'Leverage' is back! Thank God

Last night one of cable's best shows, "Leverage," returned with a batch of eight new episodes.

With apologies to "White Collar" the crew from "Leverage" are the best con artists on TV. In "The Experimental Job" the team took on a college's secret society to help homeless veterans who were being tortured and exploited.

Hardison infiltrated the fraternity while Eliot went in as a vet and as usual Christian Kane stole the episode.

His face off with an interrogator provided more insight into Eliot's shady past and gave him a chance to showcase his badassness. When the interrogator questioned him about the people he's killed, Eliot replied "Names? Dates? Locations? What food was on their breath? What color their eyes were? Want to know the last words they spoke? Want to know which ones deserved it? Or better yet, the ones that didn’t? Want to know which ones begged? Want to know why I know these things…Because I can’t forget. So there’s nothing you can do, no punishment you can hand out that I live with every day. So to answer your question, no, I don’t have a count. I don’t need to.”

Wow Christian Kane. Just wow.

It's no secret that Eliot Spencer is a dangerous man, but his good looks, charm and heroic nature make it easy to forget that he has this mysterious past. Not since season three's "The Big Bang Job" have we gotten such an inside view of who Eliot really is.

Of course Eliot was never broken, however when Hardison was kidnapped it only took him four minutes to break the interrogator. Proving torture does work if Eliot Spencer is the one dispensing it.

The reason "Leverage" continues to work so well is the constantly growing chemistry between the team. Nate and Sophie are dating, Eliot and Hardison are a great odd couple and Parker and Hardison slowly heading toward romance. All these entanglements and their commitment to each week's case make the team a perfect blend.

It also doesn't hurt that the show is genuinely fun to watch. A quality that's in rare supply these days.

Next week's take down at a big corporation is also an "Office" homage. Let's hope they do "The Office" when it was funny.

'Falling Skies:' First impressions

Tim and I will discuss "Falling Skies" in detail on this week's episode of "Inscaped." However, I wanted to offer a few early observations.

• It was boring. For an alien invasion story, it was surprisingly dull. I was expecting a little more action and a little less description of action.


• The characters aren't that interesting. Noah Wyle, Will Patton and Colin Cunningham are elevating an otherwise predictable story.


• Emotional moments are too heavy-handed. Truly great emotion is at its best when its subtle. The whole camp doesn't need to stop and watch a little boy on his skateboard to make the scene feel special.


• There was one great moment where Wyle's character had to choose between two books. That one little moment did more to sum up humanity's predicament than all the other so called emotional scenes in the two hour premiere.

TNT has been promoting the heck out of the series so the ratings for the premiere were very impressive. It will be interesting to see how the show does in the coming weeks.

As alien invasion stories go, "Falling Skies" didn't come out of the gate strong. For a better crafted, stunning, classic tale of humanity's survival, check out "Battlestar Galactica" now airing from the beginning on BBC America.