- Title: Leverage – The Lonely Hearts Job
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The Leverage team takes a case from an unlikely client when a millionaire (David Ogden Stiers), the sort the team usually takes down, begs Nate (Timothy Hutton) to find his missing wife. What starts out as a missing persons case, or a possible kidnapping, turns into something completely different when the team uncovers a ring of grifters running a complex sweetheart scam on several unsuspecting marks.
Changing tactics, Nate poses as another grifter who attempts to charm the gang’s leader (Emma Caulfield) into exposing her secrets. To accomplish this he must prove his skill by successfully wooing a mark the black widow has chosen – Sopie (Gina Bellman).
The episode includes several fun moments including Nate’s consternation with another man (Cas Anvar) wooing Sophie and the perverse glee Elliot (Christian Kane) takes in rubbing it in. We also get Parker (Beth Riesgraf) mistaking the need for a distraction by picking a fight with the woman (Diana Huey) who purchased Hardison (Aldis Hodge) at a bachelor action (which ends with both of them throwing haymakers and rolling around the floor).
Leverage delivers their strongest episode since returning from mid-season hiatus. I haven’t seen much of Caulfield since Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air, but she’s used well here as the episode’s villain. We also get a little foreshadowing with the reappearance of Leon Rippy whose offer of a job is immediately rebuffed with what may turn out to be sinister consequences.