3.6 The Ghost

A successful con of an Aussie broker turns sour when the police arrive ahead of Mickey at the team’s apartment, and the suitcase that should have been full of money is instead loaded with cocaine. It’s a setup engineered by corrupt detective Matthew York, who demands that the team entrap his least favorite criminal, Adam Rice.

Comments

There’s no doubt that the team is going to be one step ahead of the evil detective, and it’s great to anticipate how many pegs he is going to be taken down. But the episode is just a little weaker than some of the better ones, due to a little too much time creeping through the dark haunted house and scaring each other, especially Danny, who is turning into more goofball than con artist. And the con is overly ambitious. It took almost five minutes to explain how they did it at the end. Still, there are some very entertaining moments, and some very funny Danny-delivered lines.

Nits

When York refused to release Albert, I was surprised that Mickey didn’t propose a prisoner swap, so that another member of the team could temporarily take Albert’s place whilst Albert did what he needed to do. I’m not sure if York would have gone for it, but it would have been worth asking.

When the guard and the Alsatian are walking the perimeter, Mickey whispers, "Down!" and the team lays face down on the ground. Granted, they are approximately 100 metres away, but an Alsatian would use smell and hearing (especially at night) to detect intruders, and it is mostly unbelievable that the dog does not realize they are there.

Memorable Moments

• Danny pointing a gun at Mickey
• Mickey and Danny sky-diving
• Mickey throwing Danny out of the plane, then guffawing with joy

Quotable Quotes

Stacie: Mmmm, I think cash is so sexy!

Graham: You know who I am?
Danny: Why? You’ve forgotten?

"I resign! I don’t want to be a grifter anymore! I want to be a postman!"
- Danny, ready to jump

Ash (to Adam, whilst walking down street): And, you haven’t said how you’re getting through the perimeter fence.
(scene cuts to interior of plane)
Danny: I should have guessed.
Adam: Relax, Danny! We’re going in low to get accuracy!
Danny: Well…why don’t we land the plane, and be really accurate!

"Well, I think he’s, you know, gay. Seriously, I mean, you don’t get skin like that without using moisturiser."
- Danny, trying to convince Stacie about Adam

3.5 Royal Scoop

When Stacie’s childhood friend attempts suicide after being discredited with a false front page story by a trashy London newspaper called the Sunday World, the team agrees to help Stacie avenge the injustice by making the newspaper’s editor and reporter their next marks. But in the midst of the con, Mickey is abducted by detectives hired to protect the royal family, and is warned to drop the story or risk going to prison for a long time.

Comments

This very satisfying episode pits the team against a target (bad journalists) that almost everyone would enjoy seeing destroyed.

Memorable Moments

• Ash as an old, old man (I’m glad Robert Glenister has gotten a chance to stretch a little more in this third season)
• The closing scene – a conservatively dressed women, walking two corgies and seen only from the waist down, is putting flowers on Cythia Felgate’s grave (where, presumably, the real Queen Mum is buried)

Quotable Quotes

"If I was a man, I would beat the crap out of them. If I was a lawyer, I’d sue them. But I’m neither. I’m a grifter. So I’ll use that."
- Stacie

Mickey: Bit of an obsession with the royal family, don’t you think?
Danny: Well, I ain’t nickin’ the crown jewels again.

Danny: Hold up, hold up, hold up! I thought we were ruthless con artists! When did we turn into Robin Hood and his merry bleedin’ men?
Mickey: Just this once.
Danny: Yeah, well I think Maid Marion here is taking the piss!
Stacie: Listen, she is a really good friend who has been through a really tough time.
Danny: Yeah, well…so have I.

3.4 The Bollywood Con

The mark is Kolvindar Sumar,  an arrogant sweatshop owner with a love of Indian cinema, whose own dreams of acting were squashed by his father. The con is to get him to invest in a factitious Bollywood movie. But when Danny crashes the limo, Sumar’s temporary amnesia allows the team to attempt the impossible – conning the same mark twice.

