Buffy didn’t react well to another Slayer in town. Mulder and Scully never played well with other Agents. So it should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that the Leverage team reacts poorly when another crew challenges their title of Most Awesome Con Artists.
There’s a lot to love about this episode, but hands down my favorite scene occurred when the warring teams finally set eyes on each other. Parker met her pickpocketing match; Eliot encountered a foreign woman so beguilingly dangerous they couldn’t stop imagining fighting each other long enough to actually fight each other; Nate is irritated by a mastermind a lot more sinister than himself; and a showdown between resident hacker Hardison and guest-star Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: TNG’s Wesley Crusher), the opposing crew’s resident hacker. Hardison’s Star Trek reference later in the show brings it all together beautifully.
Each team member has a counterpart, and those counterparts serve not only to vex our team (and entertain the audience), but also to illustrate the unique function each individual brings to the table.
Also brought into focus is just how good our team really is. The other crew robs from the rich and gives to themselves and don’t seem to be above a little murder between old friends. They work as a unit, but they don’t seem to be a real team – there’s no affection or camaraderie between them, no sense of family.
That’s what the Leverage crew really is, when it comes down to it: a misfit family, not all that different from your own.
That is, if your misfit family likes to spend their Saturday nights breaking into highly secured offices, facilities, and compounds. Check out all the Leverage goodness over at TNT!
Castle should not be as entertaining as it is. For starters, it follows the ‘Bones’ school of procedural drama by not being much of a procedural or a drama. Yet rather than rendering it a mess, by focusing on humor and character over gore and science, Castle differentiates itself from the traditional cop shows on TV.