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#a variation on this for Parker & Hardison in Leverage?

aimmyarrowshigh · 1 year

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List of Jewish Characters for the Panfandom Hanukkah Bingo

I've gotten a few requests for a list of Jewish characters to help people brainstorm for the bingo -- just as a reminder, Jewish headcanons and fanons are totally allowed for the event, so if you don't KNOW whether your character is Jewish, it's totally fine to make them Jewish for your fanwork! :)

But, since people asked, here is a little starter-list of 225 fictional Jewish and Jew-ish characters (characters who are "nebulously Jewish," played by Jews, are Jewish in at least one variation of the character, only make sense if they're Jewish, etc.)

Feel free to add! This list is alphabetized by first name.

Abbi Abrams (Broad City) Abby Stevenson (The Baby-Sitters' Club) Adam Birkholtz (Check Please!) Adam Sackler (Girls) Alec Hardison (Leverage, Leverage: Redemption) Alex Kerkovitch (Happy Endings) Alexis Rose (Schitt's Creek) Amy Green (FRIENDS) Amy Matthews (Boy Meets World) Angela Wexler (The Westing Game) Angelica Pickles (Rugrats) Ann Perkins (Parks & Recreation) Anna Stevenson (The Baby-Sitters' Club) Annie Edison (Community) April O'Neill (Rise of the TMNT) Arnie Roth (Marvel) Arnold Perlstein (The Magic School Bus) Aunt Gayle (Bob's Burgers) Bail Organa (Star Wars) Barney Guttman (Dead End Paranormal Park) Ben Geller-Willick (FRIENDS) Ben Grimm | The Thing (Fantastic Four) Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (Star Wars) Benjamin Sisko (Star Trek) Bernie Rosenthal (Marvel) Billy Kaplan | Wicca (MCU, X-Men) Breha Organa (Star Wars)

Bruce Wayne | Batman (DCU) Carl Foutley (As Told By Ginger) Cassie Howard (Euphoria HBO) Cassie Lang (MCU) Catherine Frensky (Arthur) Charles Deetz (Beetlejuice) Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Sex and the City) Cher Horowitz (Clueless) Chuckie Finster (Rugrats) Cindy Hayes (Orange is the New Black) Cole Tillerman (Central Park) Cory Matthews (Boy Meets World) Craig Manning (Degrassi: The Next Generation) Cristina Yang (Grey's Anatomy) Cyrus Goodman (Andi Mack) Darcy Lewis (MCU) David "Gordo" Gordon (Lizzie McGuire) David Rose (Schitt's Creek) Desi Harperin (Girls) Dil Pickles (Rugrats) Dipper Pines (Gravity Falls) Dodie Bishop (As Told By Ginger) Eddie Munson (Stranger Things) Edward Teach | Blackbeard (Our Flag Means Death) Elaine Benes (Seinfeld) Elijah Krantz (Girls)

Emily Deetz (Beetlejuice) Emma Geller-Green (FRIENDS) Eric Matthews (Boy Meets World) Erik Lehnsherr | Magneto (X-Men) Felicity Smoak (Arrow) Finn (Star Wars) Ford Pines (Gravity Falls) Fox Mulder (The X-Files) Fran Fine (The Nanny) Fran Parker (Girls) Francine Frensky (Arthur) Frankie Landau-Banks (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks) Gene Belcher (Bob's Burgers) George Costanza (Seinfeld) Gert Yorkes (Marvel Runaways) Ginger Foutley (As Told By Ginger) Gomez Addams (The Addams Family) Grace Adler (Will & Grace) Grace Windkloppel Wexler (The Westing Game) Greg Universe (Steven Universe) Gretchen Weiners (Mean Girls) Hal Jordan | Green Lantern (DCU) Han Solo (Star Wars) Hannah Horvath (Girls) Harley Quinn (DCU)

Harold Berman (Hey Arnold!) Harold Hooper (Sesame Street) Helen (Central Park) Holly Wheeler (Stranger Things) Howard Wolowitz (The Big Bang Theory) Ilana Wexler (Broad City) Isabella Garcia-Shapiro (Phineas and Ferb) Jack Geller (FRIENDS) Jack Zimmermann (Check Please!) Jake Berenson (Animorphs) Jake Peralta (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) Jake Wexler (The Westing Game) James "Bucky" Barnes | Winter Soldier (MCU) James Tiberius Kirk (Star Trek) Jane Foster | The Mighty Thor (MCU) Jane Kerkovitch-Williams (Happy Endings) Jane Smith (Mr. & Mrs. Smith) Janet Perlstein (The Magic School Bus) Janice Littman nee Hosenstein (FRIENDS) Jean-Ralphio Saperstein (Parks & Recreation) Jerry Seinfeld (Seinfeld) Jessi Glaser (Big Mouth) Jill Green (FRIENDS) Jillian Holtzmann (Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) Jimmy Brooks (Degrassi: The Next Generation) Jobal Naberrie (Star Wars)

Johnny Rose (Schitt's Creek) Jonathan Byers (Stranger Things) Josh Lucas (Clueless) Josh Lyman (The West Wing) Joshua Matthews (Boy Meets World, Girl Meets World) Joyce Byers (Stranger Things) Jude Lizowski (6teen) Judy Geller (FRIENDS)

Kady Orloff-Diaz (The Magicians) Karen Wheeler (Stranger Things) Kate Bishop | Hawkeye (MCU) Kate Kane | Batwoman (DCU) Kaydel Ko Connix (Star Wars) Kelsey Pokoly (Craig of the Creek) Kes Dameron (Star Wars) Kimi Finster (Rugrats) Kit Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events) Kitty Pryde (X-Men) Klaus Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events) Krusty the Clown (The Simpsons) Kyle Broflovski (South Park) Leah Birch (Big Mouth) Leia Organa (Star Wars) Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events) Lenny Briscoe (Law & Order) Lenny Bruce (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)

Leo Markus (Will & Grace) Leonard Green (FRIENDS) Lexi Howard (Euphoria HBO) Libby Stein-Torres (The Ghost and Molly McGee) Liberty Van Zandt (Degrassi: The Next Generation) Lilly Moscovitz (The Princess Diaries) Linda Belcher (Bob's Burgers) Lorna Dane | Polaris (X-Men) Louis Stevens (Even Stevens) Louise Belcher (Bob's Burgers) Lydia Deetz (Beetlejuice) Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls) Macie Lightfoot (As Told By Ginger) Marc Spector | Moon Knight (MCU) Margaret Simon (Are You There God? It's Me Margaret) Max Blum (Happy Endings) Michael Moscovitz (The Princess Diaries) Michelle "MJ" Jones (MCU) Midge Maisel (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) Mike Wheeler (Stranger Things) Min Green (Why We Broke Up) Missy Foreman-Greenwald (Big Mouth) Moira Rose (Schitt's Creek) Molly Tillerman (Central Park) Mona Lisa Saperstein (Parks & Recreation) Monica Geller (FRIENDS)

Moose Pearson (Pepper Ann) Morgan Matthews (Boy Meets World) Mort the Mortician (Bob's Burgers) Morticia Addams (The Addams Family) Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus) Nadia Diamondstein (The View from Saturday) Nancy Wheeler (Stranger Things) Natasha Romanov | Black Widow (MCU) Nick Birch (Big Mouth) Owen Tillerman (Central Park) Padmé Amidala Naberrie (Star Wars) Paige Hunter (Central Park) Paris Geller (Gilmore Girls) Penny Hartz (Happy Endings) Pepper Ann Pearson (Pepper Ann) Peter Parker | Spider-Man (All variants) Pietro Maximoff | Quicksilver (MCU, X-Men) Poe Dameron (Star Wars) Pugsley Addams (The Addams Family) Rachel Berenson (Animorphs) Rachel Berry (Glee) Rachel Green (FRIENDS) Rachel Menken (Mad Men) Ray Ploshansky (Girls) Rebecca Rubin (American Girl)

Ren Stevens (Even Stevens) Riley Matthews (Girl Meets World) Ron Stoppable (Kim Possible) Rose Krensky (American Girl) Ross Geller (FRIENDS) Roza Wasserstein (The Diviners) Ruth bat Seraph | Sabra (MCU) Ruwee Naberrie (Star Wars) Ryoo Naberrie (Star Wars) Sam Manson (Danny Phantom) Sam Windkloppel Westing (The Westing Game) Schmidt (New Girl) Scott Lang | Ant-Man (MCU) Sebastien LeLivre | Booker (The Old Guard) Sergei "Sam Lloyd" Lubovitch (The Diviners) Seth Cohen (The OC) Shara Bey (Star Wars) Shirley Cohen (A League of Their Own) Shoshannah Shapiro (Girls) Sola Naberrie (Star Wars) Spock (Star Trek) Stan Pines (Gravity Falls) Stanley Uris (IT, IT: Chapter Two) Steven Universe (Steven Universe) Sunny Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

T.K. Strand (9-1-1) Ted Moseby (How I Met Your Mother) Ted Wheeler (Stranger Things) The Children (How I Met Your Mother) The Goldbergs (The Goldbergs) Tina Belcher (Bob's Burgers) Tina Cohen-Chang (Glee) Tish Katsufrakis (The Weekenders)

Toby Isaacs (Degrassi: The Next Generation) Toby Ziegler (The West Wing) Tommy Pickles (Rugrats) Tommy Shepherd | Speed (MCU, X-Men) Tsabin | Sabé (Star Wars) Turtle Wexler (The Westing Game) Velma Dinkley (Scooby-Doo) Violet Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events) Wanda Maximoff | Scarlet Witch (MCU, X-Men) Wednesday Addams (The Addams Family) Will Byers (Stranger Things) Willow Rosenberg (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer) Yelena Belova | Black Widow (MCU) Yitzhak (The Old Guard) Zed Necrodopoulous (Disney Channel ZOMBIES) Zevon Necrodopoulous (Disney Channel ZOMBIES) Ziva David (NCIS) Zoey Necrodopoulous (Disney Channel ZOMBIES)

#hanukkahbingo #jewish characters #jumblr #hanukkah

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onyxbird · 1 year

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I posted 4,114 times in 2022

That's 1,685 more posts than 2021!

198 posts created (5%)

3,916 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@bostonbakeddeans

@icannotreadcursive

@vickyvicarious

@party-gilmore

@original-missif

I tagged 3,371 of my posts in 2022

Only 18% of my posts had no tags

#q - 1,500 posts

#dracula daily - 370 posts

#leverage - 350 posts

#eliot spencer - 221 posts

#mr. quinn - 164 posts

#leverage aus - 159 posts

#the sandman - 126 posts

#cats - 111 posts

#leverage ot3 - 81 posts

#alec hardison - 69 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#con of showing this post to my friend: we currently live on opposite sides of a large country--prohibitive to attempting joint puppetry. 😢

My Top Posts in 2022:

A ridiculous Leverage AU concept popped into my head last night that's cracking me up. So first, it's Leverage OT3 having teamed up as a criminal crew without meeting Nate and Sophie. I'm picturing it in like a cyberpunk setting, but could potentially just be a canon-adjacent setting where the OT3 joined forces without Nate's influence, still pursuing crime for personal gain.

They've become a force to be reckoned with, a target of law enforcement and other criminal elements alike--probably clashed with at least pieces of Moreau's organization more than once--but no one has been able to touch them. Everyone with any connection to the criminal underworld knows about the genius Hacker Hardison and his cyber-crime empire, and everyone knows about his two closest lieutenants: a incredible Thief and an unstoppable Hitter, known only as "Parker" and..."Baby."

Some know only that much, and, when meeting the crew, many are prone to guess that the dainty blonde must be "Baby," and thus the glowering brunet must be "Parker."

The slightly better informed know that the Thief is "Parker" and the Hitter "Baby," but aren't 100% sure which is which.

The truly well-informed folks in the criminal underworld know who is who and enough of their reputations that although "Baby" is spoken of in hushed tones, since they know of no other name for the most elite Hitter in the business, no one dares to even think of calling him that to his face. That can get difficult for people who have to do business with him directly or discuss matters involving him with Parker or Hardison. None of the three ever offer any alternatives. (Every so often a newbie criminal comes along and decides to crack a joke about the name, often some variation on "putting Baby in a corner" and is quickly warned by their peers that 1) you do not joke about Baby--he could kill you with a blade of grass and is known to materialize in the most unexpected times and places--and 2) that specific joke has been made a million times already.)

Behind the scenes, of course, the trio's partnership is quite egalitarian, and Eliot's name is used freely, but 1) neither Parker nor Eliot is comfortable being the face of their organization, while Hardison is happy to LARP his nerdy little heart out as an evil overlord, and 2) Eliot had reasons to not want his real name spread around too much and made the tactical error of giving Hardison a little too much freedom in deciding what to call him in front of people.

Nate eventually does come on the scene, finally disgusted enough to break ties with his "lawful" but corrupt organization and willing to turn to the criminals he used to chase to cut a deal. His boldness at asking for a meeting in addition to what they knew of him as an investigator piques their interest, but they're disappointed when he stumbles in unkempt and still fairly inebriated.

