u/screen_stack

This is a rare episode in that it's both (in my mind anyways) Parker-centric AND Sophie-centric to a degree, which is nice.

It's Parker-centric for the obvious reasons: she was a car thief from age 12 and so the episode relies extremely heavily on her expertise and knowledge, so that's sensible. But beyond that, we see Parker go all in on something she's only really recently been doing.

Take a chance on someone else. Her reasons for doing so are the purest of all motives. She sees herself in Shorty, and wants to do whatever she can do spare a young woman a life in an area of crime that would probably eat someone like her alive. It's a telling decision. Parker knows enough to recognize that Shorty isn't 'like Parker', and that's a big deal in car thieving rings.

Parker's play goes the way it goes, which queues us up for more Leverage scrambling, but I'm absolutely not mad about the way things shook out. Parker got her second chance, and after a lifetime of crime a lot worse than anything Shorty could've possibly done, so why shouldn't she give someone else the same courtesy?

After all. If the people in Leverage can change, why can't Shorty?

It's also a Sophie-centric episode because we get to see her running a much longer character than usual. The clip I included, where she sells the car to (I think) Carl, is just the tip of the iceberg. She plays that man like a fiddle because of course she does, but that's the tip of the iceberg. She spends a lot of time with Penzer as well, working him hard to get the con going the right direction.

I know Bill Engvall from his stand-up comedy days, and I gotta say, he's funny as hell. He's not as big as some of the other stars they've had so far this season, but he does a great job playing a terrible scumbag.

The final and best thing about this episode (beyond Shorty getting her second chance, that is) is the con itself. I've mentioned in each of the last two, maybe three episodes that the cons themselves were only mediocre, held together with some truly awesome character building and genuine skill.

The con they run here in The Boost Job is absolute S-Tier. Parker has a chance (as lame as it sounds) to pay it forward to someone who deserves a better life than the one she'd been given and we get firmly reminded why it is that only Sophie can really do Sophie shit.

Everyone got to play a committed part in bringing down Penzer, and that's always a good time from where I sit! As this was such a great episode, enjoy not one but 2 clips stitched together! Sophie selling a car and Parker driving like a bat out of hell!

I lost my review for this one and I'm too upset to rewrite it. This was a good episode.

One of the many good things about Charlie's Angels 2000 is that it never takes itself too seriously.

That's part of it's absolute charm. Another part of it's charm is something that the 2019 rebrand failed to understand: there's nothing wrong at all with the weaponization of the Angels' sexuality. It's part of who they are. They're extremely capable women in their own right, but they also happen to be extremely beautiful, and while they're pretty close to having superpowers, that's their real superpower.

The men in this movie (with the exception of Bosley) consistently underestimate the Angels, giving the Angels the ability to flaunt their beauty, and in such a way that even the silliest of gambits is overlooked. This is absolutely highlighted during the Swedish Singalong outside that one guy's house. When three beautiful woman and a tube playing weirdo show up at your front door and want to sing at you while slapping each other's butts, that's what's going to happen.

Beyond the titillation and lasciviousness and close to fourth-wall-breaking fun, the action and the spy-work is an awful lot of fun, because that's what this movie wanted to be. Fun. I remember watching this one in theaters, and while everyone and their talking cat figured out who the bad guys were fairly early on, it didn't detract from the fun.

McG made a movie that said 'what if everyone watching really knows what's going on, what if there's eye candy, what if The Angels kick ass, suffer from their mistakes the tiniest bit and we give Sam his own dance off and what if everything's just the right amount of over the top?'.

McG understands how to make movies like this. The sequel isn't as great, but that's okay, because Charlie's Angel's 2000 is as close to a perfect action adventure comedy.

I was really on the fence about this episode and for over half an hour.

We started out pretty strong with what Hal was doing, and what John was doing. I found John's encounter particularly interesting, which is why I clipped that instead of any of the other things that I deemed clipworthy. What other moments lost out to a scene where we see that at least one Guardian is a complete and total manipulative asshole?

