#leverage Hardison

[rowanfalls]

Me: I can watch the leverage finale again. I know the twist, I'll be fine

Me, 15 minutes in: *Sobbing alone in my room as Parker, Hardison, and Elliot hold hands* They're in love! They're in loooooove

[solarianvoidthearoace]

Showstopping, immaculate, glorious

The scene on Leverage where the Team made up an entire elaborate cover story only for Eliot Spencer to step forward, straighten up, roll back his shoulders and go “I’m Eliot Spencer” gaining them immediate audience

Throwing your (team’s) cover to the wind because your real identity grants you so much more leverage (hehe), perfection

Eliot Spencer has biggest dick energy. Hardison has the most golden heart energy. Parker has unchecked chaotic energy.

Leverage did so many things with what I consider a gold standard.

One of the best depictions of Found Family there ever will be.

An awesome slow-build hetero relationship that feels organic, natural,

Never putting that romance before the familial love they have for the team

And Parker is still one of my favourite aroace autistic headcanons. She is oblivious to her own feelings for Hardison. But she is never belittled for it, she doesn’t get made fun of for not being able to name/ distinguish what she feels.

And Hardison, oh my goodness Hardison. Alec Hardison is the absolutely most loving (familially and romantically) man.

He is patient with Parker. He understands she struggles to understand how she feels.

He is encouraging and never pressures her.

And “I’m here, if you want” is still one of the most wholesome pre-relationship tropes.

Pretzels.

[marypenelope]

Yknow, Eliot being adopted means that he, Hardison, and Parker all have that sort of thing in common. Obviously not exactly the same way - Parker went through several foster homes before (it sounds like) eventually running away, while Hardison ended up with Nana (who knows if he was in other foster homes beforehand or not), and Eliot was adopted as a baby. But none of them was raised by their blood families and... idk, I just feel like that's Significant. I mean, Hardison and Parker specifically bonded when Hardison revealed Nana was his foster mom, not his grandmother. I can't help but feel like there's a parallel here

[look-how-they-massacred-them]

Preliminary Poll

Everyone

Submission reason:

Original Leverage had excellent character, story, found family, etc. 10/10 all around. In the reboot, the stories are less interesting (several of the cons feel like they could be done with half the cast, like a lot of them just aren't doing anything a lot of the time and it feels overcrowded) and the characters all feel a lot flatter? For example: Eliot. The most haunting scene for his character in the original is when the rest of the team learns he used to do work for Damien Moreau, the super evil guy they're currently trying to take down. We get this interaction: Eliot: The worst things I ever did, I did while working for Damien Moreau. Parker: What did you do? Eliot: Don't ask me that Parker. Because if you ask me, I'm going to tell you. So don't ask me. We never find out what he did. There is a strong implication it involved killing innocent children, the families of targets he was hired to take out. There may have been more. We don't know, and that's what makes it such a chilling moment for his character- whatever it was it was bad, so bad that it doesn't need specifics. In Leverage: Redemption, we get a scene where Eliot is captured by evil security company lady (I don't remember exactly who she was, but one of the main bad guys). She injects him with a drug that is described as making it easier to bring up traumatic memories somehow? and triggers a traumatic memory by saying "Operation Kansas". We then see footage of Generic War Flashbacks (with no detail as to what that actually was or any stake we should have in it, we're just told "it's traumatic"). He also starts branching out a lot more from the team looking for romance (and struggling with it) which is a lot more depressing than where he was at in the original (the team is his family). Granted this probably has something to do with Hardison's actor not being available and not wanting to focus too much on Eliot and Parker's relationship lest that read as cucking the black man, but it does weaken the found family of the original (it has a bit of the vibe of "we're growing up and growing apart" when the original was "broken people finding strength and community in each other"). They also don't seem to know what to do with Sophie exactly- in the original, she was the heart of the team. There's a line one of the others has about how they trust Nate to come up with the plan, but they trust Sophie to make sure they're all okay. For a lot of the show, this is more focused on Nate than the others because he's the most off-the-rails, so with his character gone there's a gap that isn't really adequately filled.

