Awesome / Leverage

As noted on the main Leverage page, the show's producers try to go for at least a 1:1 ratio of Funny Moments and Moments of Awesome in every episode. Here's the awesome.

General

• The premise itself is impressive, compared to being five seasons of Ocean's Eleven meets Batman as the Leverage team takes their not-inconsiderable skills and bring down the corrupt and powerful. Over the course of the series, they bring down corrupt CEOs, mobsters, fellow (less-honorable) thieves, and even international terrorists. Just take a look at the team members' resumes:
  • Eliot Spencer is "The Muscle" of the team, implied to be former Special Forces or Black Ops, who never uses a gun and yet has taken down literal roomfuls of Mooks by himself. And the one time in the series he does use a gun is a scene right out of The Matrix and the few who he fights and know who he is either usually piss themselves or are too cocky to know better.
  • Alec Hardison is a genius hacker whose earliest known crime was to hack the Bank of Iceland to pay for his Nana's medical bills when he was in high school. He's also a Gadgeteer Genius who not only creates the nearly foolproof aliases the team use for their cons, the costumes, the background research on clients and targets, and builds and maintains all the equipment that makes the CIA drool. Hardison also tinkers in his spare time, such as the EMP gun he built, which took an entire team of scientists with government backing to build a larger version of.
  • Parker is the greatest thief in the world. That's not an exaggeration, she is regarded in the underworld as the best of the best, exemplified when Nate is asked if there's someone better and he says there isn't. The woman has been seen jumping off high-rises, has done laser dances, and has broken into some of the most secured places there are. And unlike the rest of the team, sans Nate, who were criminals partly for money, she does it for the hell of it.
  • Sophie Devereaux is the foremost greatest actress you would hope to meet...when she's breaking the law that is. A natural born grifter, Sophie can take on any persona, with accent and mannerism to boot, from a countess, to a pharmaceutical rep, to a business woman. How good is she? she may or may not be an actual Duchess with her past so tightly wrapped in mystery there's no way to know the truth. Especially since that is nearly impossible to pull off in an actual monarchy, especially the British one.
  • Nathan Ford is a former insurance investigator who has at one point or another chased after all the other members of the team, a Magnificent Bastard who has pulled off some of the most convoluted, audacious scams while shitfaced drunk. By audacious we mean plans that in no way shape or form could or should work, by the simple laws of probability; but as Sophie herself as pointed out, chance seems to bend itself to his "machinations" with he and the team able to either predict or adapt to any of the usual complications on a con.

Season 1

• In the pilot episode, Hardison is used as bait to draw the attention of building security. Four guards pull guns on him and tell him to raise his hands, one of which is holding a large duffel bag. He does and drops the bag. The bag is shown falling in slow motion as Eliot, at normal speed, takes out every single one of the guards before the bag hits the floor. Now consider what the scene would have looked like if the bag had been shown falling at the normal rate of speed.
  Eliot: That's what I do.
  • The guards that manage to react during your fight against Eliot also deserve a mention . The company they work for seems to spare no expense when hiring them .
  • Parker's introduction in the same episode. Her evil foster father takes away her stuffed animal. She not only steals it back, but then blows up the entire house^note Word of God is that her foster parents were at work, not inside the house, and afterward, the flashback ends and Parker jumps off a building.
  • Also in the pilot episode:
    Eliot: What's in it for you?
    Nate: He used my son.
  • Eliot's Establishing Character Moment in that episode: a flashback to a job in Serbia three years ago, where he walks into a room full of bad guys, sipping coffee, and tells them he's there to "collect the merchandise." A dozen men stand up and level guns at him. Cut to outside the building, with the windows lighting up from several dozen gunshots. Cut back to the inside of the bar, where all of the bad guys are unconscious, Eliot is standing exactly where he was before, and is still sipping coffee.
    • Word of God: Christian Kane has said that he initially almost passed on the show because of the beginning of this scene, in which Eliot is described calmly entering the bar in his turtleneck and wire-rimmed glasses and taking a sip of his tea, and stopped reading the script there because he didn't feel the character was quite what he wanted to play. Once he was persuaded to keep reading the rest of the scene, however, he immediately signed on.
  • Sophie’s Establishing Character Moment: She’s introduced as a terrible actress, but when she’s begun her grift, Hardison is spellbound by how convincing she is.
• In "The Homecoming Job" Parker steals an actual law inside Congress as part of the larger con.
• In "The Bank Shot Job", some addicts have kidnapped a woman, forcing her husband and son to try to rob a bank for the ransom. Eliot makes the drop, then gets a message that his teammates need the money back, and beats up all three kidnappers.
  Eliot: What smells like crank and Screams Like a Little Girl?
