Leverage, season 2
Leverage season 2: really good! Sterling is such a wonderful magnificent bastard. (there was a vid once upon a time that featured Mark Sheppard getting beaten up, and then when I got to that one shot of him getting punched by Eliot I was like "hey, I recognize this!" so that was fun) (let us ignore the amount of googling I did to find that vid, when I already had it on my computer. In my defense, I just remember that bit about Mark Sheppard getting punched in multiple roles, not that it wasn't also a Doctor Who and Supernatural multi-fandom vid) I did get annoyed at the flashbacks, though. I didn't like how they would cut from a scene and later flashback to immediately after they cut away from the scene. And also flashbacks to even things they showed, because they don't trust the audience to be following along.
Jonas Quinn Tara was also pretty good, although the green screen shots of Sophie and her world travels were so green screen omg.
Also, I was glad for Tara coming in and pointing out the money aspect, because it was so glaring (since I'm marathoning) that they went from alternative revenue streams and having the cons pay themselves and also fund future cons in season 1, to basically never mentioning money or payouts or how they keep paying for everything in season 2. It was very awkward when Tara presented her invoice, but also kind of welcome, because dude, they are con artists and thieves, and also where is the money coming from.
While I totally understand why Hardison/Eliot/Parker is a huge thing, I'm not really feeling very shippy about this fandom (although Nate and Sterling have wonderful foe!yay) (although of course I'm still feeling Nate/Maggie for Nate stuff). But I'm in love with all of the characters, but really, especially Eliot. He's fantastic. He hits my loyalty kink, he hits my guard dog kink, he hits my taking-care-of-peeople-by-feeding-them-and-beating-up-their-enemies kink, he hits a lot of kinks. And a lot of people, leading me to conclude he's a Highlander Immortal, since he is a superhumanly good fighter who heals pretty quickly, and also for some reason is very good at baseball despite not liking it, which leads me to believe that in his previous life he played baseball and doesn't want to cross the streams. Because no one is suddenly that good at baseball without ever playing it.
I swear this is not residual Lindsey feels from my Angel days... okay possibly some of that.
Hardison is also an actual wizard, because what he does with computers is impossible, and also he's got some kind of Confidence Forcefield, since a lot of stuff could be disproven by 1) simple googling, 2) asking random people (they did address that in the boxing episode, yay), or 3) doing an actual background check. How Nate got to be the principal of that expensive private school in a blink of an eye is mindboggling. Suspension of disbelief ftw!
And Parker is my Emotions Are Hard favorite, just epically. I don't know if the audience is supposed to identify and emphasize so much with Parker, but oh man, I do, a lot a lot a lot.
But anyway, they are all really great. Kinda wish the show would stop pushing Nate/Sophie so hard, but, meh. I think I'd like it more if they took a different track with it. It just seems like from day one, Sophie was under the impression that she and Nate had, if not a relationship, then an Understanding Of Future Relationship. And it was never really clear why, or if Nate had brought her in to the crew with that. They seemed to have flirted a lot while Nate was still working insurance, and maybe now that Nate was divorced, she figured she had first dibs? And the way she and Nate circle each other, it seems very much like the show thinks they're in a romantic relationship but they never actually are and the show then has to go "oh right, they're just flirting". IDK. It's weird.
Also, I vaguely recall from when this show was airing, a couple people complaining about how the show treats alcoholism. I can see why.
There is also an overwhelming question that does not get addressed, but it is GLARING: how do their clients find them? Okay, okay, word of mouth? Something? BUT THEN THEY HAVE A COP AS A CLIENT. Is everybody in Leverage land aware of the Leverage crew and collectively deciding to keep them around? Are they a worse secret than Torchwood? What's going on?
This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/906966.html.