mangoapple

[mangoapple]

I really want to see an episode of Leverage: Redemption where all of a sudden Parker gets a text message from Hardison (from space). Then Parker says “Eliot, I need you to take a deep breath. Be calm.”

Eliot’s eyes narrow, and he starts scanning his surroundings. “I am calm. I will very calmly tear his arms off and beat him to death with them.”

Breanna and Harry don’t know what’s going on, but Breanna might have an inkling. Harry says “I thought Eliot didn’t do that anymore!”

“For him, I will make an exception.”

“Hello,” says Sterling.

[mangoapple]

Me, on the welcome desk in the library: Good morning, how are you today?

Customer: I have welcomed Jesus into my heart and so I am well today and every day.

Me, a little unnerved: Okay then! Is there something I can help you with?

Customer, digging around in his bag and pulling out an iPhone in a box: Unfortunately, Jesus can't help me with this fucking phone, so I came to the library.

[mangoapple]

the funniest part of the leverage pilot is that Parker and Hardison have guns for like 30 seconds. We see them get confiscated by Nate then, I'm assuming, the police. Then they never have guns again. Those two took one look at Eliot and went "yeah we don't need 'em anymore, Ponytail's got this." It's possible it's just one of those pilot vs rest of series character changes or something something trusting this stranger so much that they immediately shift how they protect themselves something something respecting how much he hates guns something something it's love at first con, your honor.

[mangoapple]

Hey, so, here's a thing I noticed...

I'm re-watching Leverage right now, and a fun bit I noticed this time around that I hadn't spotted before is how Eliot will come out with some random-ass knowledge that saves a situation or answers a question and the crew is all "How do you know that" and he'll answer "Oh I dated a NASA engineer" or whatever. It's played a bit for laughs, but -

Since Eliot is heterosexual, it's showcasing that women have valuable knowledge and expertise in a wide variety of areas,

Eliot actually listens and talks to the women he's dating, to the point where he's learning and understanding what they're talking about,

And, Eliot respects women and their knowledge and always looks a bit miffed when the crew laughs at him for knowing things because he dated someone once.

It's a little thing, but this show is constantly surprising me with the amount of thought that got put into it.

[mangoapple]

One of the things I love about Leverage is their commitment to continuity, especially when it comes to the characters’ relationships with each other.

Like for example, I just watched the Underground Job and at one point Hardison tries to get Eliot to high five him, which pisses Eliot off (because of course it does) until Hardison says it’s “for morale”, which is a callback to a bit Eliot did a few episodes earlier. And the camera specifically follows Eliot so we see his reaction change from grumpy and annoyed to “oh haha I see what you did there”

And we see it totally go over Nate’s head because he wasn’t there! It’s an inside joke! Because sure, they bicker all the time, but they’re still friends!

There’s other examples too that have more to do with the job. Like Hardison will mention the security system they’re up against is the same one developed by one of the bad guys from last season. Or Parker will bring up a diamond she stole that we last saw 15 episodes and promptly forgot about - because of course she still has it, why wouldn’t she? Idk, I feel like a lot of shows, especially villain-of-the-week style shows, often just ignore continuity because…they can. And they assume the average viewer won’t notice/care. But *I* notice. I just really appreciate the level of detail and care Leverage has for the characters and the audience

[mangoapple]

the 10 lil grifters job episode of leverage is so fun. we get to see our team attend a costume party. sophie calls her seasoned criminal coworkers "whiny babies". the whole time everyone is only like 80% sure that nate didn’t commit first degree murder behind their backs. parker offhandedly mentions that she robbed imelda marcos, and she clearly has no idea who that is. hardison has been inviting himself to the oscars for years. there’s a huge amount of references to mystery novels, movies and tv shows, not to mention all the fictional detectives you can spot in the background. timothy hutton is playing nate playing ellery queen, a detective character who was played by timothy hutton’s late father, jim hutton. we get to see all of the team use their skills in very different ways: you can’t hack a house that was built well over a century ago, so hardison has to adapt; eliot has to beat people up subtly and in public; parker’s spidey senses (aka extremely good spatial awareness) allow her to discover secret passages; sophie gets to do the amateur acting gig she’s always wanted; nate has to figure out how a crime was done rather than how to do a crime. at one point, parker gets offered a threesome. truly one of the episodes of all time.