  Addict #1: Huh?
  (Eliot kicks him in the kneecap and he does indeed scream like a little girl)
  Eliot: (as he disassembles the man's gun) Good answer. (proceeds to kick the rest of their asses)
• In "The Stork Job", Parker, while pretending to be a waiter, stabs a corrupt politician/arms dealer with a fork, and then leaps out of a window. Later in the same episode, she takes out the arms dealer, who is twice her size, and then plants herself between a group of armed gunmen and a bus full of orphans.
• From "The Wedding Job"
  Nate: Did you just kill a guy with an appetizer?
  Eliot: I dunno. Maybe.
• In "The Miracle Job", Eliot and Hardison go looking for the thugs hired to attack a priest friend of Nate's. Eliot finds himself with a gun in his face, which causes him more annoyance than concern.
  Eliot (to Hardison): You see that's why I don't like guns. They have a specific range of efficacy. See, most guys make one mistake. They get too close. (relieves the gang leader of his weapon)
  • Then Hardison notices one of the gang members acting shifty, and hits him in the shoulder that the priest injured earlier. Revealing to the gang the source of their "friend's" injury, they are none too pleased. They don't take kindly to him rolling a priest. Eliot returns the gang leader's gun calmly, as the gang leader is now just as interested in who paid his member to do the attack.
• The two unnamed pilots in "The Mile High Job." They managed to land a plane that had been plummeting completely out of control moments before onto a narrow highway bridge - which is pretty damned impressive considering how unwieldy passenger aircraft are. Without those two, everyone on the plane would have died even with Team Leverage's efforts.
• Both Nate and Sophie get one in "The First David Job":
  • Sophie arranges a meet to trade the MacGuffin for Parker on top of a sky scraper. She is trapped and no talking, flirting or conning in the world is going to get them out. So, in her own words, "I asked myself, what would Parker do?", she flings off her coat to reveal a rappelling harness as Parker throws herself at the woman and they dive off the side of the building. The awesome is accented by the look on Sophie's face as she and Parker jump off the building. The first time they did this Sophie could barely look down, this time, she looks exactly like Parker when she's doing crazy stuff.
  • At the same time, to facilitate the trade above, Nate gives himself up at a different location at which Hardison is being held hostage. Surrounded by six high-end goons, Eliot shows up, complete with broken ribs and a concussion and is declared that there is no way even Eliot can take all of them. Which Nate agrees with, and in his own words, "So I asked myself, what would Hardison do?" at which point Eliot pulls out an electronic doodad which connects to the local wifi to send out a signal that produces a screeching tone in all the goons' earpieces so severe that the three good guys can overpower the goons.
  • "Hey, Sterling. Get out of my house."
• Nate's performance in "The Second David Job" certainly qualifies.
  • "I have lost my only son. Do you think you scare me?"
  • Maggie gets hers in the same episode: "Screw therapy. That felt really good."
    • Echoed in "The Experimental Job", from one of the veterans after punching a mook.
    • Maggie also has the date with Eliot where she makes a series of disparaging comments about Nate before revealing that she knew he was watching the whole time, and when she calmly cons the museum director with her "Everyone knows it's a fungus" moment. For a character who appeared in only two episodes up to that point, Maggie manages to rack up impressive levels of awesome.
  • The entire solution to the heist is a thing of beauty, and is one of the best cons the team has ever done. Sterling knows that the Leverage team is coming back for a second round, and plans ahead. Photos handed out to everybody (that don't help, since the crew is already inside and disguised), security everywhere, cameras online, the full works. If the team had stuck to their guns with the previous plan, that would've been enough to beat them. And then Nate Ford proceeds to walk in the front door, causing security to flip out, and making Sterling paranoid enough to fall for the gambit.
    • Coupled by the grin on Sterling's face as it dawns on him how much he'll profit from being played.
    Sterling: (Finally getting what the plan is.) Oh, well done.

Season 2

• Nate's second-season Establishing Character Moment. He's spent six months alone, without his Family of Choice, steps away from falling off the wagon, watches as a car flies right over his head, and his first instinct is to run to said car to save the people within. No hesitation. Criminal he may be, but at his core, Nathan Ford is a good man.
• Just...Nate. To name just one example, in "The Order 23 Job" he gives a man a nosebleed using nothing but psychology. And then there are the Kansas City Shuffles he pulls in "The Nigerian Job" and "The Second David Job", where the marks knew he was after them and still fell right into the trap.
  Parker (to Nate): Did you just give someone a nosebleed with the power of your mind?
  • The con in "The Order 23 Job," was getting the mark to run to his hidden money stash by convincing him that Russia had just attacked the local area using a weaponized virus and he'd gotten caught up in the epidemic. It's a Moment of Awesome in of itself for the sheer audacity of it.
