deconstruction
Stel and I have decided to re-watch one episode of Leverage together each Sunday, working our way up to the finale.
Last night we watched The Miracle Job (the week before we watched The Two Horse Job), and a couple things stuck out to us.
First, we've met four people who knew Nate in his life before--Paul, Stirling, Maggie, and Sophie. None of them are the least bit surprised when they find out what Nate's up to nowadays. None of them so much as bats an eye.
One of the many things I love in The Nigerian Job is how Nate only needs five words to bring Sophie in to the game.
The scene is beautifully played; I can't emphasize that enough. But on a narrative level, the reason it works is that Sophie knows him. She knows why he'd come to her for help. She knows he has a plan, and it will be a good plan. Of course she wants in.
In the next scene, when they're back in Hardison's apartment coming up with their plan... Nate says "I'm thinking Nigerians. Nigerians will do nicely," and walks out. Parker, Hardison, and Eliot have wtf? faces and turn to Sophie who says, "Well, he hasn't changed."
The scheming, the lying, the games--none of that is new behavior on Nate's part.
I'm sure I'll talk about Maggie when we get up to the David Jobs, but for the time being -- in Second David, when Maggie finds out that Nate's scheming, she's not surprised. She's pissed off that he tried to play her, sure, but she recognizes it right off and she's not in the least surprised.
In The Two Horse Job, one of the first things Stirling says to Nate is, "this is one of those complicated little games you like to play." We see in both Two Horse and especially the David Jobs that Stirling is intimately familiar with these games Nate likes to play, which means he's been playing them for a while.
(I also love how, in The Nigerian Job, Nate goes from "I'm not a thief" to "How do you think I got all my stolen merchandise back?" in less than sixty seconds. Sure you're not a thief, honey.)
But let's get to The Miracle Job.
Paul is suspicious from the moment Nate visits him in the hospital. As the episode progresses, Paul's not only unsurprised, but his reaction is an unspoken here we go again.
When Paul gets out of the hospital and sees that there's something going on, he immediately finds Nate and demands "what did you do?"
When Nate ducks into the Confessional to tell Paul about the miracle, Paul says "there's always a loophole with you."
Paul knows Nate, and he knows not to put up with Nate's bullshit. Paul's reactions prove without a doubt that none of this is new behavior for Nate. Nate has never been innocent. Nate has never been an honest man.
The extent of Nate's skill set gives the lie, too. We see it up front with The Homecoming Job; at the party, Nate moves in to work the classic pickpocket scheme with Sophie. (Oh, you have ketchup on your coat.) He knows exactly what to do. He doesn't hesitate in the least. It's quite a stretch to say he needed to be that familiar how pickpockets work in the course of job with IYS.
(Then there's the poker game in Two Horse. It was a team effort, a beautiful team effort, but Nate has to be very good at cheating at cards. There's no virtuous justification for that; he taught himself that slight of hand for the hell of it.)
No, Nate has never been an honest man, and truth is an important part of The Miracle Job.
I mean, Nate decides to fake a miracle. Nate, who is Catholic, decides to fake a miracle. Nate--who is Catholic and went to seminary school and still believes in God (because he wouldn't be so furious if he had lost his faith)--Nate fakes a miracle.
(As Hardison points out, this kind of puts us in mortal sin territory. Nate is utterly unfazed by the idea, which is a sign of how much he doesn't care what happens to himself. He's not actively suicidal; he just doesn't care, and that's much worse.)
Nate is so terribly proud of himself for faking a miracle.
In part, this is because Nate can't deal with the truth. He's a con artist, and truth is not his medium. More than that, he's actively scared of the truth. We'd be here all night if we tried to count all the questions he purposefully doesn't answer, and it took blatant symptoms of physical withdrawl before he'd admit the obvious fact that he's an alcoholic.
But Nate's also proud of himself for faking a miracle because he didn't get a miracle when he needed one. He didn't get a miracle when Sam was dying, and yes, he's furious with God. That's why he's doing all this, isn't it? At the beginning of the episode, Nate tells Paul that he's just going to "move God's plan along." That's semantics, though, much like the exchange with Stirling at the end of Two Horse: "you think you're above the law" / "no, I pick up where the law leaves off." Later in the episode, Paul calls Nate on it, too; Paul says "you can't play God."
Nate didn't get his miracle. God can't keep up His end of the bargain, so Nate's set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner. Faking a miracle is just a little fuck you to God after all of that.
