hello leverage fandom. i’d like to post thoughts about eliot spencer, but i’ve spent Some Years thinking about the show without being in the right space to post, so there’s a lot of prerequisites to the current eliot meta rumbling around in my brain (mostly having to do with my analytical framework for the show as a whole) that i’ll need to get out there first.
since there’s no way everyone’s operating from the same set of assumptions as me, i’d like to at least be able to point people who’re confused by what i’m saying in the direction of posts that outline where i’m coming from.
here’s the inroad to the tangle of thoughts i’ve been having: nate ford is not a reliable narrator, and the show’s a lot more interesting when you account for that.
we’re all familiar with the ghostfacers effect, right? within the text of supernatural it’s canonized that there’s a discrepancy between the lived experiences of the characters and what we see onscreen. we’re seeing the shadows cast upon a wall, and interpreting what casts those shadows is up to the viewer. and it’s in the interpreting, in the space left behind by that discrepancy, where fandom flourishes.
leverage is not supernatural. that could be an essay in and of itself, but i’ll leave it at this: supernatural’s contempt for its own fans is distasteful at best and leverage feels like a love letter to fandom. this is not entirely on topic, though not entirely off topic, and i’ll now get back to the point by starting at a different one entirely.
for a long time i blamed every gripe i have with leverage on the fact that nate ford is the perspective character, though this was done in jest. i do not like him. my dislike of nate ford is entirely genuine, but also a genuine part of my enjoyment of the show. complaining done right is fun, being a hater is fun, and i’m not going to be an asshole online to people who like him. there’s no downside to any of this.
at some point, however, scapegoating nate shifted for me from a hyperbolic joke to an interesting way of analyzing the show, and i know what initiated that shift: revisiting the rashomon job.
again: leverage is not supernatural. there’s nothing as extreme as the ghostfacer effect going on here. but the rashomon job textualizes both that a) the show is from nate’s perspective and that b) he’s far from an objective narrator.
we see from the rest of the team’s perspective for the first time as they each recount their version of the night’s events; that’s what textualizes nate’s point of view as what we’re used to.
what textualizes his unreliability is his depiction of coswell. he paints the man as bumbling, incompetant, and smitten with sophie—while the rest of the team saw him as a reasonably competent adversary. nate may have had access to more facts about what happened to the dagger, but that doesn’t make him impartial or the most right about what happened that night. the truth of things is likely somewhere between all 5 recollections.
some difference in memory is understandable without jumping to the conclusion that nate is exaggerating. for thieves, any head of security is someone to be wary of, no matter how competent or incompetent. and nate was not a thief at the time—he was someone whose job was frequently made more difficult when he had to work with others, including heads of security like coswell.
it would be strange if there was no variation between the team's recollections and nate's. but ultimately, nate seems as objective about the gallery’s head of security as the rest of the team was when teasing sophie about her accent.
so why would he emphasize such an incompetant portrayal of coswell? because earlier in the episode, sophie said that coswell could be smarter than nate is—and nate's ego couldn't let that go. diminishing coswell's capability serves to both remove coswell as competition and re-affirm nate's expertise in his role. i also think he characterized coswell the way he did to flirt with sophie—similarly to sophie flirting with nate by having him help with her dress's zipper in the flashback.
why talk about this?
because as i said earlier: the fun lives in a story’s negative spaces. and because nate’s unreliability as a narrator is something i’ve never seen discussed in this fandom. nate is very convinced that he’s an objective, outside authority. and the show is from his perspective; it’s very easy to roll with this supposition. but understanding him as an unreliable narrator opens the door to a much richer universe of analysis, and i'd love for people to join me here.
(if you’d like me to tag you in meta posts i make, let me know & i’ll do so)
