Mark Watches ‘Leverage’: S03E02 – The Reunion Job

In the second episode of the third season of Leverage, the team crashes a school reunion in order to take down a CEO who is exploiting the Iranian revolution. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Leverage. 

Trigger Warning: For talk of bullying.

Good lord, what an episode.

Free Iran Movement

So, like many Leverage episodes in the past, there’s a painful truth within the framing narrative of “The Reunion Job.” Cyrus’s movement has ties to the Freedom Movement within Iran, as well as the Iranian Green Movement during summer of 2009. We’re expected to sympathize with Cyrus and what he’s trying to do, and I appreciate that this is the basis for the episode. With so much of America’s media focusing on negative and stereotypical display of Muslims or people from Iran, it’s nice that this episode casts them as the people who need to be saved, at least in the case of Cyrus. Of course, that means there’s not much time spent on Cyrus and his cause; the bulk of this episode focuses on the team’s attempt to con Larry Duberman. But at least this isn’t a case of white/Western saviors stepping in to do Cyrus’s work. They help him take down a horrible bit of software that the Iranian government uses to suppress dissidents, and that’s a good thing. The bulk of the work left is for the Iranian people to do.

Nerd Entitlement

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW BRILLIANTLY THIS EPISODE SKEWERS ENTITLED NERDS? Look, I know intimately how awful bullying is. I would never tell someone that the bullying their experienced was the wrong kind of bullying. No one deserves to be treated that way! There is an unfortunate behavior, however, that can grow out of this experience that manifests within nerdy communities. I’ve seen it a lot online; I see it at conventions that are primarily made up of white men; I see it in those GamerGate goobers. Being bullied for your interests as a kid or a teenager does not mean you get to grow up to be an asshole. Some of the most bullied people turn into the biggest bullies themselves, and the shifting perception of traditionally nerdy things – fantasy, science fiction, role playing comic books – has left some people feeling as if their suffering was for nothing.

It’s an emotionally complicated situation, of course, and it hurts to see something you loved painfully become easy to love. But Larry Duberman took that experience, and got revenge by finding a new group that would allow him to be a bully himself. He was well aware of who was using his Manticore software, and he was well aware of how it was being used. So I lose all sympathy for him in the process. He turned a terrible experience for himself into something terrible for someone else, and he knows it.

High School Reunion

Oh, what a fantastic setting, y’all. It’s a brilliant place to host a con because it’s so easy to exploit social awkwardness, particularly when it comes to remembering faces and people from decades prior. The team is a goddamn miracle here, but let’s give it up for Sophie, who uses a very subtle form of manipulation in order to get Larry Duberman to select a password that the team can guess. That is foreshadowed earlier in “The Reunion Job” when she more or less tricks Eliot into serving her tea exactly as she likes it. (I almost thought that the show was revealing that they were seeing each other???? Which wouldn’t have been a terrible thing, just quite shocking.) And while I wouldn’t say that “The Reunion Job” gave us any significant growth for any of these characters, it was satisfying for them to just interact with one another here. Parker was fascinating here because this was the way the team introduced her to how high school politics worked, which ended up being something she was glad to have missed.

Ah, those glimpses into their past. I UNIVERSALLY LOVE THEM. Hardison!!! With braces!!! IT WASN’T OKAY. And in a beautiful twist of irony, Eliot was the popular, desired one in high school, and yet he was all alone on the night of the con. WHICH… OKAY. Look, the scene where Sophie and Nate danced was amazing all by itself. If there is any growth here, it’s in these two characters getting accustomed to one another’s presence again. But then the camera pans out to Hardison, and Parker lowers herself down from the ceiling, and then THEY’RE DANCING WHILE SHE’S FLOATING AND ARGH I AM SO INTO THIS SHIP IT PHYSICALLY HURTS ME TO THINK ABOUT IT. This is the least fair thing this show has done to me. But hey, I don’t think I’m imagining them getting more comfortable, either. From Parker’s comment about “pretend” kissing in the last episode to their slow dance here, I’d say this might actually happen by the end of the show.

By “might,” I definitely mean “better.”

The video for “The Reunion Job” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

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