i was excited to go to bed early but now i’m just lying awake desperately trying to reconcile the conflicting moral stances of different episodes into a coherent idea of what constitutes a “good guy.”

yeah im gonna be here a while

honestly i don’t think “good guys don’t kill people” was actually a rule until season 3, when they realized they needed a clearer moral line to help sell the conflict with moreau

oh interesting.

last rewatch I think I felt it was murkier than that. eliot's implied to still kill people beyond s3 (the catching-up with vance we see in 5.1 must have had a body count) but maybe that falls under him doing what the rest of the team can't, and not quite holding himself to the same standards - especially not to nate's. and we do see flashback sophie poisoning a dude in the rashomon job (s3), but maybe that falls under the general convention that Medical Situations (especially concussions) are much less dangerous in the show than real life. maybe it was just that it was indirect, and she expected him to probably survive.

(maybe, since neither were doing leverage work at the time, it just doesn't count.)

I think I always assumed it was about intent. not just about what they're doing, but about how they go about what they're doing. the big bang job isn't just that eliot kills: it's that he picks up a gun expecting and planning to, far more easily than, perhaps, a person should be able to. those people were dead the moment he stepped out to meet them with that plan in his mind. (and arguably, he'd already killed the guy he took the gun from, though I'm told that neck grabs can be disturbingly crunchy without necessarily being fatal.) the job with vance? more a case of collateral damage for a "worthy" cause.

but I kind of feel that canon left this messier (in an unacknowledged way) than a good story should be - fanon takes on eliot's situation, at least, seem a bit more coherent to me than what we might actually have in canon. but perhaps he, more than the others, simply isn't capable of being a Good Man anymore.

(apologies for the focus on eliot here, but in a discussion of the team's morality and killing people, he sure does spring to mind!)

The Eliot Spencer Details Masterpost

I have been recording details about our beloved Eliot Spencer on my latest watch through. And now, it's finally time to reveal the details!! If I have gotten any details INCORRECT, I beg of you to correct me, at which time, this post will be updated and credit given. (Note: S1 was aired out of chronological order. I am going by chronological episode numbers - aka the correct order - and providing the episode titles as well to minimise confusion.) !! This post contains details from Leverage: Redemption! Read the episode references carefully if you are wanting to avoid certain spoilers !!

Shirtless Moments

Necklaces

Dammit Hardison

this is a treasure trove, OP, thanks for sharing!

not a correction, just an addition if anyone wants it: Eliot has a pendant in S4 E18 The Last Dam Job that seems to be a bird with a long, thin beak. it's only visible for a few seconds but I was able to get a decent quality screenshot this time at least.

a thought that's brought me great joy the past few days: eliot getting teased in the group text by means of videos of wolves being extremely soppy

also, when he naps around the others - and if anyone else is as invested as I am in eliot x naps, have a fic rec - it's gifs of sleeping bears.

the thing about eliot spencer as a character, right. the thing about him.

(and as always your mileage may vary on my analyses so if we disagree that's cool actually)

is that he is in fact a slightly emotionally constipated idiot who is occasionally sensitive about his perceived masculinity and gets defensive about emotional intimacy around other men (largely hardison, who's much more comfortable expressing affection and embracing a softer kind of masculinity), but eliot displays enough emotional awareness and sensitivity and respect for women etc etc that anyone who's been subjected to that era of television will put on rose-tinted glasses without even looking twice.

(and he is, don't get me wrong, incredibly emotionally aware for a professionally punchy guy with enough trauma to sink the titanic. it still startles me to see.)

on top of which we have the layers and the accessories and the excellent hair with the secret braids and the way he barely has an ego and he's good with kids and protective of his team without taking it too far and some of us never stood a fucking chance.