He gains their interest back when, even in his drunken state and having never laid eyes on any of them, he sweeps one look around their temporary HQ, immediately clocks Parker as THE Parker despite her just standing still next to Hardison, and, by process of elimination, turns to Eliot and says, "So, you must be Baby."

895 notes - Posted January 12, 2022

Dying to know how Van Helsing "signed" his phonograph entry in all-caps. Did he just suddenly bellow his surname into the phonograph at full volume in case Jonathan wasn't sure who was speaking?

(I'm also not at all clear on why VH is leaving notes by phonograph rather than just writing a note, but at least the "how" of that is fairly obvious.)

1,042 notes - Posted October 4, 2022

It seems like a lot of modern vampire fiction implies or outright shows that a vampire can drain an entire adult of blood, either completely or enough to kill them, in one meal (and they feed frequently). And then here's Dracula implying that 3 adult vampires are going to share a single small child.

I mean, I know people talk about portion sizes in the USA being excessively large, but the vampires of Sunnydale/Bon Temps/etc. are apparently taking this to the extreme.

1,494 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

Dream of the Endless is back in his cage for Halloween, and he is not happy.

I, on the other hand, am delighted by how well the design carved up, particularly how clearly Dream's eyes glow.

I ended up decreasing the width of the binding circle a bit to fit better on the pumpkin without shrinking Dream and the cage down any further, and the chains are a little chunkier to be carveable with the tools I have, but overall the concept translated onto the pumpkin very well.

I think it looks even better in person--it's hard to capture well on a phone camera.

1,706 notes - Posted October 31, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Suddenly tickled by the idea of Death giving Dream a mobile phone (whatever magical version can get service in the Dreaming) to facilitate him keeping in touch with his one (1) human friend Hob. (And maybe even making more friends? Hint, hint, little brother.)

She assures him she's taken care of everything. The only thing he needs to do is give this sequence of numbers to Hob (or any other human he wants to be able to contact him). He'll know what to do. Death has already set up everything else on the phone--she even set a ringtone for him!

Dream has never cared enough about human telecommunications to know what a ringtone is, and he's too distracted by insisting that he doesn't need a phone--he and Hob have managed fine for centuries without one--to think to ask about it.

He realizes this was a mistake only later, when he's looming dramatically and impressively over someone as Lord Morpheus, and suddenly music begins to blare:

🎶 "Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream! Make him the cutest that I've ever seen..." 🎶

(It gets through an entire verse before he figures out where the music is coming from.)

2,406 notes - Posted August 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review

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gatefleet · 2 years

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Hallowe'en and Death Glares

Leverage: Eliot Spencer, Parker, Alec Hardison Word Count: 571 (T)W: Threat of violence, knives, profanity? Request: Yes, "Eliot Spencer x Reader (Halloween)" - @that-marvel-simp A/N: There wasn't a lot to go on with this, I hope this is something along the lines of what you were looking for

You always enjoyed Halloween, the smell of spices in the air, the different decorations, costumes, customs, traditions and stories that went along with it. Each culture you had known and visited had different incarnations of Halloween and its origins. The Celtic culture believed the costumes were a way to confuse evil spirits to not exact revenge for blood feuds. Mexican and Latin cultures refer to Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) as their variation of Halloween, although they celebrate their ancestors and lost loved ones. You loved the variety and the togetherness of Halloween, whether that was the group activity of pumpkin carving, decorating or helping one another with costumes. You loved it all.

Eliot on the other hand, well he was just his usual grumpy self. Parker adored Halloween, and Hardison, well he was Hardison, the kid that never grew up. He’d never know this, but you had him saved in your phone as Peter Pan, Parker was Goldilocks and Eliot was Lumberjack. You don’t know why you nicknamed them as you had in your phone, but it felt weird putting their actual names down. You almost felt like having nicknames meant if your phone was seized it couldn’t trace back to them. It was like your own personal layer of security for them.

You were reading “Sweeney Todd” (as you did every Halloween), when you heard Parker gleefully skipping down the hall and then Eliot shout some profanities at having been given a fright. You looked up from your book and shook your head, putting your bookmark in place before going to investigate what the noise was. You were most definitely not expecting to be met with the sight before you. Parker had managed to cover every square inch of the kitchen with pumpkins, skeletons, gravestones and skulls. When the hell did she manage to pull this off? Eliot was looking around his kitchen in shock, trying to figure out how to get rid of everything. You and Hardison had to stifle your laughter, knowing that if you got caught Eliot would have a hissy fit.

After you had both calmed down, you walked into the kitchen properly and Hardison took his orange soda out of the fridge (the only clear space in the kitchen besides the spot on the kitchen island that Parker had placed herself. You grabbed one of the red twizzlers Parker was offering, you and Hardison both stood on either side of Parker and watched Eliot. He ran his hand through his hair more times than you could count, and Parker offered you a knife, you looked to her, took it and then began working on one of the many pumpkins laying around. Eliot stared at you in disbelief, this then set Hardison off again, orange soda spraying everywhere… including over Eliot. It was all over. Eliot gave Hardison a death glare, and within 2 seconds Hardison made his break for the kitchen door, Eliot hot on his heels. You and Parker stared after them both, you listened for a couple of seconds then both returned your attentions to the pumpkins and began carving your way through them.

You knew that Eliot would never let you live this down, would probably give you the silent treatment for a while, but you knew that he couldn’t really keep it up for long. You guys shared an apartment after all.

(GIF Credit: @hackerhitterthief [I'm so jealous of this username])

#leverage #eliot spencer x reader #requests open #tag list open

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sergeant-angels-trashcan · 3 years

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Something Something Alec-David has to call in a favor from Kate who has to call in a favor from Nelson&Murdock to keep Harry Wilson from getting disbarred.

you know in the Lost Heir Job where Nate keeps saying "suspended" when the other lawyer keeps saying he was disbarred? i want harry wilson to do that.

i love how convoluted this is. and that harry looks them up and is kind of worried, maybe offended, because Nelson and Murdock represent criminals and all of Leverage just looks at him because you ARE a criminal, Harry--

well I wasn't before I met you!

Nah, you were just morally bankrupt.

and harry pouts a little but stops bitching. and then echoes of the juror number...6? i don't remember her number! job.

because I'd love if nobody knows Matt is Daredevil. and Harry is sitting in court watching his lawyers and kind of going "now wait a minute..." Parker is totally supportive of his weird suspicions about his lawyers.

Eliot "it's a very distinctive stance" Spencer meets matt Murdock all of once and can confirm that Harry is right, because Eliot's met Daredevil.

(Kate either knows and doesn't tell Leverage because she takes superhero confidentiality very seriously, or she legit doesn't know and goes to Matt and Foggy because she works with them. She's their process server/PI (process servers are the ones that serve papers) and they owe her a favor for the one time they didn't give her all the information they should have, so when she went to serve papers a middle aged white woman hit her with a car)

there's so many delightful variations on this. who knows who is a superhero? who knows who is a criminal? how long does it take for Hardison to buy the building that Matt and Foggy's offices are in? Does Parker fill in for Karen or does she join Kate doing surveillance?

Does everyone wind up in a big circle in the middle of a warehouse that they all went to investigate individually and it's a round of "wait, you're a superhero? you're a vigilante? you knew she was a superhero? you're running a con on Wilson Fisk? you're stealing from Madame Gao? I thought you were blind? you two know each other? what do you mean you're an avenger? wait, you're a superhero? i thought you were an heiress?" it's chaos. just twelve people asking the same questions and kate at some point saying "oh, i get it. i've connected the two dots,"

"you didn't connect shit," David informs her

"i've connected them"

#leverage #leverage redemption #david alleyne #kate bishop #young avengers #daredevil #matt murdock #alec hardsion #eliot spencer #you've got questions i've got answers

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faorism · 3 years

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leverage ot3 late spring wedding day looks, as proposed by hardison, refined by parker, and then acquired by eliot and his wide assortment of contacts. (this post got fucking long af so read more to save us all.)

PARKER

our nb prince out here gonna start us fucking strong with a dark grey tits out suit number. the cut of the jacket is inspired by kirk's in search for spock. and by inspired i mean it is the same design only with slightly tighter cuffs and a belt that's more obi style without a buckle. the leather stripes on the sleeves definitely stay. while i fucking adore the gorgeous detailing of kirk's shirt collar, parker out here to kill so she ends up with a simple loose white blouse that has like two pearl buttons that are hidden by the belt.

ankle length pants that do not have kirk's puffs but again, the stitched detailing makes an appearance. these hems greet a pair of white fuck you jimmy choos.

she is parker so she does wear gorgeous (stolen by alec and eliot) waterfalls of pearls and diamonds around her neck and in her ears, but they make sure to include in the ceremony a moment where sophie takes off her (as well as the other two's) jewelry before entering the chuppah. the jewelry is reapplied during the yichud.

she wont wear a kippah exactly but a small cap fitted into her up-do with a veil. neat for symbolism sure but she doesn't get it as the "bride" (which she aint) but because she is very excited to wear one after sophie made them look cool wearing them for her funerals.

her nails are painted black.

nip slips miraculously only happen to be witnessed by the adults who either deserve to see it (maggie), appreciate the tease (tara), thrive off chaos (quinn), need to be made uncomfortable (sterling, who got an invitation with a note from eliot specifically saying he is already listed as nate and sophies plus one so hes gotta show), or all of the above (her intendeds).

ELIOT

alec was very tempted to put him in something absolutely flashy and intricate, but he's on a theme now and so he looks to a variation off mccoy's st: the motion picture semi-retired casual look. eliot's suit is not completely faithful: he aint wearing no onesie. but the jacket does come up short up his waist, but its sleeves are three-quarter to expose his sexy forearms. the pants are truly inspired (thanks parker): since eliot likes his damn pants so loose, they give him those fancy pants that balloon out in the legs and flow like a skirt, and whatever whatever i dont know if it would look good all together and on him, but nb!eliot (even before he realizes that's what he is) requires this, leave me alone. and for the party and dancing, since he is bound to get sweaty in the jacket, hes got kirk's fancy asymmetrical blouse parker couldnt make work for her, but it's now a white sleeveless joint.

eliot's suit is a lighter grey shade than parker's but of the same slightly blue hue, and im thinking it definitely needs to be an airy/flexible fabric like linen or flax. maybe all of theirs are, but i think eliot would def appreciate movement.

his hair is braided into an elaborate crown (thanks again parker, true mvp) with ribbons and silver beads. he has some loose curls at his temple jane austen style to really get hardison hot and bothered. for his kippah, they cheat a bit because it is also ringed with the same lace from parkers veil threaded through with a few diamonds and pearls that cannot be removed but eliot is their bestest score and needs pretty things so shhhh nana approves and that's all that matters.

in addition to the blinged out veiled kippah, eliot has got on diamond studs and his typical random assortment of bracelets plus some lux things parker supplies. there is also a leather wrist cuff he Does Not And Will Not take off, because it's the very special one parker and hardison got for him for their second anniversary, that has an inscription on the inside so it rests against his pulse. WE CHANGE TOGETHER it promises in parker's handwriting, then FOR ALL OUR DAYS in alec's.

eliot is wearing eyeliner.

HARDISON

this man out here after my own damn heart because he is gonna have a second lewk from st:tmp, his being spocks vixen in black look. except hardison shows up like a vision in white. his tight pants hug his long legs. for the top, he got this whole ass cape/vest with bellowing shoulderpads thing spock has on. i dont really know how to describe it other than hardison is totally peacocking in a lot of fabric. tho part of that is likely his clipped in tallit that can be easily removed for prosperity; his tallit gotta be big to shroud his two intendeds. the top (which does not have the vulcan embroidery, which was alecs choice even tho his partners would have been chill with it) is otherwise sleeveless.

i am in love with hardisons hair grown out a bit so that's what hes got up top. for a kippah, he has on the first one nana gave him: a simple blue that is worn threadbare at the edges and familiar and loved and color faded.

he has on a thick ass silver bracelet-cuff thing that is basically art that gives the impression of a solar system or constellation idk geek shit on his wrist. nails are painted white and he's got glittery eyeshadow because he's a fucking whole ass galaxy. he doesnt have dress shoes but like really nice desert boots and sparkly socks that also look like a constellation.

underneath hardison is wearing these gorgeous lacy briefs that feel like a fuckin dream and which, after the honeymoon, becomes the only kind he wears because parker keeps stealing his boxers to sleep in and eliot slowly slips in replacements during laundry days.

ALL THREE

they got their beautiful stolen unadorned rings that they rarely wear (it's a risky to have rings in their line of business, esp for eliot) but during the yichud they add on their private everyday commitments: necklaces one with a lock charm and the other with a key, and a recontextualized pick on a fancy new chain.

and most important of all, they wear their happiness, floating through the world with the most profound joy and love and tenderness embracing their every movement.

