Leverage is a great show, with Timothy Hutton starring, and a great cast.
The good thing is that it´s sort of a New A-Team, without being called A-Team in order to avoid not having MrT and suffering comparisons.
Yesterday, an all new episode of Leverage aired, this one called The Tap Out Job.
If you haven´t seen it or hate spoilers, get outta here now… if not, enjoy this post.
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Complete Recap and Spoilers of Leverage S02E02 – The Tap Out Job
Fight night in Lincoln, Nebraska. Two guys go at it in the ring as the crowd cheers them on. One guy, Mark, pins the other, Tank, but Mark starts to get woozy and suddenly the wouldbe loser is back up on his feet and dominating as a shady looking guy looks on approvingly. As Mark his being walloped someone from his corner jumps into the ring to intervene. He calls for the paramedics.
Somebody drugged his water, he’s still in the hospital, Mark’s dad tells Nate. Rucker, his son’s manager (the shady guy from the fight), told him to take a dive a few days before the fight. So he fired him. But he couldn’t pass up the fight because it was $5,000. And Rucker got back at him. Johnny, the ring doctor, says Mark will never fight again.
Back at a hotel, the team studies up on Jeff Rucker. Eliot critiques one of Mark’s old fights, impressed. Sophie is disturbed by the whole fighting thing. Eliot gives a demo on the skill and precision involved in MMA, using Hardison and Parker as models. He explains the fights end when somebody taps out. Nate focuses on the fact there’s no TV deal. Rucker’s also interested in golf.
Rucker waits on the golf course for his fourth. Nate drives up, acting hungover and obnoxious as Bill Wells. He asks what the stakes are, suggesting $2,000 each for the front nine, back nine and 18. Parker’s his caddy.
Nate tees up. (Flash to Hardison rigging his golf ball with something with a gyroscope inside so it’ll flight straight). He kills it.
Rucker tees up. (Flash to Hardison rigging a ball that will wobble all over the place.) Parker has replaced his ball. Hardison curves it using remote control, aiming for sand traps.
The round continues, with Nate playing like Tiger and Rucker playing like Tiger’s two-year-old. As Rucker watches in anger, Parker runs into him, lifting something.
It’s time to settle up, but Rucker can’t find his wallet (because Parker has it). Nate tells him he’s staying at the Derby hotel, Rucker can pay him tomorrow.
Back at his gym, Rucker tells one of his guys about Wells. The guy knows somebody who works at the Derby. He wants to know why Wells is in town. Then Wells hears Nate’s loud twang. He’s lounging by a ring. Rucker gives him his money.
Back in his office, Rucker watches Nate talk to a new fighter – Eliot.
Out in the parking lot, Rucker and lots of his fighters corner Eliot. One by one, they take him on. One by one, he takes them down. Parker films it on a cell phone.
Rucker calls his goons off and extends a hand to Eliot. Parker uploads the fight video to Hardison.
Hardison, Nate and Sophie watch the gym on closed circuit in the hotel.
Eliot tells Rucker he fights for Wells (Nate) in South Dakota, which he likes because there’s little oversight. He says Wells sent him there to poach fighters and has a meeting with some woman tomorrow, Debbie Dreilling.
Rucker goes on-line and fights lot of planted stories about Dreilling (Sophie) – a tv producer. The video of Eliot fighting Rucker’s guys in the parking lot already shows more than 300,000 hits. He tells Eliot to come work for him.
Eliot, doing his best corn-fed, humble routine, says he owes Wells money and works for him as muscle. Rucker says it’s a waste of his talent. Hardison scrambles through Rucker’s sloppy online financials and tries to find a good number to tell Eliot. He says he owes $20,000. Rucker says he can swing that, but he wants Eliot to bring Debbie to him.
In the hotel room, Sophie’s having issues with Nebraska food. (“Pork rinds? How do you peel a pig?”)
On their way to meet Rucker, Sophie tells Eliot again how barbaric she thinks the sport is. But he defends it as about self control and honor.
Sophie as Debbie meets with Rucker, who tells her she should work with him not Wells. From a van outside, Hardison finds a local teeny bopper concert Sophie can take credit for producing. She does. Nate strolls in and whisks Sophie away, but not before Rucker says he’ll meet up with her a the concert.
In the hall, the team figures to sell Sophie as the real deal they’re going to have to steal themselves a concert.
Parker and Hardison decide they have to show Rucker a production trailer, which means getting the real director out of the way.
Cut to Nate as the hick limo driver of a broken down vehicle carrying a very agitated director from LA. Nate pitches him his idea for a show, about a limo driver who solves mysteries until his wife leaves him for the manager of a feed store. The director, Todd Lawrence, cuts him off, calling him “hee haw” and telling him to move the car. Nate throws something in a nearby creek. Lugnuts.
Nate hops in his waiting car and drives off, stranding the director.
Hardison will be Todd Lawrence. A gaggle of screaming groupies runs up and surrounds him. “Ladies, for the last time, I am not the tailback for the Cornhuskers,” he tells them.
Sophie shows Rucker through the TV truck, including the director. Sophie lays out her plan for selling pay-per-view of Wells’ MMA fights. She says she’ll spend $500,000 in production to make $5 mil a year in events.
