Just started rewatching the Too Many Rembrandts Job and it’s only now dawning on me that at the very least Mastermind Parker (if not the trio working together) 100% planned this con. They may or may not have known about Harry but there’s a zero percent chance that Parker, who knows the museum just got a fancy new security system and knows exactly in miles how far it is from Sophie’s house, doesn’t know that Fletcher Maxwell, evil billionaire, is going to be there plus protestors will be outside loudly proclaiming about his misdeeds. Like, she (or the trio) really perfectly planned this con to get Sophie back on the wagon by “stumbling onto a job.” I mean they all saw how stumbling onto a job always worked for Nate (the openers to seasons 2 and 3) and getting the crew back together. I hadn’t yet thought enough about how perfect the situation was to realize yeah, of course it was, Parker brought her there to fix them and bring the gang back together.
In honor of Character Appreciation Week, (because all my original posts are Leverage related,) I have finally organize my pages so I have a place for all my metas and all my fics in convenient places.
I have a lot of feelings about this quote. But beyond all the obvious ones about the whole his father would be proud of him for murder thing, which is a serious but obvious issue, the bit about the ice cream says a lot about Nate’s relationship to his father.
Now, I’m not sure how it goes in other families, but in mine, ice cream stopped being a standard way for my parents to show they were proud of me long before I was an adult living on my own. That’s just not something that comes to mind for parents wishing to express pride in their grown up kid. Ice cream is something used to reward young children. And that is exactly why its mention here is so interesting.
It could indicate a kind of child-like lost feeling in Nate at that point. The line is meant to draw a link to his childhood because of how he feels at having lost his last remaining parent. And we don’t know when his mother died, but if it was when he was young, and I tend to think it was, then this could draw a link to how Nate felt at that point.
It could also imply that, true or not, the last time Nate actually felt like his father was proud of him was when he was young enough that ice cream would have been usual reward. Given their interaction in The Three Card Monte Job, I think this may be accurate. So to Nate, ice cream is synonymous with parental approval, even though at that point Jimmy Ford would have been more likely to buy Nate whiskey than ice cream.
That makes a lot of sense. I like the idea of ice cream as a show of approval tied to a particular event because it fits even better with the flashbacks to Nate’s childhood in The Three Card Monte Job, and getting into a fight makes a lot of sense for that event. It even ties in further to the line from The Last Dam Job because it ties Jimmy Ford’s approval to Nate committing violence. So Nate here is not guessing that his father would buy him ice cream for committing violence; he is recalling a specific time this happened.
I have a lot of feelings about this quote. But beyond all the obvious ones about the whole his father would be proud of him for murder thing, which is a serious but obvious issue, the bit about the ice cream says a lot about Nate’s relationship to his father.
Now, I’m not sure how it goes in other families, but in mine, ice cream stopped being a standard way for my parents to show they were proud of me long before I was an adult living on my own. That’s just not something that comes to mind for parents wishing to express pride in their grown up kid. Ice cream is something used to reward young children. And that is exactly why its mention here is so interesting.
It could indicate a kind of child-like lost feeling in Nate at that point. The line is meant to draw a link to his childhood because of how he feels at having lost his last remaining parent. And we don’t know when his mother died, but if it was when he was young, and I tend to think it was, then this could draw a link to how Nate felt at that point.
It could also imply that, true or not, the last time Nate actually felt like his father was proud of him was when he was young enough that ice cream would have been usual reward. Given their interaction in The Three Card Monte Job, I think this may be accurate. So to Nate, ice cream is synonymous with parental approval, even though at that point Jimmy Ford would have been more likely to buy Nate whiskey than ice cream.
Parker:“I can’t stop thinking about the Newtons. Nate said that they had faith that their father was at peace, but. It’s not enough. How do you do it?”
Sophie: “Do what?”
Parker: “How do you… care? When you know that people, people that you like, someday they’ll die.”
Sophie:“You know Parker, we never really talk about it, but… if you - lost someone, when you were just a child, then you might put up walls to make sure that you never got hurt again. But trust me, this life is not worth livingwithout the people that make us wanna tear down those walls. The thrill of vulnerability, the danger of opening your heart… it makes us feel alive.”
Parker:“I feel alive when I’m jumping off a building.” [smiles for the first time this conversation]
Sophie:[smiles, looks down for a moment] “Well, maybe that’s why they call it falling in love.”
This conversation is so good. Parker asked Nate, but his answer didn’t satisfy at all. Faith isn’t enough - she knows that, because it hasn’t been enough for her in the past with her brother. And Sophie, wise wise Sophie, she recognizes this and mentions Parker’s brother as a reason why this might be so hard for her. Her voice is so gentle, quiet and calm and confident. Parker looks away when Sophie mentions a loss in childhood but there’s no pressure to actually talk about it. In this whole conversation, Sophie focuses on the present. She doesn’t make any promises about coping after a loss getting easier, doesn’t offer any kind of reassurance about the afterwards.
Instead, she promises Parker that what comes before the loss is worth it. It’s what matters most in life, opening up to others and having those deep connections. It’s something only Sophie could say like this, and it’s just as sad coming from her because she has trouble opening up to others too. So recently she tried with Nate (trusting him with her real name) and he didn’t remember it. She has built up so many false connections that she lost sight of who she even was underneath all of them. But no matter how many times she has had someone and lost them, or even wanted and simply never got - it’s worth it all. And by putting words to what Parker is feeling, by outright telling her that she’s falling in love, Sophie is giving her the support she needs to jump off this building. It might be scary, but it will be worth it. Even if it ends badly at some point, that’s no reason not to take the jump
