When I heard this was getting a sequel I immediately rewatched the original with my girlfriend so we'd be ready for it. We loved the original and somehow it like many other shows were just so good during that time.
This is not that show nor is it even close to being as good as that show. They cut Nate and Hardison out of the show almost entirely and it's painfully apparent in every episode. The chemistry of the old crew is almost entirely lost during this show somehow and some terrible decisions are made for the team by the writers. At the end of the original series we saw Nate pass the torch of mastermind to Parker saying she is every bit capable of filling that role and retiring with his new fiancé.
This series starts with his sudden and unexpected death and the grieving widow Sophie (who we still aren't using her real name but that's a nitpick really). She gets together with the old crew and gets talked into doing a comeback tour of a new con. The setup feels mostly familiar if not a bit rushed but it's fine. They eventually run into the first of two new characters, this one played by Noah Wyle. He's enjoyable enough though he's written as the brand new kid on the block in terms of additions to the crew and skills. This was where their issues started and never got better.
Why bring a greenhorn into the fold of established con artists when he has no role he fits in at all? The idea was clearly to do the whole "teach a new generation of crew" but it's well established that Leverage went from a national (if not usually just local) crew of conmen to an international operation. We're told that they run 13 crews counting themselves around the globe that get involved in who knows what, all conveniently running through Eliot's food truck business. So if we've already trained a dozen teams of the new generation, why do we need Wyle or the second new character; Brianna.
Brianna is introduced to us as the new Hardison because she's his little sister and is as good as he is. She's also the attempt at getting any Gen Z viewers to easily relate to someone on the cast list and injects the "modernity" of current society into the show! Yeah nobody should be sold on her and she's just so insufferable. She's constantly whining about how things are ran or if she's not doing that she's being godly at hacking and somehow written like she's smarter and better than her brother. There's consistently times where she solves problems that she shouldn't really have any expertise on at all and it's very odd. She also consistently ruins plans because of her brashness or impatience. She's also of course the "activist" character here to preach to us all about her morals and ideology that nobody asked for. It wouldn't be a modern show without one of these right? The issues don't stop there though.
Noah Wyle does the best he can with what he's given in his role as Mr. Wilson, but in all honesty he's given way too little. His character further exemplified the main problem with this show: the hole Nate left. Whereas Brianna was a new hacker and meant to be her brother's "temporary" replacement and her role is clearly defined, Wyle's role is not. It's such a glaring issue that it hits you in the face after the first episode and is always there like a glowing neon sign. If you're going to make a sequel series at least make choices based on what the original left you, instead the show lacks a mastermind the entire season. The finale attempts to solidify the mastermind as Sophie not Parker (odd choice but sure I guess) but it's literally the last scene of the last episode. Multiple cons are done with different characters in this role. Sometimes it's supposedly Parker (though she really doesn't take the lead this season even though multiple cons it's mentioned "this is Parker's job this time"), sometimes it's Sophie, and sometimes it's one of the other crew. What it isn't is almost never Wyle. "Oh but he pulls in clients and gives info on former clients to the team that's integral to some jobs" you might say, which is true dear reader. But a mastermind that does not make, and he's explicitly written this way too. They had three choices for the mastermind of this show: Parker as was established, Sophie out of respect for Nate, Wyle to prove how good he is and that he deserves to be on the team but the show picks none of the above. He has no ties to or credentials from anyone on the team at all therefore he has the most to prove. Wyle does well in his role but feels set up for failure because of these choices made by the writers.
There's also something to be said about how overtly and boringly political this show is. The original had its moments of criticism of the system it operated in (even having an entire episode within the bureaucracy of the United States government) but it was very fair in how approach to me. It wasn't too in your face about what it wants you to believe and if you don't then what it wants to force on you. The show literally has an episode where they make Elon Musk into a LITERAL Nazi who has white nationalist thugs and commits a hate crime and environmentally poisons a gay couple. The show is as politically subtle as a baseball bat to the face from the thugs of the real world ideology it's preaching. I'm all for well done sociopolitical issues being highlighted in entertainment media; but the original series had grace, tact, nuance, and subtlety while this sequel has the equivalent of those in a political debate on Twitter.