Charcoal Weenie, Put Your Dick Away Dad and The Cow Room. They lost to Guardians Seem Like Assholes because it seems to me that Guardians shouldn't be assholes. I freely confess that this might be my DC Comic ignorance in full effect, but I thought the Guardians were the good guys. I personally understand that sometimes in order to the good, you have to play along the edges of bad, but that scene is some of the sheerest, most unadulterated manipulative bullshit I think I've ever seen.

I'm glad that John didn't fully fall for it, but I can't say anymore than that because I'm really trying very hard not to start barfing actual spoilers all over the place, especially in a show that literally just finished it's run not too long ago.

The reasons why I changed my feelings about this episode basically started the moment the moment Charcoal Weenie (IYKYK) started off because it was so weird that Hal had to doublecheck with John to make sure that was was going on was weird.

Yes. Yes it was. The rest of the episode finally starts doing what it should've maybe started doing a little bit earlier on in the game: getting down to the actuals of why they're in that small-ass town. Especially since this was the middle episode. I ain't mad about it too much, but the pacing was the tiniest bit off.

The latter half of this ep did save itself from getting what I deem a mediocre rating, which would be a 7.5. When things start escalating, they do so at a nice, steady clip right up until the end.

And that's all I can really say. Outside the two interesting scenes at the beginning, we kind of muddle along until we get closer to the end of the runtime, then it's off to the races, which was nice. Like I said at the top of the review, I chose this clip because it's extremely well done by showing the moral complexities of The Guardians themselves.

Beyond the towering awesomeness that is Clancy Brown as Hugh Whitman (which I will DEFINITELY get to in a second), this is a great episode for a bunch of reasons.

First, we get a micro-buddy-escape movie starring Hardison and Eliot. The thing I appreciate most about this team up (and kind of despair over, if I'm being honest) is that we get to see Eliot functioning in his true capacity: as the man who knows how to survive and has the absolute tools to do it. I despair because Hardison's dismissal of Eliot's factual, lived experience of knowing where he is at all time is a little out of place in season 3.

By now our Age of the Geek Baby knows what Eliot can do. The brotherly ripping and teasing is one thing, and pretty sure we all love it, but when you are in the middle of the forest being hunted by 'trained' militiamen, handcuffed to Eliot goddamn Spencer, you LISTEN to the man's thoughts on the matter of survival. You just do. Everyone takes Hardison's skills with the computer most seriously (unless they're teasing him), so Hardison should do the same.

The clip I included was an easy choice. It shows the moment Hardison stops playing around. I accept that our cityboy was trapped in an extremely bad situation and spiraled. I live damn near in the country these days myself and if I have to go weed the back lot where the weeds grow really thick, I have myself a really good hissy fit as well. In his situation I would've for sure done the same level of bitching and complaining.

And now on to the legend that is Clancy Brown. He IS a legend. I first saw him as The Kurgan in Highlander, and I fell immediately in love with him, and I can't think of a single role that I've felt 'meh' towards. The man's a consistent deliverer, much like Michael Ironsides.

But here's the fun thing about this absolutely legendary actor. At no point is any scenery chewed. He's calm, stable and very focused on the numbers, and takes a lot of time out of his day to point out that he was District Manager for the IRS. He's still villainous as hell, but he's like ... an accountant level villain. He's really into math and, like, maybe blowing you up. But the math first.

The con itself, complete with stealing a train, is one of the better ones out there. It was an all hands-on deck situation the moment our boys got themselves caught and trapped in those woods, and that's when Leverage shines best and brightest. I particularly enjoy the payoff on this one, mostly because it's one of those rare times where, when the team does their reveal as a final 'gotcha' moment, Hugh Whitman points out Sophie and Nate and is like 'THEY'RE IN ON THIS TOGETHER!'.

That's some real classic fun right there and the show, like the team, shines best when things have fallen all the way apart.

Context is everything, and OutKast absolutely recontextualizes everything we've seen up until this point.

Before we go further, I do have to say I'm not ordinarily a fan of recap-isodes, flashback-isodes and/or any combination of either of those, but the way they handle John Stewart's backstory and purpose is really something else altogether.

