The Leverage team wasn’t about to let that happen. Nate tried to get Sophie to come back, but she wouldn’t. She gave no indication as to when she would or even IF she would. This is getting frustrating, let me tell you.

Beth Riesgraf; Timothy Hutton

As for the job, Nate and his team were in an unusual spot when Tara insisted in being with them, at every move as they got to the bottom of the will and figured out how they would keep the money out of the lawyer’s pockets.

It was a fascinating ride with twists and turns throughout. The revelation that the woman heading up the charity was the lost heir was quite a surprise. I didn’t pay any attention to the clue early on as to the fact that she was also color blind.

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The twists continued right to the end when Tara revealed that she wasn’t actually a lawyer, but was a friend of Sophie’s. She was one heck of a grifter in all of this. She played everyone like a fiddle. I don’t know if Jeri Ryan will be back in this role, but if she does, I hope she wears a little less eye shadow. She looked terrific in most of the scenes, but it looked like she had an entire compact worth of eye shadow on in that final scene. She is a sexy woman; she doesn’t need all that makeup if you ask me.

I’m still frustrated with the absence of Sophie. As I have mentioned several times before, I wish this story would run its course because I’m honestly tired of it. The real-life reason why the Sophie character has been taken out of commission is because the actress who plays her (Gina Bellman) is pregnant and they don’t need her to overdo it. I can understand that, but the writers did a poor job of explaining her absence.

Rating: 8.6

Sophie’s absence was felt throughout the episode. A piece of the Leverage puzzle was missing and the characters on the show had a tough time handling it. As they encountered problems they called her for advice.

Beth Riesgraf as Parker

Parker had a lot of work to do this time around. She was put in Sophie’s spot as the roper, who was responsible for getting the mark to come into the con. She had some nervous jitters, but she pulled it off. I enjoy watching Beth Riesgraf play the Parker character. She’s just adorable.

Hardison and Elliot bickered throughout the episode, but this isn’t new. At one point, Elliot was tired of Hardison and vowed to not help him if he got himself in over his head and did he ever?!

Hardison made the common mistake of overplaying his character. It backfired when there was a double cross with the crew responsible for stealing the diamonds and Hardison found himself trying to play master thief, something he definitely isn’t.

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As usual, everything went swimmingly. Everything came together and the bad guys got busted. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’d like to see the guys run into more obstacles, something so big they don’t resolve it in one episode, much like the end of the first season. That was done well.

I haven’t quite wrapped my head around why Sophie is away from her crew. It doesn’t seem right and I can’t imagine where the writers are going with this story, if anywhere at all. I hope this isn’t the huge letdown I fear it will turn out to be.

Rating: 7.8

The Leverage crew was contacted by an elderly couple trying to find an old painting that was stolen by the Nazis in WWII. The painting made it out of Europe, but sadly the rightful owner did not. Nate and company were asked to get it back, but this was not going to come to them easily.

Wil Wheaton

The problem was that they had competition. A team identical to their own was assembled by an expert grifter from Sophie’s past. They had worked together on several jobs. This doppleganger crew managed to out smart the Leverage crew and stole the painting before they could.

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When the job was a bust, the team came together and decided to steal a painting that they knew the other crew was going to nab. The competition between the two teams was exciting to witness unfold. It was intense, but wildly hilarious as well. I was left laughing at a number of little things that the characters were doing. Hardison and his hacker counterpart (played by Wheaton) were terrific, but I’d have to give a slight edge to Parker and her male doppleganger. It was all too cute.

I was pleasantly surprised by how well everything went in this episode. I had some doubts as to whether this was going to go smoothly and not feel forced together.

Rating: 9.5

“The Top Hat Job” was another decent episode which involved the same old tricks we’ve all come to know and love. The episode dealt with a big food company which was acting irresponsibly by not recalling a large batch of food which was contaminated. I honestly had a very difficult time buying the setup. What do you mean the company did some analysis and determined it was cheaper to pay off lawsuits than recall the food? Are you nuts? No modern company would do this so long as the person in charge isn’t a total moron. The math just wouldn’t add up. It’s NOT cheaper to deal with lawsuits and the fact that no one would buy your food after learning of the scandal.

Beth Riesgraf; Timothy Hutton

Despite the really poor writing pertaining to the story setup, I have to give everyone credit for another episode which contained stuff I didn’t follow. I was puzzled how Hardison was going to get out safe and sound, with data in tact. Not to spoil anything, they pulled out all the magic to pull that one off.

I have an issue with something Sophie pointed out when she said Nate could go nuts when he realizes he doesn’t have total control now that he’s stopped drinking. All of this is coming out of nowhere. It came across as though the writers just came up with an idea for Nate to totally lose it towards the end of the season so they’re planting the seed for the whole thing through Sophie. I didn’t care for it. I would rather have picked up on something Nate actually said or did and not through Sophie’s suggestion.

Rating: 6.3

It’s hard to compare Monica Hunter to any one person in real life because she’s really an exaggerated version of a number of people on cable news. The Leverage team decided to take Ms. Hunter down by feeding her a fake news story. Telling Monica that the government was building secret prisons for terrorists wasn’t very clever in my opinion.

Beth Riesgraf; Aldis Hodge; Beth Broderick

A serious journalist would have gone for that, but Monica is a sensationalist, interested in ratings, not Pulitzer prizes. So it came as no surprise when Monica turned down the story after some very shallow digging around.

Running the team was Sophie, not Nate. Sophie is coming out of that breakup was reaching for something to hold on to and control and in her mind, she needed to be able to control an operation. Having Sophie in charge is always risky. She’s smart, but let’s be honest… she’s no Nate, not that he’s perfect by any stretch.

