We’ve been rewatching and rating Leverage and we’ve gotten up through season 4. (For more on how our rating system works, see here, which also covers season 1 of Leverage.) Here’s what we thought.
Leverage, season 4
- “The Long Way Down Job” – 5
- “The 10 Li’l Grifters Job” – 3
- “The 15 Minutes Job” – 8
- “The Van Gogh Job” – 6
- “The Hot Potato Job” – 10
- “The Carnival Job” – 5.5
- “The Grave Danger Job” – 8
- “The Boiler Room Job” – 10
- “The Cross My Heart Job” – 8.5
- “The Queen’s Gambit Job” – 4
- “The Experimental Job” – 8
- “The Office Job” – 1.5
- “The Girls’ Night Out Job” – 8.5
- “The Boys’ Night Out Job” – 6
- “The Lonely Hearts Job” – 6.5
- “The Gold Job” – 7
- “The Radio Job” – 4
- “The Last Dam Job” – 6
Leverage makes a jump in this season from last season’s average of 5.6 to 6.4. Despite a few poorly-performing episodes dragging down the average, there are a lot of gems this season that show off the skill of the writing team and the versatility of the cast. This season’s episodes continue to experiment with the form, such as “The 10 Li’l Grifters Job,” a Christie-esque murder mystery, the parallel stories of “The Girls’ Night Out Job” and “The Boys’ Night Out Job,” and “The Office Job,” which is just The Office with our heroes blundering around in it. Some of these efforts pay off; others, not so much.
The worst episode of the season is “The Office Job” at just 1.5. Maybe if you’re a fan of The Office you’ll enjoy this, but we’re not, and it just doesn’t work as a Leverage episode. “The 10 Li’l Grifters Job,” “The Queen’s Gambit Job,” and “The Radio Job” don’t work very well as episodes, but they all have their moments. Like last season, season 4 also has another half-hearted attempt at an arc which really isn’t worth the trouble the writers went to in setting it up.
On the other hand, we get two brilliant 10s out of this season: “The Hot Potato Job,” in which the crew rescues a bio-engineered super potato from an evil agri-corp, and “The Boiler Room Job,” in which our heroes have to figure out how to scam a scammer who knows all the scams in the book. Both of these episodes pit the characters against formidably smart adversaries who keep them on their toes. Besides these two, there’s also a good selection of 8s and 8.5s
There’s also an oddity this season: “The Van Gogh Job,” which we rated a 6. The two of us usually give episodes pretty close to the same rating, so when an episode rates a 6, that usually means we both gave it a 3 on our scale of 1 to 5. For this episode, though, we were poles apart: one 5 (because it’s a powerful emotional story that lets the main cast show off their range by playing entirely new characters) and one 1 (because it’s just not a Leverage story and there’s no con to watch unfold).
Any Leverage fans out there want to weigh in? Got a different pick for the best or worst episodes of the season? Let us know in the comments!
Image: Leverage cast via IMDb
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