I DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM.

[dsudis]

I just watched twenty episodes of Leverage in a single day but, much like Nate Ford, okay, I do not have a problem.

Well, okay, I do have a problem. The problem is that I have run out of episodes to watch and have to wait until Wednesday for more. THAT IS A PROBLEM.

Comments

[havocthecat]

I sometimes feel like there are five people in the entire fandom other than me who love Tara and Sophie both. I feel like it's pretty useless to resent Tara when Sophie's gone since Gina Bellman had to take maternity leave.

(And Gina will be back. For sure in third season. According to an interview she did, it'll be in a big way.)

[dsudis]

I don't resent Tara? Exactly?

Um, well, okay, I did spend a lot of time in her first couple of episodes saying DIE IN A FIRE, TARA but I got over it, mostly. She is cool! She is! Although I realized this morning that one thing that kind of frustrates me about Tara and keeps me from accepting her as part of the team is that we haven't seen the thing Tara totally fails at yet. She's too good to need a team, unlike the rest of them, so she doesn't take the team seriously, like the team does, and like I do. That's what I can't quite like about Tara.

But that said, yeah, I know Gina's coming back! And I can't wait!

[havocthecat]

Um. I guess I'm hearing that you you don't like her because she's too perfect? And that's sounding a lot like "I don't like her because she's too perfect and the PTB have made her into a Mary Sue" kind of stuff that people have been using for years as an excuse for, say, Sam Carter or Elizabeth from Pirates of the Caribbean, or Hermione Granger, or, for that matter, any number of other female characters

[1001cranes]

to completely butt in, I think I agree with what dsudis is saying, in that... WHY is Tara part of the team? She really doesn't have a compelling reason to be there, so for me she just grates. I don't really want in her in the merry little Leverage band because it seems like she's in it for a lark, she doesn't really give a damn about any of them -- Nate's drinking problem, to begin with, although HOW SICK AM I of Nate's mainpain, hur hur -- and I don't want my replacement Sophia/Mom character that way :/

[havocthecat]

She really doesn't have a compelling reason to be there, so for me she just grates.

Really? Because all of their cons require a grifter, and the time Hardison tried to be their grifter was a disaster. They design their schemes around what all five of them can do, not what four of them can do. So, yeah, they need Tara. Or another grifter. The producers hired Jeri Ryan.

I don't really want in her in the merry little Leverage band because it seems like she's in it for a lark, she doesn't really give a damn about any of themIt's a job for Tara; she stated in her first ep that she expects to be paid. She's doing it because she owes Sophie for something from their past, and because Sophie asked her to. That's brought up in more than one episode. How is she supposed to give a damn about any of them? They're co-workers, not family

[1001cranes]

Well, yes, of course they need a grifter. Logically, I know Sophie can’t be in the show because Gina Bellman can't, and they need a grifter because Hardison’s attempt was *terrible*, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy whatever placeholder they’ve parked there - particularly one who isn’t a part of the family. Yes, okay, a band of thieves can be a coworker situation, but I don't enjoy that! It's Leverage, not Smith, or Thief. Part of the appeal is that you have these fives thieves (I guess minus Nate, cue eyeroll) that didn’t want to be apart from each other. Tara is a wrench in a comfortable system of cogs. She’s only there because she wants to be paid, she doesn’t want to be Robin Hood - which is fine, hell, I loved Smith, and they were a bunch of psychopathic self-serving bastards, but again, its not Leverage

[dsudis]

Yeah, you pretty much nailed what I was thinking--not that the team doesn't need Tara, but that Tara doesn't need the team, and their co-dependence is why I love the show. Tara is like a bucket of cold water on the happy family dysfunctional lovefest. It really is just a job for her, which it hasn't been for the team since the beginning--and that's fine for Tara, but it's not what I want from the show. And since the show knows Sophie's coming back, as far as I can tell the show's built to leave me a little dissatisfied with episodes that lack Sophie.

As far as Jeri Ryan, though--I was reading John Rogers' blog, and found the entry where he talked about her first day of filming being the scenes in Nate's loft where they're all angry and hostile and don't want her there, and my instant reaction was "Oh God, poor Jeri Ryan! What a horrible first day of work!"

[dsudis]

Much of this amounts to "what 1001cranes said", but I'll take my own crack at articulating it better than I initially did