Comments

This is a fun episode. It’s got the typical elements of a con, with a great twist, and some fantastic Bollywood recreation.

When Danny has to make believe he is Brad Pitt on the phone, Stacie punches up the Internet Movie Database to help him answer questions. That’s just what I would have done.

How does the team reconcile their ‘code’ of never conning an honest man with all the ‘short cons’ they have done, to random people, to get money to fund their supposed moral long cons?

Memorable Moments

• Danny imitating Brad Pitt (even while on the toilet)
• The Bollywood segment

Quotable Quotes

Danny: Uh, not being funny ‘ere, kids. Last time we did the movie investor con, I got shot.
Mickey: Well, don’t worry, Danny, if anybody’s gonna to pull the trigger this time, it’ll be one of us.

"We can show those little piss-takers that Danny is not a complete idiot."
- Danny, talking to his seedlings

Stacie: You know, this is a whole new side of you I haven’t seen before. I quite like it!
Danny: What, uh…enough to get your kit off?
Stacie: Hmmm…you just can’t help yourself, can you?
Danny: (to his seedlings) Ignore her. She’s got issues.

Mickey: Hey…find me any elephant!
Danny: Elephant?
Mickey: Problem?
Danny: You want African or Indian?
(Mickey looks scornfully)
Danny: Indian…I knew that.

Alfred: It’s strange, though. Sumar seems…different.
Mickey: How so?
Alfred: Well…less obnoxious.
Mickey: Hmm…I’ve found that.
Danny: Maybe he’s forgotten he’s an arsehole.

3.3 Whittaker Our Way Out

James Whittaker Wright III, an American grifter who claims to be the great-grandson of a famous con artist, contacts the team and hustles Danny and Ash before proposing a merger to swindle the London Stock Exchange. With the big money a temptation, the team agrees, even though they know Wright will try to double-cross them.

Comments

This is another good episode, marred (or improved) by its large doses of lesson-giving on the workings of the stock market. It’s also a good example of an episode where the con doesn’t work out happily ever after.

Memorable Moments

• The segments filmed to look like silent movies (complete with Adrian Lester doing his own take on Charlie Chaplin)
• Stacie doing a Matrix-style kick to a banker’s head

Quotable Quotes

Mickey: Finally, we need someone to front the company.
Albert: Ideally, we need a person who’s  completely obnoxious.
James: A brash, ignorant flash-Harry.
Mickey: Yeah, a mouthy, full-of-himself, know-nothing barrow boy who’ll instantly get right up the toffee noses of every banker in the city.
Danny: (to himself, while obliviously playing a hand-held video game) Get in there!

Mickey: So are you and JW3 ready to play the part of the foolish investors?
Albert: Are there any other kind?

"You are coming to me with a big ask…a very big ask."
- Ash (stopping to look at a pole dancer’s bottom)

"There are a lot of different stories about what happened to James Whiataker Wright after his adventures in the city. I don’t really know that the truth is, but I’d like to think that somewhere along the way, he found his own little piece of grifting heaven."
- Albert (as Mickey Bricks / Charlie Chaplin and Stacie walk off into the sunset)

3.2 The Henderson Challenge

There’s a day to kill in the current long con, and the Mickey/Danny rivalry has racheted up a couple of notches. Albert proposes ‘The Henderson Challenge’, a traditional way of solving in-gang challenges to the leader. Danny and Mickey will be dropped off, naked, in the middle of London at noon, with six hours to return to base. The one with the most spoils will win.

Comments

Mickey’s solution – to do a long con, and to make Danny the mark – is priceless.

