ext_57462 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
medjai-trowa.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
crack_van2009-10-03 11:17 am
medjai-trowa.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2009-10-03 11:17 am
Entry tags:
Leverage: Fandom Overview
Leverage is a show that turns your normal perception of right and wrong on its head. Yes, the crew help the downtrodden, but they often do it by illegal means. "We provide Leverage," says Nathan Ford, and he means that, by hook or by crook (four of 'em), fair means or foul, they will get the compensation or payback that people deserve, whether the courts are on their side or not.
It's similar to the UK's Hustle, but focuses more on the fact that they are doing this for the downtrodden and not simply because the people they are running cons on don't deserve their wealth and power. So without further ado, I give you The Crew:
Nathan Ford is played by Tim Hutton. Nate is an alcoholic, driven to drink when IYS, the insurance company, refused to pay on a claim which would have enabled his son to receive potentially life-saving but experimental treatment, which broke Nate. Given a chance to get revenge on IYS by Victor Dubenich (played by the wonderful Saul Rubenik), he is introduced to the rest of the team Victor has hired through a sheaf of files ("Parker? You have Parker?" "Is there someone better?" "No; but Parker is insane!"), all people Nate has chased in the past on behalf of IYS to retrieve objects they have stolen. The team acts a lot like a family, and whether he likes it or not, Nate has been given the role of "dad". (He has also been described in various arenas as being "An insane laugh and one carefully planned murder away from being a supervillain".)
Eliot Spencer is played by Christian Kane. Eliot is the team's hitter, but don't let the fact that he is "the muscle" lead you to thinking he's stupid. Each of the thieves in the team functioned perfectly well as solo artists until Dubenich brought them together. He's also a retrieval specialist and, after beating up four security guys in the time it takes for a bag to drop from Hardison's raised hands, he tells him, "That's what I do." In the team's little family, Eliot has the role of big brother, something he doesn't always appear to enjoy, but for someone who knows 1001 ways to kill someone with everyday household objects, he hasn't killed them yet...
Parker (no first name...) is played by relative newcomer Beth Riesgraf, and is a well rounded thief, skilled in infiltration, explosives, security systems – you name it, she can do it. As long as it doesn't involve social interaction. Parker is a true genius as a thief; she just has a tendency to panic and stab people with forks when trying to scam people face to face. When Dubenich double crosses the team in the pilot, we see a little of that side coming through: "My money's not in my account. That makes me cry inside, in my special, angry place." (Note: she loves money. She doesn't buy stuff with it. She just wants the money. Other things she steals for fun, or for how much she can fence them for.) She's standoffish at first with the team but gradually warms to them, as they do to her, but we can see just how much in "The 12 Step Job" when, under medication at the end of the show, she gleefully runs up to Eliot and Hardison and tackle-hugs Eliot before launching herself at Hardison, something she would never do sober.
Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge – AKA Tyrone) is the team's hacker. He's a big guy, but fighting really isn't his strong suit. He's can make your computer sit up and beg, but he's a true geek, being late for the start of a con because he queued up all night to get the new World of Warcraft Expansion pack. The team were not pleased, to say the least. He often gets paired up in tasks for cons with Eliot, possibly in the hope that Eliot can either teach him a little restraint or at the very least be able to haul his fat out of the fire when he gets in trouble again. And he does get in trouble. The youngest of the team, he's cocky and so sure that he knows what he's doing and it sometimes turns out that that isn't the case. Luckily, the team haven't let him down yet, even when they are having to save him from himself.
Sophie Devereaux, played by Gina Bellman, was the last to join the crew, and was the only one not selected by Victor Dubenich, mainly because they needed someone the man wouldn't recognise so that they could scam him in revenge and retrieve the data they had given him to return it to its rightful owners. When the crew meet her, she is playing Lady MacBeth. Badly. (Hardison: She's very awful. Parker: Is she injured...in the head? Eliot: Seriously man, she's the worst actress I've ever seen. Nate: This is not her stage. Sophie Devereaux is the finest actress you've ever seen...when she's breaking the law.) And it's true. As long as she's breaking the law, Sophie is a very good actress. She is superb at playing off genuine emotion and using to her own and latterly the team's advantage. She falls fairly well into the "mom" role for the team, although sometimes she comes off more as "step-mom", not quite sure what to do with these people who are suddenly looking to her for advice.
The Villains of the piece
Jim Sterling played by Mark Shepard in any other show would probably be the hero (the actor has said so himself). He is, after all, only doing his job. He is a retrieval expert for IYS, recovering stolen goods for their clients and this has brought him up against the team several times now. A former colleague of Nate's, he is still working for IYS and is apparently both amused and annoyed that Nate has "gone to the dark side". (Well hey, they had cookies. Probably made by Eliot. Are you telling me you wouldn't?) Described by Parker as being "Evil Nate", he shows the same creative flare as Nate, acting against problems like Hardison setting off all the security devices in his car rather than reacting to them.
