i think that one of the most interesting things about leverage, and one of the things it does better than almost any other show, is use low stakes to build tension in high-stakes situations. in ways that you can often forget on rewatch.
because Leverage is not a show where characters are going to die in mid-season episodes. that's WHY the finale's fakeout works so well; it's the finale, it's the one episode of the show where they genuinely could die and the plot would still work. easy to forget, but nate kicks it at the end of S2 as well - if the show hadn't gotten renewed he'd be canonically dead. but in general, physical danger isn't a huge threat to these characters because they still need to be functional in the next episode. and in a lot of shows, that kills the stakes outright.
so, this is why we have Eliot. bear with me a minute, this is going under a "read more" because it's long.
when we've got episodes like the Inside Job or the Grave Danger Job where the core conciet of the ep is "we need to get Parker/Hardison out of this very dangerous situation or they will die" - it's fascinating to see where the actual tension comes from. because it's NOT the danger that they will die; leverage isn't that kind of show, as i said above. the tension comes from the character moments and the character moments alone.
will Nate go back in for Parker, will Parker be able to overcome her fear of Hardison dying for long enough to help him? even if the core threat is death, the thing that keeps the viewers on the edge of their seats is the character moments. because unlike death or injury or the con fully failing, things COULD get screwed up for everyone's arcs. and that's what we care about - because there are plenty of episodes like the Bottle Job where the worst happens and someone gives in to their bad tendencies.
you agree? good. back to Eliot.
Eliot is a character who is almost never in any real physical danger. like, yes, his job is to punch people and often to get punched himself, but the pilot episode pretty concretely shows us that it'd be hard to throw a fight at him that he cannot win - and indeed, i think there's only something like two or three fights over the course of both series' that he actually loses, and it's usually followed by him winning a second and harder fight shortly afterwards.
so that leaves the writers with a dilemma! you have a character who exists to be thrown into physical danger, but by the nature OF that physical danger he needs to always be able to overcome it. so, it'd be very easy for there to be no stakes, no reason for the viewers to worry, and it's difficult for us to worry about other characters too given Eliot's perchance for randomly turning up and whacking bad guys when you thought he was drowning or pretending to clean a window instead.
and this is where "I don't use guns" comes in. because eliot is always holding back, and he's holding back something really fucking bad. and that means that physical danger for eliot, at least in the first four seasons of the original show, is always always always ALWAYS secretly just emotional danger in a trenchcoat. from pretty much the beginning of s1, we know that he's holding back and so there is this constant question of "what could break him?".
it's another reason why the Quinn fight in the First David Job is so good, for the record. eliot's on the floor, his ribs are cracked and his face is bloodied and he's losing and still he doesn't snap. it will take more than this, this is the worst situation the viewer has ever seen him in at that point - and in the end he keeps control and doesn't even end up losing that brawl. and that's a season finale episode, of a show initially pitched to only be one season. this setup might not get to pay off but he still doesn't go down.
so eliot gets in more fights, he gets in worse fights. the Tap Out Job (as well as another episode that i think you know i'll talk about later) is such a good fakeout because we, as the viewer, aren't quite sure what his limits are until we're rewatching the show and can pick apart his psyche a bit easier. there is an OVERHEAD SHOT of eliot walking away because he agrees to loose a fight. you know what that means, if you're a fan of the show you know what that means.
then we have season three, and i think you know where i'm going with this.
on first viewing, the fact that eliot's extra stressed and grumpy all season is easily handwaved away. on rewatch, you look at all those discussions of consequence and "nine places a professional will use" and "that sniper's definitely working for moreau, that's how he does things" with a sense of utter dread.
and hold on, i'm going to talk about That Fight Scene in a minute, but one really crucial detail is the fact that it's immediately preceeded by yet another Eliot-kills-somone fakeout. the Atherton plotline is mostly a time-waster in the episode, but you'd never fucking call it that because it's there for Eliot. to establish who he was then, and maybe trick us into thinking he could be that person again. but no.
and then we get it. that fucking payoff. i've seen people criticise the gunfight in the Big Bang Job for being unrealistic or innaccurate, and i think they're ignoring the fact that behind both those things is a solid wall of badass and it's emotionally the best fight scene in the series by miles. because Eliot loses. he loses the second he picks up the gun up, and yeah he walks away unscathed but it happened. the thing we were waiting with baited breath for since the start, the thing he swore he'd never do, the very stakes of the show shooting through the roof and hitting us all right in the heart.
we're told who Eliot isn't, and then we get to see who he was. and it leaves us hanging on a thread, because now we know. now all those little lines and suspicions are fact, and we've seen him snap, and we see him up a mountain two weeks later. that Eliot and Parker scene is mostly about Parker, admittedly - but it says a lot that Eliot doesn't even try.