@werewolfsmile hey. good tags:

#eliot is not immune to the culture of the environments he's been in #like the military and crime syndicates etc etc #and i find it so interesting that he's the character pushing for emotional growth from others right from the start #(see the end of the nigerian job)

#it's like he knows he's doomed #cursed for all he's done and the blood on his hands #but it's not too late for nate #or sophie or parker or hardison #he can push them and stretch them and help them grow into better versions of themselves #and when they do grow it's like a quiet relief for him #he'll never achieve the peace that they are reaching nor does he deserve it #but he gets to see it in his family and that's enough

#until one day he realises that he's been changing and growing too #and his family view him as worthy of redemption. of forgiveness. #and that's not who he is he made his peace with that fate along time ago he knows he's cursed #but #for the first time in a long time #he wants to see himself the way his family sees him #and so eliot starts the journey of learning to forgive himself

your name is nathan ford, the angel on your right shoulder is telling you you don't need rehab, and the angel on your left is telling you you need revenge <3

actually I've placed it now and this is exactly the kind of smile eliot uses when baiting people into attacking him. it's his "I'm gonna have a good time being a bad man" smile, we just don't really see it outside the context of imminent violence, which is why it startled me here, and which is why it's so good.

it's "let's go get you some vengeance." it's "I know what you need to feel whole again and it's to go whale on the person who hurt you." it's "you're gonna have a good time being a bad man and I'm gonna have a good time being a part of it."

("screw therapy, that felt really good," as maggie put it later.)

just spent too long trying to figure out who played mystery moreau hitter guy. there's an "airport traveller", uncredited, played by Ryan Noël who has a whole bunch of photos looking friendly and harmless and a demo reel that ditto, and a Joshua St. James who's credited as "Curtis", a name that doesn't appear in the transcript and thus probably the episode, which seemed promising up until I tracked him down to this (he had two bad imdb photos) and realised his nose and eyebrows were wrong.

also the hair, for both of them. it seems unlikely they'd have bothered with a pretty damn good wig for this role.

I am, I should admit, A Little Bad at faces, so at this point & on the basis that my investigative skills end at imdb, I'm giving up. though this has driven home that mystery moreau hitter guy has a very nice nose & eyebrows.

(just sharing my notes in case anyone else was inclined to go down this rabbithole.)

responding a year (and a half) late because it's been that kind of year (and a half) but thank you you were entirely right

I think the leverage commentary transcripts blog hadn't been updated to that point when this was posted, but it has now, so I went to have a look. the actor is indeed married to Kari Wuhrer and can be seen recognisable and smiling on his imdb, which is very strange! and the sniper character is referred to as "The Frenchman" by a few folks.

the really batshit thing, though? he's not credited as an actor for anything, but is listed as co-producer for Leverage seasons 4 and 5.

so there we go! I felt a little bad leaving this mystery unanswered, so thank you again @defiantly-whole, I'm very glad I can put this to rest.

Leverage 2x11 - "The Bottle Job"

Never really thought about it before, but it's kind of hilarious that Parker is the only one of the three whose emergency fund is not destructive to access. Parker, who is often cheerfully in favor of destruction and/or bodily harm while the others balk at her suggestions (or at least her enthusiasm for them), who is often portrayed as the most paranoid about relying on other people or letting them into her personal life, is the one who simply keeps her cash in open boxes of cereal left on the shelf where any of the team could grab them. Meanwhile the boys whip put knives and start slicing furnishings open, and it's Parker going "WTF??? Why are you cutting into our stuff?"

I find it sweet that she doesn't actually comment until hardison takes a knife to the painting - it could be that she doesn't see what eliot's doing, but furniture is kind of boring and replaceable. old nate? hardison painted that. that's important - to her, and to the team. it makes it a nice moment!

I also like that parker's method, while not destructive exactly, still involves making a mess. mostly because there's a specific genre of character where "willing and happy to make a mess in other people's spaces" is a sign of trust. your (plural) mileage may vary on whether that applies here.

someone explain quinn to me. there are three characters in leverage called quinn and somehow one of them has been elavated to major character status by half the fandom. why. i'm not judging i just want an explanation.