The true villain of the piece however, is Ian Blackpoole. He is the person who ultimately turned down Nate's claim thereby denying his son the treatment he needed. He is supremely confident that he is untouchable as one of the upper executives of such a large organisation, and relies on this to protect him from consequences of his actions.
Recurring Characters
Maggie Collins (formerly Ford) – Nate's ex-wife, played by the lovely Kari Matchett. They fell apart after their son Sam died.
FBI Agents Taggert and McSweeten – appear to be having a stellar rise up the ranks of the FBI owing to being in the right place at the right time when the crew have finished a job. McSweeten is rather sweet on Parker, believing her to be a fellow agent of the Bureau. Hardison is a little jealous about this. They are played by Rick Overton and Gerald Downey respectively.
Leverage is a bit of a new breed of show. Thanks to the use of Twitter, the fans can talk pretty much directly to main cast and at least three of the crew – for the interested, Dean Devlin, John Rogers and Amy Berg, who are all awesome – and the cast and crew will often blog pictures of goings-on on set and answer fans' questions. Also, thanks to the fact that Christian's band Kane played approximately every other weekend at Dante's while filming was going on, a great many of us have also met said cast and crew and told them they were awesome. (And in some cases finked on them when they'd done a bunk and left their fellow crew member wondering where they were. And I'm not sorry Mr Rogers...)
The best place to get information about the show is The Official Site which will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the characters. There are also sites like tv.com and imdb which will give you quotes and trivia.
As always for the fans, there is fanfiction.net. The archive on there is one of the largest for the show, but do take care of the Mary-Sues as always. We also have WWOMB, The Wonderful World of Makebelieve, another multifandom archive. And below are the lj comms I frequent:
http://community.livejournal.com/comment_fic/ - hit the tags to find the Leverage snippets.
http://community.livejournal.com/leveragexchange/ - exactly what it says on the tin.
http://community.livejournal.com/leverage_fic/ - pretty self explanatory
http://community.livejournal.com/leverage_hq/ - the place to go for fandom overviews, discussion etc
http://community.livejournal.com/geteven_getfic/ - another fic comm. (this is probably the earliest established from what I remember? If you know otherwise, let me know...)
And I'll leave you all with my favourite quote from the show:
Hardison: Going to plan B.
Nate: Technically that would be plan G.
Hardison: How many plans do we have? Is there like a plan M?
Nate: Yeah, Hardison dies in plan M.
Eliot: I like plan M.
It's similar to the UK's Hustle, but focuses more on the fact that they are doing this for the downtrodden and not simply because the people they are running cons on don't deserve their wealth and power. So without further ado, I give you The Crew:
Nathan Ford is played by Tim Hutton. Nate is an alcoholic, driven to drink when IYS, the insurance company, refused to pay on a claim which would have enabled his son to receive potentially life-saving but experimental treatment, which broke Nate. Given a chance to get revenge on IYS by Victor Dubenich (played by the wonderful Saul Rubenik), he is introduced to the rest of the team Victor has hired through a sheaf of files ("Parker? You have Parker?" "Is there someone better?" "No; but Parker is insane!"), all people Nate has chased in the past on behalf of IYS to retrieve objects they have stolen. The team acts a lot like a family, and whether he likes it or not, Nate has been given the role of "dad". (He has also been described in various arenas as being "An insane laugh and one carefully planned murder away from being a supervillain".)
Eliot Spencer is played by Christian Kane. Eliot is the team's hitter, but don't let the fact that he is "the muscle" lead you to thinking he's stupid. Each of the thieves in the team functioned perfectly well as solo artists until Dubenich brought them together. He's also a retrieval specialist and, after beating up four security guys in the time it takes for a bag to drop from Hardison's raised hands, he tells him, "That's what I do." In the team's little family, Eliot has the role of big brother, something he doesn't always appear to enjoy, but for someone who knows 1001 ways to kill someone with everyday household objects, he hasn't killed them yet...
Parker (no first name...) is played by relative newcomer Beth Riesgraf, and is a well rounded thief, skilled in infiltration, explosives, security systems – you name it, she can do it. As long as it doesn't involve social interaction. Parker is a true genius as a thief; she just has a tendency to panic and stab people with forks when trying to scam people face to face. When Dubenich double crosses the team in the pilot, we see a little of that side coming through: "My money's not in my account. That makes me cry inside, in my special, angry place." (Note: she loves money. She doesn't buy stuff with it. She just wants the money. Other things she steals for fun, or for how much she can fence them for.) She's standoffish at first with the team but gradually warms to them, as they do to her, but we can see just how much in "The 12 Step Job" when, under medication at the end of the show, she gleefully runs up to Eliot and Hardison and tackle-hugs Eliot before launching herself at Hardison, something she would never do sober.
Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge – AKA Tyrone) is the team's hacker. He's a big guy, but fighting really isn't his strong suit. He's can make your computer sit up and beg, but he's a true geek, being late for the start of a con because he queued up all night to get the new World of Warcraft Expansion pack. The team were not pleased, to say the least. He often gets paired up in tasks for cons with Eliot, possibly in the hope that Eliot can either teach him a little restraint or at the very least be able to haul his fat out of the fire when he gets in trouble again. And he does get in trouble. The youngest of the team, he's cocky and so sure that he knows what he's doing and it sometimes turns out that that isn't the case. Luckily, the team haven't let him down yet, even when they are having to save him from himself.