• Eliot's match in "The Tap-Out Job". He gets his ass kicked in the first half, and then fakes straight-up killing his opponent, and really does nearly kill the guy. Him getting his ass kicked basically involves him getting punched in the face until he's nearly unconscious. Only thing that could have made it more awesome is if Eliot did it drugged.
• Another non-fighting example for Eliot is when he sings a brand new country song in front of a packed bar. Hardison's worried behind the scenes because the software he set up to correct Eliot's pitch doesn't seem to be working. Nate calmly explains to him that the software's fine and so is Eliot's singing; the latter doesn't need correcting.
• "The Top-Hat Job"
  • The reveal about how good of a security team the food company has, with the guards instantly making the crew and almost capturing them.
  • Hardison managing to get past a biometric fingerprint scanner with a fingerprint copy and a Gummy Frog. Of course, "there may also be a retinal scanner..."
  • The Honest Corporate Executive CEO firing his ruthless subordinate for wanting to put bad food on the market.
• In "The Three Days of the Hunter Job," Hardison convincing the soldier who's interrogating him as a terror suspect that he has a higher rank than the soldier does and completely turning the authority tables.
  Hardison (to the soldier interrogating him): Did I say you could leave?!
  • Hardison is just filled with this trope. Seriously.
  • Over the course of the episode the team turns Monica Hunter from a Smug Snake sleazy reporter who makes up BS to destroy random people's lives for ratings to a raving conspiracy theorist who's probably going to be arrested for breaking into a US Army base while being filmed. Heck, her network claims she suffered a psychotic break as a way to cover their own butts but it might be true!
• In "The Ice Man Job," despite being kidnapped and held at gunpoint by Russian mobsters, Hardison keeps his cool and his... "accent."
• In "The Lost Heir Job," Nate goes full Sherlock in the middle of a courtroom in a matter of seconds when he puts together a dozen disparate facts to figure out that his client actually is the lost heir to the recently-deceased business tycoon's money and is legally entitled to her father's estate.
  Nate: What... color is my tie?^Context Nate uses this question to prove his client is color blind, just like her father.
• In "The Bottle Job" the team managed to pull off a con that normally takes 3 weeks in an hour and a half. Hardison considers that their Moment of Awesome in-show.
  • At the climax, they lure Doyle into a poker game, whereupon he realizes that they're using his money (which they are - they stole it from his hideout). He pulls a gun and demands they admit to their con... and then one of the other players takes out his badge and gun... followed by the other two players revealing their badges as well. Doyle just confessed to his loan-sharking and several other crimes in a poker game full of cops, including a precinct captain and a detective in the organized crime division. With Nate's help, they had used Ambiguous Syntax to make comments that fooled Doyle into thinking they were fellow crooks. And to top it off, after forcing Doyle to go back home, broke, unable to ever return to the city, and facing his father's wrath, Nate breaks one of his fingers. Never threaten the bar.
• Eliot beating the crap out of Sterling in "The Zanzibar Marketplace Job" while Hardison bribes the McRory's bartender not to call the cops as he and Parker look on in approval.
  • Later in the episode, with Nate and Maggie being held hostage by the bad guy who's demanding the return of the $9 million Faberge egg, Eliot steps up to take charge - to the scorn of Sterling, who's incredulous that the rest of the team is going to listen to "a punch-up artist" over him. Eliot proceeds to prove him absolutely wrong, correctly figuring out not only exactly what the bad guy's plan is but who the real bad guy is, which allows the team to turn the tables. Sure, they end up having to let Sterling take the credit again, but damn, son.
  • Tara and Eliot terrifying a Russian fence into giving up his invite to the underground auction without saying a single word, Tara stealing his sandwich and just giving him facial responses and Eliot giving him the patented death glare. Perfect example of how Nothing Is Scarier.
  • Jim Sterling may be the enemy, but his epic asshole moments are always awesome, including here where he pretends to be struggling to remember that he meant to tell Nate his ex-wife is dating the suspect, waiting until the exact moment Nate sees them together to reveal that tidbit, JUST to screw with Nate for the fun of it.
• In "The Three Strikes Job," the last 30 seconds. "James Sterling... Interpol. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?"
• Nate has one in "The Maltese Falcon Job" that also counts as a Funny Moment. He must stall Sterling from reaching the 14th floor of a hotel before the rest of the crew is done working up there. Now, normally you would expect Hardison to hack the elevator, or something similar. Instead, Nate chooses to stall Sterling by running up every single flight of stairs, one after the other, and hitting the elevator's call button a moment before it arrives, forcing the elevator to stop on every single floor. After the first few flights of stairs Nate is clearly winded, but just keeps charging up each floor one after another, hitting the button and immediately charging off to the next, and it's awesome, especially since Sterling gets more and more pissed as the elevator keeps stopping.
