Leverage-"The Long Way Down Job"

Nate and Elliot go to a cold place on "Leverage"
Credit: TNT

My review of the season premiere of Leverage is after the jump.

Leverage is one of those shows that I have been trying to watch but a year ago I didn't think that I could jump into any show, even a procedural like this show. At this point, I have seen through the halfway point of Season 2. So it was a little weird to tune into the season four premiere and find that there was a good amount of story that I missed. Nate and Sophie slept together! Something happened between Parker and Hardison! These are plot points that I have been hoping for in my rewatch and I'm glad that these are occurring eventually. 

Now that I'm done with my shipper celebration, this premiere was quite good. I could tell that they spent good money to add some very cool visual shots. I imagine that this will look freaking amazing in HD. But visuals aren't always enough to make me enjoy an episode of television. This episode also had an interesting plotline. Sure it was as self-contained as all of the other episodes on this show, but it was very entertaining. I really love this group of characters and the way they interact and this episode was a great showcase for that.

The main plot this week involved trying to find the body of a mountain climber and stopping the organization that killed him because of the secrets that he learned. I found this plot to be very generic for Leverage, which wasn't a problem. The show has learned what it does well and at this point it could probably put an interesting con together in its sleep. In the premiere it managed to take the con to a place that the show has never gone (or at least, not that I've seen). The team is forced to go to a mountain. This allows the show to have some insanely slick visuals. Like I said earlier, this episode will look great in HD.

But the case of the week is never what makes this show work for me. What separates it from all of the other procedurals on TNT is the very strong team dynamic and the interaction between the characters (and cast members). This is a group of people who know how to work together and can play elaborate cons. Honestly, the reason why I watch the show is because I want to see what crazy interactions the team will have and this episode was full of them. All of the Nate and Sophie interactions were fantastic, the interactions between Eliot and everyone else on the team never fail to make me laugh, Hardison's concern for the team when they left contact was fantastic, and Parker remains my favorite character on the show due to the writer's sly sense of humor with her character. All of these little moments came together for me to help make this a fantastic episode.

Some other thoughts:

• I have to give a round of applause to Beth Reisgraf. Her mini-monologue in the cave was fantastic. It's rare that we get to see her show actual emotion, so I have to applaud her when she does.
• I was pleasantly surprised that they gave development to the victim in this one. They usually don't evolve much during the episode, but I actually cared about what happened to this one.
• Who's bugging the room of the Leverage team? That should be a very interesting mystery for the show to solve over the course of the season.
• This is one of the many shows that are airing this summer that I will be watching, but I won't be writing about it unless they do something that gives me a reason to write about it.

Overall, this was a very strong season premiere for the show. The visuals were great and the character material was strong as well. It set up what should be a very good season for the show.

What did everyone else think?