"Leverage:" "I'm a functioning alcoholic - the trick is not to get hung up on the 'alcoholic,' but celebrate the 'functioning' part of the sentence"

I confess to enjoying TNT's "Leverage" even though its storylines strain the reasonable reaches of credibility - but, more often than not, they never make me roll my eyes and think I'm being played for a chump, merely that the show's trying to be whimsically and entertainingly convoluted and sometimes crashes through that window we know as "common sense." And apparently, enough other people are finding it fun enough, as well, as TNT has picked it up for a second season, which makes the cliffhanger for next week's season finale a whole lot less so. (Belated not-so-spoiler alert.)

So: This week and next, in a two-part season finale, Nate's (Timothy Hutton) team decides to go up against Ian Blackpoole (Kevin Tighe), the insurance dirtbag who dragged his feet on allowing coverage on the procedures that might've saved Nate's son, who died before the show began but kicked it into motion and taught Nate his epicurean appreciation of the finer boozes.

Nate's colleagues form something approaching an intervention, except they're not after him to give up booze - they want him to f@&k over Blackpoole, but good. "You don't need rehab," Sophie (Gina Bellman) tells Nate. "You need revenge," Elliot (Christian Kane) adds. Which should serve as justification for alcoholics everywhere for years on end - just mercilessly torture the person you think caused you to start drinking!

Anyway, insurance dirtbag Ian Blackpoole is a big-time art collector (how better to demonize the wealthy at this point?), and Tuesday's episode opens with Nate, drunk, falling out of a cab, stumbling up to a charity function and pulling a gun on his nemesis.

"Are you here to kill me, Nate?" Ian asks.

"Not tonight," Nate slurs.

"Well, in that case, come in," Ian responds amiably. "There's shrimp."

But of course something else is afoot, and of course even greater obstacles will prevent the Leverage team from their goal, not the least of which is the fact that Nate's ex Maggie (Kari Matchett) is playing for Ian's team and may scotch their intricate plot (she doesn't know about Ian's role in her son's death because Nate kept that information from her, it's soon explained).

Stealing the diminutive artwork, one of two Davids Michelangelo crafted before chiseling out his masterpiece, is child's play (thanks to Parker (Beth Riesgraf)),

but Ian has a team in place that's every bit as thorough and unforgiving as Nate's, if not moreso. And, it's tipped, one of Nate's team may have given Sterling (Mark A. Sheppard), Ian's scoundrel-in-waiting and Nate's season-long nemesis, an in to outing the plot.

Next week opens with Leverage's staff in flux and in flight to avoid Sterling's sinister do-gooderism (he plans on selling off Nate's band of scam artists to the countries where they're on Most-Wanted lists), but, well, they just can't help themselves, and they're sneaking into Ian's latest art exhibit. Nate - who's such a tease! - brashly informs Ian and Sterling he's going to rob them. Good - or, at least, the good that's better than the perceived-good bad - prevails; surprise, surprise.

For me, the show's saving grace has always been its sense of wit, that it can deftly backtrack from a lachrymose scene to an agreeably glib one. But next week's episode manages to cut from a histrionic, overplayed flashback to a nominally touching scene. (Fun Fact: When Nate worked for the Evil Insurance Company, he slicked his hair back with lots of Brylcreem or some such to approximate the style favored by evil corporate pr!cks in entertainments committed to film; now, he just doesn't wash it often enough, which manages to be a better look for him).

At any rate, the fact that we know that the show will be returning for a second season makes its first-season finale all the more satisfying, if less suspenseful.

- "Leverage:" 10 p.m. Tuesdays, TNT.