In the seventh episode of the fourth season of Leverage, you can just bury me here because I’m done. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Leverage.
Trigger Warning: For talk of death, racial stereotypes, grief, claustrophobia, and taphophobia (fear of being buried alive).
I’m so fucked up.
I can’t help but feel heartbroken by this episode. The Wickett family are taken in for their crimes; Javier is arrested; the Newtons get their money back; and Hardison is rescued before he suffocates. And yet? The experience itself was so raw, so tense and terrifying, that my nerves are a wreck. I feel jittery. I cannot stop thinking about Parker’s fears; I cannot un-hear Hardison begging Parker to stay on the phone.
I’m so fucked up.
The Mark
If there’s a hell, there better be a special place for people who exploit those who are grieving. Darlene Wickett is ruthless in a way that’s almost uncharacteristically awful for Leverage. She and her sons prey on those who have lost a loved one, and they do so TWOFOLD. They steal the money for funeral services, deny they were ever paid it, AND THEN THEY STEAL THE IDENTITIES OF THE RECENTLY DECEASED WHOSE FAMILIES THEY JUST SCREWED OVER. Oh, and if that’s not bad enough? Darlene sells the stolen identities to a Mexican drug cartel!!! All around, stellar decisions are made!!! (I feel slightly weird about the costuming choices for Javier, by the way. The style of clothing that he wears is extremely typical of gang members in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California, so it was utterly bizarre to see it on someone who apparently lives in Massachusetts. That’s not to say there aren’t any Mexicans or Latinos within Boston, but it’s a specific style, and I think it was used here just to communicate that he was part of a gang/cartel.)
I wanted them destroyed, and that was before I knew how Hardison ended up in that coffin. FINISH THEM, LEVERAGE TEAM.
The Con
You know that when the team can infiltrate a place in the first fifteen minutes that something utterly terrible is going to happen. The initial con was more of a grift meant to distract the Wicketts so that Eliot and Parker could find their hidden supply of money, which then morphed to a beautiful set-up to implicate Darlene in her identity theft scam. Even though there is a resolution to these cons by the end of the episode, that’s not the focus. We get some closure, but this is not about that.
It’s about love and life.
The Burial
I didn’t expect another recent episode relying so heavily on Aldis Hodge’s acting after “The Van Gogh Job.†I don’t think “The Grave Danger Job†works as well as it does without both Hodge’s and Beth Riesgraf’s performances. There’s that line early in this episode about Hardison’s claustrophobia that deliberately sets up the kind of experience he’s going to have while buried alive. Even when he’s interacting with Darlene during his grift of her, you can tell he’s mortified by the entire idea of a coffin. So when he wakes up inside the Admiral coffin courtesy of Javier, he is in his literal worst nightmare. It’s horrible to watch, and as astounding as this episode is, I don’t know if I could watch this again. It’s too real, and Hodge’s portrayal is too accurate.
The same goes for Parker’s scenes. If the last episode’s gag about being replaced with Parker 2000 was an indication of her fears about being close to anyone, then this is also her worst nightmare. She has to accept that it’s possible that Hardison may die, which is too much for her because she’s still getting used to the idea of him being around her. She’s still adjusting to the idea of caring for other people. How can she do that if the people she loves are just going to go away in the end?
So it’s meaningful to watch her be the anchor for Hardison, to use her skills and knowledge to help him survive. So much of this show is other characters teaching Parker and helping her learn, and that dynamic is totally reversed here. Hardison is the one in a vulnerable state, and she’s his rock and guidance. But even if there’s something romantic about that, this is still a horribly traumatic experience, one that becomes increasingly difficult to watch. The affection we see between Parker and Hardison is tinged with terror, so it’s not exactly comforting to hear. Like, it’s a huge deal to me that Parker called Hardison by his first name. That hasn’t ever happened, so I know what it signifies. But I don’t feel good thinking about it. I feel like my heart has shattered.
The same goes for the big reunion scene at the end. There’s so much communicated through physical action, like the way that Eliot rushes through that cemetery to free Hardison. Or the fact that he embraces him in such a fierce hug, something that Eliot has always been reluctant to do with Hardison. Or the way that Nate makes an ill-timed joke and abandons the humor for a beautiful embrace himself.
Or Parker, standing away from it all because it’s so overwhelming, because she’s never had to deal with this sort of emotional attachment, and it’s one of the most crushing things I’ve ever seen.
This is easily my favorite season so far, y’all. I just can’t even wrap my mind around the calibre of storytelling here. Christ.
The video for “The Grave Danger Job†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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