Leverage · S05E03 · The First Contact Job
Verdict: MUST SEE TV
Watched: November 15, 2026

This is a great episode for a few reasons, one of which has to do with Nate having his head up his ass. It doesn't happen often, but when it does happen, it's hard to watch.

But he's also not proud or arrogant enough to ignore the mistakes he made ... anymore. There was a time when he would've told everyone in the room to pound sand, kick rocks and tell everyone to teach their mothers to suck eggs.

But this is an older and (sometimes) wiser Nathan Ford. The moment he realizes he made an error and Sophie calls him out on it ever so gently, he doesn't blink, he doesn't make excuses. He admits it and comes up with some nastiness that destroys Kanack, psychologically, professionally quite possibly even spiritually.

I love the second half of this con an awful lot. Season 5 means going bigger! What they did in The (Very) Big Bird Job, they do here only about a hundred times nastier and more encompassing. I mean ... they faked a (small) alien invasion in this one, for cryin' out loud.

This one isn't quite an all-hands-on-deck affair because technically speaking the con doesn't go wrong, but it's close in that they did the wrong job, and that's when Leverage really and truly shines.

From Eliot as Willie Riker to Parker's MiB-adjacent Fed continually getting Kanack's name wrong to Nate's incredibly seedy (he really does love playing seedy dudes these days, doesn't he?) Satellite salesman, The First Contact Job is a boatload of fun.

But the biggest, coolest highlight is the Sophie Snatch. It was a lot of fun, even if she did lie about doing Peter Pan on Broadway.

The First Contact Job isn't an 'important' episode in that there isn't a lot of deep character building or revelatory moments, but it keeps the pace up and running from start to finish and should never, ever be skipped.

Otherwise them aliens might get ya.

The Blue Line Job is some of the nicest, heart-warmingest TV I've ever seen. I say this because if I'm being honest I try to avoid heart-warming most of the time because nobody needs to see a big beardy glasses wearing dude crying into said beard over stuff.

At least very often.

But I'll watch The Blue Line Job without hesitation, knowing full dang well that when we get to the scene I clipped, someone starts cutting onions right inside my nose because it's just so damned well done.

Graham Shiels as Craig Marko is a character of depth and nuance and is so broken at the same time that you hardly even realize it. There's no way he doesn't know what's wrong with him. No one's that blind. No one's that capable of ignoring the truth. He knows. But he can't stop because the team relies on him. As he says over and over again when Eliot confronts him, he has a job to do.

And that job is going to get done, no matter his life's on the line. He has to do it for his team, he has to do it for his son, who he loves and who idolizes him. Craig Marko's going out on the ice and he's going to enforce the face off every damn person that gets in the way of that.

That's why the scene hits me so damn hard. He's desperate to get the bonus. He needs to fight, to prove he's still worth something to his team, his son, to himself and while I've seen of his stuff (Arrow, Burn Notice, True Blood)?

His emotion floors me every damn time. It's some of the realest stuff I've ever seen. Add to that a hockey arena so quiet you could hear a pin drop and an opposing side who'd probably stand there and take a beating to keep Craig alive and you got yourself one big ole blubbering beardy glasses dude.

Credit must also be given to the young man who plays Danny. Chase Offerle, who I don't think has am IMDb, does a wonderful job of being not just a dutiful son, but a son who loves his father and who does something about it; he reaches out to Leverage. Think about that for a moment! Leverage is word of mouth. Leverage has taken down globe-spanning crime lords and evil CEOs and quite possibly, in an unaired episode, the Devil himself.

For a young man to take it upon himself to do all that? That's some powerful stuff as well.

And last, we gotta talk Treat Williams. He's one of those 'been in something you've seen for sure over the last umpty-leven years'. He's great at everything, and in this one, he's a real rat bastard and he brings his lifetime of acting to the table in a real nasty way. He's paying doctors to hide Craig's test results, he's paying Craig an awful lot of money to risk his life and when that doesn't work, he offers an enormous bounty on his own guy.

