Looking for light at the end of the tunnel

Team of five, yes? Gal Gadot as the poser (“I’ve heard you have some….antiquities…..I might be interested in buying”), Daveed Diggs as the master strategist, Dan Radcliffe and Zooey Deschanel as the crack team, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as tech support.

Meryl Streep is their goyische informant and intelligence collector. Her brother, a megachurch pastor, is their first target and as she puts it, “it’s all smoke and communion wafers.” He’s a massive fraud and she can’t wait to see him get his, and refers semi-routinely to immigrants having to leave everything behind.

Toward the end of the film, Gordon-Levitt’s character looks at her and says “so….Kane, huh?” She just gives him a weird look and he says “or was it Cohen when you guys came through Ellis Island?” Turns out her family decided to assimilate and hide their Jewish roots a few generations back, but she’s still pissed about the things that made that necessary. By Jewish law, she’s a gentile, but her ancestry is Jewish.

The movie ends with Zooey Deschanel being like “so now what do we do? There are thousands of stolen antiquities out there, this was just one tiny theft ring” and all of them looking at each other before Daveed Diggs goes “so…..the Vatican?” and they all look at Meryl Streep who shrugs and says “I might know someone” and they all kind of look at each other again grinning and nodding this time.

David Arquette is the older member of the team, not quite what you’d call “washed up,” but he’s had a string of heists gone wrong. Meryl is actually the one who insists on him being part of the team and it’s because before a bad marriage kind of turned him into a schlub, he was a highly-respected professor of antiquities; his expertise will be necessary to safely remove these artifacts and scrolls, and this is a shot at redemption after angrily turning away from his faith post-bad-marriage.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is the coordinator for this happy band, making sure all the moving parts work together. Call her a secretary, and Gal Gadot will ensure you don’t have to die to regret your words.

Idina Menzel is Gal Gadot’s wife. They work together. To their marks, it seems like Gal is the looks and Idina is the money. In reality they’re both of upper-middle-class means at best and smart as fuck (and damned fine, are we kidding?)

Joaquin Phoenix is the guy who put them all up to this. He has the connections and the actual money (earned a little at a time, tokens of gratitude for other heists he’s pulled off, Leverage-style). He’s the one getting these items back where they belong.

And finally….

Noah Schnapp as the angry teen who has no idea where Judaism is supposed to fit in the modern world. He’s a foster kid being raised by a pair of well-meaning gentiles who nonetheless are of the “it’s a religion, not a culture” mentality and have left him cut off from his history. In looking for backup tech support, Joseph Gordon-Levitt set up an online hacking puzzle that was supposed to be near-impossible to solve. Somehow, Noah solved it in about fifteen minutes flat.

He sees that he’s in a room full of people who are in their 30s and older and rather bitterly goes “I guess I’m just the gopher minion, huh?”

How brilliant is the storytelling of Leverage, though? Bloody brilliant of course (like EVERYTHING about Leverage).

What I love most about Leverage’s way of character-oriented storytelling is how little time we spend in the past, establishing the big five’s (or anyone’s) background by explicitly showing it.

I am really not a fan of excessive flashbacks or “backstory episodes”, primarily because 9 out of 10 times they feel like lazy storytelling to me and alienate me from the characters.

Leverage never falls into that trap. Yes, we get bits from the past - most notably of course the death of Nate’s son. But nearly all of it is build around that one scene in the hospital that we see (yes, we also have a couple more scenes, all great ones, but the all important one is the moment of Sam’s death and Nate’s heartbreaking reaction to it). Why? We don’t NEED to see more. That scene tells us all we need to know about Nate Ford and who he is and why.

And what I LOVE about the show is that they trust that scene (okay, and Tim Hutton’s acting) to be sufficient AND IT IS.

It’s the same with the rest of the team. We often don’t even get flashbacks, we get hints, often in the form of seemingly throw-away-remarks or bits merely surfacing because the plot of the episode requires it:

Sophie’s mysterious ties to British royalty play a big part in why The King George Job works.

The Inside Job is much too fast-paced to dwell for too long on Archie’s and Parker’s backstory, but the way he talks to her, Parker’s warehouse, the laser training flashback, and the rest of the team’s (particularly Nate’s) reactions are quite enough.

Hardison reveals his foster care background in The Stork Job not for the sake of character exposition but because he wants to comfort Parker, someone whom he has pretty much just met.

What Eliot says to Hardison and Parker about his dad in The Low Low Price Job serves a similar purpose. It is proof that Eliot allows himself to trust the two of them enough to share this.

I don’t need anything more, in fact, I don’t WANT anything more.

