Leverage

Bill Engvall stars as Duke Penzer in “The Boost Job” – Season 3, Episode 8.

The expert con artists of TNT’s hit crime drama Leverage are back for an all-new season of complex heists and high-stakes action. With the team’s leader Nate Ford (Academy Award®-winner Timothy Hutton) now behind bars and his nemesis working for Interpol, a beautiful but mysterious stranger steps in to call the shots for TV’s hottest gang of master thieves. Season Three of this action-packed series starts off with a bang as the teammates devise schemes to free Nate from prison, expose a trafficker’s child slave-labor ring, and infiltrate a Department of Defense research lab to take down international terrorists. These tech-savvy grifters are highly skilled and ready to settle scores with the criminal underworld.

For its third season, the Leverage team expands its horizons and reveals hidden talents. The year begins with Nate (Timothy Hutton) behind bars. In getting to the bottom of another inmate’s suspiciously long sentence, the team members uncover a wider scam at the private prison, and their leader goes free. As Nate says in the opening introduction, “The rich and powerful take what they want. We steal it back for you.” Among others, they take down a shady software mogul (Arye Gross) and humiliate a devious debt collector (Clancy Brown).

Music comes into play when Alec (Aldis Hodge) poses as a violin virtuoso and Eliot (Christian Kane) competes with a sleazy country impresario (John Schneider) for singing supremacy (both men acquit themselves nicely). Along the way, Parker (Beth Riesgraf) sees Alec in a new light, though Nate attempts to keep his distance from Sophie (Gina Bellman), with whom he enjoyed a kiss in season two. Episode highlights include “The King George Job,” in which the group travels to London, and “The Rashomon Job,” in which each member shares a contradictory account of a museum heist, while notable guest stars include Richard Chamberlain as Parker’s mentor and Tom Skerritt, who almost played Hutton’s father in Ordinary People, as Nate’s dad.

Set in Boston, Leverage is shot in oft-overcast Portland, but still offers a welcome change from overexposed Los Angeles. Bellman, who missed part of the previous year due to pregnancy, returns full time and contributes to some of the more entertaining sequences as she teaches Parker how to ensnare marks. The season ends with a carefully plotted two-parter that brings out the best in some, the worst in others. The extra features offer deleted scenes, featurettes, behind-the-scenes footage, and 16 commentary tracks from cast and crew, including writer-creator Dean Devlin and director Jonathan Frakes. –Kathleen C. Fennessy

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