After a brief break that seemed like an eternity, Leverage is back to entertain us with a modern day Robin Hood team.

Sophie is still taking a break from the team and so she sends her friend Tara (Jeri Ryan) to be the “grifter” for them.  Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton), the “mastermind”, gets a job to help a Chinese immigrant bring her family over from China.  She was brought over to work for the Pan family in (what is essentially) a sweat shop.  She’s forced to work 15 hour days without breaks making knock-off fashion pieces at severely low wages, but because of the language barrier and fear she won’t enter a complaint to the government.

The team figures out that Mrs. Pan dreams of being a fashion designer.  They find a way to break in to Fashion Week in New York and convince Mrs.

Pan that Tara is a very famous designer.  They trick her into believing she’ll be featured as a new designer and she easily hands them $50,000 to cover costs.  Unfortunately though for the team, Mr. Pan is actually a high ranking leader in the Chinese Triads, a mafia-like group who makes their money off of fashion knock-offs.

Tara gets held hostage while Eliot (Christian Kane) and Parker (Beth Riesgraf) sneak back into Fashion Week and steal designer Andre V’s designs to trade for Tara’s life.  Tara convinces Mr. Pan to call the cops, tell them Nate Ford stole Andre V’s designs, and convince them to come to the sweat shop.  That way, he keeps the designs and Nate gets blamed for everything.  With Hardison’s (Aldis Hodge) help, Nate manages to alert the police to Mr. Pan’s affiliation with the Triads and make himself look like an undercover cop at the same time.

While the show was incredibly entertaining (as Leverage usually is), I missed Sophie (Gina Bellman).  Tara’s a good character and her being there adds a nice dynamic to the show, but I like Sophie and the way her character interacts with the rest of them much better.  I do hope she comes back to the team.