  • If you do some thinking, Nate does this every episode. He outsmarts everyone he cons, some of which being done in the most ridiculous ways possible.
  • Gets even better when you remember Season One. NONE of them could handle a large flight of stairs. Now? Simple.
  • As he and Nate being escorted onto the Maltese Falcon to meet with the arms dealer, Eliot is mumbling quietly under his breath; when Nate asks, he explains that he's counting the guys with guns, and ends up reaching a total of thirteen. Shortly thereafter, things have gone sour, Eliot's hands are bound with plastic zip-tie and a couple of mooks are about to shoot him - which is Eliot's cue to beat them both down with his hands still tied. As he does, he begins counting down. The best part of this is that after "eleven," we lose track of him for about two minutes until he appears out of nowhere to take out a guy who's about to shoot Hardison.
    Eliot: ...One.
  • How Eliot gets free of his zip-ties. No sneaky cleverness or dexterity. He literally roars and breaks them with raw strength after he takes down his guards. ^note This is actually not as difficult as it looks, especially if the zip ties are lower quality. You can find guides online on how to do so.
  • Nate bargains with Sterling to get his team free while he goes to jail. Otherwise Sterling and the feds get nothing, because Nate destroyed all their evidence. He's doing this having handcuffed himself to the rail of the ship and while bleeding to death from a gunshot wound.
  • Later:
    "My name is Nathan Ford, and I am a thief."
  • Also....
    Sophie: Well, this won't do at all, now will it?

Season 3

• The third season premiere, where a group of at least half a dozen men with guns burst into the doorway of the apartment — and Eliot rushes toward them. Only Nate grabbing his shoulder stops him from attacking, and it says something that it's hard to tell who'd have won.
• For "The Inside Job"...The team saves millions of lives, and Parker recognizes a moral choice.
  • There's something cool about how Parker managed to infiltrate a security system Hardison says the Pentagon calls overkill without being detected for quite some time, as well as how long she stayed out of being caught once she was discovered.
• The random mook security guard in "The Scheherezade Job" who fought Eliot in a way that only Mr. Quinn had managed thus far in the series. This dude got knocked out, woke up, went after him again, fought Eliot to nearly a draw, got blown up by Parker and dropped a full story into a vault, and still came back for more. Whoever that guy was, Moto got his money's worth with him.
  • Hardison's violin solo at the end of the concert. Hardison had barely a couple of days to practice it, after more than a decade of having never played the violin, and not only completely nailed it but moved the rest of the crew into silence and won a standing ovation from the crowd. Hell, he played so well, he moved a couple of his own teammates to TEARS.
• In "The Studio Job," Nate is alone with two huge guards and Eliot is indisposed. When we next see Nate, both guards are unconscious. He says later they "got into an argument," and that's all the explanation we get. The really awesome thing is that this is Nathan Ford, and he's perfectly capable of both kicking their asses by himself and convincing them to knock each other out, and we can't be sure what he actually did.
• In "The Gone Fishin' Job", Eliot and Hardison are about to escape from the Right Wing Militia Fanatics when Hardison realizes that the two of them are the only ones who can stop the terrorists from using their bomb in the next 48 hours. Against his own better judgment, he talks Eliot into going back so they can take care of the militia. That definitely took a lot of guts.
  • It's difficult to say which is more awesome: their initial escape, made possible by the combination of Hardison's fast-talking skills, Eliot's raw badassery and the fact that he managed to accurately map out where they'd been taken from inside the enclosed back of a moving truck, and a whole lot of Indy Ploy... or the can of whoop-ass the pair of them open up when they turn back, picking off the militia members one by one and culminating in blowing up their encampment with a cigarette.
  • The second time they're caught, the militia leader Chester punches Eliot in the face. Eliot is unfazed. Chester is left wringing his hand in pain.
  • Eliot's brief yet deep-cutting "The Reason You Suck" Speech that prompted the above punch.
    Eliot: See, that's the difference between a real soldier and this little Halloween outfit you got going on. You'll kill to protect your rights. A real soldier—he'd die protecting somebody else's.
• The Rashomon Job, in its entirety. The gang, five years ago, were all at a museum to steal the ancient Aqu'abi Dagger. The team, one by one, explains their perfect plan to steal the dagger, and each one is insanely awesome.
  • Sophie ran a long con the entire four months, living a double life as a duchess and a doctor scanning the artworks. She snuck in, donating a few pieces of artwork she'd stolen to make her look good. Using a choking man as a distraction, she snuck out as the duchess and came out as the doctor. She changes the details of the dagger and gets it hand-delivered to her doorstep...only for it to not be there.