That's some real rat bastard behavior. Worse still (and this puts him into exceedingly rare air), when he's confronted at the end, he has the audacity to act like a broken man. Like he didn't really try to kill a man. Like he hadn't actually been slowly killing the man for years. Like he wasn't going to screw the whole team over.

The enforcers on that ice are stronger men than I am. I would've beaten that man 3/4 of the way to death with my hockey stick, waited for him to heal, then gone after him again. There are villains and there are villains, but Treat Williams as Pete Rising really takes the cake. 'I've got nothing left' indeed, Pete. You got your life left.

How about we snatch that from you, John Creasy style (sorry, I watched Man on Fire this week and I've been itching to make a reference).

The con is incidental in every way to this episode for me, though I will say the running gag about Sophie stealing The Stanley Cup and Nate's ever-growing frustration that she can't remember where it is a whole lotta fun.

If someone you know doesn't think Leverage can give real raw emotion, show 'em this one.

The (Redemption) Lavar Burton episode is on TV right now and I'm loving that they made him a librarian and also had him in a planetarium. As a young parent in the 90s I watched a lot of Reading Rainbow (with my kids) and Star Trek TNG (for myself and later with the kids). The writers could have had him play a generic character with a random story line, so I'm loving these Easter eggs and basically tributes to his earlier works.

What I want for Christmas is somebody to please put together all of the quirky moments that make up Parker. Anytime she twitches her head one way and they add a sound effect. Or her runway walk: give me all things Parker PLEASE- simply put she puts a huge smile on my face and touches my heart. When she’s in the subway tunnel and torches the virus - that hug. I got very choked up at that moment. You guys did not warn me how addicting this series is. Anyway, thanks totally enjoyable.

Here's the thing about The (Very) Big Bird Job. It's good, but it could've been better.

My biggest complaint is that the super-amazing Cary Elwes is tremendously under-utilized. He's in it a lot, but as Scott Roemer, corrupt CEO of Global Air Transport? Not enough. Not worthy of the man. I don't know if it was the script, or the direction, or Cary owed a guy but there was something missing from the portrayal.

I'm not looking for scene chewing like we got in Season 2's Alexander Moto (Long Live Giancarlo Esposito!) Because that's really a tough act to follow for sure, but we could've gotten something like Clancy Brown's Season 3 Walt Whitman's quite menace. I don't know. Do you know what I'm saying?

The con itself is the very first of Leverage's enormously massive set piece cons and I loved it, though now that we've established that Parker is magic and can disappear into thin air and Eliot can bend bullets and only pays attention to physics when he needs to grow his vegetables and Nate can outthink Brainiac AND Superman and Sophie could steal the planet with a shy smile, it's time to give Hardison his magical powers.

Though in his case it's high-tech wizardry. If you think this is a complaint, it ain't. I love Hardison, I love he's an Actual High Tech Wizard and who cares if an actually seasoned pilot would've probably been able to figure out something was hinky with how The Spruce Goose was taking off, it fits the narrative of the con and that's all that matters.

Leverage's time in Portland is one of my favorite seasons as well, because Portland is weird. It's also home to one of THE BEST Eliot-centric episodes ever. Isn't that right? YES CHEF!

The clips I mashed together are hilarious, interesting, and sweet. Hilarious is Eliot already giving Hardison crap about trying to run a Brew Pub, interesting because Beth Reisgraf displays more flexibility in 30 or so seconds than I have shown in my life, and Parker shows Sophie how to mellow out and be happy.

Other things that could've made it in but didn't? The sweet, brief intro for Adam Baldwin as Colonel Michael Vance and Eliot grabbing the bunny.

Love the ending of this one, because it tells us something big is coming and ... because I can't remember what that big thing is. I usually tap out after The French Connection Job, but ya'll are keeping on point this watch through, and I can't thank you enough!

✓ Small country?

✓ Professor incumbent?

✓ Introduced out of nowhere?

✓ Closes gap in a few short months?

