Everything about this episode is good and believable except for Sophie. We are watching 2 episodes a night, so all the preceding episodes are still fairly fresh in our minds. And what we've noticed is that up to this episode, the interaction we are shown between Nate and Sophie is light, flirtatious banter. There's no real emotional weight in their discussions; even the argument about when they first met (shown in "The Mile High Job") was fairly teasing. And then suddenly in this episode Sophie has become a very pushy, demanding woman. Her character seems to have jumped overnight into a possessive, domineering *partner* with a higher stake in the relationship than we've seen so far. Instantly. Granted the topic is Nate's drinking, but she comes the heavy on him in a very unpleasant way. I don't agree with his drinking but I certainly understand why this interaction irritated him so much. Bellman acts it well, but all of us watching feel that they moved too fast with the Nate/Sophie relationship this way. This is the behavior of a woman who's got a far more serious investment in a relationship than we have seen between her and Nate so far.
2 Reviews
More about the arc than the con
academic-drifter30 March 2021
While the majority of Leverage's run consisted of stand-alone episodes, each season had an arc that developed over its course. The arc of the first season could be described as "healing Nathan Ford," over which the broken man introduced in the first episode drowning his sorrows in a hotel bar gradually comes to terms with the horrific loss he has suffered. In most of the episodes of the season, the arc is in the background, and in most episodes is reflected in Nate's nonstop drinking.
In this episode, however, Ford's problems take center stage thanks to their case. Their mark is money manager Jack Hurley, an addict whose loose management of a food bank's funds brings him to their attention. After tracking Hurley down, Nate decides to enroll him at a rehabilitation clinic as a way of getting him to open up about the location of the missing money. With Nate and Parker both posing as patients, they soon find themselves experiencing treatment for their problems. While Parker responds positively (in what serves as much more casual of a subplot than it deserves), Nate finds himself coping far less successfully with alcohol withdrawal, which Sophie (who is posing as a therapist) uses to get him to confront his problems.
This ends up becoming the emotional focus of the episode, thanks to an intense and showy performance from Timothy Hutton. It also eclipses the attempt to recover the missing funds, which has Eliot and Hardison dealing with rival gangs who are chasing Hurley for money that he stole from them. Though this part is resolved by the end, it is much less momentous than the development of Nate's character or the progress it makes towards the season's conclusion. It makes for one of the most important episodes of the season, though in the end not one of the best ones.
In this episode, however, Ford's problems take center stage thanks to their case. Their mark is money manager Jack Hurley, an addict whose loose management of a food bank's funds brings him to their attention. After tracking Hurley down, Nate decides to enroll him at a rehabilitation clinic as a way of getting him to open up about the location of the missing money. With Nate and Parker both posing as patients, they soon find themselves experiencing treatment for their problems. While Parker responds positively (in what serves as much more casual of a subplot than it deserves), Nate finds himself coping far less successfully with alcohol withdrawal, which Sophie (who is posing as a therapist) uses to get him to confront his problems.
This ends up becoming the emotional focus of the episode, thanks to an intense and showy performance from Timothy Hutton. It also eclipses the attempt to recover the missing funds, which has Eliot and Hardison dealing with rival gangs who are chasing Hurley for money that he stole from them. Though this part is resolved by the end, it is much less momentous than the development of Nate's character or the progress it makes towards the season's conclusion. It makes for one of the most important episodes of the season, though in the end not one of the best ones.
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