fibersofcrime

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I really hope young folks just discovering Leverage understand that in 2008 a Tesla meant basically the opposite of what it means in 2025. They were so exciting. We were so hopeful.

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okay.

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Neal if white collar hadn’t been cowards and let him keep his cane for more than 2 minutes

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"eliot spencer needs a dog" wrong. eliot spencer is a dog. eliot spencer needs an engaging tactical obstacle course complete with moving bite targets.

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We made a difference. Remember that.

@tvarchive's TV Appreciation Week Day 4: Favorite Family - Leverage

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there's also something so funny about the fact that peter's house has an exemption for neal's tracking anklet. it's outside his radius but he can go there whenever he wants without setting off an alarm. this is totally normal for a criminal informant and his handler and in no way implies anything else about their relationship.

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Eliot getting to be an Unhinged Weirdo for the con is never not funny. I love when he gets to be Extremely Weird to unsettle people.

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having thoughts about one of this season's seemingly lighter, sillier episodes (the hustler job). it was harry's episode, sure, but the thought bouncing around in my brainpan at the moment is about parker.

specifically, her full-tilt bloodthirsty outrage about the villain of the week "rolling nanas."

parker doesn't have much ingrained reverence for familial roles. and why would she? the closest thing she had to a father for most of her life was a man who used, manipulated, and isolated her, reinforcing in her the idea that she is fundamentally broken and unable to be like or around "normal" people, undeserving of real family. (yes, archie did also have love for her, but he still took a troubled child off the street and crafted her into a mini-me master thief off whom he personally profited, all the while drawing a hard line between her and his actual family. nate's scorn and disgust for archie was frankly extremely well earned.)

parker never had a nana.

but hardison did. hardison, who could've ended up a lot more like parker than any of them imagined, had he gone through the same cycle of use-abuse-neglect-violence-crime that parker experienced in foster care and even after it. but hardison, hardison ended up one of the lucky kids in the system.

he ended up with nana. a woman who cared for and fiercely nurtured him, loved him and instilled pride and confidence in him, gave him a home and family, and who would never, ever turn her back on him.

parker never had a nana, but she has undoubtedly heard a ton about hardison's over the years, met her and spent time with her, probably got a little taste of that same acceptance and warmth. parker saw her not just with hardison but with breanna, and however many other children who went into the system and found refuge in nana's house, against all odds.

i can only imagine parker has developed a mythlike admiration for nana, for the role of a nana, something sacred and purely good and as should-be beyond threat as children are, to parker.

her violently gungho fixation on the episode's villain as a predator of nanas is, like many of parker's oddities and quirky behaviors, played largely for comedic effect. but if you don't pay attention to the parts of parker's character that get framed as "for laughs", you'll miss a lot of the depth and nuance in her character.

as we've seen time and again in leverage and redemption, parker is easiest for people to dismiss as a crazy weirdo, silly and childish and incomprehensible. her weirdness often comes across in bright, brash tones, with the brightness set high enough you're not supposed to see the shadows, and the parts of her found in them.

parker never got her own nana, and until knowing hardison, possibly until meeting the woman herself, couldn't have managed to believe in such a concept as a real person. it was too entirely out of her frame of reference.

but nana is real. which means parker could have had one. but she didn't. and i'm sure she's wondered before... who might she have been had she been taken in by someone like hardison's nana, instead of a series of shitty people culminating in the man who cultivated her into a professional criminal?

would she still have been broken? this broken? would she still have been too strange for most people to connect to? could she have been something closer to normal?

and those questions, of course, can never be answered, and parker's not the type to dwell on them past the initial pondering. but it's quite easy to see how the sacrosanct myth of a "nana" who should never, ever experience harm and be protected at all costs could be built in her head.

because a nana saved hardison. and breanna. and so many others. so many children, vulnerable and afraid and alone.

might've, in another world, even saved someone like her.

so anyone who touches a nana could only be the lowest evil. and we know parker doesn't waste moral energy on trash like that. she takes them out.

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"Turns out they’re just audio recordings of static. Hundreds of hours of it."

Leverage S05E03 The First Contact Job.

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love when I'm watching Leverage and I can tell it's gonna be a Working Class Solidarity Eliot episode immediately. like oh?? we're in the field of a vineyard in the cold open? a worker just collapsed and the conditions are shitty?? Eliot is gonna be working that field within the next 2 scenes, I know it. and you know what? he was.

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art theft isnt what it used to be. now you can just right click save. you used to have to break into a museum. there were lasers and stuff. you don't even have to have a grappling hook anymore.

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but redemption really does have the same sauce as the original. like this is a show that is good and all but every now and again will abandon the righteous monster of the week premise to have a stupid fucking situation where they have to save christmas with a spy-turned-librarian (special guest star levar burton) all while only peppering in a tasteful amount of trek jokes. and it's still good

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my favorite white collar bit is neal saying "I know a guy" and every single time it is mozzie. neal you could just call mozzie. no one forgot about that man

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peter, who on more than one occasion has discussed the fact that he met el because of his job, to neal: “if i’d kept playing i would have destroyed my arm. then i’d never have been able to pass the fbi physical and i never would have caught you.”

not me sitting here like boo boo the fool thinking that sentence was going to end with him being like “i never would have met my wife” when it was obviously always going to be “i never would have met you, the platonic love of my life”.

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breanna in early leverage redemption: i wish they’d trust me and let me do stuff by myself :/

breanna getting chased with an axe in the polygeist job & the most help she’s getting is being told to head west: NOT WHAT I MEANT