What Leverage is interested in is the here and now and the future, it’s about accepting who you are. For that, yes, you have to acknowledge what made you this way, but not by dwelling on it or even disrespecting the privacy of others by pushing them to reveal more about their pasts (“Don’t ask me that, Parker. Because if you ask, I’m gonna tell you. So <i>please</i> don’t ask me.”). The show is about dealing with who you are and what you want to make of yourself and trusting your friends to do the same while offering support when wanted/needed. Thus it’s through the choices that the characters make in the here and now, not in the past, that we learn who they are and what they are capable of; more than that - and that’s the beauty of it - the characters themselves learn it over the course of the show’s five seasons.

And all that is so brilliantly reflected in how Leverage firmly sticks to the present while reserving most of the flashback scenes for characterisation through comic relief (“This is not the room you’re looking for”) and generous offerings of shared experiences in form of the shortest of summaries (“It was a shipwreck. And you know how I know that? Cause I was in the wreck.”).

That truly is absolutely bloody brilliant pacing and actual show-don’t-tell storytelling.

clone #1, looking at the security cam footage: oh yeah that's totally me

clone #2: no way look at this handsome face. that's me

clone #3: you weren't even on coruscant during that time

clone #2: that's my cover

clone #4: shut it everybody i stabbed him

clone #1, furiously pointing at the footage: he wasn't stabbed you shithead, he got shot!

Look, I recognize sarcasm, okay? I do. But Eliot has been stalling him all day and he has had that frickin lil smug smile half the time, and this whole situation reminds me of the time Eliot stalled that one lady by taking her out on a tour of the town (walking the Freedom trail, etc.), which was really just a long extended date, and Nate even referenced when telling Eliot what to do for this con, and. well.

I'm picturing one of the British minions being in town during the events of "The Big Bang Job," seeing a picture being spread around of Eliot as someone to watch out for, and saying "Hey, that looks just like that idiot American who drowned in the Thames right after Ennis asked him out!"

Which promptly gets him an audience with Moreau to explain exactly what he meant by "idiot American who drowned in the Thames."

So he explains that just before Keller went down, he was negotiating to move merchandise for this duchess who had the stupidest American as an errand boy. He was dumber than a sack of rocks, but Ennis thought he was hot. So they happened to be on the riverfront when Ennis asked him out, and he was really flustered (which admittedly was sort of endearing, even if the guy was a complete idiot), and then this guy manages to trip and topple right over the edge into the water. Clearly couldn't swim a stroke, either. He went down too fast for any of them to really do anything about it except report back what happened. Ennis was pretty stunned, but fortunately the duchess didn't seem too upset.

Moreau's brain malfunctions as it tries to process this description of Eliot Spencer.

Moreau: "..........Elaborate."

EGB: "He was working for this duchess that Keller was dealing with, right before he got taken out. Ennis thought he was cute, but frankly that guy was dumber than bag of hammers. ...About as bouyant as one, too. He tripped and fell into the Thames when Ennis tried to ask him out, drowned right away, Ennis was pretty put out about it."

this scenario has me cACKLING I can just picture Moreau's face as he reboots. It's all the funnier because he probably has experience with troll!Eliot to some extent (though it wouldn't be pulled on him, just other people), and even has likely seen Eliot pull a honeypot routine before. So, none of this is outside the realm of possibility, it's just.... why? WHY. Especially the 'drowning' in the river. Surely it'd be easier just to shoot this Ennis guy. Or shove him in the water at the very least. Wh- what is going on with Eliot????

(The reason why is Hardison somehow found time, even in the hectic last stages of creating an incredible forgery, to heckle him through the comms. Then Parker got in on it, and Nate refused to mediate, just told him to think of Boston or something, Sophie tried to give him advice - look, taking the comm out of his ear would give the game away so he couldn't do that, but he was physically incapable of listening to them make kissy noises and dumb commentary for one single second longer. He knew because of the Three-Card-Monte Job that it'd short out in water, and the silence was well worth the electric shock, thanks very much.)

Breanna: "I think this calls for a Rock In The River."

Hardison: "You've learned well young padawan. That is exactly what we need to do."

Eliot: "What the hell is a - oh, no, no, DAMMIT HARDISON, you got your sister in on this?!"

Harry: "What's a Rock In The River?"

Parker: "Eliot they think you're cute, quick, drown!" [shoves him into the Lazy River]

...and then, since it is NOT a real river where he can swim away and pretend to never resurface, Eliot winds up getting saved by the lifeguard. And the person they told him to 'flee' then tries to comfort/flirt with him, just to put the cherry on top.