Is this just coincidence, or did someone purposely place a triangle-shaped martini glass on the table, then have Stacie walk around behind it, so it is exactly in front of her ‘nether regions’? (17.12)

I question the decision to reveal that Mickey is quite happy for Danny to challenge – and take over – leadership, and to reveal that Danny is quite happy for Mickey to be leader. The tension between those two, whether real or imagined, has always been integral to the show. The final scene, where Danny almost grovels, is a little painful to watch, and doesn’t really seem in character. However, it does change the dynamic of the team and make them more united behind a central leader, which is a welcome character arc on a show where the characters could have become charicatures.

Nits

I don’t understand why the leadership of a team dedicated to pulling long cons should be the winner of this contest, which, due to its 6 hour nature, will consist solely of short cons. Funnily enough, I came to this conclusion about 2 minutes before Danny did. And, of course, Mickey’s solution is to do a long con anyway.

Memorable Moments

• Danny and Mickey dumped naked in what Ash calls, "…a nice quiet corner", but what looks to me like Trafalgar Square
• Danny’s chuffed to have progressed to wearing gardener’s clothes and packing 50 quid, until he spies Mickey cruise by wearing a suit and sitting in the back of a stretch limo

Quotable Quotes

Danny: Can I ask you something?
Mickey: Nooo!
Danny: I mean, unless I’m missing something, you don’t seem to get much in the way of female company.
Mickey: I do alright.
Danny: When?
Mickey: When I’m as far away from you as possible.
Danny: Alright, that makes sense. I mean, they aint gonna want to shag you, once they’ve seen me, are they?
Mickey: Shut up, Danny.

Mickey: Hey, if you want to be leader for awhile, go ahead.
Danny: Yeah?
Mickey: Danny…Ladies and gentlemen, Danny.
Danny: Uh, right, first things first – sleeping arrangements.

3.1 Be My Eminem

When Albert’s targeted mark has a heart attack, he switches to a rough, rude pub owner who likes to smuggle Eastern Europeans into Great Britain and beat up anyone who gets in his way. The con is to convince his rapping son that Danny is  big music producer.

Comments

The cons are unbelievable, and they are obviously performed with careful editing, not slick sleight of hand (which will probably annoy some viewers who want more realism). But hey, when you see Adrian Lester flash his ultra-charming smile after conning a selfish drug dealer, I can’t help but feel good. Damn good.

This is an enjoyable, ultra-slick episode. The creators have shown no signs of slowing down at all. The one criticism I have is that the problem that occurred – where Albert’s original mark is related to Albert’s new mark – was easy to read.

Memorable Moments

• Danny singing ‘Rawhide’ with an American accent
• A slickly filmed sequence with Mickey as a rap artist and Stacie as his girl, walking the red carpet

Quotable Quotes

"I mean, ‘ow am I supposed to work with people like this, eh? I’m an artist."
- Danny

2.6 Eye of the Beholder

Mickey’s personal dream to try to steal the Crown Jewels – the first attempt in  over 300 years – takes shape as the team agrees to give it a try. But when the outsider they have hired to arrange bids for the jewels is arrested, he lets the police in on the team’s plans.

Comments

In a nice touch of continuity, the female detective inspector who was conned in the very first episode of Hustle (The Con is On) returns here, back on the case, with revenge in her sights.

Memorable Moments

• Danny impersonating Tom Cruise
• Ash snapping a photo of Mickey mid-robbery

Quotable Quotes

"I’m too pretty to go to prison. I’ll never get any sleep."
- Danny

Mickey: Where you been?
Danny: The nice custody sergeant…he let me use his phone. (referring to his scam to earn money each time someone rings his phone)

2.5 Old Aquaintance

The team’s planned con is cancelled, and the mark is changed, when Stacie’s thieving ex-husband shows up unexpectedly.

Comments

This episode has its moments, although it probably spends too much time focussed on the relationship between Stacie and Jake.

Memorable Moments

• The speechless clerks, victims of a slick con pulled off by Mickey and the ‘pregnant’ Stacie at a jewelers, where they leave an expensive ‘borrowed’ poodle and a brick-filled suitcase that looks just like the cash-filled one they flashed earlier

Quotable Quotes

Stacie: Apart from a few thoughtful touches, he took everything that mattered to me – even my home.
Danny: Bastard!
Stacie: Oh he left me a Phil Collins CD that wasn’t even mine.
Danny: Twisted bastard!