The support relationship she had with the trio is also weakened because in the time since the first show they've all become even more competent and successful without her, so her taking on a teaching role with them feels weird (they mostly do this with Parker, which has the awful effect of making her seem less competent than she did in the original). Her relationship with Harry works the best in the new show, but since Harry's problem is entirely born of lack of experience/competence with this sort of crime, she can't really play off him in the same way as the others- it's all very teacher-student. It was also established in the original that she's a grifter, and she's not actually interested in running a team so making her character the leader after she's been out of the game for years feels out of place. And Parker. Beloved Parker. She's Word of God canonically autistic, and it was done SO WELL in the first series, which makes the massacre in Redemption so much sadder. Parker's arc in the original series involved her learning to open herself up to the world after closing off so much of who she could care about due to repeated trauma throughout her life. She shows so much growth throughout the series, and ends up implied to be the leader of the team after Nate and Sophie leave. She's weird and kooky but this isn't a flaw and it doesn't detract from her competence as a thief and teammate. And while she does struggle with certain things (grifting especially because of the social component) she does learn and improve with the help of the team. And then in Redemption, there's just. an enormous backslide. She's been at least co-leading teams around the world with Eliot and Hardison for years, but when Sophie comes back into the picture she gets implicitly demoted (it's not emphasized, but Sophie being promoted to solo leader implies it) and within the team dynamic, she is paralleled in skill level to Breanna, Hardison's 20-something sister who just joined the team (for comparison, Parker should be mid-30s at this point and has been doing this sort of crime for over a decade).

Still, Parker is put in the same category as Breanna; that is "good at her specialty, trying to be better, still has a lot to learn". She maintains her character growth from the original in regards to opening up and caring about others, but her skills and competence feel a lot lesser- despite the fact that years have passed offscreen where presumably she'd continue to learn. Ultimately she comes across as much more childish and immature which really does not sit right with the wonderful autistic representation she was in the original. Harry and Breanna I have less to say about because they are new for the reboot, but I think they also could be done a lot better. Harry's entire thing is that he used to be exactly the type of Evil Guy the team would take down but he's had a change of heart and wants to fight for what's right. And like, he did do a lot of evil fucked up shit! But the extent to which the other characters will like. Rub his face in it? Feels excessive.

Maybe this is just me having a lot of thoughts on "how to effectively de-radicalize someone" but like. For example, there's a point where they're deciding how to run a con and he offers some information as to how these guys work (I don't remember specifics unfortunately) and the rest of the team is like "Oh. And how do YOU know that? Right, because you were EVIL. 😒" when like??? He was literally already acknowledging that? And constantly shaming someone for their past when they are actively trying to improve is bad practice. As for Breanna... I want to like her. I do. And there are a lot of good things about her character. But they also kind of make her a Millennial Mouthpiece at times, where like she just expresses the opinions that Kids These Days and Our Generation have without any weight behind them. There's an episode about Fake Magic the Gathering where she gives a big speech about kids who didn't feel like they fit in, but there's nothing personal about it, so it ends up feeling empty. Character building in the original was heavily focused on specific personal details and experience, and she doesn't really get much of that which takes away a lot of potential depth. Also I would be remiss if I did not highlight this comparison because it's a big part of why I had to stop watching the reboot: In original Leverage, there is a scene where the con has spiraled out of control, and Hardison and the mark were caught on a US army base with a camera. The team is trying to figure out how to get them out without blowing the con and Hardison says "Damn the con! I am a black man caught on an Army base with a video camera! I am going to jail forever!" They manage to get him out safely, having him stall so they can break him out without blowing their cover. But that one line highlights the fact that his race does put him in more danger than the others in that scenario, and the show knows it. Even if it doesn't play out, the awareness is there. This is one of many cases in which this is emphasized. Redemption has an episode, The Great Train Job, where the mark is the head of a group of white nationalists. Breanna is one of the teammates on the train, and there's a point where she says she's going to try something and Eliot reminds her to be careful because she's in more danger than the rest of them. This is the sum total of acknowledgement of that danger, aside from some quippy lines about the evils of white supremacists. A few key things: Also in this episode, while Sophie is grifting the mark, he comes onto her very strongly in a private train car, getting way too close to Actual Sexual Assault for comfort, in a scene that was genuinely unpleasant to watch. In the original, while the stakes were often high, there was never the fear of "they're really not going to make it" or even "they're going to experience something genuinely horrible" (beyond like, "getting shot" level of injury). This situation for Sophie was new and unexpected, and because of that I no longer trusted the show not to cross another line. And because they highlighted the racism present on the train (by having the white man remind the black woman about it, which isn't inherently bad but I don't love it), I spent the entire episode on edge waiting for something bad to happen to Breanna. Nothing did, but fundamentally I did not trust that. The quote from Hardison, among other scenes, did make me feel safe in the understanding that the writers knew the gravity of the situation and would tread carefully. But the casualness of the line with Breanna, coupled with Sophie's awful scene in the same episode did the opposite. This is less of a character complaint and more of a structural one, but still.