so then there's Season Four. and in terms of these physical to emotional stakes, the show has in Nate's head here. because Nate sees it, this new tool in his arsenal. like us, he wonders if Eliot will ever do that again. unlike us, Nate is a bastard who's job is to ask Eliot to do stuff, and that's where we get "do you worst" (the Carnival Job) from. overall, Season Four is a mixed bag but it has some of the most tense scenes in the show because of this new set of stakes. and it obviously also has Eliot's monolouge in the Experimental Job, which is one of the best scenes in the entire fucking show.
finally, we get our resolution in the Last Dam Job. Eliot pulling a gun on Dubenich, deciding if he would ever do this again, pre-emptively kill to save his team from heartbreak. and he decides no.
Season Five is a denomont, everything winding down. we get our final Scary Eliot fakeout with the French Connection Job, but it's a lot tamer than the other bunch. we get a lot of good speeches, we get a lot of reminders as to who Eliot is. the show wraps up with Eliot making a choice to stick by his new family, til his dying day.
and this constant playing with emotional stakes where you'd expect physical ones is one of the reasons why Redemption doesn't work as well as the original show did. because Eliot's still in no physical danger, he's still got as much plot armour as he needs to have, but there's not the constant knife edge of emotional turmoil that existed in every single fight before. heck, by the time of the reboot Eliot's not consistently used firearms for almost twenty years; even if he wanted to, it's not even clear if he could repeat the stunt he pulled in the Big Bang Job.
Leverage was an incredible show. Eliot's a really well-constructed character on a meta level just as much as he is in every other way, because the show is incredibly clever with where it literally pulls it's punches from. the villains aren't problems that can be solved by punching stuff, and Eliot's job is to punch stuff; that in itself is a fascinating dichotomy.
a LOT of shows do similar things to this. but Leverage pulls it off really damn well.
i know i've said this plenty of times before but it's so rare to be watching a television show and know that the audience and the creators are on the exact same page about what parts of the show are the important and appealing ones. leverage really hits its stride immediately in the pilot and doesn't ever let up on it more than incidentally. there's not a single episode in all five seasons thats actually bad, and the worst they ever get is that the episode's main plot will be kind of uninteresting. but the writers and actors all care so much about the characters that it's more than capable of carrying a few weaker one-off plots. its just so much fun ugh!!!
I didn't know this was a TV series and thought you were talking about like... the mechanical/physics concept of leverage until I read the reblog. And just accepted that like "yeah true"
Iâm making my best friend watch through Leverage with me and jfc I forgot just how much I love this show. Iâm sorry barring how lovable the characters are and how cathartic it is to watch them ruin rich peopleâs lives every episode and it being the best example of the found family trope Iâve ever seen itâs just.
This show is so motherfucking funny.
Like in the Missing Heir Job the mark asks what Parker was doing in the other room and Nate just straight out his ass goes âummmm stealing! she has a meth problem!â and Parker deadpanning harder than any human has ever deadpanned before goes âI do. I love meth.â
Note that this is after Nate conspicuously keeps trying to loudly work the word âsafeâ into his convo with the mark to get Parker to stop robbing the guy and come pretend to be the long lost heir of the dude whose inheritance theyâre trying to get in the right handsâ which the mark buys to such a degree that he immediately tries to have Parker killed.
Nothing is funnier to me than when this group of savant geniuses fall apart in the middle of a con and have to bullshit their way out. Leverage Inc has one brain cell and Sophie has it 95% of the time.
I do love how the competence porn in this show is very much NOT âlook at these five experts in their fields doing everything they do to perfectionâ. It is very much, âhey these guys fuck up all the time but they have the experience and know how to get out of SituationsTM and this is why they are the best at what they doâ.
The other, also delicious, flavor of competence porn turned comedy with these guys is that âtheyâre TOO good at what they do and thus create their own problems.â
For example, being so convincing the guy tries to have Parker killed, as you said above, or a fake ID being so convincing it gets pulled for jury duty, etc.
