Cast Member Highlight - Beth Riesgraf

While watching "Leverage" there was one character who seemed to have a great comedic gift throughout the whole series. That character was Parker, played by Beth Riesgraf. Beth brought much needed comic relief to the show in tight situations with her great "serious" facial expressions and through acts of revealing strange little secret tidbits of knowledge her character had.

Beth is extremely new to the acting field, so unfortunately there is very little information about her around at the moment. But I could dig up that she was once engaged to Jason Lee (from My name is Earl) and had a son with him. "Leverage" was and is Beth's first real major acting role, before landing it she had only done small parts in small movies/television episodes.

Besides continuing her role in "Leverage", Beth recently finished filming a lead role in the feature film "Nobody", which comes out later this year. It will be interesting to see where this role takes her career.

Leverage nominated for 2 Saturn awards.

Recently, the Academy of Science Fiction and Horror films announced its nominees for this years 35th annual Saturn Awards. Leverage was surprisingly nominated in 2 fields, Best Syndicated / Cable Television Series, and Timothy Hutton getting a nomination in the Best Actor in Television field.

I was rather surprised to hear about these nominations since there really wern't very many nominees in each category, and there are tons of eligible tv shows out there. However, It's good that a show as new as "Leverage" is getting notice.

As far as the likeliness of winning goes, it looks pretty slim according to the article I found announcing the nominees. The HBO series "True Blood" is projected to win the best series award, but there was no mention of any win projections in the best actor category, so perhaps Mr. Hutton still has a chance.

TNT takes second place for Febuary.

I recently found an article about the ad-supported cable ratings for February. Overall, it seemed that the ratings for cable channels have gone up (many in double digit percentages) during the month as compared to January.

As far as the top performing networks go, USA placed first, getting an average of 3.41 million nightly viewers.

TNT (the one we're all interested in) placed second, with an average of 2.49 million viewers nightly. This was a 10% increase compared to last February, and a 9% increase amongst it's younger viewers (aged 18-34), putting it into 3rd place for that demographic.

An increase in ratings is always a good thing for a TV network, and I'm sure TNT is very happy about it. Although TNT has always performed pretty strong (especially since the introduction of "Closer") it's never been something younger audiences really watched. Most aren't that into Drama. But I think that the introduction of it's newer shows ("Leverage" and "Trust Me") really may have triggered it's boost in ratings for this audience. Although I've only watched "Leverage", both shows seem to have a more light-drama attitude with a good amount of comedy mixed in, making them something that could more easily appeal to younger demographics. Overall, I'm highly interested to see if TNT's ratings further increase with this demographic as they continue their plan to add new original primetime content.

Cast Member Highlight- Christian Kane

Christian Kane is probably the third most bankable actor in the "Leverage" cast (behind Gina and Timothy). His work has been primarily in television, with staring roles that have made him fairly well known in series like the WB's "Angel" and CBS' "Close to Home". However, when I first started watching Leverage I had no idea who he was because I never had watched either of those shows. I did take notice to him though, as definitely one of the casts' strongholds.

Christian was born in Dallas, Texas, but as a kid his family was constantly moving around. They finally settled down in a small town in Oklahoma. When Christian got to college, he felt that something wasn't right. He wanted to become an actor. Like many who get this "bug" he took a chance and headed out to California. Fortunately, Christian was greeted with a bit of success from this move. He landed his first acting role in 1997 for the show "Fame L.A". Since then, Christian has landed numerous television roles, and a few minor roles in movies such as "Secondhand Lions" and "Friday Night Lights".

Christian also has a band called "KANE" which frequently plays in night clubs around Los Angelos. It recently got signed to a record comany and the band is working on it's first major lable album release.

Season Finale Analysis

As anyone who has been somewhat following "Leverage" knows, the last couple weeks was the show's season 1 finale. The episode, dealt with what was definitely the Leverage team's biggest heist yet. They had to steal, and re-steal famous pieces of art multiple times.

What was interesting about this 2-part finale was the fact that it gave a lot more background information on Nate (the leader of the team/Timothy Hutton's character). This whole heist was primarily done for revenge on what someone did to his son many years back. We also meet Nate's ex-wife, a very likable character once she figures out what's really going on, and perhaps (I'm hoping) a new permanent member of the Leverage team next season.

One new thing I noticed about this episode was that during the commercials they said that the particular episode was sponsored by not only it's usual (the Hyundai Genesis and HP computer) but also by Bertolli Pasta Dishes. Since usually these sponsors are featured in the episode as product placement as well, I was constantly looking for pasta to make an appearance. However, regrettably such did not happen.

Other than that I didn't notice much difference in the advertising compared to previous episodes. They did however announce that they are moving their newish show "Trust me" (the one about the two friends running an advertising company) to "Leverage's" time slot since "Leverage" is no longer in season.

As far as Leverage's season went, I feel it was pretty solid all the way through. there were a few "dud" episodes, but I generally found most of them enjoyable. It looks as if they have already started filming for the show's next season, however the new episodes will not air until sometime this summer.