Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or in Gresham) for the past couple of months, you’re aware that TNT’s fledgling series Leverage has been filming in and around Portland for their second season. Word has it that the Portland City Council bent over backward to land the production in our fine little city in hopes that it would bring with it a much needed cash injection. Whether or not that happened is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain – most of us have caught a little Leverage fever around here.
I started watching Leverage late last year when the first season began, having read an article about how it was created. I didn’t mind it at first but after about 6 or 7 episodes it already felt tired to me. In lieu of anything else to watch I finished the 1st season anyway. Fast forward to last Wednesday night and the debut of “Leverage Portland”, the second season us locals have heard way too much about. So many new questions needed answering:
- Would Leverage highlight Portland at all with the first episode taking place in fake Boston?
- Would local Portland actors enhance what I feel is a very, very average TV show?
- Would Timothy Hutton’s ever-sagging face fall completely off?
So I watched the premiere…
The good news? Portland is DAMN scenic and does a wonderful job of playing Boston. In fact, with only one exception (we’ll get to that), Portland is easily the highlight of the show. Whether it’s the grit of Burnside serving as a backdrop for the world’s worst CGI enhanced car flipping scene or the various waterfront locations in ultra-high-contrast-for-maximum-grit, Portland looks great. So far, so good.
The other good news… Portland’s own Robert Blanche steals the show in the whole one minute and twelve seconds of screen time he’s given. Funny that TNT touts Leverage as “Starring Academy Award Winning Actor Timothy Hutton”, Blanche acts circles around him – in fact, his is the only convincing character in the whole damn episode.
The bad news? Almost everything else. Leverage was never great but season two feels more like a watered-down milquetoasty modern version of the A*Team than anything else. That ultra-high-contrast crap on the waterfront is designed to make you think you’re watching something edgy – rest assured, you’re not. Leverage is so lame and tame that it’s almost a fucking family show. If the first season had some promise but just not enough chemistry, well, the second season has lost it all entirely and the show that remains is strictly a by-the-numbers piece of dog shit. Competent co-stars are wasted, none of it is remotely plausible (though it wants you to think it is), and everything about it is entirely half-ass.
More bad news? A local teen actress (we’ll leave her name out of it here) plays a fairly prominent role in this particular episode and proves that not all kid actors are created equal. Ugh. If you saw the premiere and managed to make it through the hospital scenes without gagging then you’ll know what I mean. I laughed during scenes that were supposed to be deep and meaningful as I was reminded of bad weekly dramas from the 70′s (Emergency! anyone?) and the talentless hack kid actors they used to scrounge up to star in them.
Bottom line? I had hope. I made it through the first season, barely, but I was secretly hoping that filming piece of dung in Portland would be the thing that made it a little bit more tolerable. As it sits now Leverage is easily one of the cheesiest shows on television. Maybe that’s the intent, I don’t know, but it never rises above crap and never sinks to the level of “so bad it’s good”. TV shows stuck in between just plain suck.
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The real hurdle that Leverage has not yet overcome is producer Dean Devlin. He doesn’t know how to create a show that doesn’t patronize its audience. That said, we Stumptowners expected too much from Hollywood. It’s a disposable show and they used most of our disposable talent. Robert Blanch didn’t impress me like he did you but you’re right on target about the teenager, bloody awful. It makes me wonder how much money her parents paid to get her an audition and how much more they paid to convince the casting director to look the other way.
Hey douchebag !!! Gresham is better than the shithole city you blog about….
Hey old ugly fat man !!! Gresham is the butt hole of oregon.
Shut your gaping piehole Kat…..
Is it just me, or is there a decent possibility that most of the ratings come from the Portland/Metro area? Are we still that desperate after Nowhere Man?
It’s not just you. Portland wants so bad to be taken seriously in t.v. and film that we don’t seem to care if we get taken advantage of or not. I’m not surprised. Adams has secured his place in the arts community by kissing ass with Leverage and OBT. There’s a few thousand people right there that won’t be signing a recall petition anytime soon.
Stephen — If I’m reading you correctly you are saying that everything positive that the mayor does from this point forward is a way of calming the recall storm. Are you serious??? Maybe he’s just doing his damn job and actually cares about the arts! Did you ever thing of that? I’m so tired of everyone assuming that every single move the man makes has an alternate agenda. It’s tiring and it’s bullshit. Grow up.
say what you will….talk all the crap…say the show sucks…but you know what?
I worked for 6-months on this show, it was a great experience, all the people were cool as hell, I made a ton of money, and I am a oregon native who spends all his money here. Don’t people have anything better to do than to bash something that is good?
The show is not the greatest show ever made, but by far is not the worst, so get a life and focus on real crap, like fat lazy, wannabe bloggers that don’t know shit about what they are blogging.
Okay, I give up. Who was the crappy local teen actress?