#Agent Todd McSweeten

[ladyelainehilfur]

awwww yeahhhh our once a season agent mcsweeten episode!!!

[hjbirthdaywishes]

October 1, 2024

Happy 54 Birthday to Gerald Downey.

[leverage-ot3]

send me characters for leverage character bingo 🥺🥺🥺

[leverage-ot3]

I'm channeling the cat cafe I went to an hour away from where I live and am saying that they have a certain number of cats that live there full time and the rest are cats that you can adopt (they have a chalkboard near the entrance OR the register with a continuous count of how many cats they have had adopted out. it's an IMPRESSIVE number. like, this probably is a world record but eliot is too afraid to check and hardison doesn't want to register it because of they can't be associated with notoriety)

the team members take turns naming each cat that comes through and they range from normal to unhinged

hardison's names are usually fandom-related and semi-easily understood: a bonded trio is han, leia and luke (OR rey, finn and poe) (jedistormpilot you will always be famous). hissy stand-offish cat is named dalek. charismatic cat named tennant. etc

eliot's cats have fairly 'normal' cat names, but sometimes he lets himself name them stereotypical ones (white cat = snowball; black cat = shadow, onyx, etc; black and white cat named spot; and so on)

sophie's cats are usually named after famous actors and actresses OR paintings that she has stole. sometimes she names them after her aliases (not that customers know that)

nate's cats are all given human names, like the names where you have to do a double take because it just doesn't feel right to call an animal by that Very Human Name (he thinks it's funny)

parker's are all the most unhinged by far: sir barfs a lot (barf for short); meowking 2000; steranko (derogatory); cosmic brownie (cosmo if you're a wimp and don't respect the name enough); diputs (stupid backwards. she has to explain to patrons how to pronounce it). she also names cats after different types of gems (diamond, emerald, jade, opal, etc)

the core cats that live at the cafe are diputs (named by parker-orange cat, say no more), mr mittens (american shorthair, black with white paws that was named by eliot), van gogh (elegant persian named by sophie), franklin (hissy tomcat named by nate), zuko (tan cat with eyepatch coloring named by hardison), nate (named by parker, hardison and eliot when nate was gone one weekend. it yowls constantly and oscillates from wanting attention and biting everyone), trashcan (tiny female runt with patterning similar to raccoons affectionately named by parker)

trashcan, mr mittens and zuko are a bonded trio much like the people that named them. trashcan, while favorited by parker, likes to ride on eliot and hardison's shoulders. zuko lets parker hold him when she dangles from her rigs (he arguably sleeps better upside down). mr mittens likes to play with hardison's empty soda bottles and bats them around on the ground of the briefing room

other headcanons under the cut because I can't shut up

sometimes their clients will be offered a free cat (they also get free supplies and coupons for a years worth of quality cat food and litter)

mcsweeten has adopted two from two separate visits to the cafe over the years. parker entices every time he comes and she has been wearing him down to adopting a third.

bonanno adopted a three legged senior tomcat who hisses at most people but loves to snuggle with him.

olivia begged sterling to get one for her and he relented (the cat immediately was his baby. you know the meme about the dad not wanting the pet but then babying it? that's him.) olivia has blackmail of sterling babying loki the cat and threatens him with them on the regular that she will send them to hardison

quinn fosters cats for them when he is around and not on missions. is surprisingly good at accommodating even the angriest and meanest of street cats and strays into loving and family-ready cats

shelly entered with no cats and never having owned a cat and left with luke, han and leia. he doesn't know how it happened and is too afraid to ask. all he remembers is parker going to show him a cute tio of kittens and then he had two cat carriers, three bags of toys from petsmart, one cat tree and enough food and litter to last for 6 months in his car. he would have called it a fever dream but there are three distinctive meowing animals coming from the carriers in his back seat

The Bridgeport Cat Café

New Leverage AU, based on this video of someone from a cat café account introducing their cats and describing what types of crime they (allegedly) engage in:

Hardison bought them a cat café instead of a brewpub.

Parker thinks it's a great idea. As soon as Hardison shared the idea with her, she started planning out the incredibly elaborate system of climbing structures, catwalks, tunnels, and hidey-holes at both cat and human scale. Hardison wasn't able to implement all of her ideas, especially not before the rest of the team arrived, but he managed a lot, including purchasing the rest of the building the original café occupied and expanding into that space.

The renovated café quickly becomes known for the fact that it is both the physically largest cat café any of the patrons have encountered and that sections of it essentially double as an indoor play structure for both kids and adults.

Hardison, as someone with allergies himself and knowing Leverage would want to bring clients here, poured a lot of thought into the cat-free and "allergy-friendly" side of the café, where patrons can enjoy all of the café's food and beverage offerings, watch the cats, and even climb a limited portion of their signature human-sized "cat tree" while remaining separated from the cats by enormous windows. The two areas are served by separate ventilation and both have thorough air filtration. The cat-free side quickly becomes popular with the remote-work crowd who like to bring their laptops and watch the cats without any actually climbing on them and their work materials. (There are also customer-free portions of the building the cats can retreat to and optionally view the customers through glass.)

Eliot and Sophie, of course, say the idea is absolutely insane. Sophie's mostly ticked off about the unilateral move to Portland and them taking on the extra burden of a (weird, niche) business (although she makes little secret of being charmed by many of the cats themselves), but Eliot is particularly incensed about the difficulties of trying to run a café that's full of animals. "Running a good café isn't child's play, you know. You planning make food on site with cat fur everywhere? You think the Health Department's gonna stand for that? Sure, you can probably get away with some kind of automatic coffee machine and prepackaged food, but that ain't a café, that's an animal shelter with a damn vending machine."

