I've been thinking about the "IYS killed Sam by denying him treatment" thing from leverage season 1.
In theory? Immaculate, 10/10, no notes. Go off King. Plot revenge against the company and destroy them for denying life saving treatment as a policy. Sincerely, fuck them. Everyone should have access to medical treatment without having to get into an exorbitant amount of debt.
In practice, however, it gets a little complicated. Sam had stage IV cancer. That's pretty advanced and usually not curable even now in 2026. Treatment is either palliative (to make them comfortable and make sure they don't suffer) or meant to temporarily delay the inevitable. If I remember correctly, stage 4 usually means the cancer has already metastasized (moved from where it started to other organs/blood/brain) which makes it even harder to remove because it's not just about the one tumor affecting the organ (already problematic since sometimes removing it means handicapping the organ or fully removing it and people need those to function, hence the chemo and other treatment to shrink it so taking it out doesn't cause as much damage) but multiple cancer cells spreading in the body and almost impossible to completely take out. I don't think any treatment Nate could have found, experimental or not, would have saved Sam. At least not for long. At best, it might have given Sam a few months, or like a year, of feeling tired and ill and all around icky while spending most, if not all, of his time in the hospital.
I still don't think IYS was right in denying the treatment to save their bottom line. I also think they did Nate a favor by not approving it and he would have been completely destroyed if they had and Sam had died anyway. IYS decision meant he had someone to blame. An enemy. Someone to hate and resent and plot revenge against. It meant he didn't have to wonder if there was something he could have done differently. Something else he should have found. A new treatment, another doctor, maybe even question everything in Sam's life that could have caused the disease and how he could have avoided it if he had just been better.
He would have drunk himself to death. As is, he almost did. He was already trying his best to get there when Dubenich provoked him into getting his shit semi-together out of spite. I don't think he would have taken the job without IYS being a factor. I'm not sure he would have even lived long enough to get the offer. I don't think he would have ever recovered.
