wowowow

okay can we talk for a minute about Leverage and how Nate and Maggie are estranged at the beginning of the show

but there is just so little hostility and instead a lot of confusion and regret

but they wind up in a much better, closer place at the end

even get a little closure over the death of their son

BUT

them getting back together isn’t a plot thing at all

jealousy between her and Sophie is not an issue

Nate is never forced to choose between them

there is no regretful “i will miss you but i see how happy you are with her/him” scene at the end

the whole team rallies to save her butt when she’s framed for stealing that Faberge egg without question

instead of being bitter and trying to get in the way of the team, she helps the team out not just on the job that will allow her to get revenge on the guy whose policies led to their son’s death, but on a totally unrelated, earlier job

the script was so good and the character stuff so good we don’t feel like Maggie got shafted and Nate “got the girl”

i mean, unless i am forgetting about scenes or something, there’s all these really frustrating things they COULD have done, and they just didn’t

and the whole show was like that

it openly acknowledged the attractiveness of ALL their leads (Nate was a bit of a mess, but that’s Nate) and Eliot and Hardison (in that order) were the most casually sexualized (Sophie pretty much sexualized herseif, and it was almost always done as part of a con, on her own terms); Parker was not really sexualized at all, despite being cute as hell and even taking her top off in front of the boys – we believed she was sexy, we didn’t have our nose rubbed in it

the suffering of women was never depicted in a sexual way, in any way that made it look attractive

female incompetence was never a theme

“natural” female superiority was not a theme (those ”haha silly men can’t do anything right” sorts of depictions often come from a place of male insecurity, not female empowerment)

the boys on the team showed complete respect for Sophie, even though she was the “sexy one”

as the boys on the team came to understand how broken Parker really sorta was and how “odd” even aside from that, they rallied to supporther, not fix or take advantage of her, and they accepted her oddness even though it often aggravated them and sometimes led them to gloss over what she was saying as Parker weirdness (the jury episode where she tries to tell them that something is fishy and they dismiss her – actually very realistic but not done too painfully) Parker was never shown in a light that made her look inadequate because of her “shortcomings” which were really just the facts of her existence

the whole premise of the show revolved around righting the wrongs created by capitalism, even if not every episode explicitly went there

and the characters oh god my heart

every one of them was a treasure, someone i could fall in love with

Eliot was an Okie from a blue-collar background, and was a rough guy, but was never shown to be sexist in any way despite how attached sexism is to the trope of the tough southern dude who loves horses and beer and country music; he was violent, but his arc was not to unrealistically eschew that violence … rather, he channeled it into protecting, not destroying; he had very real feelings, not just caricatured reactions to things

Parker was not involved in a romantic tug-of-war between other teammates, she was never a narrative device to create romantic tension within the team; she arguably was the glue that stuck Eliot (protective big brother) and Hardison (darling loving cinnamon roll) together in that OT3 relationship that pretty much everyone who watched the show realized existed

Sophie was incredibly sexy and manipulative and this was never thrown in her face via slut-shaming or making her out to be an awful person or turning her into any of the unflattering stereotypes that sort of character often gets turned into; also, there was no running gag where she slept with every member of the team (no that it would have been bad if she had, just that sort of thing tends to get handled really badly)

Hardison, our beloved incredibly multi-talented genius with a heart of gold, was Black, but they didn’t write him like a white character or have him speak like a white character; he was also the most stable and gentle and soft-spoken member of the team, IMO, which is not how you would expect a show to depict the sole Black teammate

Nate was an alcoholic whose addiction was treated realistically and with respect, was not over-dramatized, was not magically “cured”, was acknowledged by the team without there being a major intervention plotline, didn’t function as a real liability team-wise, and was never played as a device to keep him away from Sophie by having her deliver an ultimatum he couldn’t meet; it was a part of his personality, not all of his personality, and while addiction recovery narratives are important, not everything about an addict has to be about that, any more than all gay love stories have to end in tragedy

it was just a really, really good show, you guys, grounded in real feelings and issues without being too dark, hilarious without being mean, and feelsy without being saccharine

i love it so much and sometimes i just have to gush about it