Stacie: Did you have to walk past the receptionist like that?
Danny: (wearing full wetsuit) Yes, I did. I did get her phone number, though.

2.4 Missions

A corrupt female detective, tipped off to the team by Eddie, uses blackmail to take a bigger and bigger cut of their latest artwork switcheroo scam. But the team may have something else in store for her.

Comments

Having just watched The Lesson, I wasn’t having a bar of the surface level of this con. Sure enough, everyone – including Eddie, who appears to take a beating – is in on getting the last laugh on the despicable detective.

To everyone’s surprise, not only does Stacie stop ‘the Geek’ from bidding on the forgery, but she also goes out on another date with him.

Memorable Moments

• Danny showing how ‘easy’ it is to switch the real artwork with the forgery

Quotable Quotes

Danny: Do you think she’s fit?
Mickey: Oh, don’t -
Danny: Wha?
Mickey: - even think about it.

Detective: Who woulda thought it, eh? The great Mickey Bricks taking the easy option.
Danny: Ha, ha.
Mickey: Ha, ha, yeah, that’s good, that’s good, coming from a parasite like you.

Detective: I’ll take your phones, too, just in case you attempt to make any arrangements behind my back.
Danny: I would give it, but, I mean, me Nan said she might call today – she gets very lonely…Yeah…if me Nan calls, just, um, tell her I’ll come and see her tomorrow.

Danny: Kids, eh? Who’d have ‘em, eh?
Female Clerk: I’ve got four.
Danny: Great. I love ‘em. They…as good lookin’ as their mum?

Eddie: She’s this bent D.I. She caught Billy and his crew gambling down here, you know? They were playing poker. She wants 10 grand or I’ll lose me license, and I could lose everything, Mick.
Mickey: Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Danny: Yeah…is she fit?

2.3 The Lesson

The mark is Anythony Mgube, a Nigerian army torturer and embezzler. But the plan – and Danny’s status within the team – is in serious trouble when Danny brings an uninvited outsider - a short con man with whom he has shared a few too many drinks.

Comments

All I can say is, this is the most elaborate con yet. If you guess it, you’re more clever than I. It’s also the best episode yet. Usually, we the audience are part of the team, but this time, we are conned as well.

Nits

Albert holds a briefing session regarding Mgube. Danny is not present. Why is Albert doing this? Mgube does not exist, and everyone present knows this. I suppose it could be that Albert is briefing the team on how the fake con will be carried out.

Memorable Moments

• Danny flirting with Stacie

Quotable Quotes

Danny: You said we needed somebody for the Gooby Dooby thing.
Mickey: Mgube.
Danny: And that, as well.

"I didn’t mean what I said, and I’m sorry about burping in your face. Love you all."
- Danny

Albert: You’ll get us barred [from the pub].
Mickey: I cannot – help myself [after tricking the bartender yet again].

2.2 Confessions

Albert deals poorly with the loss of an old grifter friend, while the team targets a ruthless former con who wants to share his fortune with his long-missing son.

Comments

Adrian Lester has a beautiful voice. Like Patrick Stewart, he can take mediocre dialogue and make it sound like Shakespeare.

Robert Glenisher (Ash) gets to flex his acting muscle a bit more in this episode, playing an obnoxious music industry executive.

Robert Vaughn makes a great transformation from distraught (throughout much of the episode) to suave (in the last scene).

