leverage redemption part 2 gen 2x2

redemption is back!!! more stealing, more comedy and more literally i cannot for the life of me remember the lawyer guy's name. he is just so forgettable. sorry lol

part 2 of the season released on friday, that's 8 more episodes that complete the season (no news on whether there will be more at the moment...)

quick recap:

in episode 9 we have leverage pulling an unusual job... an elderly small town librarian has cancer, and the team is tasked with setting up a fake spy-thriller adventure for the guy just like in the books he likes to read (complete with hacker parker,,, with orange soda!!! adorable imo). problem is... he turns out to be an actual spy. oops. also RIZ, the private security force we saw earlier in the season is sending their men to kill the librarian spy and grab an important piece of intel he's still holding onto (in eliot's words, of course, "mall cops")

episode 10 is leverage vs the #girlboss. an evil social media influencer selling fake medicine to desperate people. also in the process they meet this comically evil caricature of a bitcoin CEO dudebro who is funding the operation (and breanna wipes all his bitcoin at the end. based imo)

then there's episode 11
episode 11 was a lot
the opening is a standard bad guy sort of deal. Elder Abuse LLC is conspiring with a corrupt judge (redundant phrase, i know) to get guardianship over tons of senior people and then basically take all their stuff and their house. we're introduced to stella, who has alzheimer's and is struggling to save all her stuff while the guys, having full legal authority to break into and loot her house are doing so. this sucks. i'm already mad. it gets worse. stella had someone she had a relationship with in the past sign a power of attorney, which could get rid of the Extremely Punchable Faces LLC guys for good but alzheimer's made her forget who it was or where the document is stored ;____; gets even worse though. stella turns out to be the world's greatest grifter (back in the day at least): The Jackal. even beating sophie in one con. literally famous among grifters everywhere. also, stella is gay (new guy: didn't see that coming. breanna: yeah don't take it personally most straight guys never do). on a con against a london gangster, she accidentally fell in love with his wife and they ran away together to New Orleans and raised a child, in hiding, since of course gays have no rights, signing each other's power of attorney since they couldn't actually marry. meanwhile, of course by law the "husband" still has all the legal power so he tracks them down and shows up one day. very mad at the "degenerates". he tries to kill stella but stella's wife shoots him first. stella takes responsibility for the shooting and never sees her wife or kid again. anyway i'm nearly crying by this point. but as a consolation leverage does manage to reunite stella with her wife and child and parker pulls a favor to get the judge and guardian bonked. all is well, presumably, but stella still has alzheimer's. homophobic imo
episode 11 was supremely heavy, and it was kind of surprising. at the same time though breanna did say "people like us" when referring to herself and stella, which i think means she's actually gay. i just don't know why she doesn't just like say that out loud. stella is allowed to be openly gay and the client from the librarian spy episode basically opens with saying he's gay but for some reason breanna has to be a crypto-gay. it doesn't really make strategic sense because i doubt anyone that would be legitimately mad abt that is watching the show i would think. it's weird. i originally thought breanna being gay was something they just dropped out of the script but i guess not

there's another aspect which is getting to me about redemption compared to the original leverage series which is that some of the leverage enemies here are just like, more fake somehow. the villains are almost cartoonishly evil. a caricature of some of the worst parts of society but constructed in a way that they have no actual depth besides being caricatures. it's over-the-top obvious what they're supposed to represent and thus the show's stance on those kinds of people, and honestly i think that detracts from redemption a bit. take the bitcoin guy for example. compare him to Dubenich from the original series, or Damien Moreau, or Jack Hurley, or especially James Sterling. all these guys had at least some depth to their character. they're marks but they're not just flat or one-sided. they represent various evil aspects of society that leverage is fighting against, but they're also actual people on top of being those representations. meanwhile bitcoin man is literally just a caricature of the stereotypical rich techbro and nothing else. like the whole sequence in his office felt like a saturday morning superhero cartoon. i like how the show obviously seems to agree that bitcoin bros are not good, but the fakeness of the whole sequence of interactions was just super weird. idk how to describe it.

sophie: parker! where did you get that

parker: hmph. i bought it

yea that's all i have for now. see u in the next leverage post :3