#leverage #eliot spencer #alec hardison #parker leverage #thiefsome #leverage ot3 #faorism headcanons #of hearth and home and other promises #to make up for yesterdays angst heres some wedding cuteness #pls let me convince you about the beauty of nb dyke eliot pls its right there

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thatoneaceinthecorner · 4 years

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Okay so last night my beautiful friend @writing-and-nutmeg texted me while watching Leverage, and what she said sent me on a spiral of speculation about the various circumstances under which members of the Leverage team would say fuck (because we all know network restrictions are the only reason they never say it on the show). Anyway, I present my semi-coherent ramblings to all of you:

Eliot says fuck all the time. ALL the time. He treats it like punctuation. Saying “for fuck’s sake” is akin to breathing for him. It’s not aggressive, usually, more an exasperated grumpy second-nature thing in the vein of “dammit Hardison.” The only time he watches himself is when he’s around kids. He’s a firm believer that you should NEVER swear in front of kids. But other than that, he might as well say fuck every few words. Parsing the variations in his swearing is actually one of the best ways to learn his language. Parker and Hardison know it best.

Parker definitely says fuck. Not quite as often as Eliot, less second nature and more situational. Gets this squinty-eyed look when she says it, along with extremely clipped, precise pronunciation. Her swearing is sometimes vicious, sometimes gleeful, and she does enjoy the occasional startled looks on the rest of the team’s faces when they remember that she can absolutely cuss someone out.

Hardison does not say fuck, bless his soul. His Nana might have been capable of cussing like a sailor on certain occasions, but if she ever caught Hardison doing it, she’d whack him with a spoon. Even today, Hardison would never disappoint his Nana.

Nate swears, but it’s one of the few things he does in moderation. More effective that way. He usually manages to articulate his thoughts without the need for colorful language, but when he does say fuck, it’s dry, sardonic, and often somewhat amused.

There is nothing. More terrifying. Than Sophia Devereux. When she is swearing. It happens so, so rarely—Sophia is refined, she relies on class and dignity, so she’d never allow swearing into her everyday language—but when it does happen, look the fuck out. She doesn’t just say fuck. Sophia knows every curse word in the book, and a few that can’t be found anywhere. When she runs out, she starts making up her own. She knows words that make Eliot fucking Spencer turn white as a sheet. She’ll go on heated, red-faced, passionate rants full of british-isms and straight up vulgarity. The outbursts are few and far between, but they take a long time to die down. They’re usually triggered by Nate, or sometimes a particularly awful mark. Once an outburst is over, though, she’ll pretend it never happened. Swearing? Who, her?Of course not.

#leverage #leverage team #leverage headcanons #leverage ot3 #leverage meta #eliot spencer #parker #alec hardison #nathan ford #sophie devereaux #tw swearing

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aethersea · 3 years

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May I request 41 - First Kiss and 94 - Hair Brushing/Braiding for the Leverage OT3, please? (Also extra bonus points if you give Eliot beads in his hair like in The Ice Man Job, because we didn't get NEARLY enough of that in the show) Thank you!

I cannot believe I wrote this whole thing out and then never published it. I’m so sorry, it’s been at least twenty-four years since you sent in this ask, please accept my humble apologies and also this ficlet.

However, this prompt is just pure fluff, and I hate to tell you this but I am not a fluff writer. I just can’t pull off that unadulterated sweetness. I am in this fandom for the shenanigans, first, last and foremost! So this fic is now a 5+1 of Eliot and Parker trying to seduce Hardison.

1. Parker thinks they need to give him gifts, so she goes through her stash and picks out the largest, fanciest jewel she’s ever stolen. Then she realizes: Hardison likes stories. He spends hours giving their aliases histories and pets and allergies and favorite foods, he can get a whole sordid history of jealousy and betrayal from a single corporate email chain, and Parker knows for a cold fact that he writes little stories with his online friends about being wizards together.

She goes through her stash again and picks out the most cursed thing she’s ever stolen.

It’s a jeweled statuette, almost as tall as her forearm, made of gold and studded with precious and semi-precious stones. Mysterious deaths have befallen five separate owners of this thing. Its base is dented from the time it was used to bludgeon Owner Number Three to death. The tiny rubies it has for eyes follow you across the room.

Parker puts a bow on it and leaves it in Hardison’s room while he’s sleeping. He wakes up to this horrible little statue watching him from his bedside table.

He texts the group chat, Hey did anyone put an evil little gold guy in my bedroom last night? But Parker chickens out and says nothing (drunkenly betting Eliot that she can seduce Hardison is one thing, but admitting that she likes him is something else altogether). Everyone else texts back variations on “nope.” (Except Sophie, who just sends back a string of heart eyes emojis and a wikipedia link. She loves cursed artifacts.) So Hardison puts the statue away in a closet somewhere and figures he’ll deal with it later.

Parker is mildly offended that he put her gift in a closet. She goes into his room the next night and puts it back on the bedside table, where it clearly belongs.

This goes on for a week. Hardison puts the statue in a desk drawer, then in one of the cabinets in the office downstairs, then in the dumpster down the street. Every day he wakes up to those glittering red eyes watching him sleep. He’s asked his internet buddies if anyone knows a good exorcist. Hardison doesn’t really believe in curses, but also? What the fuck. What the fuck.

2. Eliot assumes the drunken bet will be forgotten by morning. What kind of world would it be if people always followed through on promises they made while they could barely stay vertical? So he spends the morning nursing his hangover and cleaning his knives. Cleaning guns is no good while hungover—all the snaps and clicks of popping things in and out of place sound like actual gunfire when you’re hungover, it’s a nightmare—but knives are quiet and have no moving parts. Buffing and polishing them is soothingly repetitive work, and every once in a while he can throw one at one of the dartboards on the walls and reassure himself that his reflexes are still sound even after that much tequila.

It’s only when he gets Hardison’s text about the golden statuette that magically appeared in his room overnight that Eliot realizes Parker’s actually going for it. After some internal debate about whether he’s going to stoop to this or not, Eliot decides what the hell and starts making plans.

Eliot agrees that gifts are the way to go, but not stolen gifts. Not things. Anyone can give a thing. Proper wooing is about giving experiences.

Eliot plans for three days. On the fourth day, he and Hardison have their irregularly scheduled monthly coffee date, and Eliot texts him beforehand to say he wants to do it at the brewpub this time. Hardison arrives to find a deceptively simple meal: basic country fare perfected through years of experimentation, made with the best ingredients Eliot can get his hands on. And Eliot, after all, is still a retrieval specialist. There’s very little in the world he can’t get his hands on.

And yet the night ends and somehow he has not gotten his hands on Hardison.

This is just not right. Eliot knows how to deploy a smolder, okay, Tangled reference aside he is damn good at flirting and he knows the looks he’s giving Hardison are clear as day. It’d be one thing if Hardison had turned him down, or if he’d been uneasily unwilling, or even if his eyes had widened slightly in suppressed panic and he’d abruptly found a reason to leave. Eliot can take rejection, bet or no, and he’d have bowed out graciously without a fuss. But this was much, much worse.

Hardison didn’t even notice he was flirting.

He’s going to have to up his game.

3. “How do you seduce people?” Parker asks bluntly, turning up at Sophie’s door just past midnight.

Sophie, despite the hour, is utterly delighted by the question.

This goes as well as you would expect.

4. Eliot’s taken a lot of dates to sports games. Hardison may prefer sparkly elves with purple lightning magic to a decent MMA fight, but baseball is the American pastime. Eliot gets them perfect seats, hot dogs from the best vendor in the stadium, even chilled beer that he smuggles in without letting it get warm. It’s going to be a perfect game.

And it is. At first. Hardison, it turns out, has a lot of opinions about baseball. What he does not have is an understanding of the rules. They’re not even into the second inning by the time Eliot finally snaps and starts arguing with him about it.

They make it all the way to the fifth inning before Eliot realizes that Hardison’s basing his complaints off the rules of a game from a Star Wars novel.

They’re at the bottom of the eighth before Eliot will speak to him again.

5. Eliot and Parker are drunk again. This is not intentional. They didn’t even mean to come to this bar, but the smoothie place with the fried oreos that Eliot had brought Parker here to try was playing such incredibly bad music that they’d ordered the oreos to go and fled. The bar was just the coziest looking place on the block, and of course they’d ordered drinks to avoid being rude––Eliot had entertained himself for a few minutes scouring the menu for something that would pair well with fried oreos and popcorn chicken.

And now they’re drunk. The conversation has, perhaps inevitably, turned to the ongoing bet.

“I tried everything!” Parker wails. “I laughed at every joke, I touched my hair constantly, I got him talking about things he likes.” She thunks her forehead on the bar. “All that happened is now I know the complete history of orcs in western literature.”

“Hardison wouldn’t know flirting if it pinched him on the ass,” Eliot grumbles.

Parker slaps his arm. “No pinching Hardison!”

“I’m not going to—I don’t pinch people!”

Parker’s ignoring him. Eliot pouts and takes another sip of his drink. He’s not entirely sure what this one is––it’s blue and kind of fizzy, that’s all he can say for sure. Parker took over the drinks menu several glasses ago, and she’s been picking them based on what has the most fun name to say. Eliot’s pretty sure the alcohol content’s been doubling with each order.

“Eliot,” Parker slurs, “we need to work together.”

“What?”

Parker lifts her head from the bar and frowns at him, the way she does when she’s figured out the obvious solution and is just waiting for everyone else to get on the same page. It’s adorable. It’s always adorable, but right now her eyes are wide and slightly unfocused from the alcohol and she’s listing sideways a little, almost as if she’s unbalanced, and it is the most adorable thing Eliot has ever seen. Parker’s never unbalanced, but some part of Eliot’s fuzzy brain thinks she’s about to fall on top of him and cannot wait to catch her.

“You can’t seduce Hardison,” Parker points out. Eliot is drunk enough to get offended by this, but too drunk to get out a complaint before she continues, “I can’t seduce Hardison. But if we work together, the two of us can definitely seduce Hardison. Together.”

Eliot stares at her. Then he takes another sip of his fizzy blue drink. Later, when questioned, he will blame his next words on that drink.

“Worth a shot.”

They take Hardison to a movie. They research for three weeks beforehand. They find the best movie theater in town, with the nicest seats, the biggest screens, and concession snacks that Hardison likes, and they buy tickets for the midnight premiere of the superhero movie that Hardison hasn’t shut up about for the past month. Parker even hacks into the theater’s computers in a last-minute fit of nerves and cross-references the credit cards with drivers’ licenses to make sure the people sitting in front of them won’t be too tall.

Parker witnesses a kidnapping in the parking lot while the boys are getting popcorn. They don’t even stay long enough to catch the commercials.

+ 1. “Hey Eliot,” Hardison says during movie night, a little over a week later. “Remember the Ice Man Job?”

Eliot groans. “I try not to.”

Hardison throws a piece of popcorn at his face. “Shut up. Remember how you did your hair for that one? With the little—those little beads on, like, a braid?”

Eliot shoots Hardison a suspicious glance. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Teach me how to do that.”

Eliot shoots Hardison another, more deliberate look, this one pointedly directed at Hardison’s complete lack of braidable locks.

Hardison rolls his eyes as if that’s a silly detail to get hung up on and leans forward to dig around in one of the boxes he has under his coffee table. He emerges with a ziplock bag of plastic beads in no time flat and hands it triumphantly to Eliot. Then he yanks a few cushions out from behind Parker, who’s sitting on his other side, and puts them on the floor in front of him. “Sit here?” he asks Parker, patting the cushion pile.

Parker takes a moment to consider being offended at having her cushions stolen, but curiosity gets the better of her and she just plops down between Hardison’s legs, grabbing the bowl of popcorn as she goes, and waits.

Hardison lifts her hair with sudden gentleness, drawing it over her shoulders and letting it fall down her back in a golden wave. His fingers brush against her neck. Parker shivers. Eliot is distantly aware that he’s gone perfectly still, focused with a hunter’s intensity on Hardison’s dark, graceful fingers carding through Parker’s hair.

Hardison leans back, hands on his knees, and Eliot breathes again. “Well?” Hardison looks over at Eliot, a tiny smirk of challenge on his lips. “Show me how it’s done.”

Eliot is suddenly, brutally aware of how close they are. Hardison’s couch is obscenely comfortable, which is half the reason movie nights are at Hardison’s in the first place, but it is not large. Their thighs are touching. Hardison leans away, to give Eliot access to Parker’s hair, and he’s still so close that Eliot would barely have to reach out a hand to—

Eliot ruthlessly shoves that thought down into the dark where it belongs. He dealt with this, he dealt with this years ago, and accepting Parker’s stupid bet doesn’t mean he’s forgotten the way Hardison and Parker look at each other. It just means he doesn’t mind losing for a good cause.

So he keeps his tone steady and his fingers brisk as he shows Hardison how to braid the clunky plastic beads into Parker’s hair, and if he flushes with heat when their hands brush each other, well, nobody has to know. He’s been trained to withstand eight different schools of torture. It won’t show on his face. His voice never once falters.

Parker has had no such training. Her lips have parted, and her breathing is shallow. She’s staring glassy-eyed at the TV. Hardison can’t see her face, sitting behind her, but Eliot watches her carefully, worried that they need to call this off. Parker’s not used to intimacy, to closeness that means something, and for all the three of them have spent half their movie nights literally on top of each other, this is something else. This has weight.

