Episode Reviews: Runway, 2 horse, and Inside Jobs
The Runway Job:
Favorite Quote: “Hot…Warm…cold…Why are we staring?”-Parker
The runway centers around an exhausted sweat shop worker and her corrupt bosses the Pans. Nate surmises that it’s Gloria Pan’s dream to be the next big thing the fashion industry. They con her with her own dreams. Using Tara as the fashion designer “Caprina” and Nate as the fashion editor “Jacque” they steal a fashion show and offer to feature Gloria as a up and coming designer.
She takes the bait. However when they fleece her for money they step into the sandbox of none other than the Triad!
Nate decides to con the triad on the fly and leaves Tara collaterall. In doing this Tara seems to earn her stripes in what is only her second job with the team. She runs the cop scam while team runs another con getting pan his designs.
Favorite things: Eliot’s weirdly perfect knowledge of fashion, the con within a con within another con theme, and Eliot and Tara’s tandem fight with the triad and their cleavers especially the unsion head butt! The smattering of Sophie via web cam throughout the episode worked nicely, mostnotably in the final scene.
Least favorite parts: Nate’s willingness to set Tara in the line of danger to futher his need to play the white knight.
All in all it’s a fun episode but lacks any real character growth from the team for that it gets three stars!
☆ ★☆
The Two Horse Job Review: Eliot is connected to the client a race horse trainer Willie Martin via his daughter and Eliot’s ex girlfriend Aimee. So this job is personal for eliot and it shows throughout the episode as they run multiple cons to get willie the horse Baltimore back.
None other than IYS is the mark’s insurance company and sterling shows up to stick to nate and complicate things for the Leverage Team!
They use the lost heir scam replacing the heir with the horse’s faked championship bloodline to sell the horse back to the mark. When the mark rebuys Baltimore under a different name and double insures him for 12 million dollars Steerling gets him for fraud and nate gives the horse and money to Willie!
Favorite things: The sexual and the you just plain piss me off tension between Aimee and Eliot, Sophie’s accent, Eliot riding a horse and More Than I Deserve playing in the back ground of the love scene.
This was beautifully shot as far as the exteriors go the lighting is lovely.
Least Favorite Things: Sterling’s general smarmy attitude and Nate’s accent!
This in it’s entirety one of my favorite episodes of the entire show. Christian Kane’s performance really stands out so I give it five stars!
Favorite quote: “I have a weakness for men with one foot out the door.” -Aimee Martin
☆ ★☆ ★☆
The Inside Job Review:
In attempt to save her mentor Archie Leach’s family from being killed Parker takes an outside job stealing a wheat blight. The only problem is the building is secured by a sternako the best most intelligent security system ever made. She becomes trapped and all of her skills are rendered useless she must rely on the team to get her out and still somehow manage to keep the wheat blight out of the mark’s hands.
Favorite Things: Parker trusting the team not only to get her out and seeing her want to do the right thing all on her own. Parker’s Character growth is amazing here. The chemistry between Beth Riesgraf and Christian Kane is great and their litte on liners are funny. Seeing Hardison knocked off his game was interesting too!
Least favorite things: The focus being put so heavily on Parker being “Broken.” I’ve only ever seen her as very weird and quirky not broken. I didn’t like the fatherly bickering and competitiveness between archie and Nate at all! It seemed petty in my estimation.
Favorite quote: “This is no time for crazy!” -Eliot Spencer
In conclusion I give it three stars for creativity and character building!
☆ ★☆