opensummer | parker is the chosen one, fight me

Anonymous asked: Hi i like Leverage and i like analyzing narratives. i'm really interested in hearing your thoughts regarding 'Parker as the Chosen One of Leverage' if you have the time to expand on that

This got super long and waaaay out of control so meta under the cut. 1.5k of sleep deprived leverage meta below. sorry not sorry

I wasn’t sleeping tonight anyway so here we go-

I’ll start here, with why the rest of the team isn’t and then move to Parker.

Eliot Spencer is the character who externally changes the least over the course of the show. He starts off a tiny shouty man who is there to protect these people and ends up a tiny shouty man who is there to protect his family (also the subbiest sub to ever sub). Which is not to say he lacks characterization- in five seasons, he gets closure on the things he’s left behind- Amie, Damien Moreau, his Dad after the Low Low Price Job (which is v important because it talks about an everyday kind of evil thats pervasive and petty)- and opens himself up to these random people who he took a job with once. He’s got inside jokes and taught Parker how to fight, and we all know damn good and well that when he said ‘til my dying day he meant it.

Eliot changes the least because out of the team he knows himself the best. He’s come to terms with who he is as a person before Victor Dubenich ever contacts him. He’s got blood on his hands and the worst thing he ever did he did for Damien Moreau but he is resigned to who he is and what he’s done. He doesn’t expect anything more from his life but now that he’s got this family he won’t ever let go. Eliot doesn’t so much change over the course of the show as he does loosen up. He’s there on the field but the Narrative is never really about him. Not even when maybe it should be. (I.e. the Underground Job)

Hardison starts out as the guy who is perpetually the smartest guy in the room and shows it. I’d kinda forgotten how blatant and uncomfortable his hitting on Parker in the first few episodes was and how grateful I am that they tuned that wayyy down. He gets easier with himself and his skin, more self confident, more willing to put himself out there. He learns how to grift, then pickpocket, and then he approaches Nate about running his own team. And Nate tells him he isn’t ruthless enough- Nate who in the first episode told Hardison about how he dies in Plan M. Hardison is soft in ways that no other team member is and it’s presented as a strength. Hardison is the one who is unashamedly kind and you see it more and more through his interactions with the team and their clients. Particularly with Parker. He’s the one who teaches her about human interaction- who explains the things she misses and holds her up when she falters.

Hardison is the Token Good Teammate. He’s too nice to have the Narrative on his side.

Sophie is a mentor. The teacher and protecter to the crew and her issues are all about identity in a way that dovetails nicely with both Nate and Parker. She doesn’t know who she is, but she knows what she’s not- that’s a great long list that starts with honest. Sophie is the character who is served least by the show I think because beginning to end she’s all tied up in Nate. She grows as a person, gives up her secrets slowly, like she’s not certain about the choices she’s making. Sophie who terrifies Chaos, Sophie who can call in a favors that will bring a helicopter down on an active crime scene that is literally crawling with feds, Sophie who never explains how she managed to hold on to her title if she truly ran off on some Duke.

Sophie is ruthless and Sophie is dangerous and Leverage very rarely lets her be either. Mentors don’t get arcs the way main characters do.

Nate is straightforward in his way. Because Nate is our Dumbledore here. He plays chess with people, and is burning with his grief. He has a Cause and it is Right and Justified and True in his mind. He goes from drunk to sober, honest man to thief, hating himself and the world to content and these are all part of his arc and all important to who he is because for a while the Narrative is on his side.

He can’t lose until he can and that’s when he decides what his final score will and how he’ll pass on his legacy. And when he makes that decision every bit of effort they’ve put into developing Parker pays off.

Parker for the entