Satire Please with a Touch of Sugar

Rocky lost his entire crew to an unknown illness and has been alone in space for forty six years. Lil guy wasn't impatient he was freaking frantic that something had happened to the only other being he'd met in the past fifty years and relieved and understandably worked up when Grace reappeared and was just fine but oh my word, can you imagine? You've been alone for so long and you don't even know what killed your crew or why you survived and you finally, finally meet another person and they leave you a note for when they're gonna be back AND THEN THEY DON'T SHOW UP ON TIME?! where are they question?! are they okay question?!

This may seem like an exaggeration, the idea that one can learn how to properly think like a criminal by learning how crime stories work. On a personal note, let me tell a story from the Leverage writer’s room.

Apollo Robbins (http://www.istealstuff.com/) runs a crew of professional thieves who consult for law enforcement. He was also our criminal consultant on Leverage. Every few weeks he would visit the writer’s room to advise on the scripts and keep us up to date about new cons and the latest in criminal technology.

One day during the third season he sat in with the writers while we broke a story. We posted the details of a real-life white collar criminal up on the room’s whiteboard, using him as the basis for our Mark. We looked at his weaknesses, how he moved his money, what his hobbies were. Once we were happy with that element of the story we added a Vault to the mix, one that used an interesting new alarm technology we’d researched. We then spent about an hour figuring out how to circumvent that alarm. We even sketched out a map of the imaginary building so we could keep track of our Crew’s movements during the Job.

“Well, I’m done here,” Apollo muttered. Noting our confusion, he pointed at the board and index cards cluttering the wall. “This is exactly how real Crews plan these things. This writer’s room is now a fully functioning criminal gang. You could be thieves.”

Of course writing television pays better than crime (usually), with far less chance of being arrested (usually), so we all managed to resist the temptation. But aside from the day a US Attorney asked us to change a plot because we’d created a scam that was a little too foolproof, or when a Homeland Security Agent admitted they were spooked by a security hole we’d exploited in our season finale, it was certainly one of the proudest moments I had on the show.

Only those who touched the Truth might understand...💛🩵 Bonus, individual:

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