Some things I wasn't surprised about. As far as it goes for me, I could see that John didn't particularly care (a whole lot) for Hal, but there was no context for it beyond 'this guy is a thundering asshole at the best of times and wildly unpredictable all the time. And honestly, if someone were treating me like that, I'd be vibrating in place, just simmering with barely contained hostility. I've been in that position before, in more than one place or work, so I 'got it'.

Obviously I'm not going to talk about the whys and wherefores of John's actual as-close-to-open-hostility as one person can get because that's what this whole episode is about, so ... suffice to say his reasons for not liking Hal are not without merit.

The other heavy lifting big shift is John's upbringing. Again, I can't speak directly to what went down in his past because that's the other half of this dynamic, so all I can say is holy damn. There are rough childhoods and there are rough childhoods. There are stern parents and there are strict parents.

Then there's John's parental units. We saw how John was raised, and why, and while I can kinda sorta get on board with all the decisions that were made, at the same time, I can't. For me, there was some real abuse going on there and I'd like to see how John's brothers turned out. Just for some comparative data, because goddamn.

The only thing keeping John Stewart from falling to pieces are the very lessons that he 'learned' growing up, and Hal's now reframed motivations for treating him the way he does could result in some terribly messy fallout. I don't know where things are going, but I imagine if there is any fallout from this, it won't/can't be too too much because then we wouldn't really have a story.

I appreciate this episode an awful lot. It does a lot of heavy lifting and reframes the story so far. Now that I know what we know about John and his life, I'll be on the lookout. For what, I won't know until I see it.

The clip I included shows the kind of stock John comes from and damn if his bloodline isn't mightier than an oak!Context is everything, and OutKast absolutely recontextualizes everything we've seen up until this point.

This is a monster episode and not just because it's one of the coolest Eliot-centric episodes we get before The French Connection Job in season 5 (which, by the way, is one of the best episodes of the entire show, ain't that right ... YES CHEF!).

First, we get Evil Bo Duke (and if that's too old for you, Evil Jonathan Kent) as a thoroughly disreputable scumbag failed musician/murderer/exploiter of genuine talent. Now I COULD have plenty to say about the sort of person John Schneider's become in the last decade or so, but I won't. For a few reasons.

One, his time on Smallville was pretty damn good and in this episode, he plays a pretty damn convincing evil bastard. It's sometimes hard for me to separate the art from the artist, but I'm willing to do it here. The important thing (sometimes, based on how vocal older actor/artists are) is to remember that when we were all younger and the sun was brighter was that these people really had a foundational effect on our lives in one way or another. I'm not over here telling you to forget your personal vendettas. If you have 'em, you have your reasons.

The other enormous big deal actor in this episode is Alona Tal as Kaye Lynn Gold. If you try and tell me to my face that you did NOT develop an immediate crush on her as Jo in Supernatural not only are you a liar, you are a lying liar and will have Lucifer, Gabriel, Castiel, Sam, Dean, their dad, their mom, Bobby and quite possibly even Rufus Turner on your ass. Pronto.

Alona is extremely beautiful, but she's more than that. She has an ineffable sweetness about her in any role she plays, and as Kaye, we see some for-real-deal acting chops and a beautiful singing voice on top of that. Beyond the singing, her role is surprisingly complex, and we get to see every bit of it; her brother's seriously hurt and in the hospital, these strangers have come to help her, Sexy Eliot is also Sexy Singing Eliot So Complications Ensue, Naturally, the con goes sideways as they always do, and then the payoff is golden.

That's a lot to carry in what's probably 10 minutes or so of screen time, and Alona sells it, especially at the end, when her world has been righted.

Outside that? Kudos to Beth Reisgraf for playing probably the silliest Parker that Parker has ever been. Every time she's up there on the screen pretending to be Not-Bjork, I genuinely wonder how it felt for her on those takes. I HAVE to imagine she was thinking 'what in the actual hell am I doing' and 'I am KILLING this shit' in equal measure.

