leveragedlibrarians

[leveragedlibrarians]

I love the Leverage episodes where they're truly just psychologically tormenting a guy.

Like obviously they first establish that the guy is a terrible guy who does terrible guy things. And we really do need the terrible guy to be doing a lot of terrible guy things because this is kinda an ethical nightmare, but don't worry, they are reliably doing a lot of terrible guy things.

But then it is just like "hey, let's convince this guy that he's made first contact with aliens and also that aliens are trying to kill him" or "hey, let's make this guy believe he's contracted a deadly disease and is going to die in quarantine because medical staff are abandoning him" or "hey, let's first try to persuade this journalist that the government is secretly creating Guantanamo Bay 2: Underground Boogaloo in your backyards and when she doesn't run with that story, let's then make her think that oops the government accidentally leaked some kind of bioweapon into the waterways and now water is gonna kill you instead."

[leveragedlibrarians]

[leveragedlibrarians]

I think non-Americans need to calm down on the ‘respect the dead health insurance CEO’ policing of Americans who are forced to live in a system where they have to pay for healthcare.

Like there’s always going to be a bit of a “Violence is never the answer” throwaway line, but that’s not really true, is it?

[leveragedlibrarians]

I love the Leverage episodes where they're truly just psychologically tormenting a guy.

Like obviously they first establish that the guy is a terrible guy who does terrible guy things. And we really do need the terrible guy to be doing a lot of terrible guy things because this is kinda an ethical nightmare, but don't worry, they are reliably doing a lot of terrible guy things.

But then it is just like "hey, let's convince this guy that he's made first contact with aliens and also that aliens are trying to kill him" or "hey, let's make this guy believe he's contracted a deadly disease and is going to die in quarantine because medical staff are abandoning him" or "hey, let's first try to persuade this journalist that the government is secretly creating Guantanamo Bay 2: Underground Boogaloo in your backyards and when she doesn't run with that story, let's then make her think that oops the government accidentally leaked some kind of bioweapon into the waterways and now water is gonna kill you instead."

[leveragedlibrarians]

I like how leverage has a genius character and an autistic character but the autistic character isn't the genius character. the genius is a 22 year old black man with adhd who becomes an expert in anything you give him within 24 hours and the autistic character is a white woman who jumps off buildings for fun and once stabbed a man with a fork because he encroached on her personal space and sense of moral conduct

[leveragedlibrarians]

i'll never get over how fascinating eliot's characterization as a hitter. obviously he's trained- military, hand to hand, weaponry, martial arts- that's to be expected. but so often I think in media about like. the Best Hitters in this genre and etc they're characterized by like? not getting hit. they're sooo good that the avoid every punch and catch every kick in mid air and dodge bullets and etc and that's not Eliot at all. he lets himself get punched in the face. he gets kicked and bowled over and uses that shift in momentum to his advantage. he gets knocked to the ground and the guys he's fighting think he's down for the count for only one moment before Eliot Spencer gets back up. because he always gets back up- but that character trait is Only compelling IF he gets knocked down enough for it to MATTER. and he DOES! and his fighting skills- they're not innate, they're not a natural inclination to fighting, its training and knowledge- he can talk about details and styles at length, he can (and does!) teach the others how to take and throw a punch, which speaks even more to his skill and knowledge and ability. he's the hitter because he's been doing it so long. because he fights to survive and he isn't afraid to get hit and lose the fight to win the battle. god. Eliot Spencer. character of all time

[leveragedlibrarians]

any time parker has a fancy little hairdo i just imagine her sitting on the ground in front of eliot while he works on it with a mouthful of bobby pins

[leveragedlibrarians]

You've got your balls tied to the stock price like a cinderblock.

Totally normal dialogue to include 24 minutes into your pilot episode

[leveragedlibrarians]

any time parker has a fancy little hairdo i just imagine her sitting on the ground in front of eliot while he works on it with a mouthful of bobby pins

[leveragedlibrarians]

rewatching leverage........ this will fix me for sure

[leveragedlibrarians]

love that one parker flashback in leverage where she got buried alive on purpose to get over her fear of the dark. not just because it’s a funny flashback, but because filming that scene required the show’s crew to dig a giant hole + pretend to bury a child alive in the middle of a public park in portland.