When the first plan didn’t work, Sophie decided to alter the story that was initially pitched. The secret prisons were actually survival shelters. A nasty toxin had supposedly been leaked into the water supply.

It was a bit of a stretch, but it did the trick. It took a full team effort, but Monica went down in flames. It was uncomfortable to watch. It was probably because was hard to take seriously. That first glimpse of Hardison as the conspiracy nut stole the show. Nothing quite touched that shocking image.

Rating: 7.3

We never really get to see the Leverage characters out on their own. We only get to see them when they are with one another, doing a job. In a big change to the format, Sophie was shown with her boyfriend. While it’s sad that he broke up with her because he felt she wasn’t being entirely open and honest with him, this showing of Sophie out on her own gives me some hope that Dean Devlin and company will begin (at some point) to show these characters out on their own just a little more often.

Gina Bellman as Sophie

I didn’t find some of this plot to be all that original given the fact that we’re just ripping off Bernie Madoff wannabes nowadays. Just last week had an episode which was all too similar to this one.

What I did like about this episode was all of the personal business. I’m generally not a big fan of Sophie, but the writers actually gave her something to do and it allowed the character to shine brighter than the others. Sophie was utilized very well this week.

I was shocked, shocked I tell you when it was revealed that the FBI agents looking after the accused were from a previous episode of Leverage, making Hardison and Parker think on their feet a bit. It wasn’t a move I was expecting, so I have to give the writers some credit for that ingenious move.

Rating: 8.4

In fact, I would have to say that Leverage continues to impress me with the complexity of some of the cons. The crew is having to think on their feet a bit more this year as the situations they find themselves in are always changing on them. It makes for exciting stuff to watch.

Timothy Hutton, Beth Riesgraf and Gina Bellman

In “The Order 23 Job,” the Leverage team works on getting money from a Bernie Madoff-type of a scam artist. The group knew that the guy was likely holding on to some of the money that he claimed had vanished so they decided to con him into giving it up.

Their only way in was to prey on his weakness and that happened to be germs. He was a germophobe. He was terrified of germs and even carried around a little bottle of hand sanitizer to kill off any germs on his hands.

It took some maneauvering, but the team managed to use an empty floor of a hospital as their own hospital and keep this Madoff wannabe there. Thanks to Hardison, Nate, Sophie, and Parker ran a wicked scam on him to make him sick, all by affecting the way his brain worked. This manipulation was clever, if not downright cruel.

While all of this was going on, Hardison and Eliot were responsible for playing security guards. They had to deal with the Marshals who were supposed to be looking over Nate’s new patient.

Eliot, however, got a little distracted in a touching side story. Eliot kind of took in a young boy who was being abused by his father… not sexually, thankfully, but he was being beaten. The father blamed it on his son simply being accident prone, but that wasn’t going to cut it with Eliot. I felt sorry for the boy because he couldn’t go to the police since his father was friends with many of them and he felt they wouldn’t have done anything about it. It’s scary to think that, frankly. Eliot ended up having the last laugh when he had a U.S. Marshal deal with the situation.

I frankly liked Eliot’s side story more than the primary plot of the episode. It really pulled at your heart. With so much going on in this episode, Nate was forced (once again!) to take everyone aside and tell them all about the tricks, cons, etc that went down. The first season’s reveals were much slicker in my opinion.

Rating: 7.2

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

Timothy Hutton as Nate Ford

Thankfully, the writers took the drinking out of the equation for season two and Nate has kicked the bottle and is now living above a bar, interestingly enough. In the season premiere, Nate finds himself helping out a teenage girl and her father in a questionable car accident. Was it just an accident or was there something out of place with it? The daughter told Nate that something was wrong with the car and that the accident wasn’t her father’s fault.

While looking into this, Nate checked out a singing performance by Sophie and naturally, all of the team was there. It wasn’t long after their meeting that the entire team was back together again, trying to take the predatory wolves, as it were, out of this world.

The team found that the Irish mob was involved in the car “accident.” The man who was nearly killed was digging a little too far with regards to tax records and realized that something was fishy with the front companies that were set up some time ago.

I would like to say that I enjoyed this season opener, but the way everything went down wasn’t very impressive. It really felt like everyone had been on vacation and everyone was a little rusty. It lacked a certain crispness that I’m sure will come in due time. Still, it’s nice to see the gang is back. The humor is welcome this time of year. There isn’t much of anything funny on television right now. PSYCH, where are you?!

Rating: 7

It didn’t take long for them to come back together. They didn’t have any contact with one another after being found out, yet they all managed to show up at Blackpoole’s gallery to scope it out. Their presence was detected, forcing them all to flee, but not before Nate came right to Sterling and Blackpoole and told them point-blank that he’d rob the gallery on opening night. Nice, Nate.

Timothy Hutton as Nate Ford and Kari Matchett as Maggie

One of the scenes I was looking forward to most was the scene between Nate and Maggie. Maggie was still unaware that Blackpoole denied the insurance claim which likely would have helped Sam, Maggie and Nate’s only child. She was horrified when she learned the truth.

In order to get into the gallery, the group had to employ quite a few tricks, some of which I saw coming and others I didn’t. One of those was hiding BEHIND the Egyptian scarcophagus. That was quite clever.

Mark Sheppard as Sterling

Although it’s quite easy to hate Nate’s former co-worker Sterling, I quite like him as a villain. I really enjoy intelligent villains and Sterling gave Nate a run for his money this season. I just hope it isn’t over for him. He’s too good to write him out of the show.

Leverage is on a very short list of clever shows that have appeared in recent memory. It’s something I would easily recommend to people. I suspect TNT will be re-airing this series quite a bit considering how popular it was for the network. And with season two in production, we can expect to see more of Leverage later this summer.

Rating: 8.5