This is a really freakin' good question, lol <3

oh, FUN question - and good answer!

all true all factual. also some of us just think he's a funny little guy :3

Hello!

Back with another reason that i had forgotten about:

I don't know how I missed this addition and I don't know why I'm adding even more when this is already a delightful mess of good points and fun posts <3

five times quinn pretended to be a birdwatcher on the job and one time it had to be eliot

#'it's a very distinctive chirp' [via @vickyvicarious]

thinking about how the one time eliot masterminds something, it's because the circumstances are dire and we don't actually see it happen; how he says he plays chess and nate believes him but we don't ever see it or hear about it again; how we don't even see his most basic fighting skills until they're needed and he has to drop the cerebral and nonthreatening grift he was using in front of the team. and I don't know what to think except that in some ways he's just as secretive as parker is, we just don't see it because on top of that he's this very believable gruff-but-sorta-amiable person who meets up with his vet buddies and goes on dates and cooks for his team.

#leverage#eliot spencer#with parker we see the warehouse and the multiple addresses and it's all shown to us in a way to draw attention to her caution#and how much she trusts the team regardless by letting sophie figure out the combination#and we have to assume that eliot has safehouses too but the show never even flirts with the idea of showing us.#he's secretive in a way the story allows and glosses over.#the difference between him and parker is that he pretends hard to be normal and she either can't or doesn't.#once again reminded of the ship dynamic 'there is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me.'#like. I sort of love that we don't see eliot's discussion of the kidnapping. what he figured out and how they'll handle it etc.#because just like in the pilot it's including the viewers in his grift#and this time it's the grift he resorts to most around people who know his job#the one that says he's violent and simple and not especially bright. the one that leads people to underestimate him.#power negativity applied in the best way for a hitter's career.#it's a grift we see multiple times and we're only barely shown the edges of it.#I would still kind of love to see more. because once again#it is fascinating to me that you can watch the entire damn show and still believe the grift of it.

(tags by OP)

Does anyone have any idea on why someone like Elliot Spencer would agree to work for a man like Damien Moreau?

If you see his motivation to enlist, his relationship with Aimee Martin from before he left, his behaviour towards the abused kid in The Order 23 Job, it doesn't look like he'd even get involved with much less do the kind of stuff he did for Moreau.

Money doesn't seem a likely reason. Eliot is not an idiot, no way he wasn't aware Moreau's a bad guy...

so… I have an answer, though it's from a very specific direction. The thing is I got incredibly invested in Leverage in general and Eliot specifically, and then I took an online course on trauma that had a section on moral injury, and about half the time I was taking notes, my brain was buzzing with how this could apply to Eliot and make sense of these kinds of questions.

(disclaimer that I'm not a professional, I'm doubtless missing the foundations that folks were meant to have to understand this stuff fully, but this is for fandom and for fun and it makes sense to me, so. Just please don't read if it's not gonna be fun for you.)

thinking, in the vein of quinn being a figurative stray cat who eliot and the team adopt, in the vein of some sort of neurodiverse quinn (and off the back of watching this sort-of-spoken-word-poem, sort-of-personal-update again), about him checking in ten times in one month and then not at all for two months after.

the way the team quietly brace for the worst the first time, and eliot at least has a bit of an idea by then that this is just a quinn thing, but it's still not easy. (nothing about being friends with someone in their line of work is easy.)

thinking about almost a year in, quinn chilling with hardison while hardison talks games at him a bit and quinn's half just adjusting to being around people again, people who like him, people who he can be himself around, more or less. thinking about alec gently broaching the topic of leaving a tracker in quinn's shoe, a program on his phone, an earpiece in his pocket. something to quietly let them all know that quinn's alive and doing his own thing. something quinn can use to call in help if he needs it.

thinking about quinn not saying yes that time. not yet. trusting that they won't betray him is one thing; trusting that they'll always want him to come back is another.

it takes another eight months. eight months, and calling in eliot for an assist once, and being so on edge when eliot brings parker (getaway driver, never really in danger, hardison on the phone and watching the camera feeds from their base) that eliot has to shove him into the car, injuries and all, to get him to come with them.