  • Eliot stole a doctor's identity and used that to sneak in (on that note, he had the least time among the team to prepare due to getting the job on short notice). After a man started to choke, he used that to get himself to the medical bay and snuck out to disguise himself as a guard to move around. Finally, he changes into a packing man and steals the dagger right out from Sophie's nose. But...he didn't get the dagger either.
  • Hardison took the identity of a dignitary to sneak in, creating a back door into the security network. After pretending to choke and being taken to the medical bay by Eliot, he goes to the computer, changes the details of the dagger so it never leaves the vault and then finally picks it up in person, all with a gigantic smug grin. However...the dagger wasn't with him, either.
  • Parker knocked out a waitress and took her place. Using Hardison and Eliot as a distraction, she sneaks downstairs and hops into the vent system, accidentally taking the bag Sophie left behind when she changed. She waits in the sorting room for everybody to leave and unlocks the door to steal the dagger while nobody is looking. She sneaks down the vents and is forced to climb up manually, forcing a confrontation with Coswell. This forces her to drop the dagger, which tumbles down the vent.
  • Nate was the one with all the details. IYS was the company insuring everything in the museum, sending Nate to look into the theft of three items stolen from the building over the past year. Sophie poisons a glass of champagne and gets Parker to take it to Hardison, whose cover was allergic to shrimp. Eliot takes the glass and spits it out, bumping into Sophie. Parker hands the knife to Eliot who uses it on Hardison, letting Parker slip out. Eliot brawls with a guard, preventing Parker from walking out the cupboard door. Hardison comes by later and meets Coswell, just as the guard Eliot shoved in the closet breaks out. He locks them both in, where Coswell finds Parker's gear. He crawls through the vents, where he meets Parker, who then drops the dagger. It tumbles down the vent shaft and right into Nate's hand. Nate then reveals the thefts are sold on the black market, and the fakes are stolen to get the insurance money. IYS takes the dagger off the museum's hand and reports it as stolen, flushing the dealer, the man who forced Eliot to try and steal it, out of hiding. Gambit Pileup at its finest.
• Behold the first part of the season 3 finale, "The Big Bang Job." Behold Eliot finally, finally, taking up a pair of guns to protect Nate. Result; five minutes of live-action that Max Payne desperately wanted to be; Behold Eliot utterly destroying an entire hit squad without taking a scratch, while the building blew up around him.
  • Doesn't hurt that they play homage to every single gunplay trope from Improbable Aiming Skills to Concealment Equals Cover to Guns Akimbo to Bullet Time to *Click* Hello.
    • Likewise doesn't hurt that, since it's him, you never even question the above's validity. Ladies and gents, I give you Eliot Spencer, badass.
  Chapman: I thought you said you don't like guns?
  Eliot: I don't. [fires four rapid shots into Chapman's chest] Never said I couldn't use them.
  • Hardison disarming the massive EMP bomb at the end of "The Big Bang Job." No wonder Parker finally wanted pretzels when it was all over.
  Hardison: If I do this right, I overload the batteries, they'll explode, and this thing is worthless.
  Parker: And if you do it wrong?
  Hardison: The bomb triggers a giant EMP pulse, Washington, D.C. is fried, thousands die, we go down as the biggest terrorists in American history, but we'll be dead too, so it's not really our problem.
  Parker: Well, there's that.
  • And remember, this is all intercut with Eliot's destroying the hitmen in the warehouse...
  • Moreau's guards aren't really buying Hardison's con. One asks who Eliot is. Eliot tells him. Every single guard is terrified.
  • Later, Moreau cuffs Hardison to a chair and kicks him into a pool, leaving him struggling under the water while he and Eliot have a tense conversation. When Moreau finally tosses Hardison the keys to allow him to free himself, Hardison climbs out of the pool and - though visibly shaking from his near brush with drowning - straightens his jacket, mops his face with a soaked handkerchief, looks Moreau straight in the eye and, maintaining his feigned French accent, says calmly:
  Hardison: And what message I should convey to my employer?
  • As they're leaving Hardison reveals that he'd bought himself an extra 30 seconds by managing to tap the chair's pneumatics in order to breathe the air inside.
• "The San Lorenzo Job":
  • "Let's go steal us a country." And they did.
  • "I'm a thief. And thieves don't win elections; we steal them."
  • Nate hands Ribera a warrant for Damien Moreau's arrest and says "You're going to be signing that before I finish my drink." And he does.
  • "You had the army, the security forces, the entire country... you know what I had? A 24-year-old with a smart phone and a problem with authority. You never had a chance."
