LEVERAGE: The Rundown Job; The Frame-Up Job

In the summer finale of Leverage, the team is split up again into two different cases: one featuring Eliot, Hardison and Parker and the other Nate and Sophie.

For the sake of this recap, I’ll go in the order in which the episodes aired, though I suppose that you could watch them out of order.

First up, we have a scientist who seems to be off his game when he forces a farmer into something crazy.

Switching from that quick introduction, we meet Colonel Vance (guest star Adam Baldwin) who acted outside of Federal Law to bring down a terrorist in Rome. With a big slap on the wrist, Vance makes a bad joke about the Titanic in relation to the CIA, FBI and other agencies.

But all of that was done without meeting the team, until just now, as Eliot takes out two security guards, Hardison opens a safe and Parker works her way across some lasers after disabling the motion sensors. Parker does lasers better than the modern Ocean’s movies, if I can add.

The team has saved some nuns and orphans from a dictator with a ton of diamonds. All cut short by the victory is an ominous phone call to Eliot for a kill. So if Eliot’s not going to do it, someone else will. Now we have a case for the day.

Coercion, with the help of Hardison and Parker, helps Eliot gets the target. Now they’re about to save the day. This seems far too easy for a whole episode. It’s pretty amazing to watch the three of them save this woman, especially with the spray paint cloud and the vespa.

The target is the administrator for the 911 services of DC, which means that hit is more than just a hit.

Vance is now into the picture, only to arrest Eliot and the team. Leaving Vance alone with the three of them is a bad plan, but now the FEMA director of DC alone with a hospital administrator. Vance’s teams are now illegal, but that doesn’t mean the team can’t stop a terrorist attack in an afternoon.

In the NSA truck, Hardison is now a kid in a candy store with all the feeds. Eliot wants Hardison and Parker gone, but they aren’t having any of that. Using all of the intel the NSA has, the team goes to the site of a robbery a few months ago. But in the meantime, someone dressed as a Muslim walked into a newspaper to drop off a letter. That’s not crazy or scary at all.

Inside the antique store is a crazy lab full of equipment and the Influenza from 1918. The odds on 150 million people dying from the Spanish Flu is freaking Hardison out, but Eliot’s got one good pep talk up his sleeve to stop the world from dying. So, crazy scientist doesn’t need a lap but a pig farm.

Vance was proof that this isn’t just a theory of a lab while he deals with the crazy letter to the newspaper from before. One dead owner later and scores of dead pigs, not they have proof that the Spanish Flu will be set off somewhere.

With the intel on a random trailer out in the middle of nowhere, the team still isn’t satisfied with what they’ve done. They figure out that the three people who were to die (save the one they saved) were all at a conference by a Dr Udall in Berlin a few years before.

Inside the door of Udall’s home, Hardison steps on a steel-trap. To save him, Parker does some very creative maneuvers to clip the wires. Now the team figures out that Ahmed from the newspaper is Udall. All the research is at Udall’s house so the trailer’s what now?

It’s good to know that there’s always a little power to your car with electric locks, especially if Hardison can use that to get Vance and his team away from the trailer before it explodes.

No clue about the eggs right now, but Udall’s taken the virus onto the Metro. That can’t be good. On a scale of one to damn this is bad, this is damn this is bad. So Parker’s on the train and now the guys are stealing a car to get to the next station. After about three seconds in the stolen car, they get a police tail, but that’s really not anything they can’t handle.

Eliot and Hardison are in the train tunnel now, but telling Parker Udall will have a bag or a briefcase isn’t helpful full of people on their way to work.

Turns out all those eggs in Udall’s house for to vaccinate himself. Found out, Udall’s just sort of crazy to talk about waking up the government to potential terror attacks. At least Parker got the bomb away, but Eliot did get shot in the process. Parker wasn’t quite as good as she should have been earlier, stealing one diamond, which is handy to help them disable the bomb. While they’re getting the bomb stopped, Udall gets his gun and starts shooting again. Eliot’s got another shot, this time to the leg, while Parker takes the bomb and uses her mini-blow torch to burn all the virus that was air-born.

Vance wants Eliot to join his team, but he won’t have it. Eilot also won’t do hospitals so he’ll walk away from the scene on Hardison and Parker’s shoulders.

Now for our other case, which starts out near the end of the case before jumping back. Ah, frame stories are great!

Without the other three, Nate’s been given a ticket to a great film noir fest, though Sophie won’t have anything with the plot (nice use of another Doctor Who reference Leverage team).

Sophie lied about her theatre being in disrepair so she could go to this art exhibit for a recently dead collector, Mr Gault. His son seems to think Sophie looks familiar. I spell a hint about the whole case now. It’s a personal thing for Sophie, though Nate isn’t buying it.

There’s a piece, “Mama Stare” that has never been seen before. Sophie still keeps saying that the painting is personal, though no one has seen it besides from Gault, per the artist’s wishes. To no one’s shock at this, the painting has been stolen. Who should arrive at the party but Sterling.

Even at Interpol, Sterling is here to help try and stop some theft because art theft is the first step towards lots of all other illegal activities. For now, Nate and Sophie are cuffed together and left alone in a room, though not for very long.

To clear Sophie, Nate’s now going to have to work to try and figure out the case. There’s some security measures that seem really lax in my estimation (though there is a museum quality scanner). Nate’s also sure that Sophie’s still hiding something (she is!), and in Mr. Gault’s room, there’s information on who was last accessing the vault.

Seeing that someone else was accessing the vault before Gault’s death, he changed the code. Now we’re not only dealing with this stolen painting, but also Gault’s murder. Joy and rapture for really complicated cases!

Gault’s murderer is someone in his house, be it the lawyer, the curator, the daughter, the last ex-wife and the son. With an hour to solve this, there’s only so much that Sophie can do, but I think she’ll handle it well. Now armed with all the family’s secrets, Sophie’s sure that there’s something else in the works (with another Who joke in Tennant and Smith) as the son doesn’t want his father’s money after all of this. Still no closer to the murderer, but maybe one step closer on the theft.

There’s a painting in the Bulter’s room, though that seems too easy. Sophie’s still not seeing what she expects from the unknown painting, though it is confirmed to be a Metier.

Nate, if Sophie is protesting that the last painting wasn’t Mama Stare, please believe her.

This con is getting more and more complicated, now Sophie’s trying to steal one painting so they can figure out what is going on with his missing painting. While Sophie’s doing that, Nate’s being mean to Sterling while Sterling’s looking over evidence.

Having proven that at least two Metier’s are the same (or as close as you can get with quick tests), Nate and Sophie are now convinced that all the art in Gault’s collection might be faked.

Sterling’s anger and rage at the news Nate and Sophie brought them is now going to go horribly wrong as the curator is now dead in the pool. With the curator dead, and the case solved to Sterling, he’ll now be a smug bastard because he knows where Nate and Sophie are based out of.

One moment of happiness for Nate and Sophie is ruined by Nate’s brain running still, but now he’s faced with a gun at the hands of the real thief.

Gault’s son killed him and copied all the art from the house. Eventually, Gault figured it out. Nate’s still not sure why the son kept going in and out so many times, but he’ll figure it out soon enough.

Nate, for your sanity, please never go work for Sterling at Interpol, even if you can bring Sophie.

What Nate finally figured out, though, is that Gault’s son’s work in construction saved the original Mama Stare. In the end, Sophie’s the subject of the painting, which they have to steal to keep Metier’s wishes.