Leverage

[Carol the Dabbler]

I'm just going to keep starting threads on here about shows no one else watches.  

 

OK, now you've done it inspired me!

 

Alex and I are really enjoying the Showtime series Leverage, which I've mentioned here and there on the forum before, for example:

 

Alex and I have recently gotten hooked on Leverage (2008 - 2012, now being re-broadcast on ION Television stations) -- which is about a team of con artists who help people who've been cheated, by bilking the bilker....  Yeah, you've seen it done before.  But it's delightfully done here....

 

Alex and I have been watching Leverage on DVD.  Unbelievably, there is an audio commentary for every single episode..., so we've learned a lot about how the show was written.  I really like their conscious attention to detail....

That attention to detail covers just about all aspects of the production, including believable villains, internally-consistent plots, great dialog, cool sets, interesting cinematography, and intriguing characters played by amazing actors.  There are five main characters, and I'm really invested in four of them (whereas it's unusual for me to get really into more than one character per show).  There's a nice balance of drama and humor.

 

So -- anybody else seen it?

 

[T.o.b.y]

My husband loves it. I've seen about three episodes and strangely, I can't remember much about them.

 

Which are the characters you're emotionally invested in?

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Heard of it but have not watched it yet.

[Arcadia]

No premium channels... oh wait, Ion? I get Ion.... will check it out.

 

I've gotten hooked on NCIS (the original) in spite of the fact that a couple of the characters make me crazy (and not in the good way). Maybe it's just Mark Harmon....

[Carol the Dabbler]

No premium channels... oh wait, Ion? I get Ion.... will check it out.

 

Right -- Ion Television is not a premium channel, or even a cable/satellite channel.  It's a small network (formerly known as Pax TV) affiliated with local broadcast channels (which of course also show up on cable and satellite services).  To find your local Ion channel, you can either click on this link and then click on "Channel Finder" at the upper right -- or (which I find easier) just Google "Ion Television" and the name of your city, or a nearby city.

[Arcadia]

Oh, I know which channel it is .... it's the one that never seems to broadcast anything except Criminal Minds. :p

[Carol the Dabbler]

Which are the characters you're emotionally invested in?

 

To put it succinctly, everyone except Sophie (or whatever her name "really" is).  I read an interview with Gina Bellman (the actress who plays her) in which she said she can't understand happy people -- basically, how can anyone be happy in a world where terrible things happen?  If Sophie also subscribes to that philosophy, that could explain why I don't "get" her.

 

I've seen Timothy Hutton in at least four things now, and he's very good in all of them -- the television movie Friendly Fire (as the young son), the movie Ordinary People (again as the young son, for which he won an Oscar at age 19), the Nero Wolfe television series (where he played Wolfe's assistant, Archie Goodwin, my favorite character in the books), and now Leverage, where he plays Nate Ford, the mastermind.  The character has a lot of layers.  One of the show's creators is all too fond of saying "Nate Ford is not a good man," but I beg to differ.  He may not be a very nice man at times, but his heart's clearly in the right place.  (I will admit that he's not a conventionally good man!)

 

As far as I'm aware, I've never seen any of the other actors in anything else, but I love Christian Kane as Eliot Spencer, who is literally the team's "hit" man (with a heart) -- his fight scenes are amazing (I don't usually like fight scenes, but his tend to come across as funny).  I also love Aldis Hodge as Alec Hardison, the team's techno-geek and hacker, who is prone to quoting Star Trek.  (Hardison and Eliot are buddies, but have the most hilarious disagreements.)  And of course I love Beth Riesgraf as Parker, the team's safecracker and second-story woman.  She's kind of like Sherlock, in that she's never learned normal human responses, but now she's starting to try, with sometimes-awkward results.

 

Oh, I know which channel it is .... it's the one that never seems to broadcast anything except Criminal Minds. :P

 

... except when they're broadcasting Leverage?

[T.o.b.y]

 

And of course I love Beth Riesgraf as Parker, the team's safecracker and second-story woman.  She's kind of like Sherlock, in that she's never learned normal human responses, but now she's starting to try, with sometimes-awkward results.

 

:lol: I think my husband is in love with Parker. I'd be jealous, but then I think nahhh... I'll just go fawn over Sherlock! :P

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Parker is cool!  I have no idea how I'd get along with her, but I love watching her deal with the situations the team finds itself in, especially the delight she takes in twenty-story bungee jumps and other such "fun."

 

I've seen about three episodes and strangely, I can't remember much about them.

 

When you say "them," is that the episodes or the characters?  I don't tend to remember much about the plots until I've seen an episode at least twice, preferably more.  That's just me -- I'm the same way with Sherlock, and was the same way with Star Trek.

 

As for the Leverage characters, it probably took more than three episodes for them to start growing on me.  Just a handful of episodes isn't enough to let you see the patterns in their behavior, so you don't realize what their personality quirks are, and you don't know when someone is acting odd (for them), nor can you fully appreciate certain parts of the inherent humor.

 

Many (maybe all) episodes are on YouTube.  I would advise starting with the first one (if you can find it, and if it's not blocked in your country) and going in chronological order from there.  Each "job" is fairly standalone, but the characters do have story arcs.  (That said, I first watched many of the episodes in whatever random order Ion was showing them in, and enjoyed them enough to buy the DVD.)

 

[Arcadia]

Oh, I know which channel it is .... it's the one that never seems to broadcast anything except Criminal Minds. :P

 

... except when they're broadcasting Leverage?

 

Nope, today it was back to back Ghost Whisperer. And I wonder why I never think to check that channel....

[Carol the Dabbler]

We've worked our way up to the fifth (and final) season now.  The episode we watched tonight had a scene where Hardison (the team's techo-geek hacker) is figuring out a complex system.  The audio commentary mentions that they got the idea of showing his thought process on-screen from watching Sherlock (though I will point out that they put their own spin on it by visualizing it as a flow chart, a nice nerdy touch).

 

There's also a scene with

 

a bomb in a subway car

 

but since the Leverage episode originally aired in 2012, if any borrowing was done, Sherlock got it from Leverage this time.

 

P.S.:  The Ion Television website says that Leverage is available for free online, on Hulu.  You can even click through to a specific episode, which makes it easy to watch them in order, starting with Episode 1, "The Nigerian Job," which introduces the characters to us and to each other (and which for some reason is listed at the bottom).