Leverage Season Two Episode 11 – The Bottle Job: Air date January 20, 2010

Leverage Season Two Episode 11 – The Bottle Job: Air date January 20, 2010

Aldis Hodge!!! That’s right, Hardison (played by Mr. Hodge) takes some center stage time as we make our way to save the neighborhood bar where Nate (Timothy Hutton) spent his youth with his father, and now lives above. By the way, a “recovering” alcoholic living over a bar could have really bad consequences. More on that later.

An Irish loan shark has moved in on the neighborhood and threatens the mourning Cora McRory (Odessa Rae, the future Silver Banshee on Smallville) who has just lost her father and is about to lose his bar. Nate jumps in as Cora is family in his mind and works “the wire”. A con that usually takes weeks to prepare and he gives his team less than 2 hours. Enter the Hardison!

This episode is a focus on Nate’s past and him returning to the bottle, Hardison’s ability to multi-task and flip from one thing to another in a quick second, and Tara’s (Jeri Ryan) growth on the team. Nate is falling apart and Sophie (Gina Bellman) is no where to be seen to force him to pick up the pieces. During the con, he tries to stay away from the bottle but gets pulled back in hard. He tells Tara that his getting drunk will not hurt the team because he understands he is not as good when he is drunk. That mentality is going to get someone hurt very soon.

Hardison takes center stage here as he controls the data feed for the con, pulls the information on their foes, tracks cell phone use to a possible hideout, and pulls a weather report out of nowhere. He showed how much the team truly needs him, and showed he’s not completely on the side of the angels when he admits to using his ATM tech when the team was on their little break. Aldis Hodge and Zachary Levi (Chuck) have given the tech/sci-fi geek portion of the world (which I am part of) characters to be proud of that, much like us, have multi-facets to their personalities and more to share than a couple of computer searches and sci-fi movie references. I’m looking forward to more of the growth of Hardison as the season continues.

Tara, what can I say about this girl? I love Jeri Ryan (told you I was a sci-fi geek) and the character is interesting, but I have a feeling she’s going to mess with the team very soon. For someone who was filling in for Sophie, she seems to have the mentality that she has replaced Sophie already whether she likes it or not. Hmmmm… catfight coming anyone? She also is obsessed with her cut of the money to do these good deeds. The rest of the team has seemed to buy into helping others from the get-go and seem to take great pride in what they do, but Tara’s monetary desires are going to derail things soon. Oh yeah, and she seems to have a thing for Nate at times. Do you think Sophie is going to like that?

All in all, a good episode that gave a back story into Nate’s relationship with his father and some insights into how good this team really is.

Apply LEVERAGE every Wednesday!

See more reviews by JAM at http://www.hollywoodteenzine.com/