Hustle, Episode 2. They haven’t managed to come up with cool episode names or anything like that. OK, I can survive.

Originally aired January 14th, 2006.

In this episode, the senior member of the gang, Albert, gets caught cheating at cards and gets severely beaten. While he is in the hospital recovering (and scamming his fellow patients), the rest of the gang has to figure out how to con the guy who administered the beating. He is rich, doesn’t seem to have many vices. But he loves the old movies. So Stacie poses as an American film actress and Danny poses as a bigshot producer in need of cash. Then the fun begins.

One of the unique artistic devices they regularly use in Hustle is a stop-motion effect where the people that are being conned all go into freeze-frame, but the grifters carry on a conversation, interact with each other (and sometimes the freeze-framed folks) and so on. The show uses this device to elaborate a bit (in a stylish way) about what the characters are thinking. They will also sometimes use this without the stop-action – they’ll just stop everything in the scene and start off in some fantasy direction for a couple of minutes, then come right back as if nothing happened.

In this particular episode of Hustle, Danny and Mickey do a song-and-dance routine right out of a 1940’s musical. It’s the creative way of showing that they talked the mark into taking the deal, without actually having to write the dialogue. I’m not a huge fan of this strategy in general, but it fits into the style of the show, and it does save some tedious dialogue.

The ending of this show is quite funny, too; Danny (as the film producer) gets the mark, under the guise of taking a screen test, to record a whole apology to Albert. Sweet, sweet revenge.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it much before, but I’ve become a big fan of Hustle, a relatively new show on AMC, Saturday nights at 9 PM Central time. Think of it as a cool British version of of Ocean’s 11, but in an hour-long format, with more likeable characters, and with more emphasis on the beauty of the con and less on playing sleight-of-hand with the viewers.

The cast is solid: Robert Vaughn as the old pro; Adrian Lester (a relative newcomer) as the leader of the gang, Jaime Murray (a total newcomer) as the femme fatale, Mark Warren (recently in Band of Brothers) looking like a younger incarnation of Dennis Leary, and longtime British TV actor Robert Glenister as the trusty jack-of-all-trades.

They’re about 10 episodes into the first season right now, and I think I’ve watched all of them so far. I’m gonna try to review each episode as it comes out, and try to catch up on the back episodes here eventually.

Any other fans of Hustle? Leave your comments!