Eliot puts a hand on her shoulder, pressing down just enough that Parker startles and cants a glance over at him. Eliot raises his eyebrows in question, and Parker glares back: don’t you fucking dare. Eliot backs off. Hardison, frowning in concentration as he threads a wisp of Parker’s hair through a green bead, graciously pretends he didn’t see the exchange.

Hardison gets the hang of the beading fairly quickly, and Eliot shows him a few different techniques. He’s almost managed to convince himself that nothing is actually happening when Hardison says, conversationally, “You two are really bad at this.”

Eliot glowers his confusion. “At movie night? You started this, if you wanted to actually watch Alien then you shouldn’t have—”

Hardison’s smile is soft, but Eliot decides for his own safety to focus on the laughter at its edge. “No, at this.” And then he slides his hand onto Parker’s neck, caresses her cheek, and isn’t the slightest bit surprised when she gasps.

Parker whips around, and there’s hurt on her face but it dies in the glow of Hardison’s gentle, unteasing smile. Hardison pulls her up with the lightest of touches, and she goes, eyes fixed on his like salvation.

They kiss sweet and slow, and Eliot’s heart twists in his chest and he can’t breathe. He needs to leave now before he shatters in half, but if he moves then they will look at him, and he would rather never breathe again than meet their eyes right now.

Hardison breaks off the kiss, gazing at Parker with something just this side of wonder, and then he does look at Eliot. Eliot flinches. He opens his mouth to…say something, make some joke or hasty excuse and scramble out the door, but Hardison raises a hand to Eliot’s face, slides his long fingers to cup Eliot’s neck, and pulls him forward, as gently as he did Parker.

It’s a chaste kiss, no more than a soft press of lips, because Eliot is too stunned to respond and Hardison doesn’t push. It lasts a long time. A whole era of change happens in the span of that kiss, as everything Eliot thought he knew tears out of place and then settles, gingerly, into a new understanding.

Hardison pulls away, his hand still warm on the back of Eliot’s neck. His smile is pure sunshine. Eliot finds himself smiling back, helpless.

Hardison’s grin turns smug. “And that,” he says, looking between Eliot and Parker, “is how you do it. Y’all are disasters, honestly, I can’t believe two master criminals working together couldn’t manage a single real date—”

Eliot heaves a deep sigh and drags Hardison into a headlock, pinning his arms when he flails. Parker surges to her knees and starts tickling him mercilessly.

They don’t finish the movie.

#finx writes #I didn't quite get Eliot's hair in there but I hope this works anyway #leverage #leverage fic #leverage ot3

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goodplace-janet · 3 years

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Leverage s2e1, The Beantown Bailout Job

nate tried to go legit, but nope. is this the first time since walking away from his ~life of crime~ or

car chases! explosions!! i’m stressed lol but what an intense opener!

i LOVE “sometimes bad guys make the best good guys”, a variation on what parker said in the bank shot job

SOPHIE GOT A ROLE

PARKER HAS JUST ONE NAME. i still want to know what’s up with that, but also i respect if that’s something the story leaves unsaid

HARDISON!!!!!

ELIOT FLIRTING and then *rolling his eyes* as he goes over to the friends he hasn’t seen in eons probably? never change, eliot

“oh yeah, no, i’ve been SUPER” they are all lying

this is like post-pandemic-level social skills

awkwaaaard

‘never before has a production of the sound of music made me root for the n*zis’ no????? excuse me??? no! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

wow.

get right back up on the bike of crime

“we’re thieves!” “not me.” sophie was RIGHT

i am once again asking why they can’t just be a team of four thieves

“get out of here! you’re planning something, i know it” i love this too much

*hacker voice* enHANCE

“shake it. shake the bible” i love this, i love them, i love them working together again, i love i love i LOVE

“i did look for you. for six months.” oh no i’m gonna cry

cuz parker DOESN’T want to talk about feelings, but! you gotta!!!

‘people are like locks. you have to be patient, and fiddly’ okay, OKAY, i LIKE this, because she IS telling him what she needs!! that’s great!!! 💞

he smile when he repeated, “fiddly? 🤨😊” my emotions!!

she needed a lock pick... and a plastic key?

this is like all the avengers in stark tower fanfic, but uninvited lmao

“oh, *that* mob” i felt like i didn’t get a good read on eliot’s character in the last season? i am delighted by his dialogue so far in this one

“if we WERE going to do this job, HYPOTHETICALLY”

JUST this one last job, and then end of the series!

TELL ME ELIOT WAS WEARING A BULLET-PROOF VEST

i’ve seen enough back to the future to only be scared for a minute lol

oh, okay, it was the little explosives, that does make more sense in this context

i cannot actually keep up with the fast-paced heist twists and turns lol but i’m here for the feelings, so i remain entertained

you waited too long, nate! aaaaaaaaaa

sophie deserves better anyway, but still

dammit, ford. this sucks :(

but he didn’t! take the drink!!! i’m so proud of him

“i bought the building 😄” this is DELIGHTFUL i am DELIGHTED

#sirius marathons leverage #i REALLY appreciate the balance of #humor #action #angst #heartwarmth #it's a lot like zr in that way

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leverage-commentary · 4 years

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Leverage Season 2, Episode 7, The Two Live Crew Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi, I’m Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode of Leverage.

Amy: Hi, I’m Amy Berg, Supervising Producer and Writer of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer and Co-Writer of this episode. Hold on. [Opens bee.] There we go.

[Laughter]

Dean: The beer has been opened.

John: The Guiness has been opened. Amy Berg where did this episode come from?

Amy: Well, I mean, when you have a show about a team of con men sort of- one of the first episodes that you think of is-

John: Yeah, it was like one of the first ones we broke- we talked about last season-

Amy: What happens when they go up against another team of con men? And obviously that's not something you really wanna, sort of, pull the trigger on during season one, so we sort of sat on it for a bit.

Dean: But we talked about it a lot in season one.

Amy: We did talk about it.

John: Yeah. But really you have to have your- part of the fun is having your characters and opposition- of people that make a difference, having the opposition of you need to know the characters really well.

Amy: You need to learn who our people are before we can bring in a new set of people.

John: Yeah, so it was a lot of fun putting together the different combinations and different variations on this- the evil team of evil Leverage.

Amy: Loves it.

John: Why the Gustav Klimt?

Amy: The Gustav Klimpt, now you're testing me and it's been a while, I believe this painting was called Higeia and it was technically destroyed by the Nazis in 1945. And it was sort of a choice to pick a painting that wasn't actually in existence, so we weren’t stepping on anybody's toes, saying that this was a stolen painting.

John: The likeless- the equivalent of likeness rights on paintings is an enormous pain in the ass so as a matter of fact, there's a statue of Lincoln in the park that's in the sequence later that we shot and then we had to get the rights to using that statute, even in the background.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Now that's very tricky stuff. Dean tell us about the fun of shooting this.

Dean: Well we wanted to try and keep perpetual motion and show two different attempts. Our team, which tries to do a low tech break in through basically just cutting through a wall through this cheapo office behind the high tech office, and then the daring team that actually chases the bullet head on.

John: Yeah. And there is our villain, Griffin.

Amy: Griffin Dunne.

John: Exactly.

Dean: I've wanted to work with Griffin my whole life. I remember seeing him in An American Werewolf Through London and just falling madly in love with this guy; I just thought he was amazing. And then when we went to do this episode, it was actually Tim Hutton who said, ‘What do you think about my pal Griffin Dunne playing this part?’ And it was just like a gift from heaven.

John: Oh yeah, we are all over that. And this is a lot of fun and we built a fake wall- And that is Tim's assistant, correct?

Amy: That’s that’s Elle, yeah.

John: That's Elle, Tim’s assistant, in her big screen debut with us tormenting her.

Amy: Indeed. And they're playing detectives Marlow and Archer who, as you know, is an homage to both Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.

John: That's right.

Dean: And there's fun outtakes from that which will be in the gag reel.

Amy: Excellent. This should have a lot of gag reel footage.

John: It's also- to tell you what's weird is, Archer actually-

Amy: Was the name of Tim Spades partner in [mumbles]?

John: That's right. That's what the original reference was. That’s also Ross Mcdonald.

Amy: But Ross Mcdonald was inspired by that character in order.

John: Really?

Amy: Yeah.

John: I didn't know that. There you go.

Dean: Fans of the show In Treatment should know that this actress, Noa Tishby, is actually the Executive Producer of In Treatment on HBO.

John: That's right Noa is an Israli actress, she was in Israel, she saw the original show, she dug in, got the rights herself, brought it to America, and wound up executive producing the American version.

Amy: By the way, that's Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is so awesome. And who cast Will Wheaton in this episode, John Rogers?

John: Well I technically cast him, but I believe you had the idea of hiring Wil Wheaton because I'm the one who actually signed the papers.

Amy: Thank you, I appreciate the credit on that.

John: Yes.

Dean: And I was so happy because Wil Wheaton and I actually used to play on the same hockey team together.

Amy: That's right.

Dean: And this was back when he was on Star Trek. And I was dumb enough to allow him to play goalie at the time and-

[Laughter]

Dean: And [Unintelligible]’s son took a slapshot that cracked his helmet open and gave him 17 stitches across the forehead.

Amy: You helped break Wil Wheaton's face.

Dean: And the producers of Star Trek called me screaming at me and forbidding me to ever allowing him to play on the team again.

Amy: Nice. Dogs Playing Poker, by the way, totally public domain. That’s why we chose that one.

John: There you go, there's a lot of variations of that, too, that’s right. And this is actually our little slam is not a part of the subtle on a lot of the CBS crime shows; just the sort of horrible-

Amy: Yeah, the over the top-

John: When we created Leverage, one of the reasons we did it was because so many shows were chasing serial killers. I think it was Chris Downey who said, ‘You know what? Serial killers are covered. Let’s chase rich white dudes in suits.’

Amy: I think they're done.

John: There's only ever been 10 and they've been caught 100 times. And that was Apollo Robbins. This is a great- this is one of Dean's signature roundy-rounds. And I was saying the other day-

Dean: An amazing steadicam shot.

John: I was saying the other day, we've actually learned in the writers room how to assign dialogue to make this easier.

Amy: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: So rather than rewriting on the fly-

Amy: -we write towards the circle track.

John: Cause you can actually see. It goes- it's like triple play: it goes to Beth to Aldis to Chris to Tim and then back around again.

Amy: I love Parker; there’s always- always something secret going on, whether its secret nazis or-

John: Yeah well, we kind of establish it in The Day of the Hunter Job, Parker’s realm of knowledge outside of stealing is not good.

[Laughter]

John: Like, anything that doesn't involve stealing, she will believe it if the other team members tell her. Oh this is great. I remember we shot this day. Dean, tell us about this bit.

Dean: Well this was one where we actually went full circle because we came in, we rehearsed it one way and it felt really good, but then we started to feel like, ‘Gosh we're not doing enough.’ And so then we reblocked the entire scene so we could all do more and have more happen, and then we all paused and went, ‘You know, the first one was much better.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And that's what we went with.

John: Yup. What I think was part of what was driving that was because I was on set that day, ‘Do not touch the motion sensitive bomb.’

Amy: Thank you.

John: Was the fact that this was gonna be Gina's last episode, full day with the cast- And also, she really dug in on the fact that the character was going to die and it genuinely upset the cast. Like the cast was a little freaked out here; they got way- cause this is a very claustrophobic set, very claustrophobic scene. The way we usually shoot is we shoot longer takes. So we do the whole thing, like we’ve shot entire acts in one take at some point.

Dean: That's true.

Amy: Yeah. By the way, this bit with the pudding, I've known John for two years and this is the only time I've ever turned him on.

[Laughter]

Amy: I wrote this bit, and he read the act and he came in and he burst into my office and was like ’hahaha’.

John: Remember you didn’t use it you; had talked about it and-

Amy: That’s true. That’s true. I brought it up in dialogue, but I didn't actually employ it. They didn’t- Parker didn't actually use it.

John: I actually kicked in the door- the only time I’ve yelled at you-

Amy: Yeah, he yelled at me.

John: I kicked in the door and said, ‘How do you come up with instant pudding in a motion sensitive bomb and not actually use it?’ And so we had- and Parker, we had Parker do it. There's a lot of great acting in here, there's a lot of Gina digging in on, sort of, Sophie's past catching up with her. Hardison-

Amy: But this is a scene where it’s really easy to overwrite it, because your instinct is sort of to write to the emotion of this scene like Sophie could die. But the point is to underwrite and let your actors find the emotion between the lines.

John: That beat right there with Chris and Gina.

Amy: Yes.

John: There's a very nice recurring thing we try to do, which is, whenever it becomes something about killing someone, they go to Eliot because Eliot- because Eliot used to do that. And there's a nice moment there. I was actually there- oh look at that look. I love that look. Where-

Amy: Emotion between the lines.

John: Where basically Eliot signs off on the fact that she's probably gonna die and Gina and Eliot worked that out and it's just a lovely moment. Ahhh this is great, now how did we do this?

Amy: Gina just knocks this out of the park.

Dean: So Gina was very pregnant at the time, so we had to do a double for the wide shots, for the running, and Gina for the closeups.