it's not any big thing that decides him. it's a little bit that they're firm about not letting him work alone until he's fully healed up. it's a little bit the way eliot glares at him and pushes plates of actual food at him, adjusting the recipes until quinn likes them. it's a little bit the way parker just sits with him when he's feeling it, invites him up to the roof with a tilt of her head, the way he knows she's a bit like that too.

it's a little bit that they already gave him the key. it's a physical reminder, a small shape in a hidden pocket in his duffel bag that he can reach out and press between his fingers and know the invitation's there.

maybe he can't quite admit to himself yet that he'd rather work with the team than solo. maybe he hasn't made that decision yet. maybe he can't trust them yet, not in his heart, and he's still working on a more deliberate trust when he makes his decisions. but he can go find hardison, keep his face composed so it's easier, and agree to what he suggested before.

he can do that, at least.

#ohhhhhhh #thinking about this again

#WARNING: angsty ramblings in the tags with characters discussing character death (NO actual character death depicted) forthcoming: #filler line for people who don't want to see that. also wolves if this is not welcome please let me know and i'll delete!

#anyway: what if the first time they put a tracker on him it gets removed the next time he gets captured #'cuz it's emitting a signal and most half-way competent thugs these days know to scan for that

#and that's okay. it's normal. right? he's been in this position before #he's used to there being nobody looking for him and now. there may be someone Looking for him #but they won't be able to Find him and that's not so different really

#anyway he gets himself out and he keeps going as he's always done in the past #but suddenly it IS different: there was a moment when he was genuinely not sure he'd be able to make it out

#and that's ALSO something he's used to! in their line of work you never know which job may be your last! #but this time. this time. in that moment he was... something. something almost like worried. almost like scared #not of dying. not even of dying alone. everyone dies alone anyway #but maybe of dying alone and never being found by the people he's learned over the years would be sure to be looking for him

#it takes him a while to realize he's upset about this situation and even longer to realize why #in the end hardison is floored when quinn asks him if he can put a tracker in him that would only activate when quinn dies

#(hardison knows that quinn is not sentimental about things like what happens to his body after he dies.#that this is about quinn understanding how the rest of them would feel about never finding his body or finding out what happened to him)

[via @trivalentlinks]

hey. HEY. get back here—

someone explain quinn to me. there are three characters in leverage called quinn and somehow one of them has been elavated to major character status by half the fandom. why. i'm not judging i just want an explanation.

This is a really freakin' good question, lol <3

oh, FUN question - and good answer!

OK, turns out I'm not done way overanalyzing the hospital scene from "The Nigerian Job." But in the interests of not continuing to spam the poor stranger who touched off that conversation, I'll dump the new overanalysis into its own post. @trivalentlinks @wolves-in-the-world

As I've been thinking about this, I'm just fascinated by what the setup seems to imply about their choices here:

1. Nate and Hardison are both handcuffed to hospital beds--Nate unconscious, Hardison apparently only still on the bed because he doesn't know how get himself out of handcuffs.

2. Parker is free of her cuffs and pacing. (She gets handcuffed to the bed after feigning nausea to lure the doctors in.) Her dialog implies she has already formulated a plan for getting at least herself out (that will be ruined if Eliot kills someone).

3. Eliot is sitting in a chair, handcuffed to the arm. Going off of other Hollywood hospital scenes, I assume Eliot being in a chair reflects both being very minimally injured and some off-screen grifting on his part. He'd want to be cuffed to the relatively light-and-compact chair instead of a bed, since he could maneuver and fight without necessarily having to get the cuffs off first, which would be consistent with his assertion that "I can take these cops"--he's got an escape plan, too.

The dialog also indicates that 1) they have been in the hospital with Nate unconscious for at least 20 minutes (because that's how long ago they were fingerprinted) and 2) everyone else has been conscious since before getting brought to the hospital (Parker: "Cops and firemen got there just as we were waking up.").