Memorable Moments

• Danny and Stacie’s simulated sex scene (while Mickey listens and laughs in the next room), and the strange aftermath
• Keyes’ moving death scene, where he asks Danny to forgive him
• Ash takes a fall in front of the cab driver’s taxi to get Gill’s ring back for Albert

Quotable Quotes

"God made a garden for man and woman, and he told them, ‘Do not eat the fruit from that tree.’ A serpent visited the woman and offered her an apple from the tree. He told her the apple would give her knowledge. He was very persuasive. And mankind has been paying the price ever since, all because we were tempted by something we didn’tneed. The serpent…was the first grifter."
- Mickey (opening lines)

Danny: Now why don’t you ask me what your’re gagging to ask me.
Mickey: Oh…no, I don’t have to. I know you two were faking last night.
Danny and Stacie (in unison): Why?
Mickey: It’s a common mistake, but…no one has that good a time of it.

"As zombies roles go, it’s great. You get to eat Amanda Donohoe."
- Albert

2.1 Gold Mine

When an old-time grifter is caught in the act of scamming by a cut-throat property developer, Danny decides to take the challenge of outsmarting this very savvy mark. Is his grift-sense enough to triumph against the odds, or is he leading the team to failure?

Comments

Danny has (at least) three mobile phones; each is marked on the back with the faux profession he has given out for that number: ‘doctor’, ‘pilot’, and ‘spy’.

(Major Spoiler Alert) The clever ending tricked me. I was fully expecting that the ‘real’ soil testers that arrived were actually con men hired by Mickey as a backup. The real con (to have Ash fire gold-loaded shotgun shells into the test area) was unexpected.

Nits

Ash creates a website for the confidential property development project that the mark glances at while in Mickey’s office. Next, we see the mark looking at Ash’s website. How did he find it? Usually, it takes time for a website to be included in a search engine database – it wouldn’t be in there the same day or the next day.

Memorable Moments

• Just to get you back in the groove, season two begins with a long, mostly slo-mo sequence of the gang scamming their way directly from the airport, into a chauffer-driven limo meant for someone else, and into a luxury hotel room
• Albert teaching Danny about ‘cold reading’
• Stacie wearing her ‘Jerry Lewis’ teeth

Quotable Quotes

"Right, listen, it’s been fun, innit? And I’m gonna call you, just like I promised. How’s your head? That’s alright, listen, I’ll call engineering, I’ll get that soap dispenser moved down a little bit, it’s dangerous, could have your eye out."
- Danny, summing up his hour with a couple of airline stewardesses

Albert: Cold-read him. Learn everything you can before you say a word.
Danny: Cold what?
Albert: You do know about ‘cold reading’.
Danny: Oh…cold reading.
Albert: Yeah.
Danny: Yeah, I know about cold reading, yeah.
Albert: Well, how ‘bout a little…refresher course.
Danny: Well, if you’ve got time, I mean…yes, please.

1.6 The Last Gamble

The mark is a fat cat CEO whose golden handshake is ripe for the picking; the scam is ‘The Wire’, involving convincing someone that you have the results of a finished horse race in time to make a bet.

Memorable Moments

• Stacie’s (tastefully filmed) pole dance, culminating in a self-applied slap to her bottom (complete with horse-whip sound effect)

Quotable Quotes

"Yeah, you gave me a shot, and I’m grateful for that. But I’ve been carrying you ever since!"
- Danny to Mickey

Danny: I’m going now, so I won’t be pestering you any more. Okay, that’s it. I guess what I’m really wanting to know is, why you wouldn’t go out with me?
Girl at desk: (whispers something in Danny’s ear)
Danny: Because you’re a lesbian! Yes! Yes! Nothing wrong with that!

Danny: Hi.
Mickey: Oh! We’ll be gone for awhile.
Danny: We’re gonna have a well-earned rest.
Ash: But we know what you’re thinking.
Stacie: Gap in the market.
Albert: Think you might try your luck?
Danny: Easy…when you know how.
Mickey: But if you do…
Danny: You gotta remember…the first rule of the con:
Stacie: You can’t cheat an honest man.
Albert: Can’t happen.
Ash: Impossible.
Mickey: Find someone who wants something for nothing.
Stacie: Which shouldn’t be hard.
Danny: And then give them nothing…for something.