He wants in. Sophie tells him Wells has already agreed to put up half her production costs. Rucker says he’ll put up all of it. They have a deal.
Nate listens to Sophie close the deal on his earpiece. He thinks they’ll be out of there by tomorrow.
But Rucker’s goon is getting off the phone with someone who’s telling him no one’s heard of either of them. He reminds Rucker about his cousin Jimmy in South Dakota, who’s never heard of Bill Wells. And his source at the hotel says Mark’s dad visited Wells the other night. They know they’re being conned.
Sophie comes into Rucker’s gym. He introduces her to Tank, the fighter who beat up on Mark. Rucker tells her no one’s heard of Bill Wells. She gets nervous as he steps up to her. Nate and Eliot walk in, dropping their covers. Nate tells Hardison and Parker to pack up the truck.
But Rucker doesn’t think they’re all fronts, he’s seen what Eliot can do. He wants him to fight Tank, and take a dive. They start to leave.
Rucker says it’s too bad they won’t be around when Mark’s house burns down in six months, or he gets in a car accident.
Eliot says he’ll fight to get Rucker off the family.
Outside, the team regroups. No hard feelings to Hardison for the cover not holding up to cousin Jimmy scrunity (“I can’t hack a hick.”)
They try to find another way out. Eliot says it’s simple: he’ll take the dive.
Sophie visits Eliot training in the ring. She’s worried about him, the impact of having to lose. He says he can take the punishment. What he needs to control is inside him, always.
On to fight night. A rowdy crowd awaits the match-up of Tank v. Eliot. The team files in. Nate, as corner man, squirts some water in Eliot’s mouth. Rucker checks with his goon that he placed his bets, all of them. Rucker says he’s sure Eliot will go down. And he has an insurance policy. He tells Tank to teach him a lesson and break every bone in his body.
In the audience, Rucker checks with Sophie that Eliot knows the rules. Nate tells Eliot to make it look good, but not too good and to not let it go past the second round.
The fight begins. Tank has a good six inches and 50 pounds on Eliot, but Eliot knocks him to the canvas nonetheless. Rucker is concerned, but Sophie says he’s selling it.
Tank pins Eliot to the ropes and works his ribs. He opens a gash over Eliot’s eye and gets him on the mat. Eliot doesn’t get up. And then he’s not fighting back. Nate checks the water bottle. The team realizes what happened. Sophie accuses Rucker of drugging him and he asks why she’d think he’d trust a bunch of lying grifters to keep their word. Sophie sends Parker for the doctor. Rucker says it’ll be over soon, but she tells him he doesn’t get it. Eliot fights to survive.
In the ring, getting bashed, a light comes on in Eliot’s eyes. “It takes all his control not to kill somebody,” Sophie yells, freaked, at Rucker, “You’ve just made him more dangerous, you’ve taken the safety off the gun!” she screams.
Eliot gets Tank in a leglock and there’s a crunch of bones. The ref finally succeeds in breaking it up but Tank’s not moving. A doctor works on him as Mark’s dad looks on. They usher the crowd out.
Rucker’s angry about all the money he lost, but the doctor shuts him up by announcing that Tank is dead. He wants to call police, but Rucker doesn’t want him to. He leaves.
At his office he packs up the gate receipts from the fight. It was unsanctioned, he could be on the hook for millions in liability. He could be an accessory to a manslaughter charge.
He runs to his car.
The team sits ringside, looking like they just watched a man die. Parker watches Rucker drive away on surveillance. They put a transponder on his GPS. The team brightens, but Tank is still flat on his back in the ring.
Nate tells Parker to make the call.
The doctor tells Nate that Tank will be fine as soon as the mild paralytic they slipped him wears off.
Nate tells Mark’s dad they found the drugged water bottle before the fight and switched it out for a clean one. Rucker’s not very original about these things.
Hardison reports that Rucker is on his way to Iowa with a bag full of cash and a tip to the Iowa state police after him. The cash won’t look good, especially when they find the surprise in his trunk.
Flash to Parker taking Rucker’s original $6,000 from golf to a gun shop and asking for lots of guns.
Back to Rucker, being arrested, and confused on why he has a trunk full of firearms.
Nate says that should hold him off until the IRS gets there. He wasn’t too diligent about reporting his cash fight earnings.
Flash to Hardison saying he needs some time to go through his accounts and he’s found something funny.
They tell Mark’s dad Rucker won’t be coming back anytime soon. He literally bet the farm.
Flash back to Rucker’s guy telling him he couldn’t find local bookies to take his action so he used gambling web sites.
Then Hardison, acting like a bunch of local bookies online.
Mark’s dad thanks Eliot for letting himself get hammered like that on purpose.
Later, the team tells Mark that the gym is now up for grabs and needs someone to run it. He’ll have seed money from Rucker’s bets. He’s thrilled.
As the team leaves, Sophie digs into a bag of pork rinds, converted to Midwest cuisine.
Author: MollyWillow for IMDB
Renewals and cancellations are coming every day lately. And we keep track of them all in two articles: cancelled shows on 2011 and the renewed shows on 2011.
Leverage is a great show, with Timothy Hutton starring, and a great cast.