And of course, what Eliot-centric episode would miss discussing Eliot himself. He has the Luck of the Irish when it comes to his undercover work ... and it always goes super well until it doesn't. Doesn't matter if it's baseball or country singin', he's gonna knock it out of the park and as you saw from the clip or from your own memories of the show, Eliot's not the kind of guy who can afford his face being all over the Internet.

Fatwas and all that, right? Anyways, The Studio Job brings a lot to the table and weirdly, now that I actually think about it, it had nothing to do at all with Damien Moreau.

As you can tell from the rating I gave this episode, I really, really liked this episode.

The mystery about what the hell's going on in that small town is not only unfolding, it's somehow infinitely worse than Hal Jordan could've ever expected, not EVEN with his jaded 'everything pretty much sucks' pessimistic attitude, and it's just great.

Even better than that, though, is Hal's steadfast refusal to 'Green Lantern' it out. I touched on this in the last review, but a Lantern's powers seem pretty damn ubiquitous, meaning that the only thing barring one from creating anything they required to resolve their issue is the strength of their willpower.

As we've seen and are led to surmise, Hal Jordan's willpower is pretty much absolute. Even before he got his ring recharged, I wondered why he didn't just zip on over to the ranch and done some digging, either literally or metaphorically, to uncover some truths. I accept that 5% charge wasn't enough to do anything of merit, but even after that, when his ring is charged, he shows caution and prudence.

Which is really not what you'd expect from someone as cantankerous as Hal Jordan, and that's precisely one of the reasons this episode rated so highly for me. He ACTS like the 'aw fuck it' guy who'd act like Guy Gardner in Superman and just middle finger his problems away, but he heads off to get more information instead.

On the John Stewart angle, I'm beginning to see why Hal's training is taking the 'I am a thundering asshole' route: John is wound. TIGHTLY. They hint at childhood trauma, and after the first episode's introduction to his dad shooting apples off his damn head with an actual gun, I can only IMAGINE what in the hell that trauma might be. Hal wants to uncover the John that's buried under all the buried trauma, if you will, and Aaron Pierre is nailing the complexity of his character really well.

One of the things I appreciate most so far is how comedic the show is. They don't overplay it to the point where it's slapsticky. It's just enough to land on as ludicrous but sensible, given Hal's ... everything.

Before I go, I want to talk about about Garrett Dillahunt, Kelly Madconald, and Paul Ben-Victor. I love all three of these actors for many reasons, not the least of which is their actual acting skill. There's just something about Garrett that I really dig, Kelly's just great in everything she does and Paul ... well, Paul's an icon. He's been in so many fantastic movies and TV shows that to list them would take too damn long.

And then of course there's Ulrich Thomsen. I know him as Kai from Banshee, and if you don't know Banshee, you've done yourself a disservice. It's violent as hell, but it's a fantastic show. You should check it out.

Anyways, the clip I chose highlights both Hal's 'it's both the hard way and MY way' choices and how absurdly funny Lanterns can be. Enjoy!

The con for this one is perfectly serviceable but doesn't ring any bells too loudly because let's be honest.

The Double Blind Job con IS basic. What's not basic is what's going on behind the scenes, which is where you know I like it.

The biggest and funniest thing is Parker's absolute jealousy that's on-screen every single time Hardison's being nice to Ashley, the client. I've seen the episode at least a hundred times and it never stops being precious. Why? Because I don't think Parker's far enough along on her emotional journey to even recognize that she's feeling anything at all, least of ALL jealousy.

Parker knows only that Ashley Moore isn't to be trusted. So even though she is the client, and won't do anything, she's got her eyes on Hardison's special new friend to the point where it's a miracle Ashley's head didn't explode a la Scanners. It's a wonderful little dive into our thief's growing emotional complexity without dialing down into it as hard as they during The Inside Job.