Is the South Korean team working behind the scenes on this? 😂

If you're curious about this: https://youtu.be/do8-HXMCyfY

The Last Dam Job is a 15/10 for me. Always has been, always will be, and it's a shame that the episode previous to this one is so hard for me to watch.

But like I said, I have deep-seated issues with the painful relationship between Nate and Jimmy, and so I just can't get through it.

This one? This one is gorgeous, and before I do anything else, I gotta talk about Saul Rubinek.

I love the little man. He's hairy and he's tiny and he's a goddamn great actor. If you haven't seen him in anything else but fully agree with my sentiment, you really need to check out Warehouse 13. One of Syfy's better shows, it's well worth your time in, especially if you (doy) love The Librarians. You really oughtta check it out if you can.

Saul does a lot of heavy-lifting in this episode in that he's an amazingly callous dickbag. Sitting there behind prison glass, taunting and teasing Nate, gloating about killing Jimmy. The hubris of the man is beyond imagination, and Saul nails it so hard I get genuinely angry and a little sick to my stomach about it. Sure prison's hardened a man, but I also feel like it dumbed him up in the process, because real talk?

Sure he accurately predicated which companies and people Leverage would go after. That's not very hard, because when it comes to his targets, Nate's very definitely got a type. Since Victor was his first target, all he had to wonder was 'which d-bag on this list is the most like me' and just go at it.

But there's an enormous gulf of difference between knowing who Nate's going to burn to ash and salt the earth over and thinking your smarter than him. Making it even more criminal? Victor's had plenty of time to actually analyze the cons Leverage deployed but it sure as hell doesn't look like he did because he and Latimer get their damned asses handed to them.

Beyond that, this season finale has an awful, awful lot going for it, and could also be clipped in it's totality because so much happens, and all of it's beyond awesome.

Archie calling Parker his daughter to his bio daughter. Quinn returning and being so badass (it's a crying shame Clane Crawford couldn't get his act together for Lethal Weapon the TV show and that it seems like Damon Wayans might've been a big part of that). Chaos returning, and wanting Parker to dress up as Starbuck from BSG or having Sophie dress up as Deanna Troi (the scandal of it all!!!!). Kari Matchett showing up for a third-reel con that has Nate rocked on his heels.

Nate. Standing at the edge of that dam, Dubenich and Latimer at gunpoint. Nate, full of anger and rage and sadness. His friends, showing up to see what his does, no doubt ready, willing and able to deal with whatever choice makes.

Nate. Making the right choice and letting two bad men take care of themselves.

I clipped the hell out of this one. Batcave, Dammit Hardison, Born Ready, Eliot's Discussion, Dad's Ice Cream Treat and The Family Gathering beat out smaller, funnier moments like Deanna Troi Cosplay, Chaos Gets Electrocuted, Hardison standing at rigid attention every time he's talking to Archie, Archie Approves of Hardison ...

You guys, I love this episode.

Leverage - S01E01 - The Nigerian Job

I love this one because of course I do! I've been waiting for The Double-Pronged Monkey Con to be next since I started re-watching Leverage.

It's got so much going for it; it's funny, it's typical Hardison overkill, it's Eliot getting a nerd-thing from Hardison (Mr Punchy) that he absolutely loves, it's Parker eating those goddamn donuts that I genuinely looked for in my neck of the woods for well over a year before giving up and, most importantly, it's a deepening of the relationship and respect between Hardison and Nate.

But before we get to all that, we gotta talk about Todd Stashwick as Tommy Madsen and Sasha Barrese as his sister Barbara. They're both so great in this, and sorry not sorry: Sasha Barrese is absolutely gorgeous and Todd's got this weird macho awesomeness to him that I can't really explain. Whatever the case may be, watching these two knuckleheads navigate their way through Hardison's GROSSLY over-complicated next-gen con is as hilarious as it is worrisome.

