Tag: f: leverage

warlordess:

I love that Hardison’s very obvious feelings for Parker are accompanied by unwavering patience.

Like, I think back to him referring to Parker’s “sexiness” to Nate in the SECOND EPISODE of the series and how he says “just between us”, like he’s not going to shower her with adoration and sweet nothings at almost every turn between them, I think about how he tells her that he likes how she turned out when she’s crying her eyes out, broken, knowing she’s different and weird and possibly even a lost cause at this point, I think about how from the moment he met her, he was already interested and how her quirks – while sometimes frustrating – never pushed/scared him away, I think about how he spends three seasons being a major leg and arm and lung in her growing support system and when she finally DOES tell him that she’s been having “feelings [for pretzels]”, he just smiles even though his heart is probably in his throat at this overwhelming progress they’ve made and he sits down and tells her kindly, lovingly, that they’re there when she’s ready to have them.

He will always be there when she is ready for him.

optimysticals:

featherquillpen:

pagerunner:

peroxidepirate:

See, this kills me because it’s a pretty fucking fundamental driving force in Eliot Spencer’s character – “you can’t make that promise to more than one person.” And yet he ends the series doing exactly that.

The evil writerly part of my brain wants to know what happens when he can’t be there for Parker and Hardison both at the same moment. Whether it’s a heist gone wrong and he has to choose who to protect, or they’re in conflict with each other and he can’t avoid taking sides – what happens? 

Hardison. (At least for the job gone wrong, and assuming nothing in the job fundamentally supercedes it by putting other’s lives in danger.) Parker would tell him to get Hardison out and he’d do it, because that’s what makes them…them.

And when Hardison demands why, Eliot tells him, “she said to say, there’s never a plan M.”

i feel personally attacked by this headcanon

It’s ok, I wasn’t using those feelings.

Source: insertusernameici

Eliot Spencer: White Male Punchline

aerinalanna:

whisperwhisk:

ok so ANOTHER thing I love about Leverage is how seriously it DOESN’T take Eliot Spencer

because Eliot Spencer, taken at face value, is an absolutely generic white action movie/video game hero, right? has a Troubled Past, beats up armies of goons, cracks wise, hits on ladies, etc.

except that this show’s narrative turns every aspect of that character type into a punchline! not necessarily at his expense – but it goes out of its way to avoid the kind of reverence most testosterone-charged action media give White Male Badasses by sidelining him, refusing to let him play the hero, and making him comic relief most of the time, even when he’s being a Badass

in fact the only times the narrative does treat him with any sort of reverence?

is when he’s being kind. (which he does on a far more regular basis than most other characters of his type)

and that? actually makes him an interesting character

It’s always very telling to me that the two times his violence is given a non-joking, single-minded focus are the two times he has a loaded gun in his hand with the intention of using it.  And what sells those scenes is Christian Kane’s acting, and John Rogers’ and Dean Devlin’s willingness to let the acting make the scene, and not music or filmography or anything else.  Christian Kane’s emotional depth as an actor amazes me more every time I see him in a role, and his ability to convey more with a still face and speaking eyes than most actors can with their entire bodies would be unbelievable if I hadn’t seen him do it over and over.  

The first time was with Nate and the Italian in the warehouse at the end of the Big Bang Job, when he tells them to go, and he picks up loaded guns without immediately emptying them.  Nate, as well as the audience, know instantly that something is different, and the solemnity of that moment as a precursor to the (admittedly amazing and over-the-top) fight sequence is fitting.  Following the fight sequence with the perfectly acted and filmed moment between Eliot and Chapman made it one of the best sequences in the show.

The second is in The Last Dam Job, when he threatens Dubenich and says that he’s thinking of saving his friend (Nate) a bit of trouble.  At this point, we’ve seen him kill before.  Once.  And the quiet, as well as the shaking of his hand on the gun, makes the moment equal parts touching and terrifying, which I never thought I would say of a scene like that.  

John Rogers and Dean Devlin created a masterpiece of a show with Leverage, primarily because they were willing to write a cool story with all the tropes, and then either subvert or hang lampshades on 90% of them.

auroralynches:

i really love leverage because the concept has the potential to be super dark and gritty and angsty and morally ambiguous–you’ve got the grieving father of a child who died of cancer, you’ve got legal injustice versus illegal justice, you’ve got characters with severe emotional issues, dark pasts, and substance abuse problems–but instead it’s this sweet, lighthearted, seriously funny show about a found family of master criminals that does things like film a whole episode in the style of the office or name characters’ aliases after sci-fi actors. it still has enough solemn moments to respect the darkness of the characters and the issues that the show handles, but it never falls into that darkness so hard or for so long that the fundamental tone of the series is lost. i really, really love leverage.