Sophie Devereaux, played by Gina Bellman, was the last to join the crew, and was the only one not selected by Victor Dubenich, mainly because they needed someone the man wouldn't recognise so that they could scam him in revenge and retrieve the data they had given him to return it to its rightful owners. When the crew meet her, she is playing Lady MacBeth. Badly. (Hardison: She's very awful. Parker: Is she injured...in the head? Eliot: Seriously man, she's the worst actress I've ever seen. Nate: This is not her stage. Sophie Devereaux is the finest actress you've ever seen...when she's breaking the law.) And it's true. As long as she's breaking the law, Sophie is a very good actress. She is superb at playing off genuine emotion and using to her own and latterly the team's advantage. She falls fairly well into the "mom" role for the team, although sometimes she comes off more as "step-mom", not quite sure what to do with these people who are suddenly looking to her for advice.
The Villains of the piece
Jim Sterling played by Mark Shepard in any other show would probably be the hero (the actor has said so himself). He is, after all, only doing his job. He is a retrieval expert for IYS, recovering stolen goods for their clients and this has brought him up against the team several times now. A former colleague of Nate's, he is still working for IYS and is apparently both amused and annoyed that Nate has "gone to the dark side". (Well hey, they had cookies. Probably made by Eliot. Are you telling me you wouldn't?) Described by Parker as being "Evil Nate", he shows the same creative flare as Nate, acting against problems like Hardison setting off all the security devices in his car rather than reacting to them.
The true villain of the piece however, is Ian Blackpoole. He is the person who ultimately turned down Nate's claim thereby denying his son the treatment he needed. He is supremely confident that he is untouchable as one of the upper executives of such a large organisation, and relies on this to protect him from consequences of his actions.
Recurring Characters
Maggie Collins (formerly Ford) – Nate's ex-wife, played by the lovely Kari Matchett. They fell apart after their son Sam died.
FBI Agents Taggert and McSweeten – appear to be having a stellar rise up the ranks of the FBI owing to being in the right place at the right time when the crew have finished a job. McSweeten is rather sweet on Parker, believing her to be a fellow agent of the Bureau. Hardison is a little jealous about this. They are played by Rick Overton and Gerald Downey respectively.
Leverage is a bit of a new breed of show. Thanks to the use of Twitter, the fans can talk pretty much directly to main cast and at least three of the crew – for the interested, Dean Devlin, John Rogers and Amy Berg, who are all awesome – and the cast and crew will often blog pictures of goings-on on set and answer fans' questions. Also, thanks to the fact that Christian's band Kane played approximately every other weekend at Dante's while filming was going on, a great many of us have also met said cast and crew and told them they were awesome. (And in some cases finked on them when they'd done a bunk and left their fellow crew member wondering where they were. And I'm not sorry Mr Rogers...)
The best place to get information about the show is The Official Site which will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the characters. There are also sites like tv.com and imdb which will give you quotes and trivia.
As always for the fans, there is fanfiction.net. The archive on there is one of the largest for the show, but do take care of the Mary-Sues as always. We also have WWOMB, The Wonderful World of Makebelieve, another multifandom archive. And below are the lj comms I frequent:
http://community.livejournal.com/comment_fic/ - hit the tags to find the Leverage snippets.
http://community.livejournal.com/leveragexchange/ - exactly what it says on the tin.
http://community.livejournal.com/leverage_fic/ - pretty self explanatory
http://community.livejournal.com/leverage_hq/ - the place to go for fandom overviews, discussion etc
http://community.livejournal.com/geteven_getfic/ - another fic comm. (this is probably the earliest established from what I remember? If you know otherwise, let me know...)
And I'll leave you all with my favourite quote from the show:
Hardison: Going to plan B.
Nate: Technically that would be plan G.
Hardison: How many plans do we have? Is there like a plan M?
Nate: Yeah, Hardison dies in plan M.
Eliot: I like plan M.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I love it and you did a fantastic overview.
P.S. I love that quote. Oh, Eliot...
no subject
And thanks!
no subject
Plus, I *love* to watch Christian fight. Great style.
It's a fabulous team show, and they are, as you say, a family.
The first season is available on DVD, for those who missed it.
no subject
Also, Rogers and Devlin have been taking ideas from fans on twitter and on Kung-fu Monkey, Rogers' blog, to see what the fans would like on the second season DVDs as extras!
leverage
There's also an Alec/Eliot community
There's
Re: leverage
And you have to bear in mind, a lot of people these days won't even remember the A-Team, let alone be able to draw parallels to Leverage from it. Hell, I remember loving the show as a kid, but beyond the specific references they make, I just don't see it at all.
Eliot is the Tiny Ninja.
Thanks for writing the overview.