Because the con is over-complicated. Of course it is. Have you met Hardison? The man can complicate goin' to the bathroom, got-dangit. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

As the Evil Gold Hoarding Brother and Sister Mean Team, Todd and Sasha are just ... let me put it this way. It's kind of surprising that they managed to scam so many people out of so much gold over such a long period of time. For all Barbara's alleged intelligence, she seems kind of ditzy and Tommy's Tommy, and with his general laxness, it's amazing he hadn't already squandered their money.

Or ... is it that even though The Double-Pronged Monkey Con was fated to fail that it was better than we think? We know by the end (and because of the very long clip I picked) that Nate for sure thought it was. If we know anything about our mastermind, it's that he sure as hell doesn't give praise lightly, so when he gives Hardison his evaluation form, there's not one hint of a lie.

This is a really important step for Hardison, because up until now, right or wrong, Nate's been treating him like the loveable dufus he is. I'm not saying that Nate underestimates Hardison in any way. Not at all.

What I'm saying is is that a lot of that gets fairly dumped at our Age of the Geek Baby because let's be real. Hardison's efforts to psych himself up to do things he knows he can do are sometimes a lot too much. I don't hate it but I feel like Nate tolerated it because when the psyching up is done, Hardison's one of the strongest players on the team.

Nate's discussion with Hardison in the loft, when it's just the two of them? A very wonderful, very quiet, very solemn moment where a grandmaster admits that the pupil will one day be complete.

Before I go, I do have to talk about the con, and how the con turned into a heist that Nate ran behind Hardison's back. It's like the man said: he knew the con was going to fail, but even a failed con can get the job done in the way that matters most. In this case, it was getting back a cherished necklace and getting reparations to all the people taken to the cleaners by The Madsens.

I was going to clip the Parker eating donuts thing but I couldn't because I'm not in the mood to rewatch a scene that makes me hunger for donuts that probably never existed in the real world in the first place.

For those who have seen both Leverage and Hustle, who wins between Nate and Micky? This is excluding the teams both have.

I feel Micky takes it, he's arguably the greater con man/mastermind.

I feel Nate's edge is having couped Daemon Moreau, but Micky did take on MI5 and beat them twice, worked in the shadow and never actually got caught.

I was just rewatching this episode. Parker was talking about an Emerald, Eliot was fighting a crew they were stuck with on the boat, and their comms were destroyed along with Hardison's equipment.

So many questions driving me nuts. Who was the mark they pulled before getting arriving at that airport? And how did they end up at the airport if Hardison lost all his equipment from the previous con?

Also anyone else wish we got an episode like that, simile to the episode where they all recount how they stole the dagger but it’s each of them meeting Nate

The absolute best thing about this episode is the scene I clipped for everyone, but before we can talk about that, I want to spend a moment talking about David Ogden Stiers as Walt Whitman Wellesley IV.

He's in it for no more than 4, maybe 5 minutes, but that's all it takes. His appearance as one of the men Nate had marked for Leveraging, only to turn out to be a heartbroken billionaire, is absolutely sold in that first scene in the bar. Unlike some guest stars and their small screen time, I'm not mad DOS isn't in this one for the whole run. It's not necessary.

We see how Nate feels about him, we see how Sophie feels about him, we see how the con goes down.

The con itself is pretty standard stuff as far as these things go, and if I'm honest, the team ran rings around Meredith and her stable of black widows and 'San-gee'. Little wonder; the team is the team is the team, and Meredith's far too callous to see people like Nate and Sophie coming at her. Sophie's revelation towards the end and Meredith's 'YOU?!' Is wonderful.

That's the risk of being convinced you're the smartest person in the room.

The scene I clipped is phenomenal for its acting. Nate and Sophie, in the park, pretending that they're running a Hohe Minne Variant. It's wonderfully complex! First we've got Timothy Hutton and Gina Bellman playing Nate and Sophie, a man and a woman who love each other but have one of the most complex relationships ever. His jealousy over Sophie having to let San-Gee try to smooth talk her speaks volumes, but here, at that small park table, it's all Nate and Sophie.