John: Yeah, and then this is a miniature.

Dean: That's right. Well, the building is the actual building we shot at, but the explosion is a miniature that we shot at our parking lot that we digitally composited on top of it. Now at the time, people didn't know what we were gonna do with Gina's character because Gina was pregnant. So when we did this scene and we aired this episode a lot of people were really upset at this point because they actually thought we had killed her off of the show.

Amy and John: Yeah.

Dean: And early Twitters were very upset.

Amy: Were not favorable.

John: Were very angry.

[Laughter]

Dean: How could you kill her off the show? But then-

Amy: This was originally intended to be the midseason finale, which in that case, the fans would definitely think for sure she was gonna be gone for a while or forever.

John: Yep.

Amy: But we ended up adding two episodes to the end of the midseason run, so we did get to see her again.

Dean: I don't know what it is exactly, but for me, Parker’s performance- or Beth’s performance as Parker in this section here is reminiscent of some of the great comedians.

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: Because it's so subtle what she's doing. And a lot of this came out of Beth herself who said -

Amy: I rewrote this scene based on Beth's notes that you were so kind to give me, and it sort of- it made the scene like 10 times better. I don't even remember what it was originally, but-

John: She's trying to remember what her lines are to say as Parker and her eyes roll up like ‘what am I supposed to say’ and then she gets freaked out at seeing Gina dead and loses it.

John: And then she totally spirals out.

Amy: There's a lot going on in, like, 20 seconds; it's pretty funny.

John: And then Hardison having to go up and bail her out. And again, there's a lot of- there's a lot of stuff going on in the structure this year with Gina leaving, and just for that tempering and having us to accelerate that storyline- There's a lot of Hardison/Parker relationship stuff between the lines on all the shows, we just never made it an A plot, but you can actually see the relationship evolve over the course of the season, when you watch the entire season particularly, the second half. And of course Chris is wearing a bandana under his hat because that's when he had slammed his head onto the set.

Dean: In the previous episode.

John: Exactly.

Amy: Yeah, he’s got a giant scar on his forehead right now.

John: Beautiful cemetery up on a big hill in Portland, nice enough to let us shoot there. Beautiful, gorgeous location. And that's a nice bit of acting, too.

Dean: Yeah, just the little moment of him seeing her and then getting that shock of losing someone that he cares about.

John: Yeah, and just processing.

Amy: So far you've pointed out that your favorite moments are the ones where there's no dialogue, so I'm glad I could contribute to that.

[Laughter]

John: Well you wrote- no no, that’s right, I usually go back and write the stage directions, but you do a lot of the-

Amy: This- and so it begins, when John makes fun of me throughout the commentary.

John: I don't make fun of you, just when you take too much credit.

[Laughter]

Dean: This is the controversy.

Amy: I was taking no credit!

Dean: In this scene, the gravestone says Cathrine Klive, her actor name, and at the end Sophie Deveraux and a lot of people thought that was actually a mistake, but why don't you address that?

John: Well we were really- it comes up in the end. We really wanted- and this is sort of a meta structural thing - she wants to kill Sophie Deaveraux. She realizes Sophie Deveraux as an identity, as a life, is a dead end, and so she changes the tombstone so that she can eventually give up that identity. And it's interesting because what Sophie is- realized is that she's going down a dead end, and in theory she’s the current criminal and Nate is the honest man. Nate is also going down a dead end, but he's way too obsessive and blind to realize it.

Amy: Yeah.

John: And so by the end of the season, you’ll see Sophie is a lot more emotionally evolved than Nate is.

Amy: It's true. This is sort of the beginning of Nate’s spiral where-

John: Yeah, maybe the end of Sophie’s thing.

Amy: His priority shifts and, like, winning becomes more important than servicing the clients.

John: We just sort of tease in 206. Great scene between Griffin and- really that was kind of fun. Once we knew we had Griffin Dunne, a lot of these scenes became, ‘Alright, it's really just gonna be head to head.’

Amy: Yeah, yeah.

John: Yeah. It's just- we’re just gonna have the two of them- And the fact that they're friends was really helpful.

Amy: And this the promise of the premise when you do a crew vs crew episode. What you are promising to the audience is you're gonna have one-on-one faceoffs between the characters and their counterparts.

John: And this is part of the evolution of writing an episode, is when we were breaking this, we had a really hard time getting that up as fast as possible, and that's what you wound up- doing the inner cut break in at the opening. Because even though they weren't facing off at each other, we gave the audience the promise of the premise.

Amy: Yes.

John: And the beautiful Hyundai Genesis. A fine automobile.

Amy: A fine, fine vehicle.

Dean: Beautiful peel out.

John: It was nice. In a cemetery!

[Laughter]

John: There was a moment where I was talking to one of the actors, I looked down and realized I was standing on a civil war veteran’s grave. That was a little disturbing.

Amy: That’s classy Rogers.

Dean: I absolutely love the little makeup and hair choices of Gina in this scene, it's so 40’s noir.

John: Yes.

Amy: Yeah, yeah the hair.

John: The whole episode she's playing 40’s noir. And it was a really interesting look, and not one we can do a lot because of the characters she's played, but this was interesting; she's not playing a character ever in this episode except in the opening.

Dean: Right.

John: I kind of liked her in the cop outfit.

Amy: It's one of my favorite running gags in the entire series of the show. Parker just not entirely buying that Gina’s actually alive.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘I'm not dead!’

John: Some part of her brain understands it, but the emotional center is so screwed up.

Amy: ‘I saw her in a coffin, ergo, she must be, in fact, dead.’

John: This is also great, is digging in on the fact that the whole ex-boyfriend/crew/guy who runs the crew she used to be with. And for a while, for like a minute and a half in the room, remember that character was Sophie's boyfriend for the whole first half of the season and this was gonna be the payoff, but we just never knew if we were gonna get the availability for that actor and we just couldn't risk it. And it also seemed a little dishonest she would hide that, so.

Dean: I love the Hardison line, ‘You saw other teams before us?’

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘No, just another Nate.’

John: ‘Just another Nate.’ That's- yes, this is a big family beat of looks back and forth.

Amy: Lots of looks.

John: Now how did you- I remember you were very, Dean, very big into designing the other team’s headquarters.

Dean: Yeah, well I really wanted to feel like a mirror of our headquarters. But in a believable way in that they don't have permanent space so they’re in a small space. But I was trying to mirror even screen direction-wise that one team is looking left-right the other team is looking right-left so that we can really feel like these are absolute mirror images of each other.

John: Yeah even the looks left-right and right-left match.

Dean: That’s right.

John: Yeah, no it's interesting. And there's Apollo Robbins, who we haven't mentioned yet.

Amy: Apollo Robbins! Yes, he's our technical consultant on the show. He is a master thief. But not anymore, he's a good guy now. I feel like I should point that out.

John: Yes we should. You can't hire him to do crimes.

Amy: When I say consultant, I mean he's not actually a thief anymore.

John: This is also great; this is also the Mona Lisa scam. Why don’t you explain the Mona Lisa scam since you’re a research freak?

Amy: Oh great, now I’m-

John: 1911.

Amy: Yes, 1911 there was a con man, I don't remember his name, but someone says it I think in this scene, where he created six forgeries of the Mona Lisa, stole the original, and then sold the six fakes on the black market to individual buyers as though they were the original and got six times the profit.

John: Some con and heist shows will just do that plot and act like they came up with it. [Coughs] Asshole! [Cough].

[Laughter]

John: Rather than mention the fact that this is something that really happened, that you should honor.

Amy: This is something that really happened, that I actually read about.

John: Also used the Doctor Who's: The City Of Death written by Douglas Adams.

Amy: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

John: There you go. This is something else we did a lot of, which was the process of elimination bit with the screens. Remember we did it in Hunter too? And it's just kind of fun because it’s kind of something from my physics background which is all about probability. And the fact that a series of educated guesses- it's kind of like our version of detective work.

Amy: Yeah.

John: You know, it's like crime detection, it's a lot of fun. And yeah, and now we're really seeing Nate start to spin out of control.

Amy: But this is what I would call dueling competence porn.

John: Yes it is.

Amy: This, and the third act where the teams are doing their jobs and doing them well.

John: Competence porn, by the way, is a term- I forget how it came about, but it's basically-

Amy: It's just a room bit.

John: It’s a room bit. It’s like, you know what? I just like watching people who are good at their jobs doing it, especially if they're entertaining. A lot of it was from 208 was watching Beth Riesgraf- in 208 there was an entire act that's a break in-

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: That’s Beth breaking into a vault. And when you're writing it, you're like, ‘Gosh, that feels thin,’ and then you're watching it and you're like, ‘I'm watching Parker break into a vault for 15 minutes and this is amazing!’

Amy: I could watch it for 40 minutes.

Dean: This is one of my favorite bullet time shots that we’ve done.

John: Yes, now this is- now remember this is all done not digitally- well we do it really. We freeze everyone in the background and the cameraman walks through it and we digitally speed it up. What is this space? This is the-

Dean: This is an actual museum in Portland that we turned into our space.

John: Yup.

Amy: Wasn't there a naked sculpture that you guys put a leaf on?

John: Yes, up in the upper level.

Amy: That's my favorite story.

John: Yeah. And then- yes, this is 4-way; this is not as insane as the one in the season opener.

Amy: But it’s still insane.

John: But this is a 4-way through about 100 extras.

Amy: I don't think Dean understands that we’re making television.

[Laughter]

Dean: Well, you know, honestly you don't even attempt a shot like this without a steadicam operator like Gary Camp.

Amy: Gary Camp is amazing.

Dean: He's a serious feature film guy. I mean, that was all one shot.

John: Yeah. That's stunning. And then you bring it back to Parker- and this is also fun, is the fact that we make fun in the show. And this was- even when we did tap out and some people were like, ‘Oh, you're making fun of Lincoln, Nebraska,’ when we had Sophie make fun of the food. We’re not making fun of the locations, we’re making fun of the fact that Sophie’s a little princess.

Amy: Yeah.

John: She's not someone who does well with things that- and the van, the van, actually, over the course of the second season becomes a character.

Dean: I love that she's says about how it smells a little whiffy.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is a callback in The Future Job as well.

John: Yes, this is hard work, it smells like hard work. Yeah, Hardison's affection for the van.

Amy: Respect the van!

John: Respect the van, yeah.

Dean: Now this is actually the first scene where we’ll see the teams start to go head to head.

John: Yeah. Split up, call out your jobs.

Amy: This is the promise of the premise act, as we call it. And it's the Van Gogh that they're after, the Cafe Terrace At Night, I believe it’s called.

Dean: And this is a very important moment because it really established who Nate and Sophie were to the rest of the team. Nate being the one that makes the plans, but Sophie being the one who keeps them safe. And that had never been exposited before, and by doing that, it really set it up.

John: Boom! And then the parallel structure over to Hardison's opposite number, Chaos, played by Wil Wheaton, just four vans down.

Amy: Nice.

John: That was really inspired. They’re the most twin of the bunch. Oh, and this is amazing. This is amazing because that's all real time. That wallet never came off. This was this whole section we just gave to Apollo.

Amy: Yeah. He's like, what can you do? And he just basically-

John: And he took Beth aside and they came up with a bunch of- it’s like, you know what? We're just gonna run camera, you just do a bunch of you do you, man.

Amy: By the way, there was no one else we had in mind for Apollo. Even when I was like- when I came up with the concept, and then I also did the outline, I also called the character Apollo, hoping at some point we would actually cast him.

John: But was the Wil Wheaton character originally a girl?

Amy: In fact, she was.

John: Yes, that’s right.

[Laughter]

Amy: Yeah, it was- I believe it was a hot Latina-

John: Yes.

Amy: -that he was going up against, and then at some point, you know, in the casting process I turned to you and I was like, ‘You know, we've been talking about Wil Wheaton for something. Is this not the prefect role or not?’

John: And Noa Tishby rocking the dress. Noa was actually in the Israeli army. So that was kinda cool as we were looking at a lot of different actresses and Dean had seen her tape.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And it was like, you know, I wanna try a different ethnicity. I wanna try a different look, and brought her in. And what's great is she looks like she can take a punch, you know, that's a tough chick. And she really did great in the fight scenes and was a really- we got really lucky in this episode.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: You know, we usually have to cast one big role; we cast five.

Dean: Right.

John: And they were all great.

Dean: Now this fight scene was-

John: Ok I'm gonna take credit for this one because nobody else is-

Amy: I wasn't gonna take credit for it.

John: No shadow on this, I had to explain this 9 times.

[Laughter]

Amy: Oh yeah, that’s right.

Dean: And this sequence was actually getting directed by Marc Roskin and you, John.

John: Yes, at two o’clock in the morning. But I will give Mark Franco big props for throwing the old 1970’s film look.

Amy: The film reel stuff.

Dean: I love it.

John: That is so great. The Shaw brothers look is that and this is the whole-

Dean: That's how they see- in their minds that's how they see fights, like the karate movies they grew up watching.