  • At the end of the day, Vittori finds his courage and confidence to lead his country into a brighter future.
  • When Ribera's security grab Vittori to make him "disappear" with the lie that they're going to the presidential palace, Sophie gets him free by using a kitchen knife to saber a champagne bottle so the cork hits one guard in the eye and then uses the open bottle to knock the other one out.
  • Moreau begs to be extradited to Rome or Paris for trial. The Italian's response? "I'm sorry, but San Lorenzo does not recognize extradition treaties." Especially when you consider that that was the reason Moreau went to San Lorenzo in the first place.

Season 4

• In the season 4 premier, "The Long Way Down Job", the victim gets one because he already had a method for taking down the crook of the week. He just needed his phone in a service zone, which Team Leverage accomplishes. As Hardison says, the man basically got revenge on his killer from beyond the grave.
• Nate luring the killer into the library, where a pipe wrench has been conveniently hidden for his use in "The 10 Li'l Grifters Job."
• The double Hoist by His Own Petard moment at the end of "The 15 Minutes Job" - not only do they bring down the mark by using his own business practices, they frame him for a drunk driving accident in which he wasn't driving to make up for an earlier incident in which he'd done the same to someone else.
• Nate's stall for time at the end of "The Van Gogh Job," in which he pretends to light the Van Gogh on fire in front of an investigator who had been chasing it for 20 years.
  Nate: I'm not trying to talk you out of anything... I just want you to know why I'm doing this.
• Eliot vs. Roper (played by mixed martial arts champion Urijah Faber) in "The Carnival Job".
  • With a concussion from having very recently been rammed into by a carnival ride, fighting disoriented in a hall of mirrors, Eliot then has to go up against a hired martial arts expert that proceeds to outclass him in every respect and repeatedly leave him gasping on the floor... and then the Theme Music Power-Up kicks in, Eliot closes his eyes and breathes deeply, and gets up and uses blindfighting training to completely kick Roper's ass. If you come for Eliot, you'd best bring heavy machinery. And then you'd best make sure he stays down.
  • What's particularly great about the scene is the subtlety; they don't go with the basic 'Eliot can kick more ass with his eyes closed than he can with them open' angle. Instead he closes his eyes (presumably to avoid the disorienting effect of the mirrors) and concentrates on nothing but all-out defense, not even trying to attack... but his ability to duck everything Roper is sending his way while blind, when immediately earlier he was hitting Eliot practically at will, completely spooks Roper into thinking that Eliot is some kind of superhuman ninja. At which point he's off his game enough that Eliot can just open his eyes again, slam Roper in the gut, and then drop him like a bad habit.
  • For added measure, the moment the mark's daughter was kidnapped, the team burns the con and their identities. They are willing to sacrifice the chip, the thing they were there to steal back, to save the daughter.
  • After the episode shifts from the con to a full-on rescue, there's the utterly badass Team Power Walk as they enter the carnival.
• In "The Boiler Room Job", the team concocts a plot to take down the episode's villain by getting each and every person he had stolen from involved in the con, allowing them to personally confront the thief that had stolen their life savings. The villain is so flabbergasted that he thinks the team is lying to him.
  • The best part was how they conned the villain. He's a master con man, descendant of an entire line of con artists. He knows every trick, he's seen and executed virtually every con that exists. He knows the team is going to try to con him the moment he sees Hardison trying to hack his bank accounts. So how did the team actually pull it off? They faked the con itself. They set up and executed a massive, elaborate con that including taking over a chocolate festival, seizing an office building, flying the mark all the way to Ecuador (with Eliot putting on his hammiest performance yet) and building an entire stock exchange floor filled with fake traders.... and the entire thing is one big smokescreen designed to be just obvious enough to keep the mark distracted with taking the con apart, all the while Hardison just finishes breaking into his bank accounts and dumps all the evidence in the laps of the FBI, per the original plan. AND, if you listen carefully...Hardison was only able to DO it, because the mark MOVED HIS MONEY, in his own attempt to turn the con to his own profit. It was just a Batman Gambit!
  • Sophie is portraying a "chocolate whisperer" during the con and she has to at one point compete against another person in identifying cocoa beans, Hardison frantically tries to look up the information, but that's not necessary because she already can identify them on sight, smell and taste alone.
• Hardison, pretending to be an air traffic controller, using Microsoft Flight Simulator X to land an actual, 300-passenger jet on his own in "The Cross My Heart Job."
  • Really, all of "The Cross My Heart Job." On a layover at the airport on the way back from a disastrous job, with none of their usual equipment - not even their earbuds or Parker's lockpicks - the team grifts, thieves, and Indy Ploys their way through rescuing a kidnapped girl and a stolen donor heart, including convincing the National Weather Service to call down a tornado watch and gaining complete control of the air traffic control tower... all within the space of an hour.
