In the course of my rewatch-all-5-seasons-of-Leverage binge over the past few months, I’ve realized that my favorite long-running gag is Eliot choosing the wrong thing to get mad about.
Sophie accuses him of sleeping around with waitresses and stewardesses? “FIRST OF ALL, THEY’RE CALLED FLIGHT ATTENDANTS”
Hardison denies stealing Eliot’s sandwich and says “you probably ate it yourself and forgot about it?” “OH, MY SANDWICH IS FORGETTABLE????“ [launches into insanely detailed cooking techniques of what, to be fair, does sound like a bonkers delicious sandwich]
Hardison announces that he’s bought a brewery in Portland where they can hide out slash take cases slash brew their own beer? Everyone else is like “why the eff did we have to move to this new town with no warning” and Eliot is LIVID that Hardison is underestimating how hard food and beer pairings are. “THE BREWPUB MENU IS THE HARDEST KIND OF MENU TO DESIGN!”
I literally never get tired of it. I could watch Christian Kane get offended at implausibly bizarre perceived insults ALL DAY.
You know what though, like, to me what’s glorious about Elliot is that, to me, he’s always choosing the RIGHT thing to get mad about.
1) ignoring the sex shaming because he’s not gonna dignify that with a response but standing up for how the women choose to identify themselves.
2) attacking the most obvious lie because it has been established that Hardison appreciates the Elliot!food (a squeeze of lemon) and how dare Hardison not only lie so obviously but also choose to call into question all of Hardison’s appreciation of what Elliot had made in the past. I mean he might as well have called Elliot himself forgettable, which is a LOW BLOW, especially for a man who recognizes and makes an attempt to remember what makes things distinct.
3) Everyone else is being upset that the team is together (in a new location) but Elliot has already accepted that the team is together. And is going to be in it, for better or worse.
In sickness and in health; and through bad beer and difficult to pair foods.
‘Til his dying day.
(But that doesn’t mean he’d not gonna have old-married-couple fights about the details.)
I’m laughing my head off. “There should have been a warning.”
The warning is that it’s a retelling of the fucking Illiad. Honest to God, a story involving one of the most famous same-sex love affairs in the history of literature and there should have been a warning?