His complaints trail off as Hardison steers him into the (newly renovated) kitchen, through the airlock-style double doors from a hallway not open to the cats, each with an automatic air curtain to keep cat fur as well as cats from slipping through. The other side of the kitchen has pass-throughs and doors directly to the cat-free side of the café. The gleaming new espresso machines are already in place, along with other basic kitchen equipment, although Hardison comments that he's still researching the best ovens and layout for baking all of their pastries on-site (the printouts and notes on his research are already bundled up and ready to be "spilled" on top of the materials for their next job, in front of Eliot).

The kitchen also features several plexiglass tunnels so that cats can watch the action in the kitchen without contaminating the space. Eliot will never admit, even under torture, to making squinty eyes and kissy noises at the cats that come to hang out with him while he cooks with no other humans around to see, especially when prepping pastry in the wee hours of the morning before anyone but the cats is awake.

Finally, Nate regrets having turned Hardison loose with free rein to pick the Portland HQ. When he suggested a restaurant or something as a front, he assumed he knew the limits of what that could entail--in hindsight, he's glad they didn't end up operating out of a Medieval Times* knock-off. He's performatively grouchy about the cats, yet never seems to chase away the ones that mysteriously end up on his lap during job planning. There's one particular "shoulder cat" that seems to love nothing more than riding around on Nate's shoulders during a briefing, occasionally punctuating particularly passionate sections with supportive meows.

Another quirk the café becomes semi-known for is the prominent lost-and-found counter where patrons can try to reclaim items that have vanished from their pockets, as the cats at this establishment seem to be oddly prone to pickpocketing...

*Consciously or not, Nate is on some level aware of how much Hardison and Parker would enjoy watching Eliot "joust."

[katiebugwrites24]

Can I just say something about how much of an amazing example of a minor/reoccuring character FBI Agend Todd McSweeten is? They handled him masterfully. We see him grow, and change, we get to know him, but he’s not even in that many episodes! He’s starts out simple with his puppy dog crush on Hagan (and, honestly, his crush on her rivals Hardison’s crush on Parker for how adorable and sweet it is, I will forever feel bad for him). He’s a new agent, bumbling around, getting promotions because the team lets their cases fall into his lap (The Wedding Job, The Bank Shot Job, The Fairy Godparents Job), but he doesn’t quite feel that he deserves them (The Morning After Job). He’s just trying to help people and maybe get Hagan’s attention along the way. He writes her a haiku!! (The Boiler Room Job) That’s amazing. Do you know what I would do if a dude wrote me a haiku and then sent it to me by way of a guy named Bob? I’d cherish the heck out of that thing. 

And then, to top everything off, there’s The DB Cooper Job. Man. Not only is his dad also an FBI agent, but he was the lead agent on the DB Cooper case? We get to see a different side of McSweeten, we get to see him deal with his dad’s death, and the fact that he died before he fulfilled his dream of catching Cooper. We got to see Todd McSweeten decide not to arrest his dad’s best friend when he found out that he was Cooper, and we got to see McSweeten as a kid. This is an amazing way to handle minor/reoccuring characters. We see McSweeten change over the course of the series, and what we don’t see we can fill in for ourselves. By the end he’s less naive, but retains some of his idealism, plus he’s relatable, just a guy trying to do his job, make his way in the world, feeling like a bumbling idiot sometimes. I just love Todd McSweeten.

[asphyxiatedredherring]

[xirkanos]

Fred Jones and Special Agent Todd McSweeten are cut from too similar cloth not to be related somehow.

[weprovide--leverage]

Shout out to Agent McSweeten for being a simp for Parker like everyone who watches the show is

[thekracken]

i wake up in the dead of night to make an “i love special agent todd mcsweeten” post every two days

[ladyelainehilfur]

OH IT'S AN ENTIRE EPISODE FOR AGENT MCSWEETEN NICE!!

[hjbirthdaywishes]

October 1, 2023

Happy 53 Birthday to Gerald Downey.

[leverage-ot3]

for character opinion bingo: taggert & mcsweeten?

I am putting taggart into a salad spinner and mcsweeten is just So Silly

[f-identity]

I was rewatching The Legend of Korra when these two Earth Empire soldiers showed up...

Tasked to do some boring monitoring/guarding in a dingy base? I know two guys who can relate...

[I love the consistency of McSweeten being the one who enjoys food while on duty. Macaroons, meat sticks, smoothies]

[leverage-ot3]

yes

Another thing I’d like to see in Leverage 2.0: Agent Todd McSweeten is now the Deputy Director of the FBI (or runs the field office wherever they are). He got his position at least in part BECAUSE of the Leverage team. 

Either he STILL thinks that Parker and Hardison are undercover agents or he’s finally figured it out, but basically pretends he doesn’t (like Lieutenant Bonanno). 

Parker: Todd! 

New Leverage kids in the background: You know the Deputy Director of the FBI???

Hardison: Agent McSweetheart? Oh yeah. He wrote her a haiku once. She gift-wrapped an escaped convict and left him in the trunk for the guy. 

Eliot: They stole files from the Portland FBI together. 

Hardison: Then we solved the DB Cooper case for him. 

Leverage kids: You solved the DB Cooper case??

Eliot: Hey, remember that time he bought her a slushie and she had to talk you through a break-in? *Mimes being upside down, tangled in rigging, like a Himalayan tree frog*

Hardison: You..you didn’t even see that! 

Eliot: I didn’t have to SEE it. 

[asphyxiatedredherring]

Special agents Elmore and Leonard

+ Bonus: Agents Taggert and McSweeten

[swingsetindecember]

the glow up of fbi special agents william taggert and todd mcsweeten, they are now the fbi deputy director and the head of the fbi counterterrorism division respectively