OT3 BAYBE

You know, in all the posts I've seen about how great Leverage is (which are the posts that got me to watch the show!) there's one part of it that doesn't really come up. They take down the bad guys, and that's really cool, and the characters are incredible, and that's also really cool.

What gets me the most though? Is the jobs where they make things better.

The jobs where they do still take down the bad guys, give them their due, stop the harm. But they also make things better.

Sometimes it's small things, like the Tap Out Job where the guy they help gets to run the boxing club going forward, keep his people safe. The checks they sometimes give at the end of an episode, with a suggestion of what to use it for, fall into this theme.

Slightly bigger, you get things like the Underground Job where the mine will have proper safety equipment now and an owner who will keep it that way. Or the Blue Line Job, which comes with a show of solidarity between the guys that fight each other on the ice - but not when it could kill one of them. Not once they know. And now they'll make sure no one faces that risk again.

On a personal level, there's the Carnival Job, where a father ends up connecting with his daughter again by the end.

And then there's the episode that got me thinking about this.

The Gimme A K Street Job.

For once, they're doing a (mostly) legal job. And the end goal is simple: get laws into place so teenage girls won't get hurt from the lack of safety regulations.

And they do it.

And going forward, no more teenage girls are going to break their bones because they landed on a mat that doesn't give anything except the illusion of protection.

Leverage is different from the typical crime solving show because of the robin hood angle, sure. But it's also different because every now and then, they don't just catch the bad guy. Every now and then, they make things better.

Very normal about how much I like this old guy

everyones fave thieves

Can you imagine how absolutely wild it must have been for Eliot's students in The French Connection Job? Like, you come to this overpriced class that you don't really care about and your teacher is a 5'5" angry wall of muscle who can spin a knife faster than you can see and tosses your phone in the water when you text during his class. But he only looks physically pained and moves on from the geek grinning over the laser so he's probably not gonna kill you? Probably?

He's a hardass, though, like the ultimate of hardasses and he has definitely killed before, so, you know, be careful.

But then you glue a unicorn horn ice cream cone to a plate and he physically crumbles like he cannot believe you are this stupid.

Oh and he and the geek definitely know each other. Only someone you care about could physically embarrass you that bad at your work. And the geek clearly knows something you don't because he will propose the stupidest ideas just to get Chef Scary Guy to growl in his face with a knife and stay grinning the entire time like he knows he's safe.

Okay, so maybe this chef's actually a marshmallow? Like a crusty one, but sometimes you'll do something right and his face will just light up with pride and you get this wave of relief. So maybe he's gruff for show and wouldn't actually hurt anyone.

Then opening night comes, and it's chaos, and at one point a guy walks in and without looking up Chef Scary Guy tells him to leave if he isn't gonna help. And almost faster than you can watch the guy is out cold on the ground and Chef is stepping over him shouting that he needs a medium steak and you don't have the time to process this cause it's the dinner rush. This happens two more times. There are three guys unconscious in the corner of the kitchen and the man who put them there is patting you on the shoulder and beaming with pride at how you roasted those veggies and just ...

Wild. Absolutely wild.

the second david job is so funny from maggie’s POV. her deeply suspicious date is wearing her ex husband’s button camera. parked like 10 feet away is a deeply suspicious black van. she opens the van door to her ex husband (moderately drunk), the sheikh’s son who sold the david (with a laptop that was clearly monitoring her conversation), a representative of the vatican (eating gummy bears & shrugging), and the hangar receptionist (also eating gummy bears, not bothered enough to shrug). all sitting crammed in the back of a van looking at her with wide eyes. and the best part is that maggie’s not mad at any of THEM, she doesn’t think that these random people (who she is evidently soon told are internationally wanted criminals) might have manipulated nate into this, or that nate’s gotten himself entangled in something by accident, no. she’s just like "nate what the fuck are you up to now". another day in the life of knowing nathan ford

it is so funny that leverage was like "alright this is the last season let's split up our main characters for two episodes and do slightly different genres than we usually do. we're gonna send nate and sophie on a charming little art theft slash murder mystery and send eliot and parker and hardison on an incredibly high stakes spy thriller. both episodes are gonna be SIMMERING with polyamorous sexual tension btw."

op: #tell me WHY do nate and sophie spend the entire frame up job flirting with sterling.....#how does rundown job manage to be that horny....