John: Yes. And this is based on two things. 1) a great story about samurais- I love that look that Chris did. Great story about two samurai who faced each other, knew each other’s skills so well they fought the entire fight in their head and walked away. And Warren Ellis’ character the Midnighter from The Authority comic book who has sort of the same thing. He does fights backwards in his head. Ah look at that, oh he's a great physical actor, too, it was really- it was nice, cause we cast Apollo, he's never done acting before, he'd never done TV before. And it's the one gamble on the whole show and he was fantastic.

Dean: And he totally pulled it off.

Amy: But he's just so damn charming, it’s like you, sort of, just believed from the beginning that he could do it.

John: Yeah, he's very dangerous.

[Laughter]

John: It's really- if he ever turned evil, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Amy: Oh my gosh.

Dean: This next sequence, outside, while I had done the storyboards for it, Marc Roskin shot the hell out of it. And what we wanted to do was an homage to the great Western movies, you know, the Spaghetti Western.

John: Well this was the challenge, and we talked about this when we were writing it. It’s like, nobody does hacking in an interesting way. There's no way to do hacking in an interesting way.

Amy: Visually it’s- filming it is not effective.

John: So abandon trying to do it with the computers and just do the metaphor, which is two guys pitting each other’s intellects against each other, and make it text.

Amy: And it's much more interesting, look at each other than looking at screens.

John: Oh and that timing is great, look at this, it’s just fantastic.

Amy: This is so nerdgasmic.

[Laughter]

Dean: He even had that Spaghetti Western whistle.

Amy: Yeah. I remember the first cut it was only in there subtly and you were like, ‘Hey turn that up, man.’

Dean: Listen, I’m-

John: And look at the little holster move, too.

Dean: I'm all for subtly, I just want a lot more of it.

[Laughter]

John: Oh no, Wil knocked it out of the park in this. Did you know that he had been doing a bunch of shows and people have come up and asked him to sign his autograph as this character?

Amy: As Chaos.

Dean: That's great.

John: Somebody came up with the anarchists cookbook and asked him to sign it as Chaos.

Dean: And I love that Sophie can’t use a computer.

[Laughter]

John: Utterly useless.

Dean: She just closes it.

John: Well Hardison’s taught Eliot- and the look to the swords. We had so much fun coming up with different props in the scenes. And this was at 2 o’clock in the morning fight fight fight, you win. Fight fight fight, you win. And just- cause they had to learn the routines and we were banging it out in three sizes at a time, it was great. Then we shot the bird.

Amy: So many looks.

John: And this- you could run the entire Parker/Apollo scene without dialogue and you'd know exactly what's going on.

Amy and Dean: Yeah.

John: Actually-

Dean: She's a little bit the Harpo. You know what I mean.

Amy: She's the Harpo.

John: She's the Harpo, he's Groucho in that scene, it's very subtle.

Amy: Is that Chase? Was that Chase walking towards the camera? It looked a little like Chase.

John: No, no. And this is, again, one of the rules, one of the hard rules of doing these shows. These shows are very hard, is that it can't be a random obstacle. Whatever is your obstacle heading into the third or fourth act must either be a product of the villains plan which you've already set in motion, or something that the team has screwed up or succeeded too well. And not screwed up too often cause that means they suck. So-

Amy: You make it sound like we did something good on purpose. That’s awesome.

John: Yeah, every now and then. And this is just- I want-

Dean: We almost didn’t do this.

John: We almost didn't do, but this is the punchline to the bit, that they're so locked into each other-

Dean: I'm so glad we did it.

John: Yeah. I actually was ready to bail on it, you were like, ‘Yeah, you know what? Let's make time.’ And the little look, and he gives them a bunch-

Dean: A bunch of crazy idiots.

John: Yeah, exactly. Now this is great, Nate’s totally lost in the need to win at this point.

Amy: Oh yeah.

Dean: I love Parker saying that, ‘The people in this line of work are unstable; we can use that.’

John: Yes.

Dean: Completely not realizing that she's in that line of work.

John: Tapping the pad look at that and look at the look Chris- that's another thing.

Amy: ‘I'm totally helping.’ That's it.

John: Gina gives a little smile which I missed the first time I saw this show.

Amy: There's a lot of little subtleties.

John: And again, second season, you start pairing up things differently. Chris and Gina found a nice rhythm for Sophie and Eliot this year that wasn't there first year, just in the pairings. And we wound up working; it was nice. And this is- yeah, she killed a guy with a mop.

Dean: I love Hardison's jealousy about Chaos, the whole ‘ugh.’

Amy: ‘Chaos.’

[Laughter]

John: Cause, you know, and it's a great thing of acting on Aldis’ part, you know he's beat him. You know that Chaos has beaten him a couple times. He's really- he’s not a pleasant loser, Hardison. And the nice little fist tap for the Kobayashi Maru.

Amy: Nice little knuckle bump, Parker.

John: Yup. Well that was another one of the little subtle things, that Parker has plainly sat down and watched like all nine Star Trek movies with Hardison because it was just something he did on a Saturday, you know?

[Laughter]

Amy: Well she wants to see, you know, what normal people do.

John: Yeah, Hardison's probably a bad example of that.

Amy: I don't think that's right- the right choice.

John: There's not- you know-

Amy: I gotta say, I love Tim in this scene.

John: Yeah. He’s really mad.

Dean: This one, out of all the cutting back and forth, this was the trickiest because it had to match rhythm, intensity-

Amy: And dialogue.

Dean: -and dialogue.

John: That's right.

Dean: This was really tricky.

John: Line by line. And that was the tricky bit, too. We had to give both of them the entire script for each one so they could know what they were doing to each other. I think- did Griffin come down the first day and watch Tim?

Dean: I actually think this was Griffin’s either first or second day on the show.

John: That's right. Tim came down to watch- yeah, so he would know what he had done physically. There's a parallel structure even with the team. This was a lot of fun. But this is one of those things that looks really elegant, but scripting, it's a little chimpy. It’s like, once you know what you're going to do, this wrote pretty easy.

Amy: Ok, yes, but I'm gonna go on record in saying that this is the best third act we've ever done in the history of Leverage. I just love it so much.

John: Well, you know what? Again, this is something you sorta learn. We- you know what? You learn how to write the show while you write the show. This is when we really where we realize you only need to do one thing an act. We so tried to buff all the people and, ‘Oh look, at the incredible plot twist’ like, you know what? They're fun characters, they're good characters, let them do one thing.

Dean: Yeah, it's fun to watch them do their thing.

John: One thing every act.

Dean: And I love how they all started to get pumped up for it. On both sides, they are gearing up for game day.

John: This is a great act break.

Amy: Nothing about that act I dont like. And I had very little to do with it.

John: This is easily- this is one of my favorite shows of the season. Of both seasons.

Amy: Mine too.

Dean: And beautifully photographed by our great cinematographer, Dave Connell.

John: That's right, because we were shooting parallel; we were shooting inside the museum and outside. You were outside running back and forth.

Dean: Very intense.

John: And this is a lot of fun. All the security guys were great. Portland once again gave us a great, great acting pool.

Amy: Go Portland!

John: And then this was a lot of fun, was setting up the snarky dialogue and Aldis and Wil basically sat and sweated in their vans-

Amy: Yeah.

John: -for 6 hours. Cause Aldis is always going, ‘Nobody knows what it's like to work in the van’. That van is hot. So he was very glad to have a playmate.

Amy: Aldis had like one full day of shooting in the van and nowhere else.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: I love the character Tim came up with here, that was great.

John: And Emily is actually the girl I went to prom with. That's where the name comes from.

Dean: Nice.

John: Yep.

Dean: Poor Emily.

John: Yeah I’m- hey!

[Laughter]

Amy: I said nothing. If you noticed, I stayed quiet and said nothing. I'm learning.

John: And Tim plays drunk, distracting guy an awful lot this season. This- and by the way, the security guard that talks him down is great, he's got a really great comedic beat. This, by the way, is a stunning sequence.

Dean and John: 10 millimeter lens.

Amy: 10 millimeter lens?

John: Down in the basement.

Dean: And look at this steadicam move - down the stairs!

Amy: Running down the stairs.

John: This is a guy walking!

Dean: And then whipping around, that is-

Amy: This is inhuman.

John: It really is.

Dean: For steadicam artists, they will understand how difficult that shot is.

John: By the way, I like the fact that we just locked Beth into the air conditioning system.

[Laughter]

John: ‘Are we gonna build one? No, there's one downstairs! Should we put Beth Riesgraf in moving machinery? If she's up for it.’

Amy: Not sure why we had to put the lock it, but that's ok.

John: It's a good look. And oh yes, it-

Dean: I think this is my favorite of all the air duct scenes, this is my favorite air duct scene.

Amy: This is actually-

John: Well like Two Horse- all of Two Horse where she was bitching while having to do it.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: This is also- we built the most complicated duct system on earth for this.

Dean: Talk about the bird, because you were there for this.

John: Oh yeah, I- we thought the bird would be CG, much like, we thought we’d be on a CG roof the series premiere, instead we wound up in Chicago 40 stories up. Dean went and found a bird-

[Laughter]

John: -a North American Kestrel. He said it would be easier to shoot a real bird that was trained, and so if you go on my blog you see pictures of the bird, but that's the last thing we did that night, so at 2 am we had this bird in a box, which was really beautiful.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And-

Amy: No birds were harmed in the making of this episode.

John: No birds were harmed. It was a really beautiful bird. But yeah, the trainer was hiding right off screen to summon the bird to get it to fly across.

Dean: This was actually one of the most difficult fight scenes we've ever shot, mainly because of the small space they were in.

John: How did you get the camera up there?

Dean: We literally locked it onto the ceiling and just let it run for the whole day. And then hoped we had good material.

John: Oh cool. That everybody would hit their marks.

Amy: She's so intense, I love it.

John: And the- him switching back over to Hebrew, this was a lot of fun. Oh and ‘now I’ve got the lasers.’

Amy: ‘No, now I’ve got the lasers!’

Dean: His arrogance was just awesome.

John: The two of them were fantastic.

Amy: He’s almost too good at it.

John: Big thanks to Derek, yet again, for building a great interface that lets the audience know exactly what’s going on.

Amy: Derek’s our graphics guy, he's amazing.

John: Does all our computer stuff. And our security guards, you know, somewhat oblivious, but good guys.

Dean: That's just the oldest gag in the world that I love.

Amy: It flickers only when they're not looking at it.

John: You know what it is, it’s the Abbott and Costello, it’s the candle on Dracula’s coffin.

[Laughter]

Dean: And I love that.

John: I love that reveal.

Dean: And he comes in dressed as, and named as, Nate Ford. I mean, that is just fabulous.

Amy: He's with the insurance company, what?

John: It is a great little, ‘Fuck you,’ from that character.

Dean: And Tim’s look at him for doing it, it’s just awesome.

John: But this was the fun of the fourth- and this was really hard when we were plotting. It's like ok, in the fourth act they have to be good, but they have to look like they’re losing. And they have to look like they're losing so bad you come into the fifth act not knowing if they won, and then we have to somehow pull it out.

Amy: Yeah. This, by the way, the scene with the two of them talking with the bird cage, was one of the first images that popped into my head when we were breaking this episode. I just love this.

John: But this duct tape- cause here's the thing, we have to shoot this direction and you have to shoot them crawling off these directions. This thing was huge, a human sized hamster trail. Took up an entire ball room for that one shot. Great fight scene, and we had talked about this, and this is a lot steamier and sexier than originally pitched.

Amy: It's literally steamy.

John: Dean was all over- like ‘I'm going to fight. I'm gonna shoot the steamiest fight scene that we've ever had.’

Dean: I thought it would be interesting to do a fight scene as a love scene.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And so the fight is actually foreplay.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: And a dance. It’s really like a dance sequence. We used to always say fights are like dances because of the movement and everything, but you know, you took that very literally and everything, which was great.

Dean: Now, by the way, we've done lasers in several episodes before.

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: These are the best lasers we ever did by far.

Amy: It's pretty cool.

John: Yeah, and having them move, that was the key. It's yet another example of something that you think will be really hard, actually turns out to be a little easier and way cooler.

Dean: And way cooler.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And again, kudos to the effects artists. If you look carefully, you can see the lasers reflecting in her pupils.

John: Reflecting in her eyes. I know, that’s sick.

Amy: That's really hot.

John: That was really great. This is a big ‘they are screwed’ act out.

Amy: Oh my god, look at that!

Dean: That is so cool.

Amy: Why did I not notice that before?

John: And wet people fighting.

[Laughter]

John: You know what? We give you everything on Leverage.

Dean: Little sex, little violence.

John: And it’s good.

Dean: And now we were able to take the hat off cause we were able to use the real scar on his forehead finally in the episode!

John: Also kinda cool, Kevin, our stunt coordinator, had them fighting in Israeli military style. That they were both- they had both sort of picked up- we always had Eliot kind of fight in that style, but the fact that that would be her training-

Dean: And I love that these two are standing next to Honest Abe.

[Laughter]

John: And that's a great entrance. She's really got-

Amy: ‘Oohhh.’

John: She's got 3 great entrances this year.

Amy: Yeah, she does.

