TV-Reviewed

Having TNT in HD this year makes Leverage all the more entertaining. I hated watching this show in 480i last season and the powers that be didn’t make it any better in the off-season. Leverage only got a DVD release… where is the Blu-ray? That just isn’t right.

Leverage is a unique show, but it unique enough to go on forever. It’s going to get repetitive and it has to some extent already, but for this week’s episode, the problem wasn’t repetition, it was just a dumb plot hole introduced by questionable writing.

Christian Kane as Eliot

The crew’s latest job had them trying to settle a score with a boxing promoter. He told one of his best fighters to take a dive and when he refused, the fighter wound up in a coma when the promoter poisoned the fighter’s water bottle just before the fight.

All eyes were on Eliot (Christian Kane) in this episode, as none of the other people are fighters. Still, Eliot wasn’t about to pull this off on his own. As usual, it was a whole crew operation. Everyone chipped in, although I was surprised by the fact that Parker was little more than a background player in much of this episode. She could have been replaced by an extra.

Anyway, after setting the trap to screw over the promoter, one of his trusted men found out that Eliot and Nate weren’t who they claimed to be. They were just con men. This doesn’t happen very often. Suddenly the con men were found out and they had to figure a way to deal with the promoter and make sure the comatose fighter doesn’t get killed.

The end result wasn’t as impressive as I was hoping. Don’t get me wrong; this was a good episode, but it had a big flaw in it. When it was revealed that Eliot wasn’t a known fighter, how were we supposed to believe that the promoter was going to be able to bet a lot of money against him and expect to win? No one’s going to bet a lot of money on a fight like this. The whole thing felt unbelievably contrived.

Rating: 7.4