When they began operating as a team, hacker extraordinaire Alec Hardison created a number of different aliases for the Leverage crew for use in their cons. The quality of his work becomes evident when one of Parker's aliases receives a summons for jury duty. After Parker goes rogue on a con, Nathan Ford decides that service on a jury would serve as a valuable learning opportunity about working on a team - something with which Parker still has trouble. Parker soon discovers, however, that what is on the surface an innocuous wrongful death civil trial involving an energy supplement is being manipulated by Tobey Earnshaw, the heiress to a major pharmaceutical company. Determined to avoid any liability for a product in which she invested without the company's knowledge, Earnshaw undertakes an aggressive operation to win the case by manipulating the jury. What she doesn't count on, though, is the intervention of the Leverage team.
What follows is staged as a chess match, with Nate and company trying to win a favorable outcome for the plaintiff. With the trial already underway, Nate concludes his only option is to force a settlement, which Earnshaw has ruled out. While Parker tries to ingratiate herself with the other jurors and Hardison and Eliot Spenser investigate which jury members Earnshaw has bribed, Sophie poses as an Indian pharmaceutical executive to convince the trial's defendant, supplement company owner William Quint, to go against Earnshaw and settle the case in order to gain a better buyout than Earnshaw is offering him. They soon discover that they face a forceful and determined mark, who will do whatever it takes in order to guarantee a favorable verdict.
The moves and countermoves between the two sides is just one of the enjoyable aspects of this standout episode. It's aided enormously by the guest performances, particularly Lauren Holly's as the calculating Earnshaw, and Brent Spiner's as supplement company owner William Quint. Yet it's Beth Riesgraf who makes it all work as well as it does. In the first episode centered around Parker she proves more than up to the task of delivering the performance viewers came to expect while at the same time developing her as a character in ways that pay off over the course of the series. It helps to make the episode the best of the first season, one that is a great example of the show firing on all its cylinders.
