Leverage Rewatch S1E7: The Two-Horse Job
Welcome back to the series where I am rewatching Leverage on dvd after having watched it on streaming with the order of season 1 messed up.
As far as openings to get you invested right away, screaming horses in a stable fire is a pretty strong one, I must say. I've also known folks that have raised horses, so the bit about the ranch not actually owning the horses, just doing the work for some rich guy was rather familiar.
Another strong starter to the episode was Parker's noodle incident of "I saw a horse kill a clown" really got me. Of course, the star of this episode was the introduction of James Sterling: former coworker of Nate at IYS Insurance and reccuring frienemy of the Leverage crew. This episode also introduced one of the great gags: Nate playing a jackass in a stupid hat.
Honestly, one of the most interesting things is Sterling's assumption Nate is trying to get his job back, which makes sense given he's a mirror to whst Nate was like before his son died. Using Sterling to nail the mark really helped illustrate how lawful evil he is.
This is one episode that is much improved by the correct watch order, as opposed to the broadcast order. As mentioned in my post on The Wedding Job (which aired as ep 7), this episode aired as ep 3, meaning the two actually swap places. And as mentioned in that post, this order makes much more sense with Elliot having alluded to the ex-fiance we meet in this episode (though thst part of the ep is just as exhausting as I remembered). With that said, her comment at the end to Elliot about the crew really adds to the queerplatonic vibes even this early in the show.
Overall a very interesting episode with the dynamic Sterling introduces to any episode he's in. And while it does add some stuff to Elliot's character, to me it felt a bit goofy and Hallmark-esque with the music used in his scenes in this one. Up next is ep 8: The Bank Shot Job, which originally aired as ep 5.