So, all three of them sat there for at least 20 minutes waiting for Nate to wake up, knowing their time before their identities were uncovered was ticking away, and none of them just ditched the others and left.

<3 to clarify (since I don't think you quite said what this implies about the sarcasm/sincerity of 'honest man'), have you come around to thinking it's sincere, at the same time that I came around to your pov of thinking it's at least partially sarcastic (sarcastic on Eliot's part, sincere on Parker's)? That's pretty funny if true.

Also, another point in favour of at least Parker and Hardison believing that Nate is an honest man is that at the reveal at the end of The Scheherazade Job, both of them, at least to my reading, seem genuinely shocked that Nate would non-consensually hypnotise Hardison, in a way that nobody was shocked when Sterling drugged Eliot in Queen's Gambit, or even when Sophie did that NLP thing on Eliot in the Reunion Job.

Of course this is more than two seasons later, when their perspectives have probably changed, but I do think that at the beginning, Parker and Hardison believe, if only because they have to reason to believe otherwise, that Nate is honest*.

*side note, it's not entirely clear what 'honest' even means in this show; I understand honest not to mean 'tells the truth', and it certainly doesn't mean 'on the right/good side'--more like a sense of generally believing in justice even when it's not in their own personal best interests, and not willing to completely screw over someone innocent?

After all, I would expect that the team believes Bonanno and the blonde detective from the Experimental job to be honest even though they are cops (not generally the good guys in Leverage universe!) and also are clearly willing to bend the truth on occasion.

Similarly for Steve Reynolds (the guy played by Christian Kane in the D.B. Cooper job) and Agent McSweeten's dad, assuming he knew who Reynolds actually was, since that is left unclear. Both cops who have jobs maintaining order, both willing not to be entirely truthful, but both would probably be perceived as honest.

Similarly, while the vast majority of wealthy executives throughout the show are depicted as definitely not honest, Pierson (Dubenich's rival at Pierson Aviation, also presumably a wealthy executive) is someone I expect the characters to perceive as honest, at least based on his on-screen actions?

Also Mr. Price, CEO of Lillian Foods (The Top Hat Job), is kind of a comedy character (knocked around in the magic box) and a bit of an asshole boss who doesn't know his employees at all ("he likes coffee"// "that's all you have? coffee?"), but seems to at least be honest in that the client was correct in her prediction that he would support pulling the entire frozen foods line and firing Erik Casten upon finding out that the frozen foods were causing people to get very sick.

On the criminal side, I expect probably everyone on the team would consider pre-canon Hardison to be honest, except maybe early season 1 Nate (who is still adjusting from being the bad guy himself). I think Josie (the car thief girl from the Boost Job) would probably be considered 'honest', even though she was an aspiring car thief and also kinda sold Parker out, though not quite intentionally

oops, this footnote is way longer than my post and also i'm not sure i quite have a point here, just there are layers to this question

@wolves-in-the-world in case you are still following this discussion

Ah, yes, the "Wow, the writers went out of their way to have these supposed loners wait for Nate" was an overanalysis tangent unrelated to the question of honesty. 😉 I do still believe that Eliot's "Of course. You're an honest man" was thoroughly sarcastic, but you raise a very relevant point about what constitutes "honest" here.

In this episode, I think "honest man" is being used to mean "not a 'real' criminal" or more precisely "working for (supposed) 'noble' motives unlike common criminals out for their own gain," and I think that may be exactly what Eliot was being sarcastic about.

That meaning was how Dubenich uses it--he wants an "honest man" to oversee the crime he's arranging to make sure those unscrupulous "real" criminals don't screw him over. He makes himself out to be the innocent victim of theft and sells Nate on the job by framing it as justice against both Pierson and IYS rather than "real" crime. That's also how Nate uses his insistence that he's "not a thief" up until The Maltese Falcon Job despite committing crimes (including theft) right and left. It's not about being truthful or trustworthy (and definitely not about being law-abiding), but about an "honest man" being nebulously "better" than people like Parker, Eliot, Hardison, and Sophie who are assumed to have gotten into crime for profit and/or glory.

