leverage is so fucking funny. man manages to find the most mentally ill and neurodivergent group of thieves on the market + an even more mentally ill guy whose literal job description was trying to chase all of them, and forces them into a found family speed-run by trying to blow them all up. they lowkey stage a full fucking country wide coup and are like eh 🤷 just another wednesday. this might be a fun place to vacation tho i guess. sophie shows up to her own funeral twice. they're so good at convincing people of their shit that they make a guy's body start reacting to an illness he doesn't have because it isn't real. go completely out on a limb and basically hand this one guy a new password for his computer so they can get into it and he goes with it. parker and hardison have straight up just "fake it 'till you make it"d into the fbi without even attempting to cover their tracks beyond just These Two Guys. half their clients never asked to be their clients and don't know they're their clients, and the other half are random people who find them who fuckin knows how, meanwhile no government agency can track them down without selling their soul to sterling. they make a point to have a dramatic scene w a Big Bad Shadowy Government Guy who doesn't actually get caught or brought to justice or anything telling them he's going to hunt them all down, and in any other show this would probably earn at least a minor arc later on but he literally never shows up again. an entire season finale hinged on a cake and a bunch of clams. they accidentally made eliot a celebrity not once, not twice, but three times. parker blew up her foster parents' house when she was like. nine. and it's hardly a footnote. hardison is just casually an artistic prodigy but it's only ever brought up for the most background of background gags. eliot's biggest beef with parker and hardison for like two and a half seasons is that they won't stop making weird food with lasers and refuse to realize they can't make a decent beer to save their lives. sophie's immediate response to being shot is to call her shooter a wanker. there's a character who has literally killed a man with a mop and they had the audacity to only put her in one episode.

Forgot how great the finale of season 2 of leverage is. Man. its just that everything comes together. the fact that even when I was watching it the first time i never thought Tara was betraying them. its in the "thanks for making it interesting nate" and the fact that Sterling switched so quickly when he noticed that Nate was bleeding. its in the fact that nate from the beginning was planning to turn himself over in exchange for the others. its the "i can take them" that Eliot says. about armed FBI agents that surrounded them. its in the fact that Parker was ready to kill Tara for betraying them. its in Hardisons panic that is so so visible. its the way Eliot immediately cuts off Nate's "you can walk away". it's Sophie coming from who knows how far away just because she got called by Tara. its the way Nate finally says that he needs her. its also the "youre my family. my only family". but I think most importantly its the fact that it was stressed so many times over those 2 seasons that Nate is an honest man. That, in Sterlings words, he is not a thief.

"who the hell is this guy?" "i don't know." "my name's Nate Ford. And I am a thief."

just. because it is no longer an insult or something he perceives as worse. yeah he's a thief. the most honourable people he knows are thieves. and he looks up at the helicopter that is flying away with his family and just. man.

yeah. just. man. forgot how good this was. no joke when he said the "I am a thief" I mightve teared up a little bit. its just. this is somehow more telling than the "youre my family" because just. this is how he wants to be perceived. sigh. also the whole Eliot thing and the Sophie thing and just the everyone thing. sigh. Leverage .

Me: I can watch the leverage finale again. I know the twist, I'll be fine

Me, 15 minutes in: *Sobbing alone in my room as Parker, Hardison, and Elliot hold hands* They're in love! They're in loooooove

Always and anywhere. Time and space mean nothing to us. LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION | 2.04 | The Date Night Job

I just watched the finale of leverage in my rewatch with my bf and omfg that episode goes so hard. Like unironically probably one of the best last episodes of tv in my opinion.

The callbacks to the very first episode? Immaculate. Breathtaking. Stunning.

Nate's acting in the holding room? Beautiful, Sophie did a good job with this one.

The fake out of Sophie's real name? Honestly the best thing about her character.

The culmination of Nate having trained Eliot, hardison and Parker to take over leverage? So well done. Beautiful. I like it, Picasso

Last but certainly not least, the ot3 being shown throughout the episode is everything to me. Eliot dying in Parker and hardisons arms, hardisons first question being "did Eliot make it?" And Eliot comforting him before all three of them die. Eliot telling Nate that he did need something and looking over at Parker and hardison, and saying that thanks to him he doesn't need to keep searching (I'm screaming). I just love this show so much and thjs episode does not disappoint as a series finale.

Who wants a really sad Leverage headcanon?

Was re-watching the Gimme a K Street Job -- Season 5 Episode 5 -- and a couple of things stood out to me.

1) Nate says "Let's go steal some congresspeople", and then sends everyone on the team (except Parker, who's being a cheer coach) out to con one of their targets. But it feels like there's a profound mismatch in who gets which mark.

For the "not like other girls" feminist congresswoman who's inclined to dismiss cheer as worthless and demeaning, you need Eliot to come in looking like a man who very much knows what does and does not count as a sport, and be his tiny angry respect-women-juice self about how regardless of what you think of their choice of clothing they are working as hard as any other athlete and they deserve safety as much as anyone else. But instead they sent Hardison.

For the "Yes I am very busy and important; admire me" chairman, you need Sophie, who is better than anyone else on the planet at making you feel admirable when you're doing what she wants, and scummy and low when you're not doing what she wants. But instead they sent Eliot.

For the "Look I am trying, but I need corn subsidies or I won't be able to do anything else" newbie congressman, Hardison could happily have gone on an infinitely recurring series of fetch quests until he sees the place where they loop around and bottom out and every problem solves every other problem. But instead they sent Sophie.

2) Eliot struggles the most, so Nate works with him the most, but he doesn't help him out hardly at all; he just keeps saying, "So what's your next play?" and then revealing that he's already anticipated Eliot's next play and has all the materials in place to enact it. And of course, they do eventually get the dude on board, and it all works out, but afterwards, Eliot tells Nate, "I trust that some time soon you'll tell me why you had me slogging through all that when you already knew how to hook him."

