50 Ways to Love your Lever…age

I’ve been watching USA’s new drama, Leverage, and am really enjoying it.

Very brief synopsis:

A crew of crooks runs con jobs on criminals and corrupt businessmen in order to help those who have been ripped off by them.

It’s a fun show. The cons aren’t as complicated as the ones in the Ocean’s movies (as it is inevitably compared with), which keeps the story light and moving quickly. The crew is small, with distinct specialties that allow them to handle most situations – i.e. a thief, a hacker, a mercenary, a grifter, and the mastermind that keeps them on track.

There’s a good blend of personalities, and the dialogue easily moves between serious and comic, with the team members taking little potshots at each other on occasion.

The producers get a lot of mileage out of the sets, providing enough detail to set the tone without relying on extensive greenscreens (a la Sanctuary) or expensive location shoots. According to John Rogers, one of the writers, “It’s nowhere near as expensive as it looks.” Hopefully this will convince the powers that be to renew it on a cost basis if nothing else.

One of my favorite parts of the show is the use of flashbacks. These were very effective in the first episode, when they fleshed out each character without pages and pages of dialogue. They’re also sometimes used for comedic effect by providing ironic answers to questions raised by the characters or plot.

{Small Spoiler Ahead}

It’ll be interesting to see how the characters develop over the story arc. They’re basically two-dimensional archetypes right now, which totally works, but I imagine the writers and/or actors will want a little more over time. I can see where the writers are already playing with fleshing out the characters some, and it seems a bit uneven right now. For instance, last night’s episode involved orphans, and the viewing audience was asked to empathize with the thief, Parker, since she was an orphan herself. This would have been fine if we hadn’t seen the flashback where a pre-teen Parker blew up her house, presumably with her parents still inside.

Hiccups aside, I think as long as the writers keep it light, the show will have a good long run. They’ve set up some sexual tension, a couple of “mysterious pasts,” a possibly reoccurring opponent, and some humorous character flaws, all of which could be mined for a while.

In any case, the timing of this show’s release is good, since Eureka, Dexter, House, True Blood, My Name is Earl, and Sanctuary are all on hiatus, and the flawed-but-still-enjoyable My Own Worst Enemy has been cancelled.

Full disclosure: I wouldn’t take my opinions on what constitutes a good television show too seriously; I thought Acapulco H.E.A.T. was awesome.