Maltese Falcone, from third-world countries to resell on the black market.
WEE, WEE MONSIEUR
After Parker, dressed as a French maid to the delight of the FBI agents guarding Culpepper’s door, gives the mayor knock-out drops disguised as mini-bar Vodka, the team accesses the room from the adjoining suite and kidnaps him.
When Nate’s nemesis, Interpol’s Jim Sterling, goes into the mayor’s hotel room, he finds Culpepper gone. The manner in which he informs the FBI guards of the missing mayor is priceless and one of the reasons I love this show. Sterling thanks Nate for “making it interesting.”
Culpepper tells Nate that Kadjic suggested giving Nate to the FBI to take the heat off. That’s when Nate decides that in order to get Kadjic, he’ll have to sell himself as Kadjic’s new business partner. The team knows Nate’s plan has little chance to succeed, but they stick by him anyway. All except Tara. She makes a phone call to a German associate to set up a meet with Kadjic.
Nate goes back to his apartment to retrieve a framed drawing his son made, an ill advised but apparently predictable move. Sterling is waiting. The conversation between these two former colleagues is very telling of their personal dynamic.
Sterling believes he knows who Nate really is—a Robin Hood trying to right wrongs in the world, someone with good intentions who is not a thief like the others on the team. But Nate doesn’t even know who he is. Has he gone too far in helping others so that he can live with the loss of his son? Unfortunately his beloved Sophie isn’t there as his moral compass.
THIEVES LIKE US
Sterling offers Nate a deal (along with a flask of booze). He’ll wipe Nate’s record in exchange for Kadjic. The catch? The team will go down. Sterling’s crusading attitude is simple: “They deserve to go down. They’re criminals, Nate, thieves. You’re not a thief. This is your second chance.”
Part of me wants to believe that Sterling has convinced himself that he has the moral high ground, but I just don’t buy it. I think he’s setting Nate up to take the fall right along with the team. He abhors what Nate has become—something they both fought against together before Nate’s world collapsed after the death of his son.
A desperate Nate calls Sophie and tells her how much he loves and needs her, but the crackly, on-and-off connection is a metaphor for their constant back-and-forth romance.
Nate gathers the gang and tells them he has a solution that will “take care of everybody.”
Parker and Tara get into the Boston FBI office. After connecting Hardison to the FBI database, Tara, dressed as an agent, drops off an incendiary device disguised as evidence into the Kadjic file.
Hardison forces the mayor to call Kadjic and pretend he’s being tortured and killed. It works. Nate shows up to offer himself as Kadjic’s new partner.
DON’T MESS WITH PARKER
Hardison hacks into the ship’s computer system and is stunned to see Tara meeting earlier in the day with Kadjic. He runs from the room to get word to Parker about Tara. In his haste, he leaves behind Culpepper’s cell phone. Culpepper dials Kadjic and warns him.
Parker gets Hardison’s message and is ready to throw Tara from the roof because of the betrayal. But Tara confesses that Sophie asked her to set up a meeting as a buyer of Kadjic’s guns.
Kadjic is ready to shoot Nate when Sophie arrives and urges him to “wait until me and the other buyers are off the ship” before he kills Nate. Kadjic locks Nate up after he discovers that the engines are offline.
THIRTEEN, TWELVE, ELEVEN…
Meanwhile, Eliot, who had been counting armed goons throughout the ship, begins to dispatch them one by one, starting with lucky 13 and ending with zero as he, Hardison and Sophie free Nate. Together, they lock Mayor Culpepper and Kadjic in the wheelhouse, but not before Kadjic squeezes off a few rounds in Nate’s direction.
As sirens blare in the background, Tara takes her leave and Sophie signals a helicopter to land on the ship. Sterling emerges onto the deck and claps. The FBI moves in.
But Nate isn’t planning to go with them. To the horror of his team and I think even to Sterling, he handcuffs himself to the railing. The blood on his hand reveals that one of Kadjic’s bullets found its mark in Nate’s side.
Nate plays his final card as he tells Sterling there was a fire in the FBI evidence room. All the evidence on Kadjic is gone and the computer servers have been wiped. Nate tell him, “You arrest me and only me.” If Sterling agrees, Nate will provide all the evidence needed for a conviction. “If you touch one of them, the deal’s off.”
EVEN THE BEST FAMILIES FIGHT
Nate tells his team that they have become his family, his only family, and orders them onto the chopper. He kisses Sophie, who berated him for telling her to come when he knew all along they wouldn’t be together. She slaps him and boards the helicopter.
Eliot takes a verbal parting shot at Sterling to “watch his back” as Nate slumps down onto the deck. Sterling calls for an ambulance. An FBI agent asks Sterling, “Who is this guy?” Sterling replies that he doesn’t know, a contradiction from earlier when he thought he had Nate figured out. Nate replies, “My name is Nathan Ford. I am a thief,” as the helicopter ascends and we see a bird’s eye view of the ship.
What Nate doesn’t realize in this parting scene is that not only has he adopted his team of thieves as his surrogate children, but they in turn have embraced him as their father figure.
I can’t wait until the S3.1 episode. No matter how angry they are at Nate, the team won’t rest until he’s freed. Count on it.
Thanks for reading. I hope to hear from you.
