How Leo’s role as face man prevents him from confiding with his team
Watching throughout the entire series we see Leo constantly keep up with his role as the face man of the group
While on missions he can use his charisma and persuasion in order to get people to go along with his plans without letting people know what he’s really thinking
But he never seems to put it down
•Leos Emotional Guard
At first glance Leo’s entire personality revolves around being lenient laid back and chill, and to everyone else it makes him seem like a very open book, and that’s why the face man role works out for him
But it means that no one is really aware of anything beneath the surface. They never bother to ask because who would need to?
However, this also includes Leo’s family
Despite his chilled back personality Leo is one of the most emotionally guarded ones out of all of the brothers
Throughout the series we can see little moments of vulnerability from each members of the family, digging deeper into their emotions and their insecurities and then go on to discuss said feelings and gain some form of comfort or closure from their family. Most notable ones shown below
Donnie in “Donnie vs Witch Town”
Raph in “Anatawa Hitorijinai”
Mikey in “Hidden City’s Most Wanted”
April in “Always Be Brownies”
Splinter & Donnie in “Turtledega Nights”
•How Leo is Different
Similar to everyone else, Leo is shown to have these moments sprinkled in too but they never occur with his family
The two most memorable moments we have are shown in “Portaled Jacked” with Senor Hueso and during his one-on-one conversation with Casey
Why these two characters and not one of his close family members?
Because it’s easier talking about problems to strangers and people who don’t know you as they have no previous knowledge or connotations of you to fall back on and there’s no feelings of burden or guilt if you believe the topic will never be discussed with them again. There’s less feelings of consequences that comes with being vulnerable towards people who don’t know you well. Because if you open up more to the people who do, the risk that their opinion of you will change gets higher
Then we add in the fact that Leo is already extremely guarded of his emotions. He doesn’t want his brothers to think less of him because he already isn’t confident of his place in the team already and thus doesn’t confide in them
•Deflecting with Humor
And then the two moments where we do see little slips in Leo’s carefully constructed masks that occur around his family, which we can find in “Minotaur Maze” and “Many Unhappy Returns”
He ends up immediately backtracking and deflecting with humor, thus changing the subject and preventing anyone from delving into it further and reacting to the quips instead
“You know it’d really help me if you guys said that I was your champion.” “Just open it!”
“This whole situation was my plan all along. If it wasn’t, then why’d I ask your tailor to make me this outfit?” “So we could both perish looking super fly?”
What makes it worse is that Leo has such a habit of doing it that his family expects it, which then causes them to believe there’s no underlying issues beneath the surface and thus don’t react accordingly. (with the addition that both parties had valid reasons for being upset with him at the time)
But it causes a situation of Leo internalizing his emotions, and if he doesn’t expand on the topic himself, then his family won’t see a reason to either nor think there’s an issue to begin with
•The Movie
To add onto this point, we see Raph and Leo arguing over Leo’s role as leader. As usual Leo deflects the argument with humor and avoids the situation. But we can see during the argument that how Leo privately lets down his guard and for a second the audience is able to see how he’s really reacting to Raph’s words. However, it is apparent that Raph doesn’t see this side of him and most likely never really has
“You just don’t get it Leo”
Now as the audience it is very easy to draw to the conclusion that Leo has clear issues with his role as the leader and most likely many insecurities regarding it thus why he acts the way he does. Like any other serious situation, he copes with, he deflects with humor and tries to avoid it
This argument then implies that in the two years since Leo was made leader of the group, he never revealed his internal issues with it and never made it apparent to his brothers either because he hates being vulnerable
The face man role works for him because it requires skillful work in that you can manipulate people the way you want to without ever letting them know what your thinking. And Leo carries that role with him when it comes to his brothers and family as well. But this doesn’t work out for him anymore when he becomes the leader and communication becomes so important to the team. (I talk about this more on a different post)
Thus the events of the movie and why things played out the way they did
Naturally he learns how to trust in his team more when the situation becomes dire enough that he realizes he can no longer keep deflecting
But even after all the traumatic events that he went through. When it comes to the one time we see him really cry. He still only lets himself cry when he’s completely alone within the prison dimension
TLDR: Leo’s role as the face man is kept on both on and off duty as we find that he is really one of the most emotionally guarded out of all of his brothers as he doesn’t want to let them know what he’s really feeling out of fear that they might think less of him as he is already insecure of his placement in the group and would rather confide in people who don’t know him well over his family where he runs the risk of them treating him differently
Honestly, “Mr. Emotionally Unavailable” has some real competition ahead of him
If we were being completely blunt, all of the brothers have trouble when it comes to letting go of their real emotions, Donnie just being out of his depth with them and it being uncomfortable, Raph wanting to be strong for his brothers, and Mikey most likely wanting to focus on his brother’s emotions over his own as the Therapist of the group, but i believe the Leo definitely has the worst case out of all of them.