One last major problem the show has is the blatant mischaracterization of the crew themselves. There's multiple times where Parker's "clumsiness" gets them into hot water. Parker, the master thief who also just happens to be clumsy and lets something fall onto a pressure sensitive floor she knew about. Or Parker the one who just runs around screaming weird things at points because of reasons I guess. Then there's the constant issue the team takes with Wyle about him having represented bad people in court. Sophie in particular is always keeping him on a razor's edge because of the fact someone they're conning is related to his former law firm. The only thing Wyle has to offer is intel from his crooked lawyer days which basically lands him the role of glorified secretary to bring in clients and you're going to make this a problem? How is he supposed to remember every client he's ever represented and recall that info on command the moment a job starts? And even if he could why does it matter to his continued work on the team? Everyone knows he did plenty of terrible things and represented the worst of the worst, why do you care so much? The show is basically subtitled after him and his search for redemption but there's 4 or 5 times where you almost toss him out? What? Eliot has murdered scores of innocent and guilty people but you're just fine with him on the team. You don't need a list of every person he's killed do you Sophie? The show has a good idea of handling this with a "Mr. Wilson redemption list" but even after that fact is revealed to the viewer we still do this forced conflict two or maybe even three more times. It's like they had no clue how to write any kind of conflict for the show itself or how to write the characters within it.
TLDR: the series has sequelitis and is such a bad representation of the torch the original passed on. From terrible new and modern characters and ideologies forced into it, to not properly writing the old characters, to the fact the show doesn't even feel like it has cons anymore; it's just average braindead TV all around. I'm massively heartbroken they've made such a bad product when the original was such top quality TV that handed them the world. It shouldn't have been made if it was going to be this bad, I guess I just need to watch more mid 00's TV I missed instead. Clearly it's the superior era of entertainment.
This is not that show nor is it even close to being as good as that show. They cut Nate and Hardison out of the show almost entirely and it's painfully apparent in every episode. The chemistry of the old crew is almost entirely lost during this show somehow and some terrible decisions are made for the team by the writers. At the end of the original series we saw Nate pass the torch of mastermind to Parker saying she is every bit capable of filling that role and retiring with his new fiancé.
This series starts with his sudden and unexpected death and the grieving widow Sophie (who we still aren't using her real name but that's a nitpick really). She gets together with the old crew and gets talked into doing a comeback tour of a new con. The setup feels mostly familiar if not a bit rushed but it's fine. They eventually run into the first of two new characters, this one played by Noah Wyle. He's enjoyable enough though he's written as the brand new kid on the block in terms of additions to the crew and skills. This was where their issues started and never got better.
Why bring a greenhorn into the fold of established con artists when he has no role he fits in at all? The idea was clearly to do the whole "teach a new generation of crew" but it's well established that Leverage went from a national (if not usually just local) crew of conmen to an international operation. We're told that they run 13 crews counting themselves around the globe that get involved in who knows what, all conveniently running through Eliot's food truck business. So if we've already trained a dozen teams of the new generation, why do we need Wyle or the second new character; Brianna.
Brianna is introduced to us as the new Hardison because she's his little sister and is as good as he is. She's also the attempt at getting any Gen Z viewers to easily relate to someone on the cast list and injects the "modernity" of current society into the show! Yeah nobody should be sold on her and she's just so insufferable. She's constantly whining about how things are ran or if she's not doing that she's being godly at hacking and somehow written like she's smarter and better than her brother. There's consistently times where she solves problems that she shouldn't really have any expertise on at all and it's very odd. She also consistently ruins plans because of her brashness or impatience. She's also of course the "activist" character here to preach to us all about her morals and ideology that nobody asked for. It wouldn't be a modern show without one of these right? The issues don't stop there though.