Who is the coolest biromantic? Parker from Leverage vs Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99
Parker
Rosa Diaz
Voting ended onJul 7, 2023
[ Image ID. An image of Parker from Leverage. She is wearing a leather jacket and her hair blonde hair is in a ponytail, she is glancing to the left of the image with a scowl on her face, she is standing next to a wall, and an image of Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99. She is wearing all black and a leather jacket and she is leaning over with her hands against a black table, she is glaring at something out of frame of the camera. End ID]
#VOTE LEVERAGE#in s2 Hardison and Eliot buy Nate's apartment and break through his wall KoolAid man style to force him out of his broody sadman times#they buy HQs that are Parker-friendly (big vents high ceilings etc)#they all go from lone wolves to begrudging (minus Hardison he loves it) cooperation to utterly ride or die in such good ways#when Parker gets stuck they mount a rescue mission for her before she even reaches out for help#Eliot canonically cooks for them#and just. the fucking. the finale#god#vote for my crime children or Else (via @raindropsonwhiskers)
I've only seen the first half of the first season, so far, but I thought it was solidly 3.5/5. Scratches the itch of Leverage: Classic, but not quite as hard? Breanna and Harry are great additions to the crew, but it felt like the writers kind of forgot how to write Leverage. Most of my issues had to do with the way the heists are plotted; too much of the plot relying on chance and luck rather than sheer hypercompetence, and the latter is far more compelling to me personally. It reminds me of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again - a fine follow-up, but it just makes me want to watch the original material.
I can speak more on this or other specific questions if people are interested, but that sums up my general opinions.
I love that Leverage really goes out of itâs way to show us that just because you break the ârulesâ, it doesnât mean youâre breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think thatâs the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.
#there was a time when parker wouldnât have noticed, #not because she lacked the capacity to care, #but because she had narrowed herself, #to stay alive she cut off as many unnecessary things as possible, #watching her get them all back, #is one of the glories of this show (via @seananmcguire)
This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc Iâd had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).
But somewhere along the line they just⌠Disappeared. My mom says theyâre not being paid and theyâre not in collections. Itâs almost as if someone out there didâŚexactly what Parker did.
Ever since I saw this the first time, Iâve imagined it was Parker doing it. That she and Hardison had a free weekend and decided to take it out on a collections agency. That I was one of the lucky ones who got a little Leverage.
Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I donât remember the exact process but basically thereâs a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But itâs also entirely possible for people to just⌠buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that itâs possible to exploit it for good sometimes.
Like, the main reason I know about this is because John Oliver did a piece on debt buying a few years ago, and ended it by revealing that heâd bought 15 million dollars worth of medical debt just so he could forgive all of it. Both to expose how broken the system was because some random fucker like him could buy millions of dollars in peoples debt with zero regulations, and also just to take the record for biggest TV giveaway in history.
I suddenly woke up stupid early on my day off with multiple weird random aches and pains and a revelation about the Leverage chess metaphors.
Theyâre all wrong.
Look, I obviously adore the white knight/black king motif, and it works really well for that very specific discussion of Nateâs shift in morality and position at the opening of the series. But the show as well as I and other fans have then tried to take that equation and apply it to other jobs and to the crew as a whole. This is fun and awesome, but I believe youâre going to get it wrong every time if you start from the white knight/black king line.Â
Because in all other situations, Nate is not the king.
Couple important things about kings in chess:
1. They donât move much. They can only move one space at a time, and for most of the game they stay in their own little box, well guarded by other pieces. This is because
2. When the king is checkmated (threatened with capture and no possible escape), itâs game over. There is no more hope. This is the sole requirement for losing the game. No matter who else is in play, if the king is down, you lose.
This is NOT how Nate operates. Yeah, he makes the plans, but he doesnât just hide in the office while everybody else carries them out. Heâs almost always right up in there playing the most obnoxious guy youâve ever met or smashing windows or something. And if Nate gets captured, itâs not game over, in fact, it often isnât even a PROBLEM. Letâs look at a few times that happens, just for fun:
- In The King George Job, Nateâs getting beat up and Eliot slightly panics and is about to run to help, when Sophie says âNOPE, donât do that, I can fix this without blowing our coverâ and saunters in at her leisure. The jig isnât up and sheâs not even particularly concerned about him getting punched. I love it.
- In the Maltese Falcon Job, Nate sacrifices himself to save the team. This is a classic thing to do in chess and chess metaphors, but, I cannot stress this enough, you cannot sacrifice your king. Thatâs just called LOSING.
-In The Long Goodbye Job of course the whole con is structured around Nate getting caught. I guess this one kind of makes sense because the whole point is to look like they HAVE completely lost, but then at the end it appears that Nateâs going to secret prison and everyone else is escaping WITH the black book, so they STILL would be losing Nate but winning the job.Â
So if Nate isnât the king, who is?
Hardison.
