TNT’s Leverage returns to the schedule on Wednesday with six new episodes running weekly through February 17. The series, co-created by former Blue Beetle writer John Rogers, was one of the network’s bright spots when it debuted in December 2008.

As the second season opened this past summer, the Leverage team reunited in Boston to settle more scores against those who use power and wealth to victimize others.  The gang is led by former insurance investigator Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton), who first got into the racket after his former employer refused to pay for treatment that could have saved his son’s life.  His highly skilled team includes Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman), a grifter who uses her acting skills to corner her marks; Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane), a “retrieval specialist” with bone-crunching fighting skills; Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge), a gadget and technology wizard who keeps the team informed; and Parker (Beth Riesgraf), a slightly off-center thief adept at rappelling off buildings or squeezing into tight places.

SPOILERS AHEAD if you haven’t seen the second season so far and don’t want to watch the marathon before Wednesday’s premiere…

By the end of summer, the Leverage team had scammed a hedge-fund manager who happened to be in the custody of U.S. Marshals; used Eliot’s martial arts skills to corner a corrupt fight promoter; and took over a private school to recover millions of dollars lost in a Ponzi scheme.  They also went head-to-head with an almost identical team of grifters to recover a painting that had been stolen by Nazis during World War II.

But for Sophie, something just wasn’t feeling right.  Her conflicted relationship with Nate left her questioning if she wanted to continue working with the team.  She decided to take some much-needed time away, but not before she arranged for a friend and fellow grifter, Tara Cole (Jeri Ryan), to fill in for her.  Tara immediately proved her worth by not only helping the team save a client’s estate from a corrupt lawyer, but also fooling everyone into thinking she was the client’s attorney. (Of course, Bellman is merely taking a maternity leave but they have written her out in a nicely dramatic fashion.)

Here’s a look at the upcoming episodes (SPOILER: with brief plot synopses) and we’ll have a review of the first two on Tuesday.

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What is it with Stuart Townsend and characters with swords? First, he leaves the role of Aragorn early in the shooting of  the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and now we hear that he’s out of the role of Fandral in the adaptation of Marvel’s Thor. AP cites that old standby, “creative differences”. Fandral will now be played by Joshua Dallas, who was in the Doctor Who episode “Silence in the Library”.

I can think of a few possibilities:

His swordsmanship isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Director Kenneth Branagh thinks having Townsend leave the production early is some sort of a good luck charm (see LOTR).

From the Los Angeles Times:

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rocked the Northern California city of
Eureka on Saturday, snapping power lines, toppling chimneys, knocking
down traffic signals, shattering windows and prompting the evacuation
of at least one apartment building.

All right, which of you geniuses ignored the “Do Not Touch” sign?

Art Clokey, whose bendable creations became a pop
culture phenomenon through countless satires, toys and revivals, has
died at age 88.

Caretaker Chrisanne Wollett Clokey says Clokey died Friday in Los Osos on California’s Central Coast.

Clokey is best known for the creation of Gumby, the green clay character with his horse friend Pokey. Clokey first molded Gumby for a surreal student project at the
University of Southern California called “Gumbasia.” That led to his
making shorts for the Howdy Doody Show and several series through the
years. He said he based Gumby’s swooping head on the hairdo of his father, who died when Clokey was nine.

Clokey also created the moralizing and often satirized claymation duo Davey and Goliath, which became the direct inspriation for Adult Swim’s Moral Orel.

Eddie Murphy restored Gumby’s popularity in the 1980s with
his send-up of the character on “Saturday Night Live” as a
cigar-smoking primadonna. Other late-night revivals followed, including appearances on Canadian late-night television with Gumby being portrayed by comic-book artist Ty Templeton. Apparently, Ty’s portrayal of Gumby ended when he mentioned that one of the books he spent time walking through was Portnoy’s Complaint.

Gumby had a brief career in the comics, starting in 1986 with Blackthorne Publishing, then later Comico and Wildcard Ink.

Yes, you read that right. Gawker, the website that spends an inordinate amount of time picking on the famous, the near famous, the near to the famous, and the need to be famous, has actually defended science fiction convention goers:

The show takes a lazy jab at nerds in Boba Fett, Storm Trooper, and
Star Trek costumes, making theories ranging from reasonable hypothesis,
to outside the box ingenuity, to television inspired, to the completely
ridiculous.

Please. The whole segment is just an excuse to make fun of nerds.

I think we have to redo the Geek Hierarchy chart now.