And of course, knowing what we now know about how season 5 ends, it makes sense that Nate is trying to train the OT3 to work without him, looking for his replacement.

Except.

If the plan is to fuck off into the sunset with Sophie, then why did he throw Sophie into this uncomfortable not-my-wheelhouse scenario?

No, Nate's preparing the entire team to carry on without him. He's forcing them to learn how to plan, learn different ways of approaching problems, to think about bigger pictures and approach them strategically.

...

I think Nate just got the first diagnosis of the disease that's finally going to kill him. And again, we -- the audience -- now know that he's going to live for many years after that initial diagnosis. But he doesn't know that, at this point. He knows he's tested positive, and he knows it's eventually going to kill him, and he has no idea how long he has.

And in some sense, it doesn't matter how long he has. Three months or thirty years, that kind of revelation makes it stunningly clear that taking care of the people you love means making sure that they can take care of themselves.

So that's what he does: he throws them into new, uncomfortable situations where they'll have to grow and support each other without him, so that no matter what happens, they'll be able to keep going. Because he's not a nice person, Jimmy Ford's son, but by God does he know the importance of protecting your family.

Yknow, Eliot being adopted means that he, Hardison, and Parker all have that sort of thing in common. Obviously not exactly the same way - Parker went through several foster homes before (it sounds like) eventually running away, while Hardison ended up with Nana (who knows if he was in other foster homes beforehand or not), and Eliot was adopted as a baby. But none of them was raised by their blood families and... idk, I just feel like that's Significant. I mean, Hardison and Parker specifically bonded when Hardison revealed Nana was his foster mom, not his grandmother. I can't help but feel like there's a parallel here

beyond important to me that you see breanna's hat in the new leverage episode

"she's part of the family!" is maybe THE funniest possible outcome of Parker vs Astrid. Does Parker add Astrid to the Leverage International Annual Newsletter? Does Parker list Astrid as one of the "LEOs to utilize when necessary"? Does Astrid start getting tips and artifacts dropped off in random, but very useful places? Astrid picks up the phone one day expecting a call from a colleague and it's Parker on the other end congratulating her on a promotion?

Three other things though, beside DAD REVEAL:

The way Eliot walked down the stairs and started smiling as soon as he saw Hardison on the big TV.

The way Parker’s lip quivered when she realized where Eliot was going.

The fact that both Parker and Hardison knew that “Oklahoma” meant Eliot’s father.

Not just the fact that Eliot told them both about his dad. But that it also wasn’t vague or anything. That they know where he is. And that they know that Oklahoma, as big as it is, can only mean that Eliot is going to his dad.

by my count, the leverage team makes eliot famous at least three times. the first is when they make him famous as a baseball player in ‘the three strikes job’, famous enough that he gets a sandwich named after him. then in ‘the studio job’, he’s a country singer with enough fans that he gets chased by a hoard of them. the third time is when he infiltrates the hockey team in ‘the blue line job’ and becomes a notable hockey player. ik hardisons able to like scrub most of their previous identities from the internet however i would have loved an episode where someone makes the connection between two or more of eliot’s famous identities or just recognizes him as a celebrity on the con.

leverage redemption season 2 episode 6

eliot: hello dad who i haven’t spoken to in decades, this is my wife parker and our daughter/baby sister/protégée brianna and our husband in currently doing something in space also that’s sophie she’s like our mom and that’s harry he’s a lawyer

PARKER & HARDISON - Leverage: Redemption | 2.01 - 2.03

It’s the way that Nathan Ford is BY FAR the least interesting character of the original Leverage five, and yet he’s the one who gets SO much backstory and context to himself. I’m literally watching the season 4 finale and I just don’t care that his father was murdered because Nate’s being incredibly annoying. Trying to be empathetic about a character grieving doesn’t even work for me here because his entire team is trying to make sure he doesn’t MURDER the man/men responsible for his father’s death and he’s not letting them in at all. It’s part of the reason I dislike his character so much. There’s hardly ever moments when he is genuinely vulnerable, not even with Sophie, who he is supposed to be in love with (yeah yeah, I know, they’re “friends with benefits” right now, but that’s not fooling anyone with eyes even without the knowledge that they end up together at the end). Nate is this mastermind of a character and it’s cool and intriguing for all of half of season before you’re scratching your head like, where’s the care for his team? He was kind to Hardison in the evaluation form and he didn’t want to make Eliot kill again, for any reason, but it’s so hard to appreciate his humanity when he’s spent the past three(ish) seasons on the verge of drinking himself to death, verbally bashing Sophie, and only being about the work. Sophie having a notebook full of moments when Nate put her or her ideas down isn’t funny or a moment of character growth. Nate doesn’t fully understands how that’s so shitty of him, as team leader, but also as her sexual (romantic?) partner. Every moment of Sophie and Nate’s relationship has to be fought for BY SOPHIE, and at this point, I don’t even know why she even wants him. He may be acting as Robin Hood and helping people, but he’s barely even a person while he’s doing it. I’ve never liked Nate, but making my way through season 4 has definitely given me the hardest time with remembering his redeeming qualities. Every time he’s vaguely misogynistic or acts like an immature man child when it comes to processing his emotions without alcohol (which happens: never), I question why he’s the main character, why my screen isn’t filled up with Hardison being the sassiest mf of them all or OT3 moments or Sophie conning the hell out of men who are led by their dicks and not their minds. When I’m watching the Nate centric scenes/episodes, I’m never wishing for more, I’m wishing the rest of the team was in the spotlight instead