‘Leverage: Redemption' review: Breezy caper series with a moral compass is back for Season 3
With a taste for heists and a soft spot for anyone wronged, the team on 'Leverage: Redemption' operates outside the law, targeting unscrupulous individuals in need of karmic payback.
Back for a third season on Amazon, the show's swindlers-with-a-moral-compass include Noah Wyle, who joined the ensemble when the series was rebooted in 2021. More recently, Wyle has been giving a wonderfully unfussy performance on the hospital drama 'The Pitt,' which just wrapped its first 15-episode season. But it's fun to see him doing something lighter on 'Leverage.' Though he plays an attorney, his actual purpose within the team has never been clearly spelled out. That's fine, and better than fine when he gets to go undercover in service of the con, whether as an eccentric CEO of a cryonics company or a pool hustler with incredible sideburns, because it's in these moments that Wyle gets to be silly.
That fits the tone of this breezy caper series from John Rogers and Chris Downey, where details and logistics are less important than a jaunty overall approach that gives audiences something that's been in short supply both in fiction and the real world: Consequences for the rich and corrupt.
A man stealing water from an aquifer and then selling it back to the area's residents? A local judge with a taste for gifts rivaling Clarence Thomas's? A company that's more or less a chop shop selling human body parts? The team has found their next project.
They're able to scam the scammers because they have very specialized skills and seemingly unlimited funds. That's not exactly a galvanizing message, but there is one episode that features ordinary people coming together to push out a nasty crook of a mayor, albeit with considerable 'Leverage' shenanigans making it possible. As a series, it has its head screwed on straight. I mean, right now? With everything that's happening? As someone puts it, a con is just a set of artificial circumstances designed to elicit an intended response. It's impossible to hear those words and not think of the stock market in recent weeks.
Aldis Hodge and Aleyse Shannon play the group's hackers (the former is once again largely absent from the season, I'm guessing due to scheduling conflicts with his other Amazon series, 'Cross') and I was bummed at the inclusion of stray bits of dialogue along the lines of 'I can run an AI algorithm.' The team may wink in the face of 'rules,' but their existence is predicated on a clear ethical framework and they'd never be so blithe and cavalier about the many issues surrounding artificial intelligence. These casual references stick out in a bad way.
It's surprising because the show tends to do the little things so well. In one episode, a food bank charity raises money at a gala where the theme is Marie Antoinette. So wrong, so absurd — no notes! In another episode, the team's cat burglar (Beth Riesgraf) and muscle (Christian Kane) impersonate FBI agents in windbreakers, and it works as a legit parody of these kinds of swaggering portrayals. The brains of each operation is the grifter (Gina Bellman) and she's the steadying presence amid the wild card personalities of her compatriots.
Something about the energy and storytelling flags in the final two of the season's 10 episodes, but it's a minor quibble. I can't express how satisfying it is to watch a television show that doesn't pretend we have to accept that systems are permanently rigged and we're all doomed. It's also deeply ironic that this show exists on this streaming platform. Hell, any streaming platform, for that matter. These are not companies particularly interested in notions of 'fairness' or 'balancing the scales,' and yet somehow this show exists. Hustling the hustlers? I'll take it.
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