Except it's not; it's also the people they're pretending to be because Meredith's watching, so the part must be played. To me, Nate's 'you really are beautiful' comment isn't acting. I really feel like in that moment, Timothy was being 100% truthful, and Gina's blushed reaction, the way she hides her eyes with her hair ... that's some realness right there.

It's a wonderfully delicate moment between two consummate actors who've been working together probably every day for the entire run of the show.

There's only one other moment that got close to getting clipped, and that's Eliot beating the tar out of San-Gee at the boat. A truly ridiculous fight, because San-Gee not only thinks he can beat Eliot after already catchin' a whuppin', he decides to give fisticuffs a try. It's genuinely funny because it's patently ridiculous. I'm not even a con artist, a flimflam man, or generally 'intelligent' most of the time, but a dude like Eliot coming at me like a spider monkey all hopped up on Mountain Dew? Me? What would I do?

I do think Iron Maiden put it best when they sing 'ruuunnn for the hills, run for your li-i-i-ife'!

Naturally, the end of the episode kicks off the two-part season finale in great fashion. A word of warning; I always find The Radio Job hard to get through because I had a very complicated relationship with my father, so we'll see how that goes.

But all credit for the greatness of this episode rests on that 1min5s clip of Nate and Sophie in the park.

While Girl's Night Out is the better story, Boy's Night Out is a lot funnier ... and easier to clip.

As I watched, I have to make a confession; age and mellowing out had me enjoying this one (and Hurley) a helluva lot more than I remember the last time around, and that's saying a lot. I find the process fascinating, and it's one of the reasons why I decided to be weird and obsessive enough to delve into such a serious hobby.

It really shows me how much my tastes have changed! As a side note, it took me 4 years to build the software and apparatus that lets me track, rate, review, and generate the sharecards.

Anyways. Like I was saying, my appreciation has changed, and the trouble Hurley's Chaos Gremlin lifestyle brought to Nate and the boys on Poker Night came off a whole lot different to me this time around. I loved his entire interaction with Nate in the church basement and the massive amount of difficulty Nate had in being anywhere near an addiction support group.

Equally hilarious was Hardison deciding he was gonna man up and do all the hard stuff himself. Watching him psych himself up, become A DIRTY COP and just generally Hardison-ing his way through the whole thing with nuns, Mexican gangsters, Irish mobsters and the whole nine yards was a real treat.

Things that were skimped on that make me sad, and which might've been why I didn't like this one so much back in the day.

Not. Enough. Bonanno. There can never be 'too much' Detective Bonanno. I know I'm not the only one in the group who thinks he's the cat's meow, and I always feel robbed whenever this one pops up. I would especially like to see how his evident friendship with Nate actually changed from 'yeah that dude's a criminal but he's all right' to 'that guy's a criminal but he hosts a mean poker party'.

WHY INTRODUCE ANOTHER ELIOT AND NOT GIVE MORE OF OTHER ELIOT?

And last but not least, Hurley and Peggy. I'm not really into romances and stuff (if you ask me why The Fall Guy is a perfect romance movie, I'll tell you about it), but we could've done with Alice ... Parker just giving us a throwaway sometime in the future saying 'Ugh. Peggy and Hurley keep inviting this Alice chick to their destination wedding ...' and then everyone says You're Alice White!.

Perfection? I think so.

Anyways. I take back the Negative Ned stuff I said about Boy's Night. It's a lot of fun!

💋💋💋

If I had to choose between Girl's Night and Boy's Night, Girl's Night wins, hands down, every time and that's mostly because I'm not the hugest Jack Hurley fan.

I get it. He's a lovable screw-up who screws up so epically that it's comical, but Girl's Night has Peggy, Alice White (who is apparently Parker) and Jeri Ryan. How could anyone not adore this one over the other one when that's what's being offered up?

I love how everyone bands together to protect poor Peggy from a creepy dude who turns out to be a highly skilled thief who's after some very important information. Information that could destroy a government.

And that's the thing about Leverage. Sometimes things start off small but by the end of it, they're literally fighting to save an entire country. But not without a whole bunch of 'phoning a friend', though in this instance it's Parker calling Hardison more than he likes, to get him to do things he shouldn't have to do during Boy's Night.

