Like any show Leverage is one that had its high points and its low ones. "The Stork Job" is one of the latter, and is probably the least-impressive episode of the first season. It's unfortunate given its ambitions, as it's the first one in which the team goes abroad, in this case to Serbia. Their mark is Irina Larenko, a former model and actress who is running a scam with local mobster Nicholas Obrovic using a fake adoption agency. Having bilked an American couple of over a hundred thousand dollars, the crooks provide them with a young boy named Luca only to reclaim him a week later. It's a premise that justifies the team's involvement, yet why Irina and Nicholas need Luca back - especially when it's later revealed that they have a whole room full of orphans - is never adequately explained.
As a foster child the case quickly proves a personal one for Parker, and results in some actions that are even more erratic than usual from her. But while Beth Riesgraf does a good job of selling her character's personal turmoil, she isn't helped by a plot that causes her to take wildly-varied actions - first planning to abandon the kids, then risking herself to save them all. The latter becomes an imperative for the team once they discover that the adoption scam is merely a sideline for much more dangerous illegal activities. This increases the stakes for the team, but it seems an unnecessarily escalation designed more as an excuse to inject some action scenes than anything else and it demonstrates the limits to their willingness to deviate from the show's formula.
To be fair, the episode is not without its merits. As usual the actors do a good job with their roles, with Riesgraf in particular getting an opportunity to develop her emotionally stunted character. There's also a fun scene early on in which Nate and Sophie simultaneously coach Eliot and Parker through initial encounters with the marks, and the team's hijacking of an independent horror film for their scam gives Timothy Hutton a chance for a showy performance as a director. Yet in the end the cast can only do so much to enliven a poorly-plotted story, one that the muted visual tones of the "Serbian" setting do little to help. It's an early misfire that stands out especially when compared to the much stronger "The Bank Shot Job" that preceded it, in which the changes were all for the better. Fortunately it did little to discourage other, even more successful experimental episodes later on in the show.
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