And Harry is just thinking ohh, it's a grifter move to build intimacy, make them the hero, oh I get it, suspension bridge effect and all. Not sure exactly why it's called that, but... makes sense otherwise.

Harry: "So what exactly is the 'Thames Tumble'? I mean, obviously I just saw an example, but what elements of that make it a Thames Tumble?"

Hardison: "It's kinda like a Vegas Wake-Up Call, but with a river and they never find the body. Technically, this wasn't a Thames Tumble since the lifeguards pulled him out."

Parker (nodding sagely): "Thames Apple Pie."

Eliot (sopping wet and busy wringing water out of his hair): "Dammit, Hardison! How many times do I have to tell you that the Vegas Wake-Up Call involves the boyfriend showing up? And Parker, you can't just add 'apple pie' to anything to indicate it involves lifeguards--that's just the Cherry Pie!"

Sophie: "No, Hardison, what you're describing is the Cuban Sandwich Au Jus, except that they never find the body. But that's not really a Thames Tumble. A Thames Tumble--or Thames Apple Pie, due to the lifeguards--"

Eliot: "There is no Thames Apple Pie!"

Parker: "So you admit there is a Thames Tumble."

Eliot: "No!"

Hardison: "The Vegas Wake-Up Call does not require the boyfriend to show up, and even if it did, HERE I AM!"

Harry: "..."

Breanna (shouting to be heard over the rest of the team): "It's faking your own drowning to get out of a date!"

Eliot (ducking aside to talk over the comms): "Hardison, I changed my mind. We are doing a Vegas Wake-Up Call."

Hardison (from the van): "Really, babe? You want to fake your death on this guy again? Just turn him down, man!"

Sophie and Breanna, also in the van, exchange glances and then stare at Hardison.

Sophie: "Hardison, what does Eliot always say about the Vegas Wake-Up Call?"

Leading to, eventually, them running into Ennis again on opposing sides. Eliot has no choice but to fess up to having survived last time but as far as he knows Ennis thinks he just washed up downriver. Doesn't seem like the guy realizes who he is past that one time, so the idiot goon ruse can still work now. And he needs to stall him for whatever reason, so... he decides to ask Ennis out. Not for real obviously, but he's been receptive before, it will at least delay him for a while...

At which point two things happen. Hardison, offsite, finishes hacking into the opposing group's comms and is able to listen in as someone tells Ennis he's "got him on the hook, now do the Thames Tumble to keep him there."

And Ennis smiles at Eliot but then stumbles into the nearby canal where he then proceeds to 'start drowning'. Turns out, Ennis has been tasked with delaying Eliot but he's not supposed to let him leave, and since Eliot seems interested in him romantically Ennis's crew figured they might as well go for this classic con to keep him here and occupied.

Eliot dies inside more than a little. Hardison can't breathe, he's laughing so hard.

Ennis: "H-help, I'm drowning!"

Eliot, deadpan: "I can't swim. Remember?"

Ennis flails in the water, trying to make it seem like he's only barely able to rescue himself so his cover isn't blown. When he finally flops ashore, Eliot has left.

It's Quinn. The crew works with their trusted friend Quinn, who politely listens to the new guy over drinks afterwards, since Harry's clearly desperate to talk about all this wild new con artist stuff he's learning with someone other than the crew who's taught him all of it.

Eliot realizes far too late that Quinn has been unusually silent for quite a while and is listening very attentively to whatever extended story Harry is telling, namely the description of the Thames Tumble as Harry has observed it used first-hand. (Quinn, having never heard of this "con" in his life and recognizing that Harry's description doesn't actually sound like a complete con, naturally follows up with the rest of the crew who are more than happy to give him all the gory details its "invention" by Eliot.) Of course Quinn makes sure this brilliant "con" gets spread through the underworld as it deserves.

Tara heard the story from Sophie soon after the original Tumble, so when she hears it referenced, she helps the rumor along (and reports it back to Sophie), confirming that this con indeed exists--it's been around for years! She knows someone who's performed it, and it worked like a charm!

When poor, soggy Ennis makes his way back to his hotel room after his unsuccessful attempt, he hops in the shower to rid himself of the dirty canal water. When he steps back out, his heart nearly stops when he sees the message ominously scrawled in the condensation on the mirror: "SHOULD HAVE GONE FOR THE THAMES APPLE PIE."

He feels free to fully take on the roll of protector, without holding back. He's not afraid of stepping on Nate's toes, and he's not afraid of being close with the team. He's more open to learning/improving skills that aren't necessarily within his wheelhouse, because there's a burden that no longer haunts him.

the girl with the dragon tattoo, by stieg larsson.