In the tenth episode of the third season of Leverage, the team tries to take down a corrupt mine owner and a corrupt politician. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Leverage.
EVERYTHING’S GREAT, I LOVE THIS SHOW, WHAT IF THAT WAS MY WHOLE REVIEW.
Dan Blackwell
This show is so good at creating villains that I am destined to despise with my entire being, and now, Dan Blackwell joins that group. BECAUSE HOLY SHIT, WHEN HIS MINE EXPLODES, HE ASKS FOR HIS LAWYER FIRST. Dan Blackwell represents that kind of business owner who unabashedly pursues his own interests and profits over… well, literally everything and everyone else. He’d seem more cartoonish at times except that he’s too real. I don’t doubt that there are plenty of people like this in my country and others and EVERYWHERE. literally every place on this planet. Thanks, capitalism!
Debra Pierce
A double dose of awfulness! I’d say that “The Underground Job†is a portrait of greed, and in that sense, Debra Pierce and Dan Blackwell are perfect for one another. Both use their power and money to get exactly what they want, and along the way, they use other people to do so. In Pierce’s case, she knows that her role as the Attorney General in West Virgina has afforded her a power that others don’t have access to. She uses it to better her own political career and help out Dan, who she is in a secret relationship with. And both of them don’t care that in the end, the poor miners are the ones who pay for their indiscretions and poor decision making. In the case of Cory, his father paid his life to that mine. But do Debra and Dan care? No, because it doesn’t affect them.
So the Leverage team makes it affect them.
The Con
This was definitely a con that I didn’t understand until a third of the way through this episode because… well, how the hell were they going to get Blackwell to buy his own mine? That seemed like such an absurd notion to me! But this was a two-pronged approach: 1) Sophie and Nate had to get Blackwell to believe that he was sitting on a store of a valuable and rare metal, enough so that he’d ask Pierce for money from her PAC; and 2) Parker had to pull off getting Pierce to believe that she was ahead enough in the polls that she could risk giving Blackwell money, violating campaign finance law in the process.
It really sounds a lot more complicated than it was, but then it really did get horribly complicated.
A Successful Con
Blackwell is so perfectly manipulated here that he doesn’t doubt a word of what Hardison and Sophie have sold him. That becomes a problem, though, when he realizes that he can just abandon his mine and destroy it, laying off everyone along with it. Y’all, the conflict of this episode changes because THEY WERE ALL TOO GOOD AT THEIR JOBS. That is new. But this team is also fantastic at altering their cons in real time that I figured they’d come up with something, right? So, Nate comes up with the perfect plan: convince Blackwell that Sophie lied to him. That would be easy enough to do, since Sophie did lie, but that con is derailed right when Sophie learns that her con of Pierce was also too good.
IT’S A MESS.
Education
But y’all, as much fun as this con was (particularly the resolution of it), I will forever remember “The Underground Job†as “The One Where Sophie Continued To Teach Parker How To Grift.†I’M JUST SO INTO THEIR FRIENDSHIP. Sophie hasn’t hesitated to take Parker under her wing (and we saw aspects of this in “The Boost Jobâ€), and it’s one of my favorite serialized subplots in this show. Due to the demand of this specific con, Parker has to be the sole grifter working on Debra Pierce. She’s not entirely without skill, and we’ve seen her work a number of great cons by staying in character. But she’s not perfect either; she’s got a lot to learn, and Sophie is there to help her re-think how to do that.
And goddamn, that might be the best part of this. Sophie teaches Parker how to read people in terms that Parker will understand. She doesn’t try and force Parker to see things as she does, and I think it’s spectacular that Sophie recognizes that. She isn’t condescending when she explains to Parker that Parker can view people the same way she views bank vaults. They have weaknesses, and they can be exploited through them. Now, that doesn’t mean Parker’s able to perfectly recognize what those weaknesses are, but that’s what the notepad is for! Well, and also giving me a fic prompt because now I want to write out Parker’s list for Hardison and you have to stop me, I have no time to do this, god.
Eliot’s plot here is also applicable, since he takes Cory under his wing, too. It reminded me of what Parker did in “The Boost Job.†Eliot was able to recognize that Cory was on his own down in the mine, eager to learn and eager to do better, but without any direction. I appreciate that these characters notice their surroundings, that they’re aware of little things like this. Eliot pays attention all the time, too! Remember that little kid he helped in the hospital last season? This is what he does. He can recognize when someone is in need, and he doesn’t hesitate to help them.
The video for “The Underground Job†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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