1.5 A Touch of Class

The team decide to con a vengeful woman who recently pushed her husband over the limit in their war of the roses by having his favorite dog put down while he was on holiday. But when Mickey gets to know her better, he discovers that she may have been the real victim, and seduced by her charms, he changes the mark to her husband.

Meanwhile, Mickey discovers that Ash’s ex-wife June is seriously deteriorating after staging two many cons consisting of jumping in front of moving cars.

Comments

Adrian Lester has got to be one of the coolest guys in the world.

Memorable Moments

• Mickey’s told-you-so smile to the camera when Mrs Winterborn asks him out to dinner

Quotable Quotes

"That was fun. I haven’t run like that since 1972."
- Albert

Danny: Well, I can’t pay for sex.
Hooker: Why not?
Danny: Because…’cause I’m…ya know…me…ya know…I don’t…it’s not…I’m…not a…payer…for sexer.

Danny: Alright, but I mean it, listen? No one is to know anything about this.
Ash: Cheers, Danny.
Stacie: Eddie! Danny pays for sex!

1.4 Cops and Robbers

The head of security for a major bank and a former grifter-catching cop has a tape of Danny involved in a casino robbery. He promises to give it to the police if Mickey doesn’t help him catch a man who is systematically robbing each of their bank branches, one by one.

Comments

Mickey is drawn into the compelling, moralistic reasons that Richards is robbing the bank. He is avenging the death of his father, who comitted suicide when the bank called in his loan. And he also wants to retrieve a special diamond that was owned by his grandfather, confiscated by the bank to cover the loan, and then never auctioned (so the bank could keep it all for themselves).

This was the first episode of Hustle I ever viewed, happening to catch it one night in Brisbane on ABC TV. It’s a good episode, filled with humor, conflict, and flirtatiousness, and it culminates with a very clever con.

Nits

During the silent movie, there is one quick camera movement (panning to follow the movement of the bottle as the bartender pours a drink for Danny) that looks incongruous.

Richards has an incredible wealth of inside information on the bank, including the exact day when they are moving the desired ‘rock’. How did he get this information?

Memorable Moments

• Danny and Stacie pull off an old con involving a dog, and we see it filmed as a silent movie
• Danny makes the move on Stacie, and when she refuses, things get a little tense
• The team outsmarting the smarmy Victor Maher
• Stacie and Danny whipping out their forbidden bank notes (and the joyous feeling of triumph at the end)

Quotable Quotes

Stacie: Game?
Danny: Dealer’s choice?
Stacie: Of course.
Danny: Strip poker.

Mickey: Can you do something for me?
Stacie: Yeah, I’ll go get the cards now if you’d like.

"Look, Albert, okay, is the roper. Okay, Ash does the fixin’. Mickey – inside man. Me? Me, I’m a floater. I mean, to me, that sounds like a turd."
- Danny

Danny: If I go away, so does the problem.
Mickey: That’s not an option.
Danny: What, cause of that whole family Musketeer thing?

1.3 Picture Perfect

While the team sets up a con involving the forgery of a work of art, they also have to deal with a possible jinx hanging over all of them because Albert and Ash mistakenly cleaned out a man who had less money than it seemed.

Comments

This episode picks up exactly where the last one left off. Danny, just about to leave hospital, overhears a woman talking about "…100 thousand dollars…", and starts putting together a little plan.

Forgeries, swapping paintings…this episode has all the elements of the classic art con, with a number of double-crosses thrown in.

Memorable Moments

• Stacie’s con involves walking into a museum, claiming to be a groupie, and wearing provocative clothing, including a tight-fitting t-shirt with a print of one of the artworks currently on display. After Mickey steals the print, she pastes it onto her shirt and just walks out
• Danny deciding to let the money rain down
• The closing tracking shot of the team walking down the street together

Quotable Quotes

"We thought he could afford to be fleeced. We ripped him off in good faith!"
- Albert

Albert: Nobody does it better.
Ash: Makes me feel bad for the rest.

