LEVERAGE GETS I.T.

With its debut episode, 'Leverage' showed how an in-joke should work without becoming a Zonk.

The team caused the computer of their mark's secretary to crash in "The Nigerian Job", and when she called the IT department, they intercepted the call. The first thing Parker asked her was if the secretary had tried turning the computer off and then on again. Alec Hardison, the computer geek on the team, boasted to team leader Nate Ford that this was standard operating procedure in the IT game.

What he could have done was beat the audience over the head with the fact that this was how 'The IT Crowd' operated in that British series. And considering that show is on IFC over here in America, they would have had to really drum in that over-splainin to make sure everybody got it.
Instead, they just let the information ride as it was. So for those in the know, it could be a tip o' the hat to 'The IT Crowd'; otherwise, it was just a statement of fact about IT techies everywhere.

BCnU!
Toby O'B