Leverage: The Con is Gone

Parker, play dead! Those are the instructions given to Leverage's blonde grifter-in-training played by Beth Riesgraf as Nate (Timothy Hutton) and his team of do-gooder con artists pull their last con of the summer — a job that brings them one step closer to nabbing the as-yet-unseen international crook Damien Moreau.

Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!

In the episode, titled "The Morning After Job," the target is a hockey goon—turned—money launderer with a connection to Moreau. The plan? Convincing him that he murdered Parker during a one-night stand, which he can't quite remember. (Probably because it never happened!) What can go wrong does according to executive producer Dean Devlin, who admits, "Part of the fun of the show is that things never go smoothly. We never wanted to turn our team into superheroes — we always wanted to give them Achilles' heels, and usually it's related to their personality defects."While we'll have to wait until December for the last three episodes of Season 3 to see whether it's Nate and Co. or Moreau who ends up getting burned, expect temperatures to rise in this episode when Elisabetta Canalis returns as the mysterious woman who strong-armed the gang into going after Moreau in the first place. "A lot of the perceptions we have about her are going to change," teases Devlin, who promises we'll be seeing even more of the Italian beauty (and girlfriend of George Clooney) this winter. Grazie for that!Leverage's mid-season finale airs Sunday at 9/8c on TNT.

Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!