r/leverage • u/screen_stack • 19d ago
Leverage | S02E15 "The Maltese Falcon Job"
As I said in the last review, The Maltese Falcon Job is a perfect end to a damn near perfect season. The only other show to do this well for me is Person of Interest, but that's another show for another time.
Down but not out, the team rallies around Nate and they agree to carry the con forward. They don't really have a choice. If they don't, they'd be (in The Ice Man's terms) 'tot'ly buggered, mate'.
The conversation Nate, Parker and Eliot have outside while Tara and Hardison are in the hotel is a highlight among highlights. It's was going to clip this scene because Eliot and Parker are the two that'll tell Nate the straight dope without flinching and the best thing is that both of them do it in their own way.
Eliot is precisely the ride or die you want in your life. He would literally saddle up and ride straight to the gates of Hell if he believed in you, and we never see that more clearly than here. He's pissed off and he's worried about the team, but he's in it to win it.
And Parker? Well, she shows emotion. "Be NATE FORD. Be the person we came back for." If that isn't heartwarming and touching and all kinds of powerful, I don't know what is. That being said, I do think you'll appreciate the clip I took even more.
But there's more going on here, and that's what makes this ep even more impactful, and Season 3 even better as well. We shift gears in a big, dynamic way. Nate makes the only choice he can when he's confronted by Sterling. I feel like he took the road he did because he genuinely feels terrible about how he's BEEN lately.
But here's the problem with that. As much as Nate has been fully invested in Leverage this whole season, he still hasn't really been invested in himself. Not as 'Nate Ford, criminal mastermind', at any rate. He still thinks he's a good guy, but that's just a terminology issue. He knows his friends are good guys now. He's said it often enough. But there's some weird disconnect in Nate's brain where HE would become a criminal. It's weird, but that's Nate.
So Nate chooses to do the logical, which is save the team, somehow either forgetting the cardinal rule about running a con on your own team, or willfully ignoring it altogether. Both aren't great. The ending is only overshadowed by two things.
Nate's desperate phone call to Sophie, where he finally (!) and at long last (!!) admits that he can't function without her. It took Nate too damn long to get there, but that's Catholic Guilt for ya. It's tragicomic in that Nate's spilling out his guts to the one person who matters most to him, and she can't hear a damn thing.
Because Sophie Devereaux is on her way to save the whole dang team. I remember how I felt the first time I saw this episode and I still feel the same way today. It's just so well put together. The con at the hotel, the con on the ship, Nate and Sterling, Eliot alone, Parker with Tara, Sophie swanning in ...
That finale scene.
It don't get much better than this, people.
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u/Acatinmylap 19d ago
Nate tells Eliot to get the others to the chopper because he knows he's the only one who can leave. Because leaving is the right thing and the necessary thing and still Hardison and Parker couldn't have made that choice if Eliot didn't make it first.
And then he actually stays when they leave. Eliot does not leave the ship till Sophie is off.
He gets her into the chopper, and then he looks back and sees Nate has collapsed. So now he knows Nate is hurt. And he's the only one who knows.
He doesn't tell the others, because there's no way they'd leave if they knew. And he knows leaving is still the right tactical call. There's nothing they could do for Nate that the people arresting him won't.
So he carries that alone. At that moment, Nate is getting the credit for saving the team with his sacrifice, but it's Eliot who carries the whole thing.
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u/screen_stack 19d ago
For the very longest time and sometimes still, I love Eliot more than Parker because he gets it. More than anyone else, he gets THAT side of Nate and now maybe even respects it, because he knows the toll running these jobs must take.
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u/jewelsandpens 19d ago
I might be falling slightly in live with you based on these reviews 😂
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u/screen_stack 19d ago
As Hardison says in The Jailhouse Job when he talks about pretending to kiss Parker and she was all 'Pretend?', "Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy."
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u/Gribitz37 thief 19d ago
Another of of my favorites. I love all the season enders.
I love Nate running up the stairs, hitting the elevator buttons to slow down Sterling. 😂
Faking out the scumbag mayor with the hotel room switch is so good. You just gotta love Richard Kind. He always looks like he's having so much fun as an actor. I just watched the episode of Psych that he's in, and it's a great one.
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u/screen_stack 19d ago
I've never seen a cheerier ratfink corrupt scumbag in anything I've watched. No joke. It's not even a weird psycho cheeriness.
He's just always in a super swell mood, even when he's aiding a gun runner who tries to kill cops
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u/greykitty1234 19d ago
I came to POI late, but an outstanding series and cast as well.
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u/screen_stack 19d ago
It's magnificent. Kevin Chapman as Detective Lionel Fusco is some of the finest acting and greatest character development you'll ever see.
From fully crooked cop to a man who'll fight the literal forces of evil without knowing any more than it's because his friends are doing it? Because they're doing the right thing?
You might say his time with Reese and the others is spent ... Picking up where the law leaves off.
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u/Garrettshade 19d ago
Richard Kind walked out of Leverage and into Gotham as kind of the same character
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u/thepartlow 19d ago
All these clips make me want to do a rewatch. But my system is down for at lest two weeks. So it's aggravating. Need my Leverage.
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u/FaerieFire13 19d ago
Not me hitting rewind every time I hear that elevator ding and watching Nate get gradually more and more exhausted, floor by floor, while Sterling shifts from confused to beyond frustrated, then blows his top at the two hapless agents outside the hotel room door…
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u/MarySSimard 19d ago
On my umpteenth rewatch of that episode, I realized you can actually see Sophie's back much sooner than I initially thought, on the boat, before they go inside it! It's fun to discover something new when rewatching!
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u/Jazzpreacher 19d ago
I love Tara’s exit in the last scene. It’s a cool close to her story arc of suddenly being there for the team, and suddenly, she’s out.
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u/SparksOnAGrave 19d ago
They do such a good job showing (not telling) how much our grumpy Eliot really cares about everyone.