John: One I'm not gonna talk about.

Amy: Cause you haven't seen it yet.

John: You haven’t seen it yet. But the Annie Croy entrance in the season opener was one of my favorite Gina bits, and then that.

Dean: Fabulous. Gina absolutely brought her A game this season.

John: And yup, this is our double just whipping through this.

Amy: That was me.

John: That was you? I forgot about that.

[Laughter]

Amy: It's a secret skill. I don’t like to talk about it.

John: And that's the thing, that was footage of the gymnast whipping through those maneuvers with Beth popping up. The special effects people had to put the lasers through those moves to coordinate with- you know, ordinarily, you build these shots incredibly carefully. It was like, ‘No, here's the footage. Make it work.’

Dean: I love this old school crank.

John: ‘Can't hack a classic.’

[Laughter]

Amy: More competence porn.

John: More competence porn. Hardison- the staff will tell you the first year we had Christmas together, I got them all wind up radios and flashlights.

Amy: Yes.

John: I'm a big believer in emergency preparedness for the apocalypse.

Amy: He cares! He cares about us.

John: You mock.

Amy: Wants us to live through the world ending.

John: Well, you know. I play a lot of Left 4 Dead. I want to make sure my crew’s ready.

Amy: Alright, cool.

Dean: I love that - Parker not quite good at acting yet.

John: No. This is key, Parker can't do a long con. She can maintain it for maybe 4-5 minutes before her inability to mimic humans breaks down. And there we go.

Amy: By the way, this episode totally screwed my- the way I do story telling now, because I'm thinking as the criminal all the time.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: Like, it's terrible. ‘How would I break into an auction house? Well to control the motion sensors-’

Dean: I love this beat right here.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Like, ‘Ahh, screw the fight.’

[Laughter]

John: Well he knows he's won by this point, so it's just really-

Dean: And she's so turned on by the fact that he did, cause no one else has ever beaten her.

John: Yeah, that was a lot of fun, was the idea that people- it's, again, you respect someone who’s competent. And the hand- yeah the little look after the handcuff-

Amy: Wow.

John: He actually looks a little scared there.

Amy: I know, I know.

John: He's like, ‘I got you! Oh wait, what did I get?’

Amy: ‘Is it over?’

John: This is nice.

Dean: In the original longer version, they originally kissed and then fell out of frame.

John: I missed that! I missed the fact that they banged out a quickie during the middle of the con.

Amy: Uh, no.

John: Alright, fine. By the way, Christian loves the badge on the chain. Anytime he can have the badge on a chain, he’s the happiest man alive. And Hardison-

Dean: A little bit of improv-ing by Aldis Hodge here.

Amy: Indeed.

John: Aldis- and again, this pops up in the next episode, Hardison always goes a little too far. He's never able to quite control the- he’s never able to get out without pushing it too far.

Amy: Are you saying that's going to catch up to him at some point?

John: That will catch up to him. The very next episode matter of fact. And yeah, this was a lot of fun driving police cars around Portland at six o’clock in the morning.

Amy: I'm sure no one was alarmed.

Dean: Now young filmmakers, that little move there is to get on the other side of the line.

Amy: Oh yes.

John: What was that?

Dean: So we- after we established them coming out of the building the camera slowly tracks over to the other shoulder on both sides, so now we're on the opposite side of the line and all of their looks have now reversed from the previous scene.

John: You and your looks.

[Laughter]

Dean: But this allowed us to now do our car gag, because we couldn’t really blow up a car in this location.

John: At two o’clock in the morning.

Dean: So we had to whip-pan off of a look to a parked car, then later we blew up a model car and replaced it.

Amy: We did two miniature explosions.

John: I love this reveal. I love this look. It’s like, ahhh, it's like Christmas.

Dean: Bingo.

John: Yeah.

Amy: Always knew you were evil, Wil Wheaton.

Dean: And now the evil speech of evil.

Amy: The evil speech of evil!

John: The evil speech of evil! A crucial part of the- well, this isn't really an evil speech of evil. The evil speech of evil is usually when they are-

Amy: Yeah, it’s the evil griping of evil.

John: The evil speech of evil is just: define your behavior. He's straight up monologuing here.

Dean: This is a little bit more of the, ‘I would’ve gotten away if it weren’t for you meddling kids.’

John: Yes, exactly.

Amy: Are you saying this is a Scooby Doo?

John: In the original version of this, he pulls off the Wil Wheaton mask only to reveal he's still Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

John: But he wears a Wil Wheaton mask. You know what? We should've called Wil for this.

Amy: Oh my god, why didn’t we do that? Now we gotta record it again.

John: I know. Maybe- You know what? We’ll do one on iTunes with him.

Amy: We'll do a special one.

John: And we may be playing Dungeons and Dragons while we actually do the commentary. This is great now. This is tough. And talk about- we had a couple different endings for this episode in this particular scene.

Amy: Yes.

John: Go ahead.

Amy: I don't remember them, I just remember there were multiple endings. [Laughs]

John: We actually, for a couple different versions of the outline, had him lose. Had Nate and the guys lose.

Amy: Oh, that’s right.

John: And then our team conned them about the painting. And the moral was basically our team kinda sitting around, pissed off they lost, but they were still a family while the other team broke up. And it just didn't feel-

Dean: Wasn't satisfying.

John: It was one of those good writer beats- and that's why Dean’s actually a very valuable producing partner, because he's all heart.

[Laughter]

John: Seriously man, he’s- and he’s, ‘I don't feel it.’

Amy: And we have none.

John: And we have none, because we’re writers and our blackened little hearts are shriveled away.

Amy: And our dark souls.

John: It's very easy when you're writing a con and heist show to get a little too clever for your own good.

Amy: It’s true.

John: And Dean’s a very good barometer on, ‘You know, do I really-? Am I gonna be happy with this?’ And you know, he’s right.

Dean: I like a little fromage.

Amy: Well what were the reasons-?

John: No, not fromage, but just, you know-

Amy: I think one of the reasons we were gonna have them losing was that this was gonna be episode three or four, and then we had the wild thought that we would bring the evil team back for episode seven.

John: Yes.

Amy: And sort of do, you know, ‘We lost the first one, but we won the second one.’

Dean: There's the recall of your Emily story.

John: Yes, that's right, the little go to the dance with. No it's- oh and that's great.

Dean: Again, that was Apollo who came up with that idea.

John: Yeah, that they're picking-

Dean: A lockpicking race.

John: And also Beth tossing the lockpick into the air and catching it? After a week with Apollo, she’d really gotten disgustingly good. I think they're actually picking there.

Amy: Well Apollo has gone on record as saying Beth can actually be a professional pickpocket if she wanted to.

John: She's got soft hands.

Dean: And this is, again, one of those scenes where Christian shows you how good he is at comedy. How subtle he is when he realizes she may be the person who actually shot him.

Amy: Look at that look!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah.

Amy: His eyes widen just like a millimeter, but-

John: Yeah. And that was an improv, I think. ‘Y’all nasty’. He's supposed to just look at it.

Amy: That’s awesome.

John: And Griffin doing the Nate Ford, ‘I'm an honest man’ speech here, incredibly uncomfortably!

Dean: Well, we always want the villain to suffer and this is how he suffers.

John: He’s just sweating it out.

Amy: He's getting more satisfaction out of watching Griffin Dunne lose than he is from getting the painting back to the clients.

John: Which is something wrong.

Amy: Yes, that's not right.

John: Sophie's actually the moral center of this scene.

Amy: This is the episode where they, in a way, sort of switch roles. She becomes the honest thief, and he becomes-

John: They were a lovely couple. God, these actors were nice.

Dean: Just amazing local actors.

John: No, this was a lot of fun. And then, again, giving him just enough rope to hang himself with. And making sure that he's pissed off enough to come back in season three.

Dean: The other part of this scene I like is, it really shows how far Sophie has come, that she’s actually not just doing this, she’s actually, really- she’s drank the kool aid by now. She really believes in what they're doing.

John: To a little bit more than Nate at this point.

Amy: Yeah.

John: Yeah. Which, you know, and that- we really took the, ‘You killed Sophie Deaveraux.’ And the funeral was a late addition; that wasn't in the first outline.

Dean: Yeah.

Amy: No, it wasn't. That was something that we added later.

John: Yeah it was.

Amy: But that was an element of knowing we were gonna lose Gina and trying to set up an awesome departure.

John: Yup. And that bomb thing wound up being really- Because originally- it was originally a sort of investigatory clue path and then when we lose Gina it's like, alright let's scare the audience a little here.

Dean: How did you come up with this bit of how they tracked-?

John: I think that was some geek bullshit I had in the notebook, I’m fairly sure. Whenever it’s some tiny minutiae of how phones work, it’s you know-

Amy: Good old GPS.

John: Yeah well, you know what? I think at the time there were some protests about the fact that you couldn't turn off the GPS tracking in your phone, and it was- they were talking about a lot in England you being able to do that, so that just kinda stuck.

Amy: Well I imagine all this would-

Dean: There's Chase!

Amy: See, yeah, there's Chase. I knew I saw him at some point.

John: Is this-? Yeah, here we go. All these great local actors.

Dean: And I love the security guard; this woman is fabulous.

Amy: So much personality, only a few lines.

John: And again, this is one of those things where you are trying to come up with a really clever way to screw him and then you suddenly realize, no, it’s just a box full of paintings; there's nothing really subtle about this. You’re just going to jail forever.

Dean: But in a way, this is what makes it work. ‘This is the real one.’

John: We had a couple of different notes, too.

Amy: He lost by winning. Cause what he wanted was the paintings, and we gave him the paintings, but that’s what did him over in the end.

John: Another rule: the villain must be brought down by their own sin.

Dean: Now this, for me, is my favorite scene for a number of reasons.

John: It’s a good scene.

Dean: First of all, just the lighting. We got this at the perfect time of day.

John: Yeah, how'd we get the lighting Dean?

[Laughter]

Dean: We accidentally went over that day and somehow went into-

Amy: Oh accidentally?

John: Oh did the director somehow go over in the morning, so we just happened to be shooting at the magic hour?

Dean: It was odd how that worked out.

Amy: Oh interesting.

Dean: That we just happened to be in magic hour to shoot the romantic scene.

Amy: That is so funny.

John: What I love is the fact that you’d never work again as a director for boning your producer that bad, except you’re the producer?

[Laughter]

John: No, this scene is stunning.

Dean: They both knocked it out of the park on this day. And for me, it's weird to say it because I directed the episode, but this is the best almost-kiss I’d ever seen before. And it's really the way they did it.

John: Yeah. This was another one where it was like, set up the cameras, let the actors work.

Dean: This was also a callback to what happened in the episode at the school, because-

Amy: Fairy Godparents.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Cause in the Fairy Godparents that she had never really been honest.

John: Exactly.

Dean: And here she realizes she doesn't know who she is anymore because she's been so many other people for so long.

Amy: She got dumped because she wasn't being truthful with her boyfriend, and she actually recited all the names of her aliases, and this is sort of the callback to her having to bury them in order to move on.

John: Yeah, she's more attached to fake people than real people and it’s caught up with her. And this is the moment where Sophie Deaveraux becomes a better human being than Nate Ford.

Dean: And that red coat was totally Gina.

John: That was Gina. That's right, she came in with that she and Nadine went hunting for that. This is a great almost kiss.

Dean: Ow! Ow!

John: This was an Italian over. This is- what's that terminology?

Dean: It’s a French over. Rather than being in the front of them, you're over their backs and then this walk away.

Amy: The Italian over is you're drinking wine while you’re doing it.

John: And this walkaway was fantastic with that light right there!

Amy: Through the trees! It's so pretty.

John: You knew what scene was good when we were shooting it because I was watching it on the monitor and I turned around and all the local PA’s were standing behind us watching the scene and two of the girls were crying.

Dean: Yeah. It was awesome.

John: You just really nailed it. And that was going to be the summer season ender, 207, and wound up being still a great send off for that character. And really one of the best episodes of the two years I gotta say.

Amy: Yup, it's one of my favorites for sure.

Dean: For me it's almost like the two part season finale of one, season one, done in one episode.

Amy: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: So thank you for watching.

John: Thank you for watching.

Amy: Thanks everybody!

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Eliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 7 #Season 2 Episode 7 #The Two Live Crew Job

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onyxbird · 2 years

Text

Some know only that much, and, when meeting the crew, many are prone to guess that the dainty blonde must be "Baby," and thus the glowering brunet must be "Parker."

The slightly better informed know that the Thief is "Parker" and the Hitter "Baby," but aren't 100% sure which is which.

#alec hardison #eliot spencer #leverage ot3 #leverage #leverage aus #the universal baby #except that it's become *only* for Eliot in this 'verse.#Hardison probably single-handedly shifts the use of endearments in the entire criminal underworld.#When you're a Hitter who's had your ass handed to you by a terrifying force of nature that you know only as ''Baby''#you're probably gonna want to call your loved ones something else.#(Yes that's really the central element of this AU which probably shouldn't be as amusing to me as it is.)

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ixalit · 4 years

Note

What are the main things you’ve shipped in the past?