Letâs look at our points about kings again:
1. Doesnât move as far or as quickly: Yes, Hardison ALSO gets out there and participates in the cons, everybody does. But Hardison does stay in the background more often, because thatâs where his power is. He does the behind the scenes tech stuff and the remote stuff, he can wreck your shop without showing up through the power of the internet. He also does the forgeries of identities and objects, which are also done in his own space. At the same time, he has less physical power and less range â you donât want him in a fistfight, or a gunfight, and his grifts are notorious for being a little⌠uh⌠interesting. So he has limited physical range and power but at the same time⌠.
2. The game is over if you lose him. That far-reaching behind the scenes power is absolutely vital for 90% of the jobs. He does the massive amounts of research and hacking legwork needed just to START a job, even before you get to actually completing the job. You are pretty much dead in the water without Hardison. But thatâs just from a practical standpoint. Losing Hardison is also a crisis from an emotional standpoint. Heâs our moral compass and our sweet baby brother and when Hardison gets in trouble there is no âwell heâll be fine for a few minutesâ and no âwell he kinda had it coming.â No, when Hardison is in trouble everything else grinds to a halt and everyone comes running. (See: The Experimental Job, The Grave Danger Job, The Long Goodbye Job.)
So like, yes Nate is in charge. But the king isnât in charge on a chessboard, the king is just a piece with a very unique role, which Hardison fills much better than Nate does. So, now that we have our real king, who are our other pieces?
Queen: Parker. This has nothing to do with her dating Hardison. The thing about the queen is she can do a little bit of everything â she can move in any direction, making her the most dangerous piece on the board. Parkerâs whole character arc is about learning all the different roles and how to access the whole playing field. Sheâs the only one who plans and executes an entire episode-length job by herself (okay, with a little help from her girlfriend). Plus, the other cool thing about a queen is she has a built-in transformation story â a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen, which Parker mimics by initially being dismissed as âthe crazy oneâ and ultimately becoming the mastermind.
Knight: Sophie. I know, I wanted Eliot to be the horsie too, but this makes more sense. The knightâs deal is that itâs sneaky â itâs the only piece that can turn corners â and it can jump over obstacles. Sophieâs whole philosophy of grifting is that she shouldnât need to know about safes or security systems, she should be able to bypass (jump over) all that by insinuating herself with the mark (being sneaky by playing a character to get behind enemy lines)
Rook: Eliot. This is the straightforward one â it goes in a straight line. It also literally represents the castle walls. Itâs also so, so fucking helpful to have around, I fucking hate losing my rooks. Itâs your solid right hand man, basically. Is this a little reductive of Eliot? Absolutely, but Iâm jamming five complex characters into five predetermined boxes, itâs not all gonna be nuanced. And I think Mr. Punchy would like being seen as the fortress that everybody depends on, and to let all the nuance go under the radar. Thatâs where he likes it.Â
Bishop: Finally, hereâs where Nate is hiding. While the rook can only go straight (lol), the bishop can only go diagonally. Nothing can be straightforward for the bishop, he always has to come at things from an angle. Like, you know, constantly looking at all the different angles of a situation and finding the right angle to come at a mark from. Also, the bishops sit right in the middle right next to the king and queen. I donât know that this is historically accurate, but when my dad taught me to play he told me that was because the bishops were important councilors to the rulers, they were the ones who had important wisdom that would tell them the best plan of attack. So the king here isnât necessarily the one making the plans â thatâs the bishop. And finally, apparently the bishop is called lots of different things in other languages, but weâre operating in English, which means it makes Nate a priest, and that makes me happy.
thinking about the Sterling & Eliot fight scene in the context of that thing where Eliot seeming to be out of control is pretty much always a grift. Itâs something I didnât properly twig until reading this meta of the french connection job - and it surprised me how perfectly possible it is to watch the show and believe his performance at every turn.
(even with the example early on of Eliot using this trick - anger as a performance, quickly switched off - to get Sophie to admit that she wasnât apologising. I will never be over season one Eliot successfully tricking the teamâs grifter that way. And for such a gentle reason.)
so we get Nate strolling casually up to the table to ask Sterling what heâs doing here - which, big mob boss vibes there, itâs gorgeous - and Iâm just thinking about how Eliot âsnappingâ and going after Sterling allows Nate to be civilised, because Nate doesnât have to threaten Sterling or remind him not to mess with them; his man, working for him and under his control, has already done that. And Nate being civilised and calling the shots allows Eliot to safely lean into his donât-mess-with-me angry hitter persona, probably to make a point, probably to have a little fun as well. (Really I donât even stop to justify that scene. It just causes me so much joy as it is.)
the first time I saw the french connection job, the âcall off your dogâ bit bugged me. Nate hearing that and (after a moment) doing so meant he was implicitly agreeing with the idea that Eliot was his dog, and that Eliot wasnât capable of standing down by himself. Which goes entirely out the window if itâs a grift. Reading it as almost transactional, an agreement between the two to enable each other to lean into their respective roles in little plays for their marksâ benefits - and their own - makes it so much better. Nate gets to come across as reasonable and in control of powerful assets; Eliot gets to scare people into believing that he really would hurt them badly if they gave him a reason, and his reputation survives another day, and people donât look too closely.