Parker does a lot of heavy lifting in this one, pretending to be Peggy (while playing her getting increasingly drunk), keeping the deadly Craig Mattingly preoccupied while pulling off some incredibly smart tricks to make sure the man gets what he deserves.

Frustratingly it's a bloody hard episode to clip. It's a wonderful watch, but everyone and everything is so connected and the scenes are so much longer than usual, and as much as I know (you know, that I'm not telling the truth ... sorry, couldn't help it) that you'd all love super long clips, the only super long one worth clipping was Jeri's spectacular tango scene. She's got them leg for days.

The clip I chose made the cut because it's Peggy going absolutely ballistic on that waiter in the best possible way, with even suave bad guy Craig Mattingly acting like it's a little too much!

Are you kidding me right now? This is hands down one of the greatest episodes in a literal sea of great episodes. It's funny as hell, it has one of the greatest cameos from one of the greatest actors in the world, it's chock-a-block full of unhinged performances from everyone In Leverage ...

... and I've barely even covered the con, or the internal friction. Sophie's feeling disrespected by Nate, Hardison may or may not have eat Eliot's quite literally bespoke, handcrafted sandwich and Parker's fending off the hot advances from Peter Stormare as Gunter Hanzig, noted dockoomentary filmmaker and all around weirdbeard.

And Leverage has to work around this lunatic and his cameras, which are everywhere.

Everyone involved in this episode woke up on the absolute best day of their lives, had the absolute bet time of their lives, and gave us an endless cavalcade of humor in the process.

I confess; I am not a fan of The Office, UK or US versions. That level of cringe, which I appreciate many people find hilarious, is actual kryptonite for me. It makes me feel weird and uncomfortable and it has a lot to do with (I suspect) being on the spectrum. I feel that cringe on a visceral level and I can't handle it.

But the moment Nate and the team realized they had to get in front of those cameras and work with the dockoomentary film crew to get the job done? Additional comedy gold.

Personal highlights for me that didn't make it into the clip factory? Sophie's Monkey Training, Parker's entire deal with greeting cards, the sandwich situation and roughly 35 other minutes of airtime.

The clip I did choose I had to choose. When Gunter gets ahold of one of Hardison's super-great cameras and tries to have a normal conversation with Parker, who he loves more than anything else in the world is just excruciatingly awesome.

This is one of the episodes I'd show to someone, no context, and say 'this is why you have to watch this show. This. Right here. Watch and love like I do.

I chose the clip I did for two reasons. One, because it's a Parker scene. Two, because Peter Stormare nails it so hard as a Werner Herzog clone I literally can't even.

Just when I think I can’t love Parker more than I already do. I rewatch ho ho ho. LOVE IT.

This one's a blast, and for the usual, totally obvious reasons. Everyone (especially Hardison and Parker until she's not and Eliot ...)

Let me retract that statement. The only person in The Experimental Job who's having a real good time (until he's not) is Hardison. We can't blame our super-geek for having the time of his life on this particular job. It's the first time in his entire life he's ever felt like Big Man on Campus, and all because of the very same talents that made him an outcast back in the day.

But while he's off hanging out with a pile of Chads and being Chad-adjacent, Parker's doing homework for classes that've been dropped, Eliot's hanging out in a torture chamber absolutely terrifying seven different shades of hell out of Stoney Westmoreland, the EVIL CIA interrogator.

By the by, those particular scenes with Eliot giving that 'stone cold spook' a case of the whiggins is a personal highlight for me because our hitter with a heart of gold probably isn't playing. I'd say, given everything that he did for Moreau and who knows who else, that there's a very good reason why Eliot Spencer only sleeps four hours a night, and it's not so he can grow vegetables.

When Parker's not being terribly disappointed in Hardison's college extra-curriculars, she's having a really good time playing his crazy girlfriend. As I was watching this time around, I became very much aware of how much Parker's changed since the beginning. It's amazing how open and comfortable she is inside her own skin these days. Old Parker would've stabbed everyone with all the forks at that garden party. I almost clipped the scene where she calls herself a slut etc, but if I started clipping everything I liked about this episode ...