You're right and you should say it.

leverage is so funny cause they start out with like, really Sympathetic Pretty Victims for the people who love cop shows like “poor ceo just trying to make airplanes :(” and “patriotic war vet” and “priest” and then like a season later theyre like “anyway landlords are scum, all cops are bastards, have you considered that prison is an inherently racist and violent institution”

like episode 9 isn’t about any sort of mob boss or corrupt person doing secret Evil Crimes, its about how it’s entirely legal to screw poor people over with forclosures just to make a buck, and also includes a cop randomly showing up to do some light brutality against nate just to intimidate him. leverage really said “okay now that i’ve got you on board with how sexy heists are, lets talk about how fundamentally broken the system is and how the law isn’t remotely just”

God I love the episodes of Leverage that are like “yes Eliot is working class. yes he grew up surrounded by trades people and “menial” labourers. yes he knows so much about those jobs and will ALWAYS support those workers and their job choices.”

Because it’s something that really does set Eliot apart from the other characters. Like, Sophie is all about the finer things in life, and even if she did ever grow up poor or around labourers, she doesn’t exactly respect that life style. She’s all about getting away from that, if she ever was that lower class, which I don’t think she ever really was. Nate is Office Worker tm, just in vibes. That man has never seen a shovel. And while Parker and Hardison both went through the system, they’re both very city centric. And I mean, Parker has never once thought about real jobs or anything, ever. And Hardison definitely has a bit of a thing about age of the geek, and def starts out looking down on “menial” jobs.

But Eliot, throughout the entire show, is very much all about that. The mining episode in particular is such a favourite just because of the respect and care for these workers that Eliot shows. And I really like how different all of the leverage characters are, not just in skills but also in backgrounds, and how those backgrounds affect how they treat people. Eliot comes from a family of workers and a community of workers, and he holds those people in such high respect.

i think it’s fair to assume that hardison is always doing his best to keep the team safe by destroying any information on them, so i’d like to see him mess with government files over the course of years until they’re useless. especially interpol files… interpol files that sterling reads. and no one but sterling really knows enough about the team to realize that the files are wrong, and there’s no proof that they’ve been tampered with because, so his colleagues are like "maybe you’re just misremembering? doesn’t that seem more likely than interpol being hacked without a trace?". there’s no decent records but sterling KNOWS that everyone’s age is off by a decade, half the crimes they’re accused of never happened, and their pictures get more and more photoshopped over time. hardison would definitely sprinkle in silly anecdotes and doctor who references. it’s infuriating. one interpol file contains a coded message that turns out to say like "hi sterling, we still hate you and all, but please tell olivia we said happy birthday". obviously it’s gone from the file as soon as sterling cracks the code. if he tells his daughter that some old friends sent their best… well, he’s just trying to be a nice father.

The Sandwich Saga

+ Bonus :

I just really like thinking about Eliot and food as a way of showing love.

Nate’s hungover and exhausted and he hadn’t paid attention to why Eliot stuck around for a while last night after it was clear to the others that Nate would be continuing the night alone, but it makes sense now when he shuffles into the kitchen to find slow-cooked oatmeal in the crockpot, blueberries and banana and honey and almonds on the side, and a note that reads Client meeting moved to 11. Eat all of this in Eliot’s hard scrawl.

Sophie idly says, ‘I think I might try going vegan,’ and don’t think she doesn’t see them all roll their eyes. And all right, it wouldn’t be the first time she proposed a lifestyle change only to later decide it isn’t for her, and she knows they’re all thinking of the time she persuaded them to do 6AM yoga and then didn’t turn up, as if that’s the point—she learned something about herself, namely that she’s absolutely not a morning person. But soon the kitchen’s stocked with plant milks and pulses and every vegetable imaginable and Sophie does not go vegan but Eliot’s chickpea and tofu hash remains one of her very favourite meals.