Propaganda:

A lot of my gripes with Redemption are about the show as a whole, so idk how well this fits this poll, but the characters are a huge part of that because it's such a character driven show. Anyways I'm genuinely curious to see how this does because I am so strongly pro-original and so strongly anti-reboot, but I have the impression that a lot of people really like the reboot.

[shy-glow-worm]

:)

[happyyellowhamster]

In the MLM episode, Parker says she is 14 months pregnant so it shows she knows very little about pregnancies and stuff. Like this is when if our theory is correct and a parker pregnancy is happening in season 3 that she has absolutely no clue how soon she is supposed to have the baby. Meaning she absolutely would not know any of the important things about preparing for a baby. Like i feel like the only reason she would know she's not supposed to drink during pregnancy would be if someone else on the team knows and told her not to drink. This furthers my evidence of Eliot being the protective older brother who absolutely caught onto the pregnancy and that is why he knew about the magiq baby clothes as he already has a baby stockpile for the #Pardison baby because that's his little niece/nephew and he's gonna be the best Uncle/godfather.

[rivenoblade]

Here is some fan art I made for the Tv show Leverage! It is of Eliot, Parker, and Hardison watching a sunrise on a building! I hope they look recognizable enough! And if they are not Recognizable, I would love some tips on how to make them more so!

[maker-az-is]

You ever think about how much food is love in Leverage? Going to dinner, pretzels, picnic, stolen sandwich, Parker feeling something different at the restaurant. Eliot says food is life, but I think it really means love.

Obviously I spend too long thinking about this.

[atombonniebaby]

Okay, so it finally clicked on who Sam sounds like...and then I thought a little harder and...

[avacadokin]

transgender alec hardison real

[vallygirl285]

Gotta love Eliot and Hardison!!!

[sherokutakari]

Maybe the information is out there already and I just can't find it, but is Hardison not going to be a regular in Leverage Redemption s2 after all? They made it seem like he would be at the end of s1, but I've yet to see ANY filming/bts stuff with Aldis Hodge. Like I know it's hugely dependent on his availability, but not even the 100th???? blease where is my boy

[thundergrace]

Just a couple of dudes reminding you that Aldis Hodge is, in fact, the sexiest man alive. In addition to being a horologist, he's also a painter and a violinist. He also went to school for architecture.

[marypenelope]

I know that Aldis Hodge is busy and can't be here much this season, but between getting some of Sophie's backstory and Eliot's? I really feel like this might be the season we finally meet Nana. Especially since it could reveal as much about Breanna's life and childhood as it could Hardison's

[scattered-winter]

more memes

[churchofthecomet]

Sophie grifting: hot duchess. seductive investor. mysterious businesswoman.

Eliot grifting: ridiculously competent chef. hot athlete (any sport). heartthrob country musician.

Hardison grifting: overly-confident criminal. assertive FBI agent. heartthrob classical musician.

Nathan Ford grifting: goddamn piece of shit oily slimy scumbag ambulance-chaser untrustworthy con artist with a stupid fucking voice and a silly hat

the show is not doing Nate any favors in the likeability or attractiveness departments here

(Bonus mention: Parker grifting: autism creature)