In keeping with issues of truth, the scene in the Confessional is one of the most important in the whole series to date. Nate ducks in there to find a loophole--Paul is dead right, there. Nate ducks into the Confessional to buy them time because it will, at least temporarily, tie Paul's hands. Confession is a sacrament, and anything said there cannot be repeated. It's the first thing out of Nate's mouth, "I get immunity of course." That's the legal wording for an incredibly powerful moral rule.
But Paul has known Nate for a long time and is not going to let Nate get away with that bullshit. Paul says "start it right," and that stops Nate, that takes the wind out of him, at least for a moment. Nate is not comfortable being there. He starts to get defensive, says that he's "out here trying to help people," and Paul responds, "are you? Or are you trying to kill yourself and take a couple of bad guys down with you."
Both of these things are true.
I said it back when I wrote at length about The Nigerian Job: you can do something for the greater good while maintaining selfish motives. Nate is very good at that, but he needs his excuses. He needs plausible deniability for his own sake as much as he needs it to control how other people percieve him. He needs to be helping people--but only in as much as it gives him an excuse to continue destroying his life. Helping people isn't the motivating factor; it's the side effect that makes everything else okay.
In the Confessional, Paul holds up a mirror, and Nate refuses to look in it.
That's part of what Confession does; it requires that you take a clear look at yourself. A while back, Stel said it better than I could:
I think the other reason that Nate seems to have a special hate on for Confession (viz. his glee over breaking the seal of Confession) is that he's not big on having his sins exposed, or on being honest about himself. So Confession is a double whammy: it never allowed him to judge people the way he wanted to, and at the same time it forced him to expose himself, to lay himself bare, when he was taking the sacrament himself. And that's the other thing that Nate can't abide.
One of the reasons I (we) like Stirling as an adversary is that he will come in and tell the truth. Telling the truth is the one advantage he has on Nate. That's really how Stirling wins in The First David Job.
Nate is terrified of the truth.
(An honest man would not be scared of the truth.)
Nate is not an innocent man. Nate is not an honest man. He's not even a particularly nice man. If he looks like one sometimes, well, it's in keeping with something he said twice in The Nigerian Job:
if you want to con someone, you give them what they expect.
Last night we watched The Miracle Job (the week before we watched The Two Horse Job), and a couple things stuck out to us.
First, we've met four people who knew Nate in his life before--Paul, Stirling, Maggie, and Sophie. None of them are the least bit surprised when they find out what Nate's up to nowadays. None of them so much as bats an eye.
One of the many things I love in The Nigerian Job is how Nate only needs five words to bring Sophie in to the game.
The scene is beautifully played; I can't emphasize that enough. But on a narrative level, the reason it works is that Sophie knows him. She knows why he'd come to her for help. She knows he has a plan, and it will be a good plan. Of course she wants in.
In the next scene, when they're back in Hardison's apartment coming up with their plan... Nate says "I'm thinking Nigerians. Nigerians will do nicely," and walks out. Parker, Hardison, and Eliot have wtf? faces and turn to Sophie who says, "Well, he hasn't changed."
The scheming, the lying, the games--none of that is new behavior on Nate's part.
I'm sure I'll talk about Maggie when we get up to the David Jobs, but for the time being -- in Second David, when Maggie finds out that Nate's scheming, she's not surprised. She's pissed off that he tried to play her, sure, but she recognizes it right off and she's not in the least surprised.
In The Two Horse Job, one of the first things Stirling says to Nate is, "this is one of those complicated little games you like to play." We see in both Two Horse and especially the David Jobs that Stirling is intimately familiar with these games Nate likes to play, which means he's been playing them for a while.
(I also love how, in The Nigerian Job, Nate goes from "I'm not a thief" to "How do you think I got all my stolen merchandise back?" in less than sixty seconds. Sure you're not a thief, honey.)
But let's get to The Miracle Job.
Paul is suspicious from the moment Nate visits him in the hospital. As the episode progresses, Paul's not only unsurprised, but his reaction is an unspoken here we go again.
When Paul gets out of the hospital and sees that there's something going on, he immediately finds Nate and demands "what did you do?"
When Nate ducks into the Confessional to tell Paul about the miracle, Paul says "there's always a loophole with you."
Paul knows Nate, and he knows not to put up with Nate's bullshit. Paul's reactions prove without a doubt that none of this is new behavior for Nate. Nate has never been innocent. Nate has never been an honest man.