Yes. You'd voluntarily watch the entire episode. Hell, even though I just watched it, I'd probably watch it again just to make sure it was perfectly done.

The villain in this one is actually pretty villainous in a lot of ways and he absolutely deserves what he gets. I love how the con plays out at the end, with him being trapped in The Prisoner's Dilemma the moment Nate laid eyes on him. Everything else was really a lot of smoke and mirrors, but when Nate builds something like this, those smoke and those mirrors can destroy a man.

Love this episode a lot!

Sophie was a con artist

Hardison a hacker

Parker a thief

These are three of the most stereotypical roles for criminals.

We know Elliot was hired to retrieve stuff like in the introduction in episode one and in yhe Rashoman job.

But what makes him different from Sophie? Besides the violence? Isn't he essentially a con artist manipulating to get into places?

The reason for asking is I'm working on a fan fic in the same universe with a new crew and I'm struggling with the Hitter role.

I have a Mastermind (Former Interpol Officer), a Con Artist, Hacker, Thief.

Then I have two more characters one is a Fixer who's travelled the world as a smuggler with ties to the under world. The other is more Elliot inspired who's a underground street fighter who's fought in different countries and is a hitter/retriever but it's not a role which makes sense.

Watching thru Leverage again, and giving Redemption another run too, and happened to see this dress in The Mastermind Job (about 18 minutes in). I swear I've seen Sophie wear this dress. Am I hallucinating? Did she wear something similar? I'm supposed to be working on real projects so really can't just try digging through every scene where Sophie would be wearing a fancy and compare. But it's driving me the short way to crazy. Please someone tell me where I've seen this dress, or where this strange deja vu is coming from.

I have a deep and abiding issue with this episode and I feel like maybe most of you have the same problem.

Nate gives Sterling a pass. Oh, I get it, I get it. I really do. What wouldn't Nate do for his kid, right? At the end of the day all Sterling wanted was to make sure his daughter got out of Dubai and away from one of the lamest criminals I've ever seen on TV.

But it's the way he went about it. He took Sophie off the map. He drugged and assaulted Eliot. He trapped Parker in a closed room. He put all of them in for-real-deal trouble. Not 'you're under arrest' trouble. In 'we're gonna shoot you and then throw you off the Burj Khalifa and pretend we know nothing about it'.

That kind of thing does not get a pass. Ever. Worse still (as you see in the clip), Sterling admits why he had to have Leverage do it, and Nate in particular. Nate is the greatest thief he's ever seen, but only because he has the greatest team in the world and also because Nate Ford is, for all his criminal ways these days, as honest as the day is long.

All Sterling had to do was ask. Nate wouldn't have even made the man beg. We saw how the entire goddamn team reacts to children in jeopardy in The Carnival Job. All Sterling had to do was ask and Leverage would've figured out a way to, I don't know, steal the tallest building in the world or something.

I like this episode, but it makes me angry at the same time and that's a real funky place to be when it comes to one of my favorite shows.

Anyways. Massive temper tantrum out of the way, this is a pretty good episode, if fiendish to clip properly. I'm not out here trying to stitch together than dozen or so 10 second comedic moments, but the clips I did put together are, for me, a showcase.

The BLYAT chess scene never fails to make me laugh because it's damn funny. Parker being saved by Hardison, who understands her more than ever after her understandable freakout over wearing an additional hundred pounds of ball bearings strapped to her feet, is just wonderful. And thinking so far ahead that he had his OWN Plan Q, where Parker would need to jump off the tallest building in the world?

That's some real awesomeness there too. It's why Nate trusts Hardison so much. Because the man is starting to think like a mastermind ... when he isn't whipping up nonsense like The Double-Pronged Monkey Con. But that's down the road still.

And last, yeah, I clipped that scene were Sterling admits the truth, but I'm mad about it all the same!