Hardison’s not totally surprised to see that the recent search history on the laptop he leaves around for the team’s casual use includes How to set up a kosher kitchen and Best Jewish recipe books and Gelatin-free gummy frogs. He’s only offhandedly mentioned his desire to learn more about his Jewish heritage, and gently reminds Eliot of that when he next sees him. Y’know, not that he doesn’t appreciate the thought, but Eliot doesn’t have to be changing the whole kitchen on Hardison’s account. Not yet, anyway.

Eliot looks a little flustered. ‘Listen, I—I wasn’t tryna pressure you, or anything.’

‘I didn’t think you were,’ Hardison says, ‘but I think I’m gonna take this kinda slow, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ Eliot says. ‘Yeah, of course. Just. If you do decide to make any changes. Didn’t want you to have to wait.’

Eliot looks so giddy—or as close to giddy as he gets—when he tells Parker he has to show her something that she automatically turns to head upstairs to the roof.

‘Are we not jumping off the building?’ she asks, when he catches her wrist, both of them equally confused.

But it’s a baking thing, which she’ll admit makes more sense for Eliot, and she lets him drag her to the kitchen where he presents her with a frosted layer cake and a fork. And she loves cake, but Eliot bakes cake all the time, and she’s not sure why he’s so excited about this one, and about sharing it with her specifically, until she tastes it.

‘Is that—’ she starts, trying to place the flavour, and he nods, delighted.

‘Cereal milk, yeah. You like it?’

And Parker likes it so much she gives him a very rare hug and decides to not take revenge if she finds he used her cereal to make it. (He didn’t.)

And over time they all learn how to speak Eliot’s love language back to him. Not by cooking, that’d be a disaster, but Eliot finds the staples he needs at Nate’s place in Boston never run low even though he’s pretty sure what Nate counts as staples are salt and maybe pepper at a push. Sophie presents him with a rare first edition of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management with a wry smile and a ‘Don’t ask.’ Every base Hardison sets up has a state-of-the-art kitchen, and there’s always a place to buy organic, local produce a stone’s throw from their front door. And on a job in New York, Parker takes him on a detour to an East Village bakery so they can try some original cereal milk confections, and loudly proclaims them not as good as Eliot’s while he hisses at her to keep her voice down and tries and fails not to smile.

little crew moments (1/∞) | eliot & sophie in the experimental job

i think part of why moreau is so scary in the pool scene is because like...we know eliot can grift? and we've seen how he usually plays this kind of thing. goofy, charming, power negative. he has tools. he has skills. we know he's good at it.

but then we get to the pool, and moreau's outwardly pretty friendly and casual and visibly trying to build some bridges here, and eliot just gives him.... nothing. just absolutely nothing.

"whose snoopy lunchbox do i have" nothing. absolutely nothing.

moreau's sitting here saying you work alone you prefer beer i know you i know you and eliot gives him nothing!!! moreau's a mark saying "here's what i want from you, here's what you can give me for this to go smoothly, i want to talk to you i want to have this conversation" and eliot's just blank.

if sophie or nate or whoever were here, they'd absolutely be trying to match his energy, trying to go along with this. hardison does a little bit at first, nervously smiling, trying to be casual about it (after moreau's like, hey, don't take this personally, it takes me a while to open up to people ;) )

but eliot is a brick fucking wall. if this were any other mark, eliot'd be picking up on every single little opening tossed his way and using it. but he doesn't. moreau's trying really, visibly hard to remind him of this shared Something and eliot's just standing there with his arms crossed sticking to his script and his monotone

reminds me of belgrade!!! hey remember this shared experience we have! i know you i know you i know you! the deal's over and eliot's still just. not engaging even a little bit.

i know i keep saying that moreau's not scary because of what he does, but because of how other people act around him, but. hhhhhhhh