Just One More AKA Grumpy Nate S2E1 while his found family is forcibly moving in
I made a meme/fanvid inspired by This post by @captainjonnitkessler
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@mimes-leverage
Just One More AKA Grumpy Nate S2E1 while his found family is forcibly moving in
I made a meme/fanvid inspired by This post by @captainjonnitkessler

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I like to think turning the charm up to eleven in the delivery of "Miss Devereaux, how is your Southern Belle" is sort of an apology for whatever the fuck was going on with "Sophie, how's your luuuuuuuge"
thinking about the Sterling & Eliot fight scene in the context of that thing where Eliot seeming to be out of control is pretty much always a grift. Itās something I didnāt properly twig until reading this meta of the french connection job - and it surprised me how perfectly possible it is to watch the show and believe his performance at every turn.
(even with the example early on of Eliot using this trick - anger as a performance, quickly switched off - to get Sophie to admit that she wasnāt apologising. I will never be over season one Eliot successfully tricking the teamās grifter that way. And for such a gentle reason.)
so we get Nate strolling casually up to the table to ask Sterling what heās doing here - which, big mob boss vibes there, itās gorgeous - and Iām just thinking about how Eliot āsnappingā and going after Sterling allows Nate to be civilised, because Nate doesnāt have to threaten Sterling or remind him not to mess with them; his man, working for him and under his control, has already done that. And Nate being civilised and calling the shots allows Eliot to safely lean into his donāt-mess-with-me angry hitter persona, probably to make a point, probably to have a little fun as well. (Really I donāt even stop to justify that scene. It just causes me so much joy as it is.)
the first time I saw the french connection job, the ācall off your dogā bit bugged me. Nate hearing that and (after a moment) doing so meant he was implicitly agreeing with the idea that Eliot was his dog, and that Eliot wasnāt capable of standing down by himself. Which goes entirely out the window if itās a grift. Reading it as almost transactional, an agreement between the two to enable each other to lean into their respective roles in little plays for their marksā benefits - and their own - makes it so much better. Nate gets to come across as reasonable and in control of powerful assets; Eliot gets to scare people into believing that he really would hurt them badly if they gave him a reason, and his reputation survives another day, and people donāt look too closely.
āYou know, people underestimate you, Eliot.ā āThatās kind of the point.ā
thereās quite a bit of trust in it, both ways - and an unspoken understanding of whatās really going on - and it just⦠I just think itās neat.
#Playing Nateās pet hitter is kind of just a different spin on his āpower negativeā grifts. #In one version he pretends the mark is the one with the power. #In the other he pretends that Nateās the one in power and that the mark is in danger from both of them. #But either way Eliot rarely assumes the role of the person in charge #even though heās the most ready to call Nate out of anyone on the team. #He doesnāt want to be in charge. But he has standards for how being āin chargeā should be done and he will enforce them. [tags by @onyxbird]
#one of the things Iām forever grateful to this show for is the way it takes Eliotās skillset seriously and recognizes that itās not#entirely or even primarily about being able to hit others or even all about physical skill #Eliot perhaps more than any other character in the main cast sees what he does as a role and not who he is#(we see him bring the same professional pride to cooking that he does to fighting) #and he recognizes that a big part of his role is that underestimation - consciously downplaying and sometimes taking literal hits #(which Eliot notes in the tap out job & also in the 3 strikes job where he says he doesnāt like baseball b/c you canāt score on defense) #and because we get all that comments like that from third parties about Eliot being a thug or a dog never bothered me #because thatās the point - because he knows exactly what heās doing and how much pressure he needs to apply and what aspects of his #skills he needs to play up or diminish #in the Rashomon job he just plays into the doctorās pre-existing ideas to get him to do what he wants w/o using violence at all #and even the many times we do see Eliot be violent we never see him out of control - we always get the sense that with very few (drugged) #exceptions heās always in control even when it doesnāt on the surface seem that way
Bank Shot Job is underrated. Dont be an idiot Hardison, Sophie was still in there. Eliot ready to storm the bank if Nate asked him to. Robbing a bank that's already being robbed. Meeting FBI agents Mcsweeten and Taggert Sometimes the bad guys are the only good guys you get. We'd be the cavalry. Citizens deciding to collectively lie without needing to be told bc fuck that Creep.
This is basically a thesis statement of the show. We care about helping people, especially the ones driven into situations that they should've been able to ask for help in. We won't leave each other behind. We can figure this out, on the fly, by depending on each other.
every so often youāll watch an episode of Leverage where the Worlds Most Fucked Up Thing Ever happens, and youāll be like "surely this is just a hypothetical, surely itās hyperbole" and then youāll look it up and itās not only happened, possibly multiple times, but the situation was somehow even worse in real life.