  • From the same episode:
    The Mark: God helps those who help themselves.
    Nate: And I help people who can't. And God help you if anything should happen to that boy because if he spends even one second longer in that hospital than he needs to, I will make it my mission in life to end you. I will ruin you. I will ruin your name, I will ruin your company. I will bring down everything you have ever touched. And when I am done, I will hunt you down, and I will kill you myself.
  • Nate recognizes that the paramedic was one of the mark's contingencies before he's even finished his sentence and punches him out without so much as breaking stride.
  • And the ending.
    The Mark: Well, Mr. Ford, it seems you've killed me after all.
    Nate: Oh, I didn't kill you. God killed you. I just made sure it took. [hangs up]
• Pretty much everything Sterling does, but "The Queen's Gambit Job" really counts. To reunite with his daughter who is also his informant, he hires the team in a pretty much unrelated heist so he can get in the same building that she's in. He then drugs Eliot, betrays Parker's position and screws the team over as a distraction to make off with her and get her away from her stepfather. Said daughter is the only reason that he didn't get the crap beat out of him for doing what he did. That and flattering Nate's ego for telling Nate that he was the best person for the job and Sterling refused to risk less.
  • Even more so, is that even with all that, they still completed the required job anyway. By sabotaging an illegal nuclear weapons facility...to blow up.
    • And Sterling knew they would.
  • Parker BASE jumping off the Burj Khalifa Expy is a CMOA for her, but even more so for Hardison.
  • Nate gets a less noticeable one by beating two chess Grandmasters with no additional help in order to make it to the final round of the chess tournament.
  • Nate's first opponent in the tournament, who's so good at the game he's able to sleep through all of Nate's turns, waking up only to instantly make his own move. Sophie has to be a Honey Trap for Nate to get past him.
  • Subtle example: Nate admits that he has plans that "usually" result in Hardison's death (and possibly Sophie and himself, which he dodges explaining). Eliot and Parker never die in his plans because he knows they're just that good.
• Eliot vs. the interrogation expert in "The Experimental Job". When you can give a career CIA man the heebie-jeebies just by talking about what you've done (and yet without really saying anything about what you've done), you know you're good.
  • Then he beats the ever-loving crud out of said interrogator when he finds out Hardison has been captured to get his location.
  • Parker taking Eliot's usual job by beating up a bunch of tough guys to rescue Hardison.
  • Let's talk about Hardison's scene right before that. He's taken at gun point, blindfolded, and taken to a new location where he's thrown on a pool table. The moment the hood is taken off, he leaps off the table, taking down one guy in one blow. He then engages the second guy, and was winning until two more jumped him, and only then did he need to be saved by Parker. He's come a long way from being the "fight the injured" niche guy.
• Parker's Locked Out of the Loop Nice Girl friend Peggy (described by Sophie as "disgustingly normal") gets one in "The Girls' Night Out Job" when she attacks one of the villains with a frying pan and hits him hard enough that a hardened thief winces afterwards.
  • The three ladies of the group (Sophie, Parker and special guest Tara) manage to find and Indy Ploy their way out of a terrorist plan, on the fly, without a hacker, hitter, or mastermind.
• In "The Boys' Night Out Job" we have Eliot stopping a speeding car... with an umbrella. No, seriously.
  • Detective Bonanno's Dynamic Entry and Shelley pulling an 'Eliot' was pretty awesome too.
• "The Radio Job": Eliot handling 3 'terrorists' with duct tape, and then finishing them off even after letting himself get the crap kicked out of him to prove something to an onlooker.
• The Season 4 finale. Quinn and Eliot kicking ass as a team, Maggie's return as a substitute grifter, Archie using cake to infiltrate the villains' headquarters, Chaos breaking into a system specifically designed to recognise Hardison but not him...it was just all around awesome.
  • "The Last Dam Job" is full of these, but three of Nate's stand out. In the first, the villain has a gun pointed at him.
    Nate: You were so focused, you forgot about the little details. (trigger is pulled, nothing happens) Like counting bullets. This one here, my father's gun? It has five bullets. I'm quite sure of that.
  • Then, when Dubenich tries to get him to drop the gun by using his son against him (again), Nate makes it clear he's having none of that.
    Nate: (lowers gun) My son would be ashamed of me if I was a murderer. But my father? He'd buy me an ice cream. (raises gun again)
  • Finally, the two villains have both been trying to convince Nate that he should kill the other one.
    Nate: So the problem I'm having with all of this is if only one of you dies, the other goes free. I have five bullets. Who would like to go first?
