Leverage Is So Fucking Funny. Man Manages To Find The Most Mentally Ill And Neurodivergent Group Of Thieves

Well that hurts

the lady at the grab-n-go actually missed having Vance there to play pinball. she missed how she would have to call the police every other day because Vance had fought someone. she missed hearing the swearing shed hear when he wouldn't beat his high score. once Vance went missing she put a 'out of order' sign on the pinball machine so no one would play it or beat the high score cus the machine was reserved for Vance and Vance only. she never got the machine changed as she would feel like it was disrespectful to Vance and wanted to keep some sort of memorabilia for everyone.

I will not sign it away

God damn it I was slowly moving on from Lockwood and co. The pain is back again 😭😭

One of the things I love most about Lockwood is that he is the textbook example of the "one who is scared to love" but instead of being extremely cold and callous all the time like your normal tragic backstory male mc, he can't stop himself from loving.

The thing is, we know he tries. (See THB). He tries to keep everyone at a distance, tries to be cold and calculating, but he can't do it. He wants to be Sherlock Holmes, highly functioning sociopath, but he can't do it.

And it shows up in the smallest ways: how immediately understanding he is of Lucy when she doesn't want to explain what happened at Jacobs' even though he is interviewing her for a job. How he stood up for the bratty nightwatch kid when Ned was bullying him, simply because he didn't like watching someone smaller get picked on. Or when he mercifully changed the bet with Kipps, because at the end of the day it was a petty bet to begin with, and they had just been through so much together, and honestly it didn't matter anymore. There was no reason to humilate anyone. How he will always protect another agent, even if they are Fittes. Heck, he even stands up for the Fittes' agents, saying "they're just kids like us." It's the adults he has beef with.

Lucy mentions that any news of a death by ghost-touch weighs on Lockwood. He is incredibly patient with Danny Skinner and perturbed that a kid this young is in his living room alone.

All three of them think of Lucy as the one with the bleeding heart. She's a Listener, a feeler, the one who is most affected by the past suffering of the ghosts. But that's for the dead.

Lockwood is a bleeding heart for the living. He tries not to be. He hates it. Because caring means risking hurt. Caring means you can lose what you care about. But for as hard as he tries to pretend he doesn't, for as good as he is at acting like nothing can phase him, it does.

Lockwood is scared of loving. But he can't stop.

Sally died in the rain. Do you think Poseidon felt it? Do you think there was a moment Sally thought he might come for her? She knew he couldn’t, but maybe for just a moment she thought she’d be safe in the rain.

listen, no matter how you feel about the leverage OT3, I think we can all agree that Eliot needs to engage in some handholding (platonic or otherwise) with Parker and Hardison. It’d be good for his blood pressure.

Okay, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong- but at the end of The Nigerian Job, when the team was convincing Nate that they should keep doing what they did- Eliot's whole argument was Nate. Nate falling apart. Nate needing the chance. Nate not being able to walk away. Nate.

Then, suddenly Eliot became the whole team's body guard. (Something he's grunt and gruffed about.) Yet. Yet. Somewhere (I say it was The Iceman Job and The Inside Job,) Eliot's brain switched from protecting the team to protecting Hardison and Parker. (Again correct me if I'm wrong.) Suddenly his job became more about having Hardison and Parker's back than having Nate's back. Maybe I'm the only one whose noticed- but Eliot become more softer with both Hardison and Parker after those particular jobs. Sure he keeps that gruff, sarcastic wit about him but there's often tones of... protectivness(?) when he interacts with them. Almost like he's telling other people around them- whose in ear shot- that Hardison and Parker are his. Like he's possessive.

Now, I'm not saying Eliot just stops caring about the rest of the team. I mean- he beats up Sterling for Nate and in Redemption Eliot is following Sophie around a handful of times. Their are even times where he has Breanna's back and Harry's. But he seems to treat those situations like a case. He compartmentalizes those situations. With Hardison and Parker- he doesn't. It's like his brain won't let him. He sees Hardison and Parker and it's like- all bets are off.

And on the flip side- has anyone noticed that Parker and Hardison seem to be the only ones that know how to... defuse (is that the right word?) Eliot? Like even Maria couldn't get Eliot to relax in The Hurrican Job. (Of course that's probably because Eliot was hiding who he was to her.) But Eliot always seems to be more relaxed when he's around those two.

In The Iceman Job after when Hardison tries to hug him? Eliot wasn't really fighting it. (I would know- I do that to my brother ALL the time when he tries to hug me.) In The Inside Job- when Eliot went to attack that employee- Parker stopped him. In The Double-Edge Sword Job, when Eliot is furious because an abusive ex comes after a women that they tried to hide- it's Parker that calms him down. It's Hardison who pays off the bartender when Eliot attacks Sterling. It's Parker who is always by his side or close to it. It's Parker who trusts Eliot when their in the back of the van with Vance. (Yes, Parker trusts Hardison too, but Hardison is a hacker- not a protector.) It's Eliot who Hardison listens to when he's not confident. It's Eliot who grabs Hardison from the coffin. It's Eliot who crouchs behind Hardison as Parker flips around him. It's Eliot whose hands are shaking when he they have half a second on a bomb.

Eliot Spencer is Hardison's and Parkers. They own him. In the same way Hardison and Parker are his. He owns them. (Does that make sense?)

For the record- I don't know why I'm pointing all of this out. It's just interesting to me... I guess.

Same energy

Love him

My hottake is that people are trying to fit Lockwood into character archetypes he doesn't fit, because they see "traumatized teen boy with a big ego and a passive death wish" and go "oh. emotionally unavailable asshole character" when that's.....not actually the character we're shown.

He's constantly praising Lucy and George. He's often the first one to try and apologize when he gets into a fight with them. The second he clocks Lucy as a "safe person" he becomes super touchy and holds her hand constantly. He compliments George's cooking. He's visibly proud of the people he cares about and publicly defends them on multiple occasions. He repeatedly asks his team if they're okay and tries to get them to open up when they're having issues. He makes an obvious, conscious effort to repeatedly tell Lucy he believes in her and wants her to stay at Portland Row. He smiles and jokes and laughs around with them on a pretty regular basis. He's also emotionally aware enough to tell Lucy "the reason I haven't talked about this subject with you is because it's relevant my childhood, which I don't like to talk about because it's pretty traumatic" when she questions him ahout Jessica's door, and he's kind of astonishingly open about his trauma with Lucy and George despite generally being unwilling to actually talk about the details.

And this applies to characters other than Lucy and George, too. He compliments Kipps' team during the graveyard fight and clearly respects Flo, for example. He's kind to Winkman's son, is generally polite to his clients, and is affected by the death of the undercover agent to the point of having a panic attack. It's pretty clear he cares deeply about the people around him even as he tries to push those closest to him away so they won't mourn him if (when) he dies.

Like yeah, Lockwood has an ego the size of Manhattan, has enough trauma to fill a boat, and is worryingly flippant about the worth of his own life, but he's not the Asshole With a Heart of Gold archetype. He's not cruel or deliberately mean (at least, not to anyone who's not Kipps). He's friendly and pretty kind to most people most of the time, and he openly cares about his team. And it's a little weird that I'm seeing so many people talk about him like he's not.

Yup