Anonymous asked: *skids in wearing a fake mustache* hey moran! you and your writings are a blessing on this earth and i know that you are incredibly busy, but do you have time to talk about elliot spencer? or leverage in general? thank! *skids out again while refixing the mustache*
ELIOT SPENCER. THE LOVE OF MY LIFE.
Okay, for those of you poor deprived souls who have NEVER HAD THE PLEASURE OF WATCHING LEVERAGE, here is my rapid-fire pitch: take a hitter, a hacker, a grifter, and a thief, add an ex-insurance agent who hunted them all at one point or another and has a guilt complex that is…well, very Catholic. Mix with a helping-the-helpless motto, and point at the nearest righteous crusade. It’s Robin Hood for the modern age. It is the five-season-long, genuinely enjoyable, never grimdark but always sincere, emotionally wringing show you have looked for. The characters are a delight, the writing is witty and soulful and real, the women are treated excellently, they have racial diversity, every episode is a whole different flavor of wonderfully wicked glee, and it’s obvious in every moment that everyone involved loved working on it. The found family feelings spill off the screen. Here is a pitch, here is a pitch, also here, here is MY pitch, there’s another here, here, here’s a spoilery but super detailed one, here, here, and I could find more BUT THIS IS A LOT ALREADY. It’s on Netflix, go forth.
Eliot, my hitter darling, I love him so much.
Okay, like, let’s talk about how devoted he is to the Leverage crew. Eliot is one of the ones who, quite frankly, does A-OK solo. He doesn’t need Sophie there to grift, he can do it, he can steal stuff even if he’s not as expert as Parker, having Hardison around is helpful but not mandatory, and, as we see when Nate’s taken out of play in the Zanzibar Marketplace Job, Eliot’s a good enough tactician to wing it successfully. Like. He’s fine on his own, maybe even more fine than Parker or Hardison, who are a little hit or miss on the others’ fields of expertise. He’s there because these are his people and he is going to take care of them. It’s all about taking care of his people. And I think the thing about Eliot is that that’s always been a part of him, one he’s had to throttle into nothingness for years. The mercenary life doesn’t lend itself to emotional connections, and for Eliot, who–even if he’s gruff and irritable about it–loves his people with his whole self, that must have been a very lonely life. Trust no one, because they might be hired to kill you tomorrow. Love no one, because they might sell you out to the highest bidder. Be alone, be safe, keep everyone more than arm’s length away and watch for the glint of a knife or the press of a gun. Touch nothing but the object of the mission, let nothing touch you.
And then…and then he meets the Leverage crew–only, they’re not the Leverage crew yet, they’re four people hired for a job. Four, Eliot has to admit, brilliant people, even if they’re all their own unique flavor of bonkers. And then one of them’s holding him at gunpoint, and then a building is blowing up and he’s pushing them ahead of him out of a building, and let me ask you something. Do you think he knew, then? With the fire at his back and his hand in Hardison’s shirt as he dragged him to his feet? Do you think he had a moment of clarity, running out of that building, or waking up in the hospital, where he knew that his carefully constructed walls–cold and hard and strong as diamond, be alone, be safe–were already down?
I do. I think he sat there, handcuffed to a chair with ink on his fingers and Nathan motherfucking Ford out cold in the bed beside him, and wondered when it happened. Because he pushed Parker ahead of him–Parker, who had pointed a gun at him and lived anyway–and he dragged Hardison along and he made sure Nate was outside. And it wasn’t a job, he can’t tell himself that, because he wasn’t getting paid. He just…had a moment of weakness, he tells himself. He never believed in collateral damage, it’s sloppy, it’s messy, so he avoided it. He might still need them to get his paycheck from Dubenich. It’s okay, he’s fine.
I think he might have convinced himself of that right up until they each get a check pressed into their hands by Hardison, a huge check, a go legit and buy an island check. And then…and then they walk away and for the first time in a lot of years, Eliot thinks I don’t want to go. And for the first time in a lot of years, he realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to go, and he comes back. From the very beginning, he comes back, because he’s been a hitter and a hunter and a killer for so, so long, and maybe this is a chance to be a protector instead. Maybe this is a chance to reach back in time a little and find some scrap of that kid with a flag on his shoulder, who believed in what he was doing.
Maybe this is a chance to have a family.