    • That doesn't quite do it full justice. He gets two villains to realize that the only person standing in the way of their freedom is the other villain, by stepping through how they can save themselves if the other dies. Then after letting that soak in, puts the gun on the edge of a cliff in between the two villains and walks out of their way. The rough equivalent of putting a steak between two starving dogs.

Season 5

• Parker really turns up her thieving skills in season five. In the first episode, she steals the clip out of a man's gun while it's in his shoulder holster. In a later episode, she steals both the clip and the chambered round out of a pistol in a desk drawer while the gun's owner is seated at the desk.
• In "The French Connection Job", a group of French thugs attempt to kidnap Eliot while he's cooking in the kitchen. One-by-one. Every time one of them comes into the kitchen, Eliot knocks them out without breaking a sweat or interrupting his cooking, and his students don't seem to care.
  • Actually, they do care, which makes it better. At the start of the scene, they are objecting to pretty much every order he gives them regarding the food, and in general they don't seem to respect him. As he continues to beat up the thugs, they get more and more polite and helpful until they are doing everything he says and gushing over his praise.
• And one for the random surgeon in "The Broken Wing Job". When the robbers shoot an off-duty cop that tries to stop them, the surgeon decides to stay and allows himself to be taken hostage so he can treat the wounded officer. Parker even admits that was a pretty badass thing to do. Also, in the same episode, Parker managing to singlehandedly foil and physically beat up a group of robbers while she was crippled with a torn ACL.
• Eliot, Hardison, and Parker managing to foil a terrorist attack in "The Rundown Job" within the space of an afternoon with almost no planning, and no help from Nate and Sophie.
  • Colonel Michael Vane gets one for being a badass on the same level as Eliot; not only does he apparently thwarts terrorist plots on a regular basis but it takes Eliot multiple tries to knock him out. Keep in mind Vance was letting the former hit him to look like the crew escaped.
  Hardison: Three tries?! Damn.
  Eliot: He didn't always wear a suit.
  • Special mention goes to Eliot, who took a bullet to the chest and one to the leg and didn't even slow down.
• Eliot's verbal beatdown against Jerkass store manager Bryan after he nearly works an elderly employee to death in "The Low Low Price Job". The only reason Eliot doesn't get physical is because the old man wouldn't have wanted that. When Bryan takes a swing at him, Eliot effortlessly catches his arm and plants Bryan face-first against the breakroom soda machine with his arm twisted behind him to continue his lecture.
  Bryan: [panicking] I can't feel my arm.
  Eliot: [utterly sincere] I know.
• The con in "The White Rabbit Job." They don't hurt the guy, they don't get him arrested, they don't remove him from his position in charge of the company, they just help him realize that his cousin's death wasn't his fault and his guilt was hurting the company. In the end, he comes around and he starts moving the company in a positive direction again.
• In "The Corkscrew Job", Eliot manages to lay a beatdown on a couple of thugs while slowly suffocating due to carbon dioxide buildup in the room. It's even more impressive because one of the thugs has his own air supply, so he doesn't suffer from the same handicap. Hardison also holds his own in a fistfight, showing that he's learned a thing or two from Eliot.
• They say "Sterling never loses." However, "The Long Goodbye Job" put several dents in his armor:
  • Nate spins a dual-layered sob story about his team dying during a daring jump over a drawbridge. His grifting ability has been mostly one-note in previous seasons (mainly sticking to the limits of the obnoxious, the hard-seller, or the obnoxious hard-seller), but here he sends his Interpol questioner around in circles, goads Sterling into opening the door to the vault, and all the while portraying the grieving mastermind. (Complete with furious outburst questioning "why would I lie?")
  • Sophie plays 13 distinct people, switching rapid-fire to sell the first part of the con, then portraying Lady Macbeth to a standing ovation to cover the getaway.
    Sterling: I've seen Sophie Devereaux play a dozen different people. While drunk.
    • It should be noted that all of these were consistent enough and distinct enough to fool an entire Interpol office.
    • Not only that...we've SEEN SOPHIE DO IT! K-Street job, remember? She did those in PERSON.
  • The team beat a Steranko. Last time they faced one of those, they "barely escaped," by Hardison's own admission. Not only that, but Hardison notes that after the events of "The Inside Job" the Steranko was upgraded and refined based on what they did so that the same tactics would not be effective again.
  • Last but not least, the team, or, at least, the 3/5 that mattered for the team's future, escaped scot-free. Sterling choosing Justice or Order wouldn't change the fact that Parker, Eliot, and Hardison are all set to put Operation Leverage Int'l into play.
  • From a narrative standpoint, the fact that the writers managed to fit not one but three Kansas City Shuffles in a single episode in such a layered and complex way and still have it make perfect sense and not leave any loose plot threads after.

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