[hopevalley1874]

BETHANY JOY LENZ as REBECCA CLARKE Hope Valley: 1874 - 1x01: O Brave New World

[ttinyedits]

#nowkiss

[sapphicaffeine]

Doc 2.03

[ranaroy]

they're everything to me

[queenofthetides]

They’re coming back to me so soon🥹

[queenofthetides]

Jake and Amy 2x03 “New Blood”

[alexbrecks]

MOLLY PARKER as AMY LARSEN DOC 2.01

[queenofthetides]

Jake X Amy 1x02 (… Try Try Again) 🤍

[alexbrecks]

MOLLY PARKER as AMY LARSEN DOC 2.02

[queenofthetides]

“I know her… And I know her heart” 🤍

Jake and Amy “Her heart” 2x01

[alexbrecks]

[asquared-ohgodnotthehorrors]

I love how Leverage is like:

“Elliot, we need you in position we do not have any alternatives.”

“I will, I just- there’s this sad kid, I’ll wrap things up quick-“

“Oh uh. No yeah we’ll work around that take your time we’ll figure something out- alright guys Elliot’s out for the rest of the job.”

[violet-oriel]

Why is this actually such a good summary of both of their teaching styles though?

Sophie came from an environment where street smarts saved your skin, you didn't study; you did. I mean, you can't exactly learn out of a book how to take a car hit or steal a painting. Over time, she gradually refined her techniques by running scams and stealing priceless artifacts until she became the best. That's not to negate the loads of research she probably did to get as good as she is, but as we see in Tournament Job, a lot of the time she is able to con without much preparation at all.

So it makes sense when she's teaching Parker, Hardison, Harry, Breanna, and even Maggie how to grift that she doesn't actually grift on their behalf or by having them follow behind her when she plays a character. She gives them a few suggestions and lets them try it out for themselves. This also relates to non-grifting teaching as well, like when she's teaching the crew about the nature of smuggled artifacts in The King George Job. She allows for each crew member to tell their observations about the statue of Ra before she details why that's significant. With Sophie, you learn and you con by doing.

Eliot came from a sports and military background, where you receive a looooot of feedback, a lot of the time in insult or brutal honesty. Depending on the person, feedback combined with further training and repetition can lead to solid improvement. You best believe that Eliot has taken every piece of advice to heart so that he could be the best. He has cultivated his skills through many different facets, namely in black ops, retrieval assignments, and culinary school. We see evidence of the years of training and experience in every single episode. With Eliot, you learn and you con by honesty (ironically) and correction.

So again, it makes sense that Eliot's the most brutally honest out of the whole crew and uses that to his advantage when teaching. Because he calls the crew out on their individual shit, it allows for them to assess dangerous or painful situations accurately and work together to evade or conquer. They improve because of his feedback. That's not to say that Eliot is not an incredibly gifted teacher or that he doesn't tune his feedback to who he's teaching (I love how gentle he is with kids and Parker for example), but he doesn't sugarcoat to spare people's feelings. He wants them to succeed, but he's not above knocking them out in the name of showing them proper technique to do so. We see this time and time again with his interactions with Hardison and Nate.

But what I do love is that both of them praise the crew ALL. THE. TIME. It starts as early as The Bank Shot Job where Sophie praises Parker's baby grifter attempts and obviously Eliot boosts morale through the entire original show. This carries all the way through Redemption, they really can't not hype their family up and it is so so fun to see. Especially considering that they probably didn't receive much positive validation in the years that made them great.

[star-h0pper]

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.

[enigmatic-mystery-777]

Not me bawling because Eliot (Leverage) made sure to get someone willing to listen to that poor little kid Randy about his father's abuse, someone not in his father's pocket or under the man's influence.

I fucking love Eliot.

[just-call-me-zinnia]

Kids are a very understated but still important aspect of Leverage. There's no "kid" character because that would be ridiculous and hard to take seriously but great emphasis is placed on how much the crew care about kids. If a child is in danger, they will drop the entire con to help them. Entire subplots will be dedicated to a member of the crew helping a child with something unrelated (Eliot in the Order 23 Job, Sophie in the Fairy Godparents Job). At one point, Eliot and Hardison are in a stolen police car and respond to a call because they're the closest and there might be kids involved (there weren't).

In Leverage, children are very important.

[sillysammy2297]

Also, this entire show even happens because IYS lets Sam Ford die. Everything we see on screen is a direct result of the decision not to protect a child. Talk about haunting the narrative …

[perksofbeingahalfie]

everyone's favorite autistic weirdgirl

[violet-oriel]

Just thinking about the Scheherezade Job where Nate tells Hardison he doesn't have the ability to lead a crew because he's not ruthless enough to use them, then pivoting to the Gold Job where Nate says that you begin to see the worst in people when you mastermind for too long. But then we see Hardison in Redemption leading multiple crews, fixing global issues, even getting burned out trying to help people. Because while Hardison is a skilled hacker, his biggest strength is his unfailing kindness.