Noah Wyle does the best he can with what he's given in his role as Mr. Wilson, but in all honesty he's given way too little. His character further exemplified the main problem with this show: the hole Nate left. Whereas Brianna was a new hacker and meant to be her brother's "temporary" replacement and her role is clearly defined, Wyle's role is not. It's such a glaring issue that it hits you in the face after the first episode and is always there like a glowing neon sign. If you're going to make a sequel series at least make choices based on what the original left you, instead the show lacks a mastermind the entire season. The finale attempts to solidify the mastermind as Sophie not Parker (odd choice but sure I guess) but it's literally the last scene of the last episode. Multiple cons are done with different characters in this role. Sometimes it's supposedly Parker (though she really doesn't take the lead this season even though multiple cons it's mentioned "this is Parker's job this time"), sometimes it's Sophie, and sometimes it's one of the other crew. What it isn't is almost never Wyle. "Oh but he pulls in clients and gives info on former clients to the team that's integral to some jobs" you might say, which is true dear reader. But a mastermind that does not make, and he's explicitly written this way too. They had three choices for the mastermind of this show: Parker as was established, Sophie out of respect for Nate, Wyle to prove how good he is and that he deserves to be on the team but the show picks none of the above. He has no ties to or credentials from anyone on the team at all therefore he has the most to prove. Wyle does well in his role but feels set up for failure because of these choices made by the writers.
There's also something to be said about how overtly and boringly political this show is. The original had its moments of criticism of the system it operated in (even having an entire episode within the bureaucracy of the United States government) but it was very fair in how approach to me. It wasn't too in your face about what it wants you to believe and if you don't then what it wants to force on you. The show literally has an episode where they make Elon Musk into a LITERAL Nazi who has white nationalist thugs and commits a hate crime and environmentally poisons a gay couple. The show is as politically subtle as a baseball bat to the face from the thugs of the real world ideology it's preaching. I'm all for well done sociopolitical issues being highlighted in entertainment media; but the original series had grace, tact, nuance, and subtlety while this sequel has the equivalent of those in a political debate on Twitter.
One last major problem the show has is the blatant mischaracterization of the crew themselves. There's multiple times where Parker's "clumsiness" gets them into hot water. Parker, the master thief who also just happens to be clumsy and lets something fall onto a pressure sensitive floor she knew about. Or Parker the one who just runs around screaming weird things at points because of reasons I guess. Then there's the constant issue the team takes with Wyle about him having represented bad people in court. Sophie in particular is always keeping him on a razor's edge because of the fact someone they're conning is related to his former law firm. The only thing Wyle has to offer is intel from his crooked lawyer days which basically lands him the role of glorified secretary to bring in clients and you're going to make this a problem? How is he supposed to remember every client he's ever represented and recall that info on command the moment a job starts? And even if he could why does it matter to his continued work on the team? Everyone knows he did plenty of terrible things and represented the worst of the worst, why do you care so much? The show is basically subtitled after him and his search for redemption but there's 4 or 5 times where you almost toss him out? What? Eliot has murdered scores of innocent and guilty people but you're just fine with him on the team. You don't need a list of every person he's killed do you Sophie? The show has a good idea of handling this with a "Mr. Wilson redemption list" but even after that fact is revealed to the viewer we still do this forced conflict two or maybe even three more times. It's like they had no clue how to write any kind of conflict for the show itself or how to write the characters within it.
TLDR: the series has sequelitis and is such a bad representation of the torch the original passed on. From terrible new and modern characters and ideologies forced into it, to not properly writing the old characters, to the fact the show doesn't even feel like it has cons anymore; it's just average braindead TV all around. I'm massively heartbroken they've made such a bad product when the original was such top quality TV that handed them the world. It shouldn't have been made if it was going to be this bad, I guess I just need to watch more mid 00's TV I missed instead. Clearly it's the superior era of entertainment.