âYou know, people underestimate you, Eliot.â âThatâs kind of the point.â
thereâs quite a bit of trust in it, both ways - and an unspoken understanding of whatâs really going on - and it just⌠I just think itâs neat.
#Playing Nateâs pet hitter is kind of just a different spin on his âpower negativeâ grifts. #In one version he pretends the mark is the one with the power. #In the other he pretends that Nateâs the one in power and that the mark is in danger from both of them. #But either way Eliot rarely assumes the role of the person in charge #even though heâs the most ready to call Nate out of anyone on the team. #He doesnât want to be in charge. But he has standards for how being âin chargeâ should be done and he will enforce them. [tags by @onyxbird]
When we write Eliot playing the cons, he tends to â and this is a lot of Christianâs acting choice â he tends to play the character very power negative. Itâs a subtle thing but heâs actually the second best. Eliot is the second best after Sophie on the cons. Parker isnât comfortable enough with people, Hardison always goes over the top, and Nate is too distracted and to a great degree, particularly in this season, really is working through his addiction to vengeance and control. - John Rogers, 2x02 Audio Commentary
leverage is so funny cause they start out with like, really Sympathetic Pretty Victims for the people who love cop shows like âpoor ceo just trying to make airplanes :(â and âpatriotic war vetâ and âpriestâ and then like a season later theyre like âanyway landlords are scum, all cops are bastards, have you considered that prison is an inherently racist and violent institutionâ
like episode 9 isnât about any sort of mob boss or corrupt person doing secret Evil Crimes, its about how itâs entirely legal to screw poor people over with forclosures just to make a buck, and also includes a cop randomly showing up to do some light brutality against nate just to intimidate him. leverage really said âokay now that iâve got you on board with how sexy heists are, lets talk about how fundamentally broken the system is and how the law isnât remotely justâ
#i think that eliot was supposed to be way more cultured and hipster at first#hence this scene#but then they just decided to go with country boy thug#which okay#but i still miss THIS eliot#leverage#favorite character alert
actualmenacebuckybarnes: okay but canât he be both though? Like, okay, I get the backstory, as itâs been given to us, but this is my number one pet peeve about the perception of Southerners, country people and of violent characters generally.
Eliot Spencer is incredibly smart and very cultured. When other characters talk about pink collar jobs, Eliot corrects them and is far more aware of that sort of thing than they are (Sophie says âstewardessâ, Eliot immediately tells her âflight attendant,â etc.). He has a great knowledge of not just knife technique, which, okay, but wines, distillery, flavor composition, etc. He routinely passes as professions deemed higher class than that which is perceived to be his own (doctor, lawyer, accountant), and he uses his means of accomplishing tasks, violence, with skill and discernment and not mere force.
He also reads Nate better than anyone, including Sophie, and calls him on his bullshit directly all the time.
When we see Eliot interacting with the rest of the team, itâs not that heâs uncultured or less of a hipster trope, itâs that it reads different coming from him than say, Hardison because he has a Southern twang, a gravelly voice, and a tendency to punctuate with the word âdamn it.â Which is a local dialectical thing, honestly, I do it, my momâs boyfriend does it, a lot of people around here do it.
Eliot with the Leverage crew is Eliot relaxed. Heâs code switching. When he knows something, he tells them, âitâs a very distinctive,â which is like our tumblr shorthand âfor reasons.â They come to trust that when Eliot says âitâs a very distinctiveâ he means, âItâs complicated and I know it from experience, but itâs not important enough for you to know that I have to explain, so move on.â He doesnât have to turn on his charm or put forth any sort of airs, they know him, they know how he operates, they know how he thinks, so he can just grumble and swear and threaten and keep working, so heâs happy.
He doesnât like talking. That doesnât mean he doesnât like anything else, he just doesnât like talking. Some people donât. Doesnât mean they donât think, I mean, thereâs that old proverb about removing all doubt, right?
I never see Eliot as a thug. I see him as a country boy hipster whose professional life is punching people in the face, and, aside from the resume, I know that guy. I went to school with that guy. Iâve banged that guy on multiple occasions. Heâs a great guy.
A lot of people with that twang donât like to talk because talking too much is discouraged in this geographical location. Weâre taught to include being taciturn as part of the masculine ideal.
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