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scout_lover November 29 2011, 02:06:22 UTC
Word!

I don't get how, four seasons into this show, people are still shocked that Eliot is a bad man who has done bad things and Nate is a bastard. Maggie could not live with the man. If Maggie Collins can't put up with you, well …

As for Eliot, oh, let me count the ways …

• "I'm a bad guy."
• "I've hurt people."
• Who does Nate turn to in "Mile High" for information about how a hit would lay out, and for how the bad guys would take out somebody on a plane?
• "There are nine places a professional will use to hide an injection."
• "The worst thing I've ever done in my entire life I did for Damien Moreau. And I'll never be clean of that."
• Damien: "Spencer, my friend, I see you haven't lost your touch."
• And then Eliot takes out a small army in a warehouse, using their own guns.
• Again, Damien: "You know how these things work. Or you used to."

Of course Eliot has killed people! How is that even a question?

Here's what I wrote somewhere else regarding this:

This is one of the things I love most about Eliot, and the Leverage writers. Given what we know of Eliot's past, and the hints that have been laid over the years, other shows would be tempted to slather on the angst with a trowel, to make Eliot a tortured soul. But this show doesn't.

Eliot knows what he's done, and he knows it's bad. He doesn't deny it, he doesn't try to justify or lessen it. And he also knows there's not a thing in the world he can do to change it. What's done is done, and can't be undone. He can try not to do it again (though you could argue he was defeated in Big Bang Job), and can try to reform his life from now on, but the past is set in stone.

Rogers once said that Eliot hasn't really made peace with his past so much as he's found equilibrium with it, and I like that. He knows what he is and what he's done, and has accepted whatever fate it leads him to without a lot of anguished handwringing.

These people are criminals. Nate has shown not only an ability but a true affinity for ruthless mindfuckery. The Leverage writers have done a fantastic job of gving us some rich, deep, incredibly broken people, and to try and see them as, I don't know, the CareBears does them and the writers a terrible disservice.

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