Review - Leverage Season 3 Episode 15 The Big Bang Job / 16 The San Lorenzo Job

This season, Leverage had an overarching plot, and it's been a failure--perhaps more accurately, nonexistent. Burn Notice and its successors on the USA network are the prime examples of shows which can juggle a central story every episode while maintaining an ongoing subplot with a sense of progression through the season. Although Burn Notice's spy subplot has gotten stale, at least people were doing something each week.  
Leverage, however, gave us the initial tease of a big picture story in the first four episodes of the season, introducing the Italian woman and her target, Damien Moreau, but failed to follow-up with anything substantial. The Italian woman returned a few times to talk with Nate in the shadows, there was an episode about one of Moreau's associates, but there was never any sense of an impending collision or even that Moreau was a presence in most of the episodes.

Luckily, "The Big Bang Job" and "The San Lorenzo Job" wrap up the Moreau story. The biggest problem with Moreau is that he's not a great villain. In each episode, the team manhandles him, first by putting a bulleye on his back for governments around the world in "The Big Bang Job," and later, putting him in jail in "The San Lorenzo Job." For someone with so much wealth and influence, someone hyped to be the spawn of Satan, Moreau turned out to be pretty easy to bring down.

Another problem which persisted through the season is the Italian woman. Who is she and whom does she work for? Neither question is answered nor does there seem to be a plan to answer them. So what was her purpose? She's mysterious, threatens Nate into working for her... and? At the end of the day, all you can really say about her is that she directed Nate towards Moreau.

As individual episodes, both episodes were decent, but not spectacular. "The Big Bang Job" sheds light on Elliot's dark past and we get the sense that there's a lot brewing underneath the surface that has yet to be explored. I'm torn on the big gun battle near the end of the episode. Normally, I can enjoy Elliot beating up a crowd of thugs, but the whole slow-mo, sliding on water, bullets whizzing by was a little too much. On one hand, it was damn cool to watch--purely as a visual spectacle. On the other hand, it was absolutely unrealistic and absurd to the point where Elliot became a caricature in an episode where his character was expanded greatly.

"The San Lorenzo Job" is one of the most improbably jobs of the show, with Nate orchestrating and stealing an entire presidential election right under the nose of Moreau who's watching him the entire time. You'd think Moreau would be smart enough to have people watching Nate, but it reinforces the fact that Moreau really isn't that scary. And I can't talk about the episode without mentioning the ending, Nate and Sophie in bed together after some drinks the night before. Uh oh...

Score: 8.7/10