augustales replied to your post “At work I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts and I'm distressed...”
oh tell me your nate thoughts! there’s a couple things i like about him (we stan a grieving alcoholic) but i just rewatched and was thoroughly sick of him by mid s4
All right, here are some things I like about Nate. He’s still my least favorite of the Leverage crew, but I do like him and find him interesting in certain episodes.
I like that Nate is the angriest and most vengeful about their jobs. Moments like the Cross My Heart Job where Nate descends on rich assholes like the wrath of God. One of the reasons I like Leverage so much is that it’s cathartic when I’m feeling angry about capitalism and bloodsucking billionaires, and Nate is the character who channels that anger.
I like his grating asshole grifting persona, the way he just annoys his marks so much they can’t see what’s really going on.
I like his character arc of moving from this pedestal of self-righteousness where he’s the good guy and the others are thieves, to embracing that he and the others are equal, they’re all thieves, and there is a kind of honor in that.
I like that the show never solves the problem of Nate’s alcoholism. He’s still an alcoholic at the end of the show, he just has more of a support network to help him when the alcoholism kicks him in the ass. That feels a lot more true to a lot of addicts’ journeys of recovery than most addiction narratives are on television.
I like the arc of his relationship with his ex-wife. He never resents her, he broke up with her for real reasons that make sense, and he goes from condescendingly trying to protect her from who he’s become since Sam’s death to fully respecting her abilities and what’s she’s done to grieve and move on.
And, as @rembrandtswife often points out, I think it’s great that Nate and Sophie get to have a kinky, sexy, shenanigan-filled romp of a romance as middle-aged people (which is showcased at its hilarious best in The Frame-Up Job.) Usually middle-aged people on television get a slow, tentative, almost chaste romance (e.g., Roslin/Adama in BSG) while young people get to have fake relationships and wild hook-ups and handcuffs – but in Leverage it’s exactly the reverse. Parker and Hardison get the very slow, sweet, careful romance, and Nate and Sophie get to pull off cons on Interpol agents as raunchy foreplay.
(Note that I don’t mention Nate’s daddy issues anywhere here, because that is the part I find least interesting about him, and that the show dwells on most.)