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one thing i love about leverage is the fact that the characters generally seem to... communicate with each other? like they do have their secrets, of course, and we see these the reveal of these secrets playing out in different ways (damien-eliot, parker-archie, even sophie's real name to an extent) but for the most part there's no petty miscommunications. like yeah, the team bickers and they argue and they have their secrets but they actually do care about each other and communicate really fucking well! there's no jealousy or weirdness about parker being close with eliot from hardison, there's no nate hiding his alcoholism storyline. it's just... they talk to each other and the writers don't drag shit out for drama. and i think that's why the big bang job and the inside job work so well, because these characters know each other so well that it's jarring for these secrets to come to light.

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NYPD: We’re asking for the public’s help identifying this suspect.

Every New Yorker: I never seen ‘em.

NYPD: We haven’t even shown you the photo yet.

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LEVERAGE REWATCH MARATHON Streaming today: The Corkscrew Job

It’s Sunday, Leverage Marathon folks, time for another  episode!  This week we’re watching the 13th episode of season 5, The Corkscrew Job, in which Hardison tries to modernize wine production, Parker is rightfully indignant over unpaid internships, Sophie understands fine wine better than any sommelier, Eliot notices a punchable face, and Nate shares a bottle of wine. Come and watch the episode with us on our Sunday Leverage Marathon discord server and post all about your feelings, thoughts, comments, anything & everything.

We’ll be starting in about half an hour at 3:35 PM Eastern U.S. Time. Come on in, say hi to your fellow fans, get comfortable.

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"the hell's a Sophie?"

"-UNSEX ME 🙅🏻‍♀️ and FILL ME 💃🏻 from the crown 👑 To the tOE 👸🏻 make thick my BLOOD🩸-"

👁️👁️ 👁️👁️ 😃 👁️👁️

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LEVERAGE REWATCH MARATHON Streaming today: The Rundown Job

It’s Sunday, Leverage Marathon folks, time for another episode! This week we’re watching the 9th episode of season 5, The Rundown Job, in the OT3 is 100% canon and competence pr0n abounds. Come and watch the episode with us on our Sunday Leverage Marathon discord server and post all about your feelings, thoughts, comments, anything & everything.

Come on in, say hi to your fellow fans, get comfortable.  We’ll be starting in about 15 minutes at 3:30 PM Eastern U.S. Time.

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TEASER: Go To War | Leverage Team Vid

I haven't worked on my music videos in ages, but I've been thinking about this one lately. So here, have a lil teaser of a project that will come to fruition one day!

Song: Go To War by Nothing More

Edit: almost forgot the youtube link. Click here!

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@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.

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What absolutely kills me about The Queen's Gambit Job is how totally unnecessary Sterling tricking the team was, and yet how Sterling absolutely could not have approached them in any other way, because of who he was and how he thought and what he'd seen of the team so far.

If he'd approached Nate with "Hey, my daughter is being held captive as a trophy by her step-father and Interpol moves too slow for me to get her out in anything like safety especially because she's informing on him to me, so if you handle the criminal shit I'll get my daughter out," Nate would have dropped everything to help. Sophie would be horrified that anyone would do that to a little girl and be fully on board. Parker and Hardison would have absolutely been behind helping rescue a kid, and Eliot would have grumbled but every fight with Sterling would be in the rearview until Olivia was safe. Sterling would have seen an entirely different, very much more controlled and softer side to the team.

But so far all he'd seen is an old friend going off the rails, a grifter who's tricked her own team and almost got them all killed/arrested, a violent retrieval expert who hates his guts and would do anything to get one over on him (including potentially hurting his kid), and a thief and a hacker who would probably be perfectly fine with the hitter hurting his kid (they've consistently sided with and covered for Eliot, from Sterling's perspective they are dangerously codependent on each other.)

He could trust them to rescue Maggie while he got the egg because they knew and liked Maggie. But they hate his guts and will hate Olivia for being his daughter, so for this one he has to trick them. After all, they wouldn't believe him even if he told them the truth.

So Sterling never got to see the team's softer and more balanced side and their protection of kids, no matter whose the kid is.

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Can you imagine how absolutely wild it must have been for Eliot's students in The French Connection Job? Like, you come to this overpriced class that you don't really care about and your teacher is a 5'5" angry wall of muscle who can spin a knife faster than you can see and tosses your phone in the water when you text during his class. But he only looks physically pained and moves on from the geek grinning over the laser so he's probably not gonna kill you? Probably?

He's a hardass, though, like the ultimate of hardasses and he has definitely killed before, so, you know, be careful.

But then you glue a unicorn horn ice cream cone to a plate and he physically crumbles like he cannot believe you are this stupid.

