Who wants a really sad Leverage headcanon?
Was re-watching the Gimme a K Street Job -- Season 5 Episode 5 -- and a couple of things stood out to me.
1) Nate says "Let's go steal some congresspeople", and then sends everyone on the team (except Parker, who's being a cheer coach) out to con one of their targets. But it feels like there's a profound mismatch in who gets which mark.
For the "not like other girls" feminist congresswoman who's inclined to dismiss cheer as worthless and demeaning, you need Eliot to come in looking like a man who very much knows what does and does not count as a sport, and be his tiny angry respect-women-juice self about how regardless of what you think of their choice of clothing they are working as hard as any other athlete and they deserve safety as much as anyone else.
But instead they sent Hardison.
For the "Yes I am very busy and important; admire me" chairman, you need Sophie, who is better than anyone else on the planet at making you feel admirable when you're doing what she wants, and scummy and low when you're not doing what she wants.
But instead they sent Eliot.
For the "Look I am trying, but I need corn subsidies or I won't be able to do anything else" newbie congressman, Hardison could happily have gone on an infinitely recurring series of fetch quests until he sees the place where they loop around and bottom out and every problem solves every other problem.
But instead they sent Sophie.
2) Eliot struggles the most, so Nate works with him the most, but he doesn't help him out hardly at all; he just keeps saying, "So what's your next play?" and then revealing that he's already anticipated Eliot's next play and has all the materials in place to enact it. And of course, they do eventually get the dude on board, and it all works out, but afterwards, Eliot tells Nate, "I trust that some time soon you'll tell me why you had me slogging through all that when you already knew how to hook him."
And of course, knowing what we now know about how season 5 ends, it makes sense that Nate is trying to train the OT3 to work without him, looking for his replacement.
If the plan is to fuck off into the sunset with Sophie, then why did he throw Sophie into this uncomfortable not-my-wheelhouse scenario?
No, Nate's preparing the entire team to carry on without him. He's forcing them to learn how to plan, learn different ways of approaching problems, to think about bigger pictures and approach them strategically.
I think Nate just got the first diagnosis of the disease that's finally going to kill him. And again, we -- the audience -- now know that he's going to live for many years after that initial diagnosis. But he doesn't know that, at this point. He knows he's tested positive, and he knows it's eventually going to kill him, and he has no idea how long he has.
And in some sense, it doesn't matter how long he has. Three months or thirty years, that kind of revelation makes it stunningly clear that taking care of the people you love means making sure that they can take care of themselves.
So that's what he does: he throws them into new, uncomfortable situations where they'll have to grow and support each other without him, so that no matter what happens, they'll be able to keep going. Because he's not a nice person, Jimmy Ford's son, but by God does he know the importance of protecting your family.
annaxmalina
titsay
