#go watch leverage

[lets-steal-an-archive]

#supernatural knew all the WRITERS#you'd know if an episode was going to be good based on who was writing it#that sense of dread when we found out Bucklemming got crucial plot episodes in s8 (x)

BUCKLEMING BINGO (est. Nov. 30, 2013)

if people know a showrunner by name then u just know they were committing war crimes throughout their shows

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 4x18- "The Last Dam Job"

[laser-tripwires]

so i've been rewatching redemption and. we need to talk about directing parallels in the one man's trash job for a sec because i don't know how much marc roskin gets paid but he deserves a raise. also, eliot spencer and sophie devereaux are two of the most fascinating characters ever written.

i'm going to talk about two parallels today, and let's start with the marginally less painful one.

i'll set the scene: they're attempting to take down an artifact smuggling ring. eliot's blending in in a car park as a mechanic, in dark clothes and a beanie - there to provide backup and run in if needed, which he almost moves to do. the con has just gone to shit. sophie's about to spin out an entirely new plan but in the process get caught up in her past as charlotte prentiss, and the things she left beind in london. she'll spend the rest of the episode getting vey wriggly and trying her best to not explain any of her past to the team, but enough slips through the cracks for us to get a picture; and it sets the tone going forwards in the season.

kign george job or one man's trash?

because.... that's pretty beat for beat. i refuse to view it as a coincidence.

in the original show, King George Job is pretty much the sophie backstory episode. it hits right at the midpoint of both her arc and the show as a whole, providing us with a centrepoint to return back to. r2, of course, has a very different setup - it's sophie's show, now, and this is her season. her redemption. so all of that gets dredged back up but, as seen here, we never quite escape the original context and that's by design. look at how the theme of collateral damage echoes over, too, playing the same part in sophie's story.

i'm actually of the opinion that the whole of r2 is fascinating from eliot's perspective, especially with what he ends up doing to sophie and what he thinks of arthur. none of it is atall as new or incoherent as people say - i'd actually argue that this is the season wherin eliot grows the least. a lot of stuff happens and a lot of stuff is revealed, but it's much less about change than it is about interrogating where he is.

heck, eliot's perspective for most of r2 is the same as the one he had in the king george job - sitting in the sidelines, never quite trusting, with a past that makes sophie's worries about collateral damage look like child's play.

because eliot knows what it's like when your past nips at your heels. he also knows that there's nothing in sophie's tale that is half as dark as what's in his own.

interesting too is sophie's "Everyone here has a past, and everyone here respects that." line when she's trying to get eliot off of asking about wilde. because to everyone she's explained the job - but eliot's caught onto the things she's trying to hide here. sophie taking that tack in that conversation here is probably the reason why eliot does what he does vis a vis digging up information from billy towards the end of the season.

everyone has different reactions to guilt - and we know from the king george job that sophie's main one is to get veeeery wriggly and stop answering questions.

so of course she screws up, a little. loops wilde in on the con, etc etc, you don't need me to explain the episode to you.

and it's eliot who call sophie out. "This has nothing to do with the new plan. This Wilde guy is not just somebody that you used to know. Before, when he was on the outside, if you wanted to pretend that then that's fine. But he's on the inside now."

sophie has spent a season and a half waxing lyrical to harry about loyalty and honesty; now it's her turn to put her money where her mouth is, even if it hurts. in the original show, the eliot and sophie relationship landed much harder on sophie's arc influencing eliot's than it did the other way around - but with the shifting of dynamics in redemption and sophie being the protagonist now, that's clearly changed and, like a lot of r2, it's a nasty wakeup call for sophie. this episode is for her what the tower job was for harry, what inside job was for parker, and... what the big bang job was for eliot.

"Just like when it happened to me, when it happened to Parker… you gotta come clean."

thus we reach our second parallel.

dark blue shirt? check. crossed arms? check. dead-eyed expression? check. innocent dude sitting down to the left wearing a rumpled suit and not really following what's going on? check. irritating irish guy who's the henchman to an evil ringleader our current focus character used to work for? check, check, check and check.

we've been here before.

but the fact that we get eliot saying there's nothing about arthur that says they can trust him and then the very next scene is arthur saying "You don't trust me, Sophie Devereaux? Fair enough. You shouldn't."

and then at the end of the episode arthur telling sophie she hasn't changed and him being clearly wrong but just right enough to trip her out because her past is still there, that pain inflicted did happen, but she's a different person now. so many setups for the Museum Makeover Job, both for sophie's final confrontation with wilde but also eliot's conversation with sophie, eliot as the person with non-metaphorical carnage in his past, the themes ringing down through the season and across the shows.

sophie thanks harry for pointing out her blindspots but the episode clearly and deliberately shows it was eliot who did that. an oft-underdiscussed theme of this season is sophie's coping strategies and worldviews clashing with the reality of the present and the past. fitting, for a story about redemption that's set after moving on from grief.

i don't know. leverage: redemption isn't perfect but man, it's really damn good in places.