The other truly funny thing is Eliot ... ELIOT ... being dumped by Jennifer Pearson (played by Tracy Gaillard) for not being exciting enough. The look on his face, the sheer visceral reaction to being on the receiving end of the 'it's not you it's me' speech is something I dine out on every time it pops up. Because this Eliot. The Man's Man and The Lady's Man all wrapped up into one awesome hitter/chef combo package. Not only could he cook you a 12 course 3 Michelin star meal, he could (and has) fought off thugs while doing so.

Last but not least, a shout-out to Michael O'Keefe as Darren Hoffman. He's another accomplished actor that you might recognize from movies and TV here and there, but once upon a time he played Danny in Caddyshack, so he's got that goin' for him, which is nice. He's another one of these stealth top tier actors that drops into Leverage, plays an absolute shit-heel and fades into the night, only to pop up somewhere else.

While the con is simple, the emotional payoff at the end for everyone is great ... especially when Sophie finally spells the truth out for Parker. Why is this awesome? Because we get the people are like pretzels metaphor, and that makes my heart swell two sizes too big every time.

And that makes an only okay episode an 8/10 for me.

I have to confess, I was expecting a very different movie from the one I watched, and I'm not mad about it. Part of my preconceptions about Bullitt has a lot to do with the fact that the only thing I KNEW about this movie was about it's legendary car chase scene.

I promised myself I 'wasn't gonna be the guy' who talked about the car chase scene because everyone always talks about the car chase scene but you know what?

It absolutely deserves it. The clip I included was because of the specific shot of the bad guys seeing Bullitt's famous car appearing behind them in the rearview mirror. The slickness of that moment absolutely sold the scene to me in an instant. It was so very well done, and the resulting chase through the incredibly steep hills of San Francisco, sometimes narrowly missing a full-on crash, all the way out of the city is some of the most tense car driving I think I've ever seen. My stomach rose and fell as those rad old muscle cars went flying up and down those hills and you just have to give kudos to the drivers and the camera people because for some of the hairier shots, they were IN the damn cars.

So, going in knowing only that it has an exceptional chase scene led me to believe I was in for a kind of proto-Dirty Harry-esque kind of affair with plenty of violence, and that was a thing I was fully ready to accept.

But what I got was something I love even more than that: a rock solid police procedural with a bona fide mystery at the core and plenty of thoughtful, considerate work to solve the case. And what a case it is.

From the moment things started developing, I was certain I knew who was involved, why Bullitt's case was going sideways and how people were always seemingly one step ahead of him. I'm sure the director wanted us to think that and it worked like a charm, because it sure seemed like Bullitt was thinking along the same lines.

I can't say anything more than that about the movie's actual plot because to do so might affect your ability to enjoy it, so I'll leave this in closing;

Lt. Frank Bullitt's investigation into the murder of a gangster turning State's evidence and the attempted murder of police officers results in more than one exhilarating chase, a few shootouts, and the use of genuine police protocol to catch the real bad guy.

And that? That's a great combination!

One of the absolute joys of walking into something fully blind, knowing only that a show or movie might be something I'm going to like is being proven right. It's a huge gamble, of course, because I hate spending time on anything that I don't like.

But without that gamble, I can't know what is and is not worth my time. Of course I'd seen a few clips on social media covering Lanterns, but that's a risk as well. We all know that sometimes those clips are the only things worth watching.

Lanterns is worth my time. If I hadn't already been an enormous fan of X-Men, New Mutants and a few other Marvel titles when I was a kid, I would've definitely been a Lanterns fan because I've already kind of been one. Whenever I go to relax and kill time on Tiktok or Youtube Shorts and clips from The DC Universe pop up and Green Lantern is in there, I'm not-so-secretly pleased about it.

Hell, I even like the movie that bombed so hard Ryan Reynolds traveled the multiverse to correct that mistake.

I mention all this because I am coming, essentially, to Lanterns with a completely fresh slate. I'm a comic nerd, but not a DC comic nerd, so I couldn't tell you what's canon, what's bullshit, what's so-so or what's really what. What I CAN tell you is what I think is good and what's not.

The pilot for S1 of Lanterns is great. It's got a solid hook. That hook, of course, is that Hal Jordan is kind of a massive dick and that he doesn't really seem to be enjoying his whole entire existence, and that quite possibly being Green Lantern is more of a burden than anything else.