[leveragedlibrarians]

so the thing about Leverage is that by the fifth season you'll get to an episode called "The D.B. Cooper Job" and think to yourself, ah, of course, this thematic title hints at some kind of aerial crime, or perhaps a case of needing to vanish with a lot of money. Which is why it is so fucking insane that two minutes into the episode Agent McSweeten looks directly onto the camera and asks "hey can you guys please literally solve the real actual D.B. Cooper cold case. it would really mean a lot to my dad."

[leveragedlibrarians]

okay pro tip: leverage is a really great show for when you're dealing with stress about the world, capitalism, politics, corruption in general... it's the ultimate comfort show to me, and I know I'm going to be watching a lot of it today as we wait for things to happen.

however.

today is a really bad day to watch the episode where they steal an election.

[leveragedlibrarians]

@zahnie i am kind of mad tbh bc now i keep thinking about that leverage/batman crossover and it’s ridiculous. they’re using a charity gala as a way to get into the manor. eliot immediately pegs alfred for former mi6, but he can’t figure out what the fuck bruce’s deal is. something about the way he stands or the way he watches the room or his shoulders or something. “is it not distinctive enough?” “oh, it’s distinctive as hell, i just don’t know what it is”. let’s say it’s older bruce so hardison has to get into a hacker fight with tim. sophie can’t grift bc there are too many rich people who’d recognize her in attendance. parker can’t infiltrate the catering service because they run that shit tighter than the white house (WHY is he so paranoid about his CATERERS what the HELL i’ve seen BANKS less lax about tracking employees than this) so she has to pretend to be a model. that backfires so fast because bruce is so nice and wants to know if she’s okay bc she seems uncomfortable. parker is thrilled when she discovers the house is full of secret passages but that also ends poorly when she turns a corner and bruce is standing there like “hey there, you seem lost”. he’s still wearing the tux and drinking his champagne. he helpfully guides her to the bathroom since she is having such trouble finding it. eliot has a tense standoff with alfred bc this is wayne manor alfred and that means he is like an older, british eliot who’ll shoot a motherfucker. hardison and tim get distracted playing wow together and it isn’t clear exactly how that happened. there has to be at least one scene where eliot and bruce are fighting and the rest of the team just watches instead of doing anything useful because it’s actually kind of really hot. they don’t even really hurt each other so it’s fine. probably fine. just let them keep pinning each other to the floor for a while, it’s fine. bruce has a lot of helpful critiques for nate’s plan that nate does not appreciate. the obvious thing is that they figure out he’s batman but it’s kind of funnier if they don’t and just think bruce wayne is an inexplicable bamf. they’ve all learned a valuable lesson about judging people based on appearances. bruce flirts with sophie and nate pretends not to be bitter about it but he gazes out at the gotham skyline and broods. it’s just what happens when you’re in gotham. it’s a very broodworthy skyline. make fun of batman all you want but you look out at that skyline and try not to brood. you can’t. even superman broods. i mean, he looks like he’s brooding. he’s usually trying to remember if he left the oven on because every time he decides to make himself a nice dinner a supervillain attacks and four hours later his baked ziti is charcoal. it still counts as brooding. nate never stood a chance.

[leveragedlibrarians]

i love the leverage bit where parker says "eric with a c, nice and friendly. erik with a k, evil" because 1) parker sharing her thoughts on reality and 2) all their reactions to this, uh, interesting take, are so perfectly them. hardison seeming to know what she was gonna say and nodding along. sophie’s "oh i didn’t know that" like she’s softly encouraging parker to talk about her perspective regardless of whether she believes it. eliot looking disturbed but not surprised and quickly letting it go. and then there’s nate like… "????? no one else has an issue with that ????? no one else thinks that might be incorrect ????? anyone ????? hello ?????"

[leveragedlibrarians]

nobody is doing it quite like bicon prince charming cassandra cillian, who kissed a vampire woman, asked old man immortal played by john larroquette sir galahad out on a date and gained telepathy via tumor removal all in one day

[leveragedlibrarians]

a delightful part of leverage to me is also how much of the stuff they pull off is so insane that if the marks try to explain how they ended up in that situation noone ever believes them because who the fuck would even do something like that. they get away with it just because of that so often and it's awesome