Oh and he and the geek definitely know each other. Only someone you care about could physically embarrass you that bad at your work. And the geek clearly knows something you don't because he will propose the stupidest ideas just to get Chef Scary Guy to growl in his face with a knife and stay grinning the entire time like he knows he's safe.

Okay, so maybe this chef's actually a marshmallow? Like a crusty one, but sometimes you'll do something right and his face will just light up with pride and you get this wave of relief. So maybe he's gruff for show and wouldn't actually hurt anyone.

Then opening night comes, and it's chaos, and at one point a guy walks in and without looking up Chef Scary Guy tells him to leave if he isn't gonna help. And almost faster than you can watch the guy is out cold on the ground and Chef is stepping over him shouting that he needs a medium steak and you don't have the time to process this cause it's the dinner rush. This happens two more times. There are three guys unconscious in the corner of the kitchen and the man who put them there is patting you on the shoulder and beaming with pride at how you roasted those veggies and just ...

Wild. Absolutely wild.

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Click and drag or screenshot to find out what you wouldn't (or absolutely would) steal

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So, in between the absolute and utter chaos of This Is The Real Life, I’ve been sitting down to rewatch Leverage here and there, for the sake of preserving my sanity, and I did The 15 Minute Job a few days and noticed something.

Here’s the thing: this is the third (and last) time I can recall Nate telling Eliot to walk away from the job. (Well, kind of.)

Nate: All right. We can still make this work.

Eliot: I don’t know why I’m sitting here listening to a new plan.

Parker: Well, the first one’s not going all that well.

Sophie: This playing-with-fame thing, it’s reckless.

Eliot: You’re not controlling the mark. All right, we’re operating without a net. Somebody’s gonna get hurt.

Nate: Eliot, why don’t you just take the rest of the job off?

(Eliot gives Nate a long look before pushing back his chair and leaves the table. Parker does the same)

Sophie: Consciously or not, I think you look at Reed Rockwell and see everything you hate about Nathan –

Nate: Any way I can get you to not finish that thought?

Sophie: Every time something goes wrong, you push harder, and now you’re pushing to ruin Rockwell so hard, you’re going to end up ruining yourself. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to do.

(I’m keeping Sophie’s bit in for a reason, by the way. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

Now, this is the fourth season. It’s more than a bit out of the ordinary at this point, actually, because for the most part Eliot and Nate rarely conflict anymore. But it follows an old pattern: Nate goes over the edge, Eliot calls him on it, Nate gets annoyed and tells him to back off.

There’s two other instances of this that I can remember: The Snow Job (waaaaaaaaay back at the start) and The Maltese Falcon Job (you know, where it all went to hell). Admittedly the latter is less “walk off the job” and more “seriously insult,” but either way, both times it’s Eliot calling Nate on his bullshit—

Nate: Guys, you got to trust me, all right? You’ve trusted me before, and with your life.

Eliot (slams his hand down on the table): Not when you’re drunk.

Nate: Oh, come on.

Eliot: You’re not in control of yourself.

Nate: So, what, you’re gonna control me? Is that it?

Eliot: Ah, I ain’t your daddy. You can drink yourself into a coma as far as I’m concerned, but you take me down with you – then it’s my problem.

Nate: You know, you talk too much. You ought to just go skip some rope.

Eliot: What? What? (gets up angrily)

Nate: Skip some rope.

Eliot: You want me to skip something? (heads across the room)

Sophie: Hey, hey! (gets in front of Eliot)

Eliot: I’ll skip your drunk ass off this marble floor.

Sophie: Okay, I need to speak to Nate alone. For a second.

Eliot (turning away): Yeah, do that.

(Eliot leaves, followed by Hardison and Parker, who lingers to give Sophie a meaningful look. Sophie sits on the arm of the couch)

Nate: Now, don’t you dare give me the “we’re all a family” speech.

Sophie: Mnh-Mnh. No speeches. Just a question. Is this helping you? Hmm? If you give Wayne Scott back what he lost, will you be satisfied?

Nate: You know me. I can do this.

Sophie: I knew you two years ago.

Nate: Well, I’m still the same person.

Sophie: No. You’re not.

Nate: No, I’m not.

— in Snow Job, and—

Nate: Don’t worry about Sterling.

Eliot: Did you just say, “Don’t worry about Sterling?”

Nate: Yeah, don’t worry about Sterling. What you don’t think I can beat Sterling?

Eliot: I think in the last six months, Nate, I’ve heard you talk about beating the Triads, beating the Russians. All right? Maggie’s boyfriend. Huh? How’d that work out? We all said that meet was a bad idea, right? But you got a taste for taking down this Mayor and you can’t resist.