Oh, that is a very interesting point. It had not occurred to me that the team is using Dubenich's definition of honesty here. In that sense, yeah, I can see Eliot as being entirely sarcastic here, and he probably thinks Parker wouldn't genuinely believe Nate to be 'honest' (in Dubenich's sense) either.

(I was understanding 'honest' completely differently: Dubenich's definition would probably consider pre-canon, still-working-for-IYS Nate to be 'honest', even though he obviously wasn't being honest, at least to himself, when he was working for an evil corporation and forcing himself not to ask too many questions/think too hard about the victims. So that kinda flips my argument in the other post on its head.)

Interestingly, I like how Eliot forces Nate to be honest about not being 'honest' before he agrees to work with him:

Eliot: What’s in it for you?

Nate: He used my son.

There, I believe Nate is being totally honest (truthful) about the fact that he's doing this primarily for selfish motives and not any 'noble' reasons, i.e. he's not any more 'honest' than the rest of them, and this is the point where Eliot's actually on board.

oh now that's a cool point - I like the idea that as parker was hired as a Thief, as hardison was hired as a Hacker, nate was explicitly hired as an Honest Man (tm) to keep the others in line. to prevent any crime that wasn't specifically ordered by dubenich. eliot's sarcasm almost suggests that he knows or has guessed that, and yeah, is a very appropriate response to nate's initial "no, see, my crimes are justified and thus not actual crimes" attitude.

snipping out for emphatic agreement:

I like that he had to be sure of nate's motives before committing to working with him again, too. how else can you trust an Honest Man to lead a group of criminals without turning them in?

rewatching the first episode of leverage is so funny to me because any time one of the team members goes “yeah, we trust nate because he’s an honest man” oh they have no fucking clue what they’ve just walked themselves into

Wait, did the crew actually say that sincerely in the pilot??? Wild. I remember Eliot saying it really sarcastically in the hospital, so my vague recollection was that they all were aware that Nate was... well, Nate, from having him pursue them in the past.

Wait, did people generally understand Eliot's hospital comment as sarcastic?

I understood that to be sincere, since Eliot had just said that he doesn't trust (isn't willing to work with) the rest of them, but he does seem genuinely willing to go along with Nate's plan at that point?

Though I seem to read sarcasm in Leverage very differently from the rest of fandom--I had always read the [Nate:] "Who here plays chess?" // [Eliot:] "I do" // [Nate:] "Sure you do" exchange as sarcastic and a little asshole-ish on Nate's part, but it seems like most of fandom takes that as Nate being genuinely respectful of Eliot's chess skills, so I may just be bad at parsing sarcasm lol

thrilled and delighted that we don't have consensus on this! (tagging @onyxbird just so you see this)

I'd say I read the phrase as serious but a little ironic, but I know "ironic" is one of those terms that's rarely used correctly, so goodness knows if it even works here. perhaps just "mocking."

it read to me kinda like "well, you say you're an honest man, and it's believable so far." but I also think that attitude - whatever it is - is something we don't see in eliot that often, and it could be down to just how early it is (both in-universe and out), or because things have gone very very wrong in a way we don't really see again.

theory, then: eliot works alone. he makes an exception, doesn't get paid, almost gets blown up while making sure the others get out of there too, then gets cuffed and fingerprinted while he waits for their 'leader' to wake. it's all kinda proof he should work alone, isn't it? I'm sure the others feel the same way, at least until they get out, until there's a plan for profit and revenge. and it could explain eliot's attitude, which to me didn't only show when eliot spoke that line. (I could probably find gifs, but I seem to recall he's rather deliberately casual in a situation that definitely isn't, and I suspect if he did deal with the cops as he offered, he wouldn't have stuck around for long.)

