#or maybe i just thought Mal and Wash were hot? can't tell

[churchofthecomet]

I haven't watched Leverage in a while, see my last complaint post about their Stuxnet episode. But in the meantime I've been consuming other media, and it just struck me how equal the dynamic is between all of the Leverage characters.

Every character in this show is competent. They each have Their Thing that They Do, and if one of them is absent for an episode, the rest of the team suffers until they get back. I complain about them short-changing Hardison by making the tech stuff unrealistic and incomprehensible (so you can't get a feel for how good he is at it, like you can with Eliot punching people -- although if I knew more about fighting I'm sure I'd be complaining about Eliot's scenes too). But at least within the narrative he is really good at his job, and the other team members know it. Likewise for Eliot, Parker, Nate, and Sophie -- they're each at the top of their respective classes. They have separate specialties and they're amazing at those specialties.

And what's more, the interpersonal dynamics reflect this. Nate is an asshole to the rest of them, but there are FOUR OF THEM so it balances him out -- they can commiserate with each other, sit him down and have a talk with him, threaten to strike, whatever, and their side of the relationship is treated with importance because the team couldn't function without them.

Hardison and Eliot's sniping is just friendly banter, and they know it. Everyone is so supportive of Parker's social problems. Sophie is the one with the most traditionally-feminine skillset, something which might be demeaned in another show (and I have some complaints with Leverage's treatment of her), but she's taken seriously both in-universe and by the show itself. They all work wonderfully together. They balance each other out, and they become more than the sum of their parts.

Contrast this with the dynamics in a bunch of other modern media. Let's grab my favorite punching bag of late, BBC Sherlock. Sherlock is far and away the more useful member of the Sherlock-and-John team. The narrative places incredible weight on his intelligence, and John is stuck in a support role. Sherlock is also mean to John, and since John is one person (without much of a spine for standing up to Sherlock!) it feels utterly abusive. The "friendly banter" isn't banter. The "aww look they really DO care about each other" moments were enough for me when I was 13 or 14, but now it just feels like a cycle of abuse. The dynamic is fundamentally not equal. If I'm watching a TV show and I start to think "man character A really needs like 6 months of therapy to stop hating themself and they NEED to leave character B," when the show's message is "character A and character B are a match made in heaven you guys," the show has failed.

See also Our Flag Means Death season 2 with the relationship between... honestly Ed and the rest of the crew, but mostly Ed and Stede. Ed is the best pirate anyone's ever seen -- the rest of them are pretty good but no match for him. The one guy who had a chance of standing up to Ed and equalizing things got killed off at the end of the season, and Stede (as we've seen) lacks a spine to stand up to Ed. Controversial take but Good Omens might be heading in this direction? They defanged Aziraphale and made him into way more of a softie than the book or Season 1 imply. Meanwhile Crowley is Competent and Right About Everything by comparison. The general pattern here is that couples (or whatever the fuck was going on with BBC Sherlock and John) are worse off. I don't know if it's lasting heteronormativity or "two-person dynamics are hard," but the urge to make sunshine-and-stormcloud pairings where the stormcloud acts like shit towards the sunshine is just... too strong.

Leverage is this rare show that refuses to shit on any of its protagonists. Everyone's in the loop, everyone sees some character development, and it fucking RULES. I wish they could make more TV shows like this in 2024.

#leverage #ofmd critical #bbc sherlock critical #good omens critical #(only slightly) #found families #i need leverage but with like even better politics pleaseeee #i think Firefly is also good at this #or maybe i just thought Mal and Wash were hot? can't tell #i should go rewatch it