Nate: You wanna walk away? Walk away.

Eliot: I’m not walkin’ away. It’s not my job. My job is to get your back. And, Nate, I’m gonna do it. All the way down. But I need you to do your job.

Nate: And what’s that?

Parker: Be Nathan Ford. Be the person we came back for.

…in Maltese Falcon. 

Intriguingly, Eliot does walk away—for a bit—in both Snow and 15 Minute. But he comes back both times. And you know what? Kudos to him for walking away, because that’s exactly what he needed to do. Snow obviously wouldn’t have ended well, and 15 Minute was just waiting to blow up. He demonstrates healthy anger management beautifully: walk away, cool off, and then come back to the problem later with a clear head.

Also, based on the conversation in Maltese, I suspect that Nate knows full well he won’t walk away in 15 Minute too. I’m guessing that’s more an “I’m done with you pushing me” warning instead.

Notice something else about those times, though?

Sophie.

Both times, Sophie doesn’t interrupt or try to add on to Eliot’s piece, and then, when he leaves, proceeds to metaphorically grab Nate’s ear and ask him about the thing that’s putting the job at risk… and, incidentally, the thing Eliot’s worried about. Because every time, every single time, he’s hit exactly the right mark. If anything, that’s why Nate gets angry. He knows Eliot’s right; he just doesn’t want to believe it.

Thing is, Eliot’s wake-up calls are a bucket of ice water, whereas Sophie’s approach is, well, hers. She’s more artful about it, and she knows how to dance circles around Nate. There’s also their respective dynamics. Nate respects Eliot (…most of the time), but, because it’s Nate, he tends to take those wake-up calls as a challenge rather than a warning. (…something something Nate’s problems with toxic masculinity and refusing to back down, probably.) But he’s a whole lot less likely to do that with Sophie, perhaps partly because he knows she’ll probably just use it as ammo if he does.

This is, in a way, pushing at Nate on two fronts: Eliot’s upfront and blunt warnings, and Sophie’s gentler pushing. Eliot cracks down, Nate gets the hard “I’m doing something wrong but I really don’t want to admit it” moment, and then Sophie snares him and forces him to keep staring that wrongness in the face. Does Eliot intend to give her that opening? Probably not (certainly not in Snow, and, for obvious reasons, not in Maltese). But she’s able to take advantage of it pretty well.

Intriguingly, we get a swapped version of this in The Last Dam Job, when Sophie tries to get Nate to listen about killing Dubenich and winds up calling on Eliot to talk him down instead. Her softer approach won’t work in that situation, so she needs Eliot’s ice-bucket instead, because this time it’s the only thing that might get Nate to wake up. But her initial approach softens him up for Eliot. It’s easier for Nate to hear him out when he’s already had that seed of doubt planted in his mind, and Eliot takes a gentler approach that time around.

Also worthy of note: in both Snow and 15 Minute, while Nate goes on, he does seem to listen to both of them. He backs off a bit. Not much, but he does. It’s unvoiced, but they do shift his perspective.

And in Maltese Falcon, when Eliot puts his foot down and says I will not walk away, Nate listens to him then, too. However, that time, Sophie isn’t there to push at Nate—and while he cools off a little, he doesn’t have her to push that point all the way home… and the crew winds up nearly getting themselves killed until she steps in. Tara says that Sophie had the plan built in because she knew the trio would follow him “all the way down,” as Eliot puts it.

This is, I think, partly because Eliot knows he cannot walk away. If he does, someone’s going to get hurt. So even when he thinks it’s at the worst point, even when he’s sure that it’s going to end badly… he stays. Because he knows it’ll end way worse if he’s not there.

Except Nate knows that. Which means that he will keep going, if he’s being really blind and stubborn about it, and so Sophie is essential to pulling him back too.

Anyway. It’s a good demonstration of how both Sophie and Eliot wind up pulling on Nate in their respective ways, and how they’re both essential to keeping him from getting the crew killed. They’ve both got a lot of influence on Nate in ways Parker and Hardison don’t. Eliot’s seen stuff, and if he says something’s too dangerous, it’s too dangerous. Not that Nate always listens, and they do pull through. But whenever Eliot puts his foot down, it’s really important to listen, because he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

Trouble is, Nate’s a reckless jackass—who, moreover, really likes a challenge, and really hates losing, and thus has precisely zero idea when to back the hell off. Sophie’s important for any number of reasons. But one of the big ones is getting him to listen when Eliot says “this isn’t right.”

So… yeah. They’re counterweights, basically. (And definitely the only reason why the crew is still alive.)