Did you see Leverage’s episode, “The Mile High Job,” this week? Granted, it wasn’t the most clever case, but it was arguably the funniest episode of the season so far, and the credit goes to our friend Alec Hardison.
Up until now, Hardison would deliver some memorable lines, and have a public role or two in a job, but for the most part, he remained behind the scenes, at a computer terminal somewhere, making it all happen. Was he necessary? Yes, the jobs couldn’t have gone off without him, but he was not a player.
Until this week.
Hardison just might give Sophie a run for her money in the con department, after what we saw him pull off at the corporate headquarters of the toxic fertilizer company. How he got the employees to not only believe that he worked there, but also to let him lead a meeting and to throw him a birthday party was just insane. Good insane, not Hannibal Lecter insane.
How will this affect the series as a whole? Only for the better. Here’s how it could go:
What do you think? Do you like Hardison out there in the limellight, or should he stay behind his computer?
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Jan 24, 2009 @ 12:30 EST5EDT
Hardison was great this week. I don’t see why he can’t do more fieldwork. Nate is good enough on the computer and Hardison always does all his prep work ahead of time so he could just show Nate what all he needs to do on the computer to free himself up to go in the field. As long as Hardison and Eliot don’t switch jobs they should be fine. Eliot can’t type and Hardison can only whup up on gimps. I don’t think Eliot could ever find the time to teach Hardison to kick ass good enough and Hardison will never be able to teach Eliot anything useful enough on the computer to do anything worthwhile. I love when Nate plays those crazy parts like movie director or priest. He plays them so well.
I have to admit, I didn’t have high hopes for the Hardison character. I assumed the writers might eventually fit him into some type of mold and so I watched with baited breath. But, I am seriously loving him. More things I liked:
– In the first 5 min of the show, I remembered wondering why the con was so awkward, but I didn’t notice Hardison’s absence until later & it reminded me that all of the characters are necessary for each job due to their skills/personality.
– Like you said, I loved how he strolled into the office with the worst accent possible, pulled off the worst presentation in history, wormed his way into the affections of his office mates & then got a b-day party on top of that.
– I love that Hardison’s a millionaire, yet he still abides by the 3-second rule.
– I like how they’re broadening the characters. In the Orphanage job, I was impressed to see Parker kickbutt a la Eliot. The writers are doing a great job with the char’s.
I don’t want to pull Hardison off tech duty, because I love him there. However, I liked that Nate told him he couldn’t survive off of ‘talent and luck’ alone, implying Hardison might do more in the future. On a side, side note, Eliot’s hair looked way better this time around (maybe b/c they finally gave him a condition & trim ;)
I loved Hardison this week. He seemed just like a typical geek (hot pocket) in some ways, and far more sophisticated in others. I caught myself doubting that a “computer hacker” could talk his way into the company like that, but then I realized that’s just the stereotype other shows follow. The fact is, in order to be an infamous world-traveling computer hacker – the kind Nate would have been sent after – he’d have to have some social engineering experience…
That’s also my biggest nitpick about that episode – the fact is, physical presence is required for lots of computer infiltrations, and hacking into a system aboard a plane across the world is a stretch – but this is a fun show so I’ll let that go.
this is really shaping up to be a must-see show. I just hope TNT gives it an early pickup so they can start writing the next set of shows right away.
They have already ordered 6 new scripts, that’s not the same as saying they will order a second series, but if there is a second series these 6 will be the start of it.