[unloneliest]

in the lonely hearts club job leverage asks the question "does romantic love exist?" and answers it by having eliot buy parker a venus fly trap on hardison's behalf, expecting no recognition and revealing eliot remembers a throwaway comment parker made on their second job together.

we all know this.

but was anybody going to tell me hardison already had a browser window open looking for restaurants to buy eliot in portland in response at the start of the episode immediately after that? or was i supposed to figure it out on a rewatch all by myself?!

[abubblingcandle]

One of my favourite things on Leverage is when Eliot gets to grift and just plays the most unhinged guy and seems to have the most fun doing it

[werewolfsmile]

HAS ANYONE ELSE SEEN THE NEW REDEMPTION TRAILER??? ARE WE SEEING THIS???

ARE WE SEEING THIS???!?!!?!(????

PARKER I LOVE YOU WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

screaming crying throwing up -> doesn't even cover it

[disorganizedkitten]

I think it so cool, actually, that Elliot likes food. That he's a chef. That around all of his functional knowledge of weapons and fighting styles of militia groups, he also knows culinary things.

Because there are so many reasons for him to know this, and every one makes sense. Elliot has been in the trenches fighting and liberating countries, he knows generals and admirals and soldiers. Elliot knows what rations taste like, what gruel is, of course he got home and made something better, something special, because it was a way to remind himself that it was over.

Elliot has been a hired goon for mobs and mafia, for men who threaten others while snacking on decadence and claiming it shows their superiority. Except those mobsters still need his protection, and he understands how to make such decadence in a borrowed kitchen in half an hour. Their posturing is just that, posturing.

Elliot has been undercover as the type of the man who buy food based on its price tag, and undercover as the type of man who'll eat anything that won't poison him.

Elliot has been the TARGET of assassination attempts, is on wanted lists. Of course he learned to cook so he could recognize it if someone tried to spike his food.

He's been in so many situations, held captive or part of a team in rough circumstances or an unhappily helping goon. Of course he likes being able to go home and make himself food.

Food that he can control the flavour of, the decadence of. Food that he knows hasn't been tampered with, because he made it himself.

Of course it's a point of pride. That's his civilian hobby. And he's good at it.

[thegroundhogdidit]

so i'm watching leverage

[asphyxiatedredherring]

I'm enjoying the pitt because it's a good show, but also I'm really hoping that people find leverage/redemption and the librairans though noah wyle

[blueskiesandstarrynights]

I think the thing that bothers me the most about the Eliot Maria romance in s1 isn't the fact that it contradicts the vaguely word of God ot3 canon, it's not the fact that Eliot has had chemistry with so many other people over the course of both og leverage and redemption and not her, it's the fact that she's a cop. A fucking cop?? Really? Of all the shows to have a noncop chatacter date a cop, it's this one??? I'm genuinely wondering what the writers were thinking with that particular decision tbh

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 3x15 - "The Big Bang Job"

[leverage-ot3]

okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭

bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)

but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good

some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember

he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business

one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man

he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)

they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)

not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it

and then the long goodbye job happens

hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.

so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.

and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.

not this time. not to sterling crowley

he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)

nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to reapir fully.

he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.

the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.

but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.

‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.

watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it

[strangeasf]

Not Nate calling out Hardison on referring to Eliot and Parker as "baby" in The Studio Job😭😭

[theinfinitedivides]

'now you. you're different. you fight like something's trying to get out of you.' read for filth?????????? possibly read for filth by the mark?????????? Eliot?????????

[dorian-they-ao3]

Leverage (2008-12) was really ahead of its time

[lightthewaybackhome]

I hate the Leverage finale. I hate the way it breaks me. I hate the way I cry. I hate the way it destroys me. I hate the way they die. I hate the tears in Nate eyes. I hate saying goodbye.

But mostly I hate the way I don't hate it, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.