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the fact that nate literally never wraps his mind around āitās not about the moneyā is so funny to me. he is a chessmaster who cold reads marks in .02 seconds, identifying their deepest desires and most closely guarded secret weaknesses in order to exploit them, but a client can say directly to his face āi donāt want the moneyā and heās like haha yeah sure you donāt pal. lemme just get you a check for a million dollars. why are you pushing it away. what do you mean you donāt want the money
heās just so used to only focusing his attention on the worst people in the world that, even when faced with the concept a hundred times, āitās not about the moneyā is incomprehensible to him. because, for the bad guys, itās always about money. he just. forgets not everyone is a bad guy.
Some people have pointed out that it's a test. Does the client want instant gratification or will they find a deeper satisfaction in good old fashioned eye for an eye justice? And I agree with that, because it's very Catholic, and very Nate.
But at the same time, I think it's because some part of him thinks that if he and Maggie had been able to scrap together enough money, they would have been able to save Sam. They mortgaged the house and sold their car, and they still didn't have enough.
Nate knows the power that money has. He's not stupid, he's grieving a little bit every time someone comes to him asking for help. He's thinking, maybe this time the kid gets to live.
If you told Nate Ford that money didn't solve problems, he'd laugh in your face.
Thereās also an arc to it. I think it takes him some time in the beginning to get the hang of it, and then for most of the show he does get it and itās more of a test. But then in season five itās explicitly exactly what op says, heās been wrapped up in Getting The Bad Guys for so long that heās having trouble seeing anything else, which is a big part of the impetus for retiring at the end of the season.
nathan ford kinda one of the craziest characters of all time. like hes a sad middle aged catholic washed up divorcee who worked in insurance and has a drinking problem right? theres a very specific image created by that description. but then you learn like a little more about him and its like woah buddy! like ok so yeah so hes all that but also hes terrifyingly pistol whip smart hes deeply grief stricken. hes the son of a mobster. hes been in a psychosexual situationship with a thief who shot him for like a decade. he treats people like a chess match. HE GAVE A GUY A NOSEBLEED WITH THE POWER OF HIS MIND. and hes got all this going on whilst hes running Righteous Revenge AnonymousTM and garnering a reputation as the leader of one of the most dangerous crews in the world. genuinly one of the most psychologically fascinating charactees of all time ever.
i love when eliot comes on screen and you can only see his legs and feet but you can immediately tell itās him. itās a very distinctive boots and pants combo.
sophie, circa 2009: so then thereās parker-
tara: wait, THE parker?? shit, isnāt she crazy?
sophie: no! donāt say that, sheās so sweet! weāve been working hard on grifting skills and sheās really improving! no more stabbing - well, knock on wood - and the other day she even offered to throw me off a building. i think weāre really making progress.
tara: are you hearing yourself
sophie: wait wait wait, just look at this photo! here she is dressed up for a grift - i picked the costume out for her - isnāt she just adorable? <3
tara: ā¦alright. next time maybe just adopt a cat instead of, you know, the worldās greatest thief.
āā
sophie, circa 2023: my stepdaughter, astrid, who i [presumably] never told you about came back into my life recently.
tara: i - okay. sure.
sophie: sheās an interpol agent working for sterling and sheās doing such a great job hunting people down. she even found out multiple aliases of mine! iām so proud! i initially thought sheād want to toss me in prison or get revenge on me because her father sort of died of a broken heart when i left, but sheās actually very kind and just as adorable as ever! weāre getting tea next monday :)
tara:
tara: where are you finding these people. do you have some kind of magnet
Tucked into my Likes folder and thought it should go around again.
One of the things I appreciate so much about Leverage Redemption is how it handles Timothy Hutton not returning. There were very real reasons the show cannot have him back, so being dead is the best way to handle it.
But the way they handle it? God!
It feels like after someone has a scandal, people want to pretend like the person and everything they touched was never likeable or good. I get it (believe me). But the Leverage team decided to go a different way.
Nate was integral to the original Leverage. He was the fulcrum for the arcs everyone else went on. The first series is really framed as his journey through his rage and grief. And by the end of the series, he's come to the end of his journey. In reality, any sequel to the original didn't need him to begin with.
Oh, I'm sure that they could have found a good use for the character, but he wasn't really necessary anymore.
Instead, Nate's still treated like an important character, his shadow's still there but he's dead and gone. And so the series moves from having Nate in the center to Sophie. Sophie is the new emotional core. The same way Nate's grief drove him, Sophie's grief drives her. But Nate died not because of some rich asshole, but likely due to his years of alcohol abuse. There is no one to lash out at or take revenge on.
But now is also not 2008 when the first series started. It's 2021, and I believe it hits harder to have a character to decide to get into hunting horrible people not because of a need for revenge, but for a need to have a life and a purpose outside of who they lost.
Sophie's journey so far has never undercut her loss or her grief. It's still there, even when she's happy, even when she's working, even when something's going wrong. It's there. It's raw. It can stop her short and also drive her forward. But also, her grief isn't just tying her down anymore. She has something to focus on now. The balance Leverage Redemption strikes is so perfect and necessary. It feels real.
Nate was an important character in the last series. And not bringing him up regularly, when he's only dead a year, would seem cheap and hollow. They don't over do it, so that when Nate is mentioned it can be a gut punch, but the importance of that character isn't undervalued.