The extent of Nate's skill set gives the lie, too. We see it up front with The Homecoming Job; at the party, Nate moves in to work the classic pickpocket scheme with Sophie. (Oh, you have ketchup on your coat.) He knows exactly what to do. He doesn't hesitate in the least. It's quite a stretch to say he needed to be that familiar how pickpockets work in the course of job with IYS.
(Then there's the poker game in Two Horse. It was a team effort, a beautiful team effort, but Nate has to be very good at cheating at cards. There's no virtuous justification for that; he taught himself that slight of hand for the hell of it.)
No, Nate has never been an honest man, and truth is an important part of The Miracle Job.
I mean, Nate decides to fake a miracle. Nate, who is Catholic, decides to fake a miracle. Nate--who is Catholic and went to seminary school and still believes in God (because he wouldn't be so furious if he had lost his faith)--Nate fakes a miracle.
(As Hardison points out, this kind of puts us in mortal sin territory. Nate is utterly unfazed by the idea, which is a sign of how much he doesn't care what happens to himself. He's not actively suicidal; he just doesn't care, and that's much worse.)
Nate is so terribly proud of himself for faking a miracle.
In part, this is because Nate can't deal with the truth. He's a con artist, and truth is not his medium. More than that, he's actively scared of the truth. We'd be here all night if we tried to count all the questions he purposefully doesn't answer, and it took blatant symptoms of physical withdrawl before he'd admit the obvious fact that he's an alcoholic.
But Nate's also proud of himself for faking a miracle because he didn't get a miracle when he needed one. He didn't get a miracle when Sam was dying, and yes, he's furious with God. That's why he's doing all this, isn't it? At the beginning of the episode, Nate tells Paul that he's just going to "move God's plan along." That's semantics, though, much like the exchange with Stirling at the end of Two Horse: "you think you're above the law" / "no, I pick up where the law leaves off." Later in the episode, Paul calls Nate on it, too; Paul says "you can't play God."
Nate didn't get his miracle. God can't keep up His end of the bargain, so Nate's set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner. Faking a miracle is just a little fuck you to God after all of that.
In keeping with issues of truth, the scene in the Confessional is one of the most important in the whole series to date. Nate ducks in there to find a loophole--Paul is dead right, there. Nate ducks into the Confessional to buy them time because it will, at least temporarily, tie Paul's hands. Confession is a sacrament, and anything said there cannot be repeated. It's the first thing out of Nate's mouth, "I get immunity of course." That's the legal wording for an incredibly powerful moral rule.
But Paul has known Nate for a long time and is not going to let Nate get away with that bullshit. Paul says "start it right," and that stops Nate, that takes the wind out of him, at least for a moment. Nate is not comfortable being there. He starts to get defensive, says that he's "out here trying to help people," and Paul responds, "are you? Or are you trying to kill yourself and take a couple of bad guys down with you."
Both of these things are true.
I said it back when I wrote at length about The Nigerian Job: you can do something for the greater good while maintaining selfish motives. Nate is very good at that, but he needs his excuses. He needs plausible deniability for his own sake as much as he needs it to control how other people percieve him. He needs to be helping people--but only in as much as it gives him an excuse to continue destroying his life. Helping people isn't the motivating factor; it's the side effect that makes everything else okay.
In the Confessional, Paul holds up a mirror, and Nate refuses to look in it.
That's part of what Confession does; it requires that you take a clear look at yourself. A while back, Stel said it better than I could:
I think the other reason that Nate seems to have a special hate on for Confession (viz. his glee over breaking the seal of Confession) is that he's not big on having his sins exposed, or on being honest about himself. So Confession is a double whammy: it never allowed him to judge people the way he wanted to, and at the same time it forced him to expose himself, to lay himself bare, when he was taking the sacrament himself. And that's the other thing that Nate can't abide.
One of the reasons I (we) like Stirling as an adversary is that he will come in and tell the truth. Telling the truth is the one advantage he has on Nate. That's really how Stirling wins in The First David Job.
Nate is terrified of the truth.
(An honest man would not be scared of the truth.)
Nate is not an innocent man. Nate is not an honest man. He's not even a particularly nice man. If he looks like one sometimes, well, it's in keeping with something he said twice in The Nigerian Job:
if you want to con someone, you give them what they expect.