[mangoapple]

Honestly my impression of Leverage from Tumblr undersold how good this show is. Y'all really weren't lying about the found family stuff though. That family sure can be found.

[mangoapple]

i love watching parker in the background of scenes in the hq/nate's apartment/the pub/etc because she's always doing something - after all, "she bores easy". like folding some paper, maybe doing origami? in the hq during a meeting:

or picking the lock of a set of handcuffs while nate talks over the comms:

it's often some form of lock picking, or tapping her fingers or feet if there's nothing around her. stealing is what keeps her entertained and a lack of action makes her bored and restless. it's a nice subtle background detail that really shows her character :)

[mangoapple]

Leverage x Onion headline

[mangoapple]

what I really like about Pratchett's work among all the other things, is that he basically opens all his books with exposure and "here is an immuable, very eternal law upon which the world is built" and then he spends the rest of the book trampling on that law

"it is impossible for a woman to be a wizard, so we're going to follow this wizard girl's journey"

"dragons are gone forever and dormant, here be no dragons. say hi to this one lady dragon tho"

"nobody can resist elves. that's why Magrat is going to deck their queen in the face"

"everyone knows women can't fight"

"everyone knows golems don't have souls. they all have names and personalities and-"

"all dwarves are men. then they were introduced to gender"

"Death is eternal and unchanging. Let's see what happens when he goes through all major human development stages in reverse starting with his retirement"

All in all "here's this thing everyone knows is true, here's why it's bullshit, here's how untrue it is, and here's how nobody is going to learn a lesson from being shown that this law of nature is bullshit. We all know people never learn right. or do they"

[mangoapple]

the miracle job tells us so much about what nate was like as a young man. this priest sees a miracle in his church a few days after telling his old friend from the catholicism factory that there's nothing to be done about his troubles and immediately goes "nathan ford you wiley coyote-ass bitch you stop helping me right the fuck now"

[mangoapple]

eliot telling hardison he needs to be more assertive and hardison just going. well then i'll go in there and get the drugs back all by myself. and eliot going. that is not what i meant by that. and hardison head butting the bouncer and stumbling back and eliot just sighing and putting a hand on his back to steady him. they are everything to me.

[mangoapple]

something that always gets me when I rewatch Leverage is the poor flight attendant in the Mile High Job

she's just having a normal day when the crew needs to get Parker onto a flight as a flight attendant so Hardison calls this poor woman up to tell her that the cat is at the local shelter and she needs to come get it immediately if she knows what he's saying, and of course she freaks out

can you imagine her showing up at the shelter and her cat's not there, nobody knows what she's talking about, she tries to call the number back but of course it won't work. she must have been panicked all to shit, thinking it must have been a different shelter and she won't get there in time, or that it was this shelter and they just don't want to tell her the truth

finally it occurs to her to go home and check on her cat, who of course is fine, and she must end the day thinking someone played a particularly cruel prank on her

then she sees on the news that the flight she would have been on nearly crashed and had to make an emergency landing on the highway, and the sheer wtfery of that

I bet she thinks about that every night of her goddamned life.

[mangoapple]

[mangoapple]

One bastard refusing to approve an insurance payout for a kid with terminal cancer really fucked things up for all of the other greedy evildoers of the Leverage-verse huh

[mangoapple]

Tweet by John Rogers: “I’m an infamously even-tempered man, but if you take Terry Pratchett’s name in vain for some small-minded bigoted fuckwittery I will push you down a set of fucking stairs and laugh at the bounce.”

[mangoapple]