[id: 3 screenshots from the show leverage and leverage: redemption: Hardison as Wade Perkins from the 3 days of the hunter job, Eliot as Willie Riker from the first contact job and Parker as Dire Wrath from The Bucket Job. End id.]
i feel like quinn will make it the problem of Everyone in a Ten Mile Radius if he’s forced to wear denim for a con, he’s in crisis, he’s never experienced this level of hardship in his Life, but if he gets shot during the same con he’s just like. “this is honestly so annoying”
bitches will be like “my ot3 ” and it’s a woman who could murder them, a guy who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in six years, and another guy who almost got both of the other two murdered. it’s me i’m bitches
Imagine you’re some big time lawyer for a multinational, multimillion dollar company and you’re walking into court to defend your company against charges for crimes they absolutely committed. And you’re thinking to yourself, “I’m a big time lawyer for a multinational, multimillion dollar company— I can win this case in my sleep and if I can’t, I can always buy it out.” And you walk into court on the first day of trial thinking you’ve got this in the bag, thinking there’s no way you could lose. And you walk into the court room, and you approach the bench. And you’re confronted with fucking Jimmy Papadopoulos. And he WINS.
mcsweeten being in leverage redemption and still having not a clue that parker and hardison are, in fact, not federal agents and are actually world-class criminals
or at some point between the finale and now he did find out, and then some government official gets wind of one of their heists and is jabbing their finger at a blurry image of parker and hardison mid-thievery and with a completely straight face, mcsweeten explains that guys, those are agents hagen and thomas and they are working on an undercover op and were in no way at all involved of what is inconveniencing the government now
and the government official keeps trying to explain they are criminals but mcsweeten just pulls up their dossiers and credentials and he can literally see the vein throbbing in the man’s forehead but he just smiles says that he has personally worked with agent hagen and would trust her with his life
Ok but consider this the team comes clean and Mcsweeten takes it hard and says he needs some times alone . After a few days they go to check on him and find his apartment empty. Panicking they go to the FBI and find out that his office is empty too. After some discrete probing from Sophie they discover that Mcsweeten never existed . Apparently this was a brilliantly crafted false personality used by a mysterious spy who has managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the FBI
The team stunned and with their professional pride hurt decade to join in on the task force designed to hunt Mcsweeten . They finally track him down and burst into the warehouse only see … a surprise party with every member of the task force they thoguht they left in the dust and Mcsweeten who goes “I loved your prank where you tried to make me think you were criminals so I decided to play one on you as well. Thgouht it would be great for team building !”
And the episode just ends with the team unable to decide if Mcsweeten is really that oblivious or if he really is playing a massive prank on them
sterling is so funny because the leverage crew gives him endless grief and they snark at him and he snarks back but god forbid some other department wants to jail them or something because excuse me that’s his group of bothersome thieves and no one can touch them except him
#idk I just want sterling to be at the ot3s wedding as a joke invite but when he’s asked if he’s going he snatches the invitation and is like #NONE OF YOUR BUISNESS and then proceeds to get a thoughtful wedding gift #or a joke one your choice
The wedding gift is the location and specs of an obscenely high-tech kitchen gadget that actually does something really useful. He doesn’t give them the item, of course–if they want it, they have to come steal it from him. Said gadget is inside multiple nested safes (some computerized, some purely mechanical), inside a secure vault, inside a building with a good security system. There are a handful of not-particularly-assiduous guards (you know, just enough for Eliot to feel like he’s needed, without him having to actually work on his honeymoon). There are elaborate gratuitous laser grids both inside and outside of the vault. Each one has a conspicuously laser-free area just large enough to hold two deck chairs and a mini-cooler of beer and orange soda.
In the innermost safe, next to the gadget, are three feedback forms and a pre-addressed, stamped envelope so they can critique the security measures at their leisure. Mr. Quinn is waiting to “catch” them on the way out to ensure Eliot gets one satisfying, low-stakes fight out of this job. (There are, again, two convenient deck chairs nearby, but this time the cooler is stocked with orange soda and chocolate milk.)
I admire a lot of things about Tara, but the fact that she did not hesitate to back Eliot up on his plan for the hostage exchange in The Zanzibar Marketplace Job, not for a second, even though earlier in the same day she’d used him as muscle in a con and she’s only known him for a matter of weeks has gotta be near the top of the list.
I love this too. Tara’s the equivalent of a freelancer. She clocks in and out and only does as much as she’s paid for. But when she’s at work, she’s at work. They’re only getting out of a con with their clothes on their backs? She hates it, obviously. But she doesn’t bail.
She’s the best, she’s the best in a different way than Sophie is but she’s the best for sure. But also, Tara really, really trusts Sophie.
I’d say they’re not even friends at this point in the show (they definitely are by s4 though, which is a whole other thing I can talk about). But the trust is absolutely there. Sophie calls in a favor, says she’s going to set things up with Nate, and get Tara paid? Tara’s like okay. Sophie says that Tara can trust every single one of them but that Nate’s probably going to be the hardest to get along with? Tara’s like okay.