He's also pretty damn cool and awfully funny in that 'oh here comes our drunk, rough around the edges Uncle, everyone buckle up, shit's going to either land us all in jail or Vegas or both before the night's over', and I like it like that.

John Stewart is so much Hal's polar opposite that he's actually closer to being Hal Jordan than not, if you take my drift. We see in the beginning of the hour that he was being trained (sorry ... traumatized) by his dad so that he could be the only one to become the next Lantern. He's pretty tightly wound, clearly wants to be Green Lantern right NOW and claims to respect Hal while clearly wanting to punch him in the face.

John is somehow the kind of stick in the mud that would also make special friends at a bar in a town where no one wants them.

I won't talk about the overall plot or why they wind up where they do because to talk about it might spoil it for someone who hasn't (like me) decided to watch until the show's over and done with.

What I will say is that I enjoyed the pacing an awful lot. Hal's an older, seasoned Lantern and when they arrive where they do, he smells something nefarious is afoot. Rather than jump to conclusions and start Green Lanterning right away, he treats the situation as it should be treated.

Like a mystery that needs solving. Our impossibly powered superhero is old enough and wise enough to self-regulate his abilities and himself, which is something that needs to happen with heroes who are, essentially, gods.

I do love mysteries, and what we get here is not one but two mysteries, and that's just plain old cool. I can't wait for the next episode, but like it is in this first episode, pacing is key.

One of the more interesting things about The Great Escape is what it doesn't show, and that's because it couldn't.

It wouldn't (and to some degree, couldn't) show the grim, brutal reality of WWII and it's impact on the men who served, nor could they show the terrible conditions of the camp, or the treatment of the prisoners, or the cruelty of their captors, and for a very simple-yet-complicated reason.

No one back then wanted to see that kind of movie. They wanted heroic men banding together heroically, and fighting against evil oppressors and coming out the other side with all limbs and a hearty spirit intact. While modern day film making definitely makes space for the reality and starkness of wartime and does it very well, a movie like The Great Escape does the opposite.

And it does it so very well. With a cast so stacked it's practically absurd, we're treated to men not merely surviving in a camp designed to be inescapable, but thriving, and in such a fun, grandiose way. Each man in the camp is known to the other, either because they were all banged up in another Nazi camp elsewhere or because their exploits in their OWN camps were so legendary that word passed like wildfire.

There are forgers and diggers and scroungers and builders and it's all so much damned fun. If the movie itself didn't cover such dire circumstances, I'd damn near want to call this an adventure comedy. The stakes are real enough that we're reminded of what happens when Ives makes a break for it, but watching a ragtag band of soldiers from all corners of the world consistently get one over on their Nazi captors is just an old fashioned good time.

Even though there are more stars in this movie than there might seem to be in Heaven, for some reason I just absolutely loved seeing James Garner here. I know, I know, Steve McQueen's the star as Hilts The Cooler King, but James Garner as Hendley 'The Scrounger' scratched an itch I didn't know I had. There's just something about the smoothly glib way Hendley manipulates Werner to get valuable documents that's just a blast.

But that's not to say the other big name men in this movie don't deserve their kudos. I loved seeing Donald Pleasance outside of a Halloween movie (where he chewed the scenery so hard I'm surprised the sets didn't fall down) and Charles Bronson as Danny The Tunnel King, which is so far from his iconic roles in Death Wish he seems like a different actor altogether.

I feel like they didn't use James Coburn nearly enough, or Richard Attenborough, but like the song says, we can't always get what we want, but we might get what we need. And what we needed was a big ole adventure with a lot of now extremely famous actors playing what really is tantamount to small roles that contributed to an enormously entertaining movie about triumph through adversity, and comradery through shared miseries.

If you're wondering why I haven't really talked about Steve McQueen at all until now, here's why. I suppose he was the biggest star in the movie at the time, and the studio was banking on his specific star power to bring people to the theaters to see their movie, but he really, genuinely didn't feel like the focal point of the movie. I understand after looking a few things up that he walked off the set and refused to come back until his role was made bigger and that the now legendary motorcycle scene was added.