Right now, I mainly just ship Stucky and Evanstan (and variations of these men like Chrisandy and Knifewood and Jefferson/Johnny - Jefferonny?). In the past, I’ve shipped a lot of things, but I’ll tell you the ones I’ve read the most fic about.

Wolfstar (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

Linny (Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley)

Drarry (Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

Destiel (Dean Winchester/Castile)

Cockles (Misha Collins/Jensen Ackles)

J2 (Jared Padalecki/Jensen Ackles)

Cartinelli (Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli)

Sterek (Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale)

Moried (Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid)

Johnlock (John Watson/Sherlock)

Leverage OT3 (Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer)

I still read fics about the Leverage OT3 and Moried from time to time

#as you can see i only tolerate het ships in the background #they get enough attention as it is #about me #asks

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sergeant-angels-trashcan · 3 years

Text

canNOT decide which version of “Harry Wilson actually already knows Kate Bishop, thanks anyway” i like more:

Harry was one of Derek Bishop’s attorneys and he’s actually the one who cut Kate off

variations on “Harry worked for Derek”

he calls her now that he’s a good guy to talk to her about her dad’s company, he’s thinking of seeing if Leverage will go after Derek next, and he asks her to meet up with him

at like, an abandoned warehouse or something super sketch like that

and Kate says sure, but she’s ALSO not stupid, so she calls David and asks if he’ll go with her

David Hardison says yeah, his babes are going to be in New York that week so he’ll be able to spend time with them!!

They meet in the super sketchy warehouse and Harry’s all “Hardison? What are you doing here?” and Hardison is all “why the hell are you calling my friend Kate,” and Kate’s all “David why the hell do you know my dad’s asshole lawyer”

a hiLARious misunderstanding

Harry finds out Kate is Hawkeye and he’s like. okay. okay. i need a minute. i need to find someplace to sit down. you’re saying you could have sniped me at any moment, i just, i need a minute

if this is KateQuinn then Quinn goes with her, OBVIOUSLY

and Eliot goes with Harry because Harry lets slip he’s meeting up with someone who probably doesn’t like him very much

Eliot and Quinn are both checking the perimeter and run into each other. they start fighting before they realize who they are

and then it’s lots of back slapping and “dude!”

Eliot rolls his eyes so hard when he finds out Harry is here to see Kate

if he’d been less secrety, they could have had this meeting somewhere with less water damage

harry has a lil crush on quinn

PERHAPS Kate goes to meet Harry, but this time she’s bringing her OWN lawyers, Matt and Foggy, who Harry ALSO knows

and he’s just like, fuck, fuck, i CANNOT catch a break

OR. Leverage is working an unrelated gig and Kate just happens to be at the party they are at to work the mark

Harry and Kate lock eyes and she. the look she gives him. it’s a MURDER look.

and harry’s just like shit shit shit. i think she knows i helped her dad put a hit on an avenger. how does she know.

Eliot intercepts her before she gets to Harry because Kate can legitimize the con and she’s helped them before

Kate realizing Harry is on the earbuds and straight up threatening him with murder when she’s done

MattKate version where they’re at the party and Matt can tell Harry has the earbud in and tells Kate it’s David’s team

Kate stalks up to Harry and says something to the effect of “say hi to david for me” and Eliot and Parker start freAKIng out because yay!!! kate!!!

they tell Harry what to say so Kate doesn’t deck him and ruin the con

at some point Eliot goes “i think Kate’s lawyer boyfriend is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen”

“the BLIND LAWYER?”

“it’s a very distinctive stance!”

Harry realizes he not only helped Derek put a hit on an avenger but also his own daughter and harry has a meltdown

they’re running the info on their next job, which is bishop publishing, and Kate walks in, sees Harry, LAUNCHES herself at him, and decks him

cut to harry with a bag of frozen peas against his face while Eliot tries not to laugh

Harry put together the prenup for Derek and wife #5 and went to the wedding. He had the good fortune to sit next to Kate who was guessing how long the marriage would last and how much everything cost like “these super ugly floral arrangements could have funded the meal programs in three schools”

kate kind of hates everything, so harry asks why she even came?

she wanted to glare at her dad the whole night. just enough to make him and the bride uncomfortable

“she’s my age. that’s very ew.”

“to be fair, she’s almost thirty, once you hit thirty age differences are less--”

“i know how old she is, we graduated high school together.”

“ah, yep. ew.”

the wedding was held at an art museum or something

kate: i know someone who stole this painting once.

harry: ha. ha. ok.

somehow convinced harry to steal some champagne and go into an off limits area to play beer pong with champagne

“i didn’t go to college right after high school, this is what college is like, yeah?”

“it is absolutely not”

he says something about her inheritance and she snorts. she’s not in the will.

harry thinks he could probably write her back into it and no one would know

he’s impressed she has her own business

she’s not impressed he works for her dad

he humblebrags about his daughter

kate: u know what would piss my dad off

harry: i do not.

kate:

harry: no. absolutely no. nope.

kate: :(

they keep running into each other

kate sneaks into her dad’s new year’s eve party (she was not invited)

she’s planning on stealing some data from him. like crime data

harry has no idea she wasn’t invited, he’s just like “thank fuck someone fun”

at midnight they do the “should we?” awkward shoulder bob thing and give each other a respectful lil smooch

people start to leave and Kate has to bounce before her dad notices her

Harry of course is all “i should walk you home or to a cab, it’s late, who knows what could happen”

which to Kate is the equivalent of a puppy barking at a vacuum

anyway at some point they probably make out

and then Kate realizes Harry’s a sketchy kind of lawyer and nopes out immediately

cut to a year later, Eliot’s telling the team that Hawkeye is going to be joining them on this job for some unspecified reason

everyone is mildly insulted at how surprised Harry is that they know an Avenger

Breanna is SO EXCITE. She temped for Kate one time and they accidentally blew up some dickbag’s bitcoin mining operation because he was stealing electricity from a poor neighborhood

to clarify, FINDING the guy was an accident, the explosion was planned

Alec had given them his “i’m very disappointed” face when he found out. apparently Kate is immune to that face

but the whole point of working with kate was to not do crime so alec was all “no more temp for you”

but basically everyone knows which Hawkeye Eliot is talking about and they’re all really excited and don’t worry, Harry, Hawkeye is cool

and in comes Kate

she and Harry see each other and freeze all YOU

and of course EVERyone in that room either knows how to read people or is being trained to read people so they’re all going oH WHAT. WHAT. SOMETHING HAPPENED WITH THE TWO OF YOU OH OHHHHH

“what are you doing here, sketchy-ass lawyer man?”

“it’s mr. sketchy ass lawyer man to you, and what do you mean what am i doing here, what are you doing here?”

“so i guess you two know each other,” Eliot says

“yeah???” goes kate “he’s one of my dad’s douchebag lawyers!”

“ex douchebag lawyer.”

eventually it gets to harry going “wait, I thought hawkeye was coming?” and all of the rest of leverage going “she’s Here!” and waving in Kate’s direction

Harry is quiet for a minute and then is like “i guess that’s why you laughed at me when i offered to walk you home on new year’s”

“i didn’t MEAN to laugh”

OR Harry represented Derek against Kate

OR Harry was originally Kate’s council as part of Derek Bishop’s team of lawyers, and then when Kate realized her dad was a criminal it became Harry’s job to make her go away and stop causing a ruckus so Kate’s only reason for agreeing to help is on the off chance she gets to punch him

harry comes in to meet their newest client and is all ???? the fuck is that vapid heiress doing here, how does someone like her warrant our help

and of course kate is like, tf is that asshole doing here, mr hey-derek-let’s-hide-some-of-your-money-offshore like THAT’s not super sus

at some point he sees her and eliot sparring and harry just. bluescreens. does not compute.

he never had to deal with kate personally but stories about her are legendary, she’s the WORST kind of young money. reckless spending. drinks like the world is going to end. will snort anything.

and here she is. an actual superhero. who apparently uses partying as a cover for vigilantism. and knows how to fool a breathalyzer into thinking she’s drunk when she’s not

he feels bad for whoever her legal council is now. imagine having to deal with that.

turns out he’s her legal council now. whoops.

someone points out that they’re all sort of vigilantes

and someone--either Parker or Kate--goes, “we’re not vigilantes, we’re a vigilanTEAM”

harry has the most profound moment of “were it not for the laws of this land i would have slaughtered you where you stand” he’s ever had in his life

#leverage #leverage redemption #kate bishop #hawkeye #young avengers #harry wilson #our mr. wilson #david alleyne #alec hardison #eliot spencer #mr. quinn #obsessed with this idea

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afraschatz · 5 years

Text

5 things I love about Leverage that isn’t The Team

Look. Everything about Leverage is brilliant. I think we can all agree on that. EVERYTHING. However, instead of talking about a random episode and the 10.000 things I love about it, and instead of writing yet another love declaration to the team, let me just do it a little differently in this post and write a love declaration to Leverage that does not feature the characters (well, mostly it doesn’t).

So, here are five things I LOVE about Leverage that aren’t Eliot, Hardison, Sophie, Nate, and Parker (who technically aren’t things anyway, so never mind):

1 - The music. I talked about this before, but I have to do it again. Listen. The music to this show is so iconic, so perfectly LEVERAGE from the very first episode on. It would have been so easy to make this a much darker show (seriously, aside from Hardison and his braces and his Nana, who of the team has a past that does not spell DARK in capital letters). One of the main reasons why that’s not the case is the music. It tells us ‘we’re here to entertain, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we know exactly how to read and create a mood, how to change things up from one second to the next’. And that goes for the main themes used in almost every episode - aside from the opening theme, there is, for instance, the “the con unfolds” theme and the “ooh, things get tight (but not really)” theme - as well as all the little variations, always perfectly setting the mood for whichever genre persiflage the show is going for this week . And last but not least, let’s not forget that this show didn’t just give us Christian Kane singing, it made an entire episode about Christian Kane singing. AND it gave us Hardison and Eliot jammin’ in Lucille.

2 - The wardrobe. Okay, I want to start this by saying that hands down the best costume is Parker’s Björk-Duck-costume (which it is). However, aside from that, one thing I so love about the show is that we once again get both: We get costumes carefully picked to fit the theme of the episode (whether that is posh Sophie in horse-riding gear in ‘The Two Horse Job’ or Nate’s horrible suits whenever he needs to be a sleazy lawyer or that time Eliot was convinced he not only had to wear a silk scarf to that fashion show but also eyeliner. And that time when Parker, Tara, and Sophie played “Charlie’s Angels” in ‘The girls night out Job’? Yeah.). And all those costumes are just such FUN because they are just slightly over the top, slightly too much, in that nudging-us-in-the-side-and-winking-at-us kind of way that always somehow reminds us that this is all make belief and not real. Aside from those con-related things, we get Nate’s hats and Hardison’s shirts, Sophie’s heels, Parker’s fondness of elastic fabrics, Eliot’s plaid. - All of them have a distinctive style, so perfectly reflecting their personalities. Just take Hardison and his combination of practical and comfy, of bright colours and blacks, of obviously expensive and whimsical, of super stylish and understated; seriously, I want to write an essay about Hardison’s SHIRTS alone. - And the best? It’s never commented on, it’s not necessary. It’s just another layer of awesomeness.

3 - The locations. Can I just remind everyone that we’re dealing with a TV show here? One that wasn’t produced by HBO (who apparently shit gold bricks)? And yet we get San Lorenzo and Hardison sucking air from a chair in a basement pool, we get airports and car chases, hospitals and ski lifts, Eliot galloping down the street and beating up people in a recording booth, we get an entire show set in the 70s, one set in the 40s, we get auction houses in London, chess tournaments in the middle East, graveyards and jungles and A FUCKING MOUNTAIN - need I go on?

4 - The camera work. Seriously. I watched every episode of Leverage at least 15 times (this is not an exaggeration btw. I mean that.). Two of those times? I was just watching for the camera porn. Like, I dare you. Watch ‘The Frame-Up Job’ just for that, just to see the camera fucking _dancing_ with Nate and Sophie all the time, and watch that back to back with ‘The Rundown-Job’ and its fast cuts, its close ups, its hard cuts and jump cuts. Watch Eliot coming clean to the team about his involvement with Moreau and watch it just for the camera angles. Watch how it is the camera and the cuts that make ‘The Rashomon Job’ work. Seriously, I dare you. Watch. Art, I tell you. (Also? Locked-up comedy frame.)

5 - The DVD commentary and the DVD extras. EVERY episode has one. And every episode’s commentary is worth listening to, not once but several times (believe me, I did). You learn so much about how the episodes came about, backstories alternative versions and connections to other episodes. And aside from that, they are just so entertaining and it seems like everyone had fun making them - so much fun, that repeatedly surprise guests such as sexual chocolate err Aldis come and join in, even though they clearly don’t have to. - And the DVD extras? Eliot fights a bear? The the-team-meets-the-Muppets pitch? The hand job? Beth being an entitled starlet?

So, when I say that I love everything about Leverage? I literally mean EVERYTHING.

#leverage #eliot spencer #alec hardison #nate ford #sophie deveraux #parker #things i love about

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