In both removing Nate, but also acknowledging what he meant to the characters, the show reminds the audience of an inportant fact: it's not 2008 anymore. It's a different time, and things we treasured are gone. The road ahead is less clear. Plans are broken. Things are darker. But there's still hope.
I think if they did it any other way, it wouldn't have worked.
The Leverage sequel does what a lot of sequels canāt seem to do - follow the characters, their changes and growth over the timeskip, instead of just shoving the characters into a new plot device and cranking the money machine.Ā

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I have obtained totally trivial insider Leverage knowledge. Watch this space.
So I got a haircut today. My family's been seeing the same kinda high-end hairstylist since the early 2000s. Of course I happened to mention Leverage and it turns out she likes it and we were talking about it for a while and then like ten minutes later she goes "Hey who's that guy who was on the old Leverage but not the new one?"
"Timothy Hutton?"
"Yeah, him. So I used to make his secret hair color."
???????
After much vague and circuitous discussion, I learned:
Timothy Hutton went completely gray well before Leverage started.
This was supposed to be Not Okay for a star at the time so this was supposed to be a big secret
His stylists developed a special custom hair color for him
The formula for this color was ALSO a big secret
When production moved to Portland they revealed the secret formula to MY stylist
She did not DO his hair, her role in this process was specifically to MAKE THE SECRET FORMULA and then give it to the people who did his hair
I asked her if she would get in trouble if I shared this. She said "I mean it's embarassing so he'd probably just deny it. So go ahead."
Once she saw I was excited about it she also really wanted to tell me the secret formula but finally she decided she couldn't go that far. I bet she would've told me if I'd pushed. But like. Wtf would I even do with Timothy Hutton's Top Secret Custom Hair Color Formula?
Dude, people from Portland are so weird. You'll meet a guy and he'll say his name is "Gnar Slabdash," and then, with a straight face, tell you "the 'N' is mostly silent." I hate it there.
You get the notifications that oh! Leverage redemption is doing a noir episode! And you think of course, of COURSE THE Sophie Devereaux will be the femme fatale. Makes sense right? Earth revolves the sun, moon makes the tides, and Sophie Devereaux is a femme fatale running a con. Right. Right?
But then, Parker!!!! Parker, the one who stabbed a guy after she was triggered and jumped off of a balcony in a foreign country. Parker, who used chloroform coz she couldnāt distract a guy away from his desk. Parker, who used excessive borderline obsessive note taking to talk to a mark. Parker, who cried when a mark read her trauma from her micro expressions.
But then. Then it just, makes sense! It makes sense because like she says, she has gone through extensive therapy for YEARS! She has processed her trauma, her grief, her years of being āotheredā till she found her people. Parker has lived, and loved, and toppled empires of crime.
And none of this has made her more āpalatableā. It wouldāve been so easy, SO EASY, to put forth a more āeasy to goā Parker to the audience and tell them OH! She just āgrew upā.
But they didnāt. Sheās still a thief, sheās still unnerving, sheās still doing things that canāt be explained using classical physics because she is Parker. Moreover, she is a mastermind, she is the head of Leverage International managing many teams at the same time. OG Parker couldnāt be the femme fatale for a noir episode. However!!!! In the original series, Parker held Tara by the throat threatened to throw her off of the roof and said āI dangle off of rooftops with my fingertipsā. She has always had the capacity it. But Redemption Parker? She has had time! She has had time to process and hone that capacity. So femme fatale? Of course. Of course!
if itās taken until season 3 of leverage redemption for harry to realise that "sophie devereaux" may be an alias, i canāt wait til he realises that heās only ever heard parker called by one name.
tags by @underforeversgrace - omg this is perfect. i need this episode to happen now!!
There is something specifically sooo og Leverage season 1 maybe 2 about the Shakedown in clone-town job. First of all, this is the most bank shot job coded episode ever. Small town, corrupt town mayor AND Sheriff, a side of drug running, good people of the town trying to do the right thing but desperately need help, several scenes in an old bank, Parker stealing from the bank, cavalry reference, etc etc.
But from there it's all in the production and camera work. The little diner set feeling like the old bar. The courtroom set. The fuckin hallway outside the courtroom idk what it is but I was transported back to 2008 from that hallway alone.
In the way that weekend in paris and the grand complication job felt like elevated, updated leverage, this felt like a deliberate return to original "smaller scale" Leverage. I'm sure Beth was thinking about this when directing this episode.

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"The best lie is the truth" - Tara Cole (funniest woman alive) to Nate Ford (man she is actively grifting)
i love that none of the leverage team have misplaced confidence like they all really are THAT good. hardison hacked into the bank of iceland as a teenager. parker can crack almost any type of safe in seconds. sophie is a famous art thief and has played such long cons that she became a duchess. eliot is an internationally renowned hitman and retrieval specialist FOR A REASON. nate literally gave a guy a nosebleed with the power of his mind. no wonder the five of them are the only people who could possibly figure out how to beat a steranko twice