I can't deny that all of that was really awesome, but at the same time, I feel like it somehow defeated the inherent purpose of the movie: to show that everyone, doing their small part, could make a long-lasting impact.

This don't make the movie 'worse' or 'unenjoyable' because that's impossible. The Great Escape is absolutely fun movie that is so worth anyone's time that if you haven't seen it, you really should. I bring up Steve McQueen the way I did because until sitting down to watch this movie for the first time, the only things I knew about it were that he was in it, and the motorcycle escape.

I thought the entire movie was about him engineering The Great Escape with little to no help, but the moment I saw the cast, saw how it was all put together, that changed the dynamic for me in a big way. I understand the marketing of it all, and I can't blame the studio for doing as they did, because The Great Escape is still absolutely fantastic.

One of the things I am appreciating most about my movie challenge this month so far is that it's introduced me to some movies I dismissed kind of casually out of hand. These are movies that have always been lauded as excellent, and so far, I'm pleased that it's been a trifecta of absolute brilliance.

The first half of Lucky S1E1 is nowhere near as good as the latter half, but I'm glad I stuck with it until the halfway mark, which is much better.

It's not so much that the first half is 'bad', it's that it ... lacks something, and this is coming from someone who absolutely loves movies and TV shows where crime, criminality, cons and heists are the top spots. The episode starts off KIND of in media res, which is my least favorite literary/media device, but only just, so it wasn't too much of a deal breaker.

The damn near deal breaker was in how the first half was put together. I can see what the director was looking to do: without spoilers, in short order, Lucky (Anya Taylor-Joy) has compelling reasons to make herself absent from the Vegas hotel casino she's in, and so the quick cuts as she works hard to make that happen are MEANT to establish tension and heighten excitement.

For me, it did the opposite. There wasn't enough ground for Lucky's flight from authorities in the hotel for Anya to stick to, if you take my meaning, The actual mechanics of her escape were pretty believable and shows that our grifter has a good head on her shoulders, but there wasn't one single 'oh hell how's she going to get away moment' where I really believed things could go poorly.

Obviously if that happened we wouldn't have any further episodes, but there's a way to make me believe it COULD happen even when I know it CAN'T.

The latter half saves No Shortcuts. The introduction of not only Timothy Olyphant (who I love) and Annette Bening (who I ALSO love) and the narrowing of focus turned the flow on it's ear. I won't say anything more out of fear of spoilering, but Lucky's eventual plight at the end of the episode is much more complicated and was so much better than the escape that I do, in fact, have hope for the next one.

Also, and this is more of a nitpick on my part than anything else, but the way this episode was edited made it super difficult to isolate a clip that wouldn't spoil anything too major and/or be 5 minutes long, so the one I eventually went with I chose because it's a genuine holy damn they went there moment.

Lucky's lucky. The change in storytelling gave it a chance for me to want to watch episode 2.

This is a very fun episode, but there's more to it than just that (isn't this always the case when I write a review?).

First off? Giancarlo Esposito as Alexander Moto? Gus Fring the Chicken Man himself? What's wild is that he played Fring in Breaking Bad BEFORE his turn here in Leverage, and it's like I say whenever the show gets a real heavy-hitting actor to drop by.

They let 'em chew the scenery as much and as hard as they want and as Alexander Moto, there's a lot of scenery being chewed. Having finished Better Call Saul about a month ago, it's truly wild to see a man capable of that kind of dramatic acting play someone as comically villainous as Moto.

Beyond that, I remember being super gaga over this episode and was expecting to give it at least a 9.5, but as I watched, it just kind of struck me that the con is kind of loose, the layup and the payoff not as great as other episodes. I mean, it's still a really great episode, but after seeing them hack a whole entire person last episode, the machinery that really got everyone into that vault seemed a little rushed.