Tara will complain to Sophie all day and night about Nate. She’ll raise objections with Nate and to Sophie about Nate. But she doesn’t leave a job half-finished, and she trusts the team with her life on like their first job together.
Whatever the hell it is that built that trust between Sophie and Tara? I think about that all the time.
Nate goes up to his sad little apartment at the end of The Beantown Bailout Job after finally asking Sophie out only to learn that she is already headed to a date with someone else, after the job is over and everybody has disappeared, fully expecting to be alone with just his coffee cans …
Only to find Hardison hanging giant monitors all along one wall and Parker bringing in that weird painting Hardison painted of Nate’s own face masquerading as Harlan Leverage III, which they’ve brought from their previous office and saved for six months for some reason, to hang somewhere and Eliot cutting a giant hole in the wall with a chainsaw. Hardison has bought his building and is now his landlord. Nate will never be alone again. He wants to pull his hair out. (He wants to hug them.)
Once, just once, I want to see the Leverage team set Sophie to seduce some guy as a distraction, only for him to be completely uninterested, and after roughly ten minutes of increasingly frustrated flirting, Sophie pulls back and calls for Eliot or Hardison as a replacement.
i do think that hardison’s nesting proclivities stem from before the start of the series but there’s something really intriguing to be said about him and the snow job. they give the family that big house (and more important catharsisandstability and a future) and hardison’s visibly emotional. they all were, that job; the stakes felt higher and the investment deeper. for a long time hardison wonders why that is, why this one got to all of them so bad. he looks back and forth between each of his teammates and the concept of a home and thinks “hmm, i have a hypothesis in need of testing.” and buys an apartment complex in boston
I’m making my best friend watch through Leverage with me and jfc I forgot just how much I love this show. I’m sorry barring how lovable the characters are and how cathartic it is to watch them ruin rich people’s lives every episode and it being the best example of the found family trope I’ve ever seen it’s just.
This show is so motherfucking funny.
Like in the Missing Heir Job the mark asks what Parker was doing in the other room and Nate just straight out his ass goes “ummmm stealing! she has a meth problem!” and Parker deadpanning harder than any human has ever deadpanned before goes “I do. I love meth.”
Note that this is after Nate conspicuously keeps trying to loudly work the word “safe” into his convo with the mark to get Parker to stop robbing the guy and come pretend to be the long lost heir of the dude whose inheritance they’re trying to get in the right hands– which the mark buys to such a degree that he immediately tries to have Parker killed.
Nothing is funnier to me than when this group of savant geniuses fall apart in the middle of a con and have to bullshit their way out. Leverage Inc has one brain cell and Sophie has it 95% of the time.
quinn meeting hardison: this nerd is so annoying how many times can i hit him. eliot. pick a number between one and ten
quinn 2 years later, successful graduate of phase 4 of alec hardison’s Hitter Domestication Program, watering his stardew valley crops from his blanket burrito on the couch: it’s just like…imagine if someone was mean to alec. alec our friend alec. eliot wouldn’t that be so fucked up. think abt it….i’d kill them. hey quick come see my new cow her name is mango
Quinn: “Alec! Eliot! Come see my new pig. His name is Nate.”
Eliot: “…I thought you were mad at Nate. Why are you naming your pretend animals after him?”
Quinn: “I am mad at Nate. And if he makes me madder, I’m going to sell pig-Nate so Gus can make him into sausages.”
Alec: “Uh…I–I’m not sure that’s how selling animals works here.”
*quinn voice* alec WAKE up i was in the MINES. killing monsters and getting rich and then someone “”“”“saved”“”“” me and took all of my cool shit. are you listening. i was in the mines and clint mugged me and your “”“”“"game”“”“”“ won’t let me mug him back WHAT is leverage inc doing to combat this fucking injustice—
Quinn: “Do you know what happened last time I lost a fight and got knocked out? I made a friend. That is how I met my FRIEND, Eliot. How dare all these meddlers come and ‘rescue’ me from the mines and take my stuff in payment for taking me away from my potential FRIENDS?!?!”
Hardison: “…Uh…I don’t think the monsters are sentient–I sure hope they’re not–and I’m pretty sure they’re trying to kill you.”
Everyone on the team except Nate (yes, including Sophie), secretly works for Moreau.
They all know the others work for Moreau, but they’re from different divisions with completely different specialties and working styles, so they’ve only ever met any of the others in passing, if at all (possible exceptions being Eliot and Sophie, since I imagine Sophie’s skills would bring her closer to Moreau’s orbit than the others, even if she’s not in his inner circle).
Nate in The Long Good-bye Job: I knew it wasn’t a hospital immediately because hospitals are noisy.
The team in The Order 23 Job: so here’s a mix of background noises to play on a loop outside the hospital room and we’re going to use the PA system combined with that to convince the guy he’s really in a hospital.
Like many parts of Leverage, there were many layers to the conversation in The Long Good-bye Job. One of those layers was Nate telling Sterling and the Feds to their face that his team was better than them because five people pulled off a more convincing hospital con in under an hour than the combined force of multiple federal agencies. (While his team was conning them.)