1.2 Faking It

When Albert is caught cheating in a card game and is beaten up by a ruthless casino owner, Mickey assembles the crew to for a revenge con. Meanwhile, Mickey also has to deal with the request of a divorce from his wife.

Comments

Marc Warren’s nuanced turn as Danny features subtle movements and looks that keep us wondering if this man is dedicated to the team or always about to betray them.

Nits

At one point, the mark looks at a ‘Jennifer Cole’ website. How did the team accomplish this? I suppose it’s possible that when they fed him a doctored copy of his regular movie magazine, they could have put the link in there, then created the website themselves. That part is believable, but hopefully he isn’t a regular internet user, or he might do an Internet Movie Database search for ‘Jennifer Cole’ and get suspicious when there are no matches!

Memorable Moments

• While trying to pull the big con, time is stopped and Mickey is able to give advice to Danny (everyone else in the room except Mickey is frozen in time). Then, Mickey and Danny proceed into a song and dance routine, and even the mark joins in. I assume this was a little reference to ‘giving the con a song and dance’
• Not only do they scam the mark out of 2 grand, but they also get him to apologize to Albert (by videotaping him while he is supposedly reading lines from a script for faux actress Jennifer Cole)

Quotable Quotes

"I’ve gone from soulmate to obstacle so fast I think I’m getting a nosebleed."
- Mickey to his wife

1.1 The Con is On

Con-man Michael "Mickey Bricks" Stone (Adrian Lester) is out of prison, and wants to do the cliched ‘one last score’ on his own terms to prove his previous stint in jail was a fluke. To that end, he assembles his regular crew of con-artists:

• Albert Stroller (Robert Vaughn), an American, and a former shoe salesman from the American mid-west, who graduated to being a con artist and later emigrated to England
• Stacie Munroe (Jaime Murray), a sharp, sexy woman who was married to, and pulled cons with, another artist until he took all the money and ran
• Ash Morgan (Robert Glenister), a jack-of-all-trades who can get, or build, anything

The mark this time: Peter Williams, a greedy man with plenty of money, but that doesn’t stop him from stealing tips. The con is all going smoothly until a small time con man, Danny Blue (Marc Warren) tries to get in on the game. When the police catch the scent and ask Danny to testify in exchange for freedom, will he look out for number one or remain loyal to his new grifter friends?

Comments

Fast-moving, well-edited, light, and the opposite of thought-provoking, Hustle is just fun to watch. I particularly like the way most of the characters smile knowingly at the camera (us), acknowledging that we are in on the con, and making us feel like we are part of the team.

Every movement and look on the show is meaningful; it’s not sloppy, it’s precise.

Nits

I felt it was contrived that Williams wasn’t so keen to put some more money into the deal until Danny burst in with his stream of praise. This seemed a little out of character for the man.

Memorable Moments

• Danny getting slugged by Mickey, and then, while still crumpled on the lounge, winking at Stacie

Quotable Quotes

"I’m sorry, gentlemen, this is Mr…Redford, a client of mine."
 - Mickey, introducing Danny and making a reference to the movie The Sting

Mickey: You see, the first rule of the con…
Stacie: …is you can’t cheat an honest man.
Danny: It’s never been done.
Albert: Can’t happen.
Ash: Impossible.
Mickey: The only way this thing works is if you want something for nothing.
Ash: So, what do we do?
Stacie: We give you nothing for something.

"If you want to be a grifter, don’t have anything in your life you can’t walk away from in a second: lovers, friends, even your own mother."
- Mickey Stone to Danny Blue

Mickey: First rule, Danny: always look after number one. If you don’t, no one else will.
Danny: Okay…yeah, I’ll try to remember that.

"You know what I love about roulette? That glorious 30 seconds while the wheel is still spinning."
- Albert