Of course, two things in particular stand out. Nate's continuing to fence with The Italian. Her attitude towards Nate is so ridiculous it bears mentioning again: this woman has access to everything Nate did back when he was at IYS (presumably) and DEFINITELY everything he's bene up to since joining Leverage.

My personal headcanon is that we only get to see the big cons. The ones that matter kind of thing, so when I say she knows everything he's done in particular and the crew overall, I mean 'there's a lot that they've done'.

And she still thinks she's got (sorry) Leverage over him. There's just no way. I like to consider myself some kinda smarty-pants, and at no point in my life would I think 'no yeah I got this guy over a barrel' because Nate Ford is the kind of guy who saw the barrel coming fourteen days ago and has a speedboat waiting around the corner, remote piloted by Hardison, who's in a helicopter being flown by Eliot while Sophie's schmoozing with The Pope (special thanks to whichever awesome commenter put that The Italian works for The Vatican in my head) and Parker's out there sticking The Hope diamond in a shoebox under The Italian's bed.

But the most important (and worst) thing we see in this episode is how much of a bastard Nate can be. We saw it last episode (Could you do it for Parker), and we really see it in this one. I understand the mechanics behind what Nate did, and I can even accept the necessity of hypnotizing Hardison into being able to play like he had as a child prodigy.

But you really don't do stuff like that to your team. Nate's defense, that that's precisely what you do to your team, isn't good. We get it. He's squaring the team off against Damien Moreau, one of the deadliest criminal power brokers on the planet. He's juggling the side con on The Italian.

But like Eliot says. You don't run cons on your own people. Y'don't do it.

This is one of the most important season premieres for the entire show, and for one specific reason.

They introduce a full seasonal arc at the end of the very first episode. More specifically, the devil that is Damian Moreau and The Italian. Neither of these people are good, both are actually people Leverage would hunt down and have them pay for their sins.

Obviously this happens, but we get so much out of this season, and all of it's great.

One of the most important things, naturally, is Nate's growth. After having accepted at the end of the last season that he IS a thief, we see him truly flourish in The Jailhouse Job in general, and the show in specific.

There's a lot packed into this 42 minute runtime. Sophie's grand escape plan (which very much resembles Nate's actual rescuing of the team in Season 1, after they flubbed their independent looksees into the museum). Eliot's very intense dislike of how Nate ran the con on them in last season's finale. The relationship between Parker and Hardison ('I like it when we pretend to kiss' ... 'Pretend?' ... 'Heyyyyy').

All of that's tastier than a fine bottle of ice-cold orange soda and the Reuben they named after Eliot, though I would've preferred if it'd been a Hoagie myself.

But here, in this very first episode, the writers and the show handle the appearance of The Italian so perfectly. A mysteriously beautiful Italian woman who's so powerful that she can threaten Adam Worth IV with basically every single member of every single Alphabet Gang on the PLANET?

Who is she? Why is she so powerful? What's her interest with Leverage? Naturally, this is all revealed in a very dramatic fashion, but not after they run rings around Adam Worth IV, and in equally dramatic fashion.

And they do it so well. The Italian's reveal has just the right mix of overwhelming firepower and intrigue, and all she does is tell Nate who their mark must be. The show lets the team inform Nate about the extent of Moreau's reach and power.

Leverage has grown up. Although I clipped the discussion between Nate and Eliot in the prison because it's the right one to remind everyone of this episode (I think), the final discussion between Nate and The Italian shows us just how much Nate's come to accept his new role as criminal mastermind.

When she says 'thieves die all the time' we can see it in Nate's eyes. She crossed Nate's very carefully drawn lines, and it was in that exact moment that she became a part of the overall plan. Before that moment, The Italian was just a woman with a lot of power in her own right who was using it to her advantage, with the carrot of freedom being offered for Leverage when they succeed.

Which is great, because the one thing hanging over Leverage's head are their pasts. Having their lives restored to new means they can go about the job of fighting for the little guy without having to look over their shoulders every time they run a con.

Nate didn't need a stick, but by giving him one, she became an adversary. It's a shame she read but didn't understand Nate's file.