@trivalentlinks 🤷 I just rewatched that scene, and Eliot's tone is not as blatantly sarcastic as I remembered it. Could go either way, I guess, but IMO he's snarky throughout that scene, and I read that statement as sarcasm/faux sincerity. (The delivery of "of course" I could have bought as sincere, but IMO the follow-up of "you're an honest man" and accompanying facial expression read as subtle sarcasm.)

Parker's the one who explicitly says she doesn't trust the others and implies she intends to get out alone, which comes in response to Eliot saying "unless we get out of here in the next ten minutes we all go to jail. [...] I can take these cops." (Hardison also IMO sounded like he assumed they were going to get out of there as a group, and may not have had a viable solo exit plan.)

I assumed Eliot's plan was to knock out the cops (and possibly grab handcuff keys if needed) and clear a path for all of them to escape. If he were planning to escape alone and abandon them, there's no real reason to wait for Nate to wake up or explain to anyone what he's planning to do--he could just go. His "This was a one time deal" comment came after Nate started trying to take charge and issue orders for a plan he wasn't sharing with them (presumably a more complex plan than Eliot's suggestion), so I took that mostly to mean "what makes you think you're still the boss here?" rather than meaning he wasn't intending to help the others escape (or, alternatively, he might not have intended to work with the others on an escape but intended to clear a path by himself that would allow everyone to get out, except here is Nate trying to implement a more complex plan).

@onyxbird @wolves-in-the-world

I also just re-watched this scene, and you make an excellent point--I had forgotten Parker was the one who talked about not trusting them; this exchange actually goes:

Parker: I don't trust these guys

Nate (looking at the wall/vent connecting to Parker): Do you trust me?

[long pause while camera focuses on Parker, who says nothing]

Eliot: Of course. You're an 'honest man'

Which made me realize that it's quite possible Eliot is both being sarcastic and sincere at the same time here: he's answering for Parker here, probably because it's become clear after the long pause that Parker's not willing to answer that question out loud, so perhaps what Eliot means is that he believes that Parker sincerely believes Nate to be an honest man, while he himself has his doubts.

And I think it's quite possible that he's right here. Parker seems like the type to keep any contact with the people chasing her to an absolute minimum.

So while we (the audience) know that pre-canon Nate was the type to work for an insurance company and not care whom they're hurting until it's his own son, it's quite plausible that Parker wouldn't know that.

As far as Parker is concerned, Nate could just be a well-meaning, oblivious guy trying to do his job and fight for who he thinks is the right side, just like Detective Bonanno and Agent McSweeten. (Parker could even not know enough about insurance companies to know how evil IYS is.)

Of course, we know that Nate's way too bright and too curious to just be oblivious to the evils of IYS unless he's being intentionally ignorant about it, and Eliot probably also knows this, because Eliot knows what it's like to work for someone and force yourself not to think too hard about their (your) victims until it's someone you personally care about, so he can probably see a little of himself in Nate there.

But there's no reason for Parker to know any of that, and even though Eliot and Parker don't know each other at this point, Eliot could know enough about Parker by reputation to know that she stays alive by being fast and light and as far away as possible from the people chasing her, and maybe doesn't know enough about the insurance sector to think of Nate as anything other than an honest guy trying to do good

just another thought i had

@onyxbird

I'll admit I always assumed that parker was saying out loud what the others were privately thinking (remember that in the previous scene two of the three of them pointed guns at the others, and eliot arguably didn't need to, so they could well not trust each other yet even if they did let nate de-escalate), but these are interesting points!

rewatching the first episode of leverage is so funny to me because any time one of the team members goes “yeah, we trust nate because he’s an honest man” oh they have no fucking clue what they’ve just walked themselves into

Wait, did the crew actually say that sincerely in the pilot??? Wild. I remember Eliot saying it really sarcastically in the hospital, so my vague recollection was that they all were aware that Nate was... well, Nate, from having him pursue them in the past.

Wait, did people generally understand Eliot's hospital comment as sarcastic?

I understood that to be sincere, since Eliot had just said that he doesn't trust (isn't willing to work with) the rest of them, but he does seem genuinely willing to go along with Nate's plan at that point?

Though I seem to read sarcasm in Leverage very differently from the rest of fandom--I had always read the [Nate:] "Who here plays chess?" // [Eliot:] "I do" // [Nate:] "Sure you do" exchange as sarcastic and a little asshole-ish on Nate's part, but it seems like most of fandom takes that as Nate being genuinely respectful of Eliot's chess skills, so I may just be bad at parsing sarcasm lol

thrilled and delighted that we don't have consensus on this! (tagging @onyxbird just so you see this)

I'd say I read the phrase as serious but a little ironic, but I know "ironic" is one of those terms that's rarely used correctly, so goodness knows if it even works here. perhaps just "mocking."

it read to me kinda like "well, you say you're an honest man, and it's believable so far." but I also think that attitude - whatever it is - is something we don't see in eliot that often, and it could be down to just how early it is (both in-universe and out), or because things have gone very very wrong in a way we don't really see again.

theory, then: eliot works alone. he makes an exception, doesn't get paid, almost gets blown up while making sure the others get out of there too, then gets cuffed and fingerprinted while he waits for their 'leader' to wake. it's all kinda proof he should work alone, isn't it? I'm sure the others feel the same way, at least until they get out, until there's a plan for profit and revenge. and it could explain eliot's attitude, which to me didn't only show when eliot spoke that line. (I could probably find gifs, but I seem to recall he's rather deliberately casual in a situation that definitely isn't, and I suspect if he did deal with the cops as he offered, he wouldn't have stuck around for long.)

Random Leverage thought

Time for an extremely rare fandom commentary from yours truly: I fucking HATE the way they filmed Eliot using guns again in The Big Bang Job.

Like, okay, I get they probably wanted something in keeping with the tone of the show, so they went with frankly ridiculous gun choreography. Knee slides and grandstanding where the bad guys obligingly exposed themselves in manageable numbers and get taken down like arcade targets by the hero, nothing upsetting really. It was cartoon violence.

I just think it was a disservice to Eliot’s past and how assiduously he avoids guns through the whole series, to the looks we’ve started getting at his past, to who he is as a character, and obviously to his alleged skill. And I think there was a different way to go, artistically.

Let’s say, instead of keeping the tone of Leverage, when The Italian confirms she can take down Moreau, he nods, picks up the gun, and suddenly there’s no music. It’s quiet. And Eliot starts hunting. Nothing flashy, no unreal marksman shots or feats of bravado. Just a man with a gun moving through a space and methodically leaving dead enemies, until there are none left; it’s businesslike and fast and inelegant. Then, once him and Nate and The Italian are free of the warehouse, Eliot dumps the guns and walks away. The show goes back to the usual light tone, soundtrack comes back, and nobody ever mentions it again.

It would feel…jarring. Off. Uncomfortable. Bad. You’d look back on the episode with a bit of discomfort, a sense that it doesn’t really fit or belong. Because frankly it shouldn’t - this is something Eliott tried very hard to leave behind and never touch again, for very good reasons, and I hate how the show turned it into a voyeuristic cartoon boss fight.

#well shit!! gorgeous job OP you changed my mind on this entirely

#I could see a version of this where it cuts away before he even takes the first shot #in the style of the first ep’s flashback (where we sort of know he’s violent but we don’t yet see it) but more serious yeah #so that this - like all the times eliot killed in his past - isn’t something we get to witness #we see the setup and we see eliot discarding the guns and walking away after #and maybe we see the bodies or maybe we don’t. maybe just a brief glimpse so we can recognise chapman #and realise that he showed up - without knowing if they spoke or not. #so that what eliot did is something awful and almost private. #like the things the team never ask him about. #like I enjoy the cheesiness in canon but you’re right that the tone of it is… it’s almost one of triumph and it shouldn’t be.

[via @wolves-in-the-world]