Leverage – Recap & Review – The Lost Heir Job (Season Finale)

photo: tnt

Leverage
The Lost Heir Job

Original Air Date: 9 Sept 2009

Brittany Frederick – Staff Writer
brittanyw@thetwocentscorp.com

Weren’t we just talking about this show coming back and now its second season is already over? Wow.

We’re at a hospital where some elderly and ill rich guy is being told by a friend that his lawyer is going to decimate his entire estate. Somehow, this gets us to Nate tracking Sophie down in London to beg her to come back in the most awkward fashion imaginable. There’s a very long pause before he tells her he’s meeting a new client, and hopes she’ll be there with him. She doesn’t answer, and Nate looks emo.

And then there’s Seven of Nine…I mean Tara…who is the attorney for said friend of now-dead rich guy, whose name is Ruth. She’s worried that her dead friend’s wishes may not be followed thanks to sleazy lawyer guy. Meanwhile, her lawyer doesn’t really like Nate much, and Nate doesn’t like her either, because she’s on her big soapbox about how she believes in the cause, et cetera. In fact, no one really likes this chick, as evidenced by the subsequent team meeting. (Hardison also likes pointing out they all know Nate was in London, thanks to a lot of security cameras.

Hardison: Who feels like playing Where’s Waldo? I do!)

The game plan is to scare the crap out of the sleazy lawyer guy to intimidate him. They dig up a skeleton in his closet involving a mysterious payment made in 1980. This involves Nate in a godawful suit making him look like a bad Vegas lounge act pretending he’s another lawyer, and Hardison and Eliot playing prison guards to get to the dead guy’s former business partner. Parker, as usual, is hanging out in air ducts. This is to intimidate the former business partner into squealing by setting him up for some serious trouble otherwise. The guy then squeals to the lawyer that the mysterious payment from dead guy somehow involves the mob.

Meanwhile, Nate meets sleazy lawyer guy pretending to be an equally sleazy lawyer. He makes up something off the top of his head about there being a long-lost daughter dead guy fathered with a stripper, and passes Parker off as said daughter with a meth problem. It doesn’t go too well. Turns out, however, that the stripper really was pregnant and being paid off by the rich guy. Oops. They make up a fake medical file and sic the client’s lawyer on the sleazy lawyer, all to create more drama. Think Nick George in Dirty Sexy Money, if he were older, evil and feeling entitled to everything the Darlings ever had. And willing to have Parker killed off to knock her out of the picture. Thankfully for everyone, the hired goon misses and Eliot beats the crap out of him before he runs away.

Everyone tries to get Parker to the probate hearing, but sleazy lawyer guy has now blamed her for the fate of the hired goon, calling her “armed and dangerous.” In other words, the cops are all over her. Hardison stalls by making sure sleazy lawyer guy sets off the courthouse metal detector with a gun. Parker has a little too much fun with a tazer. But Nate is nowhere to be seen; he’s late, meaning it’s up to Tara to make their case that Parker really is the lost heir of dead rich guy. Except…as Nate reveals in true grandiose Nate fashion, such an heir really does exist, and it’s not Parker.

It’s their client.

She’s colorblind, as was the dead rich guy and the stripper. As Nate points out, she was adopted in 1982, when she was two. The dead rich guy was mistaking her for her mother the last time they met. He was looking for her all along.

As insurance, Parker cleans out the sleazy lawyer’s safe to get all the dirt on him and gets him arrested.

Parker: Sorry I’m late. I was just at your office cleaning out your safe.

Not to mention, Tara the client’s lawyer? Not a lawyer. She’s a friend of Sophie’s that Sophie hired to fill in, who decided to sneak her way in the front door. More bickering amongst everyone ensues. Especially when she is just in it for the money, a direct contrast to our heroes, who all don’t seem to like her very much.

Admittedly, I’m not a fan of introducing a replacement into an existing ensemble that works well. It can either be good – see Gabrielle Union temping for Sarah Shahi on Life – or horrible – Bre Blair knocking Regina Taylor out of The Unit, for example. I’m still on the fence about Jeri Ryan. But as an episode, this one was once again very well written. Those last two turns surprised me, but when I thought about it, I realized that they made perfect sense with the plot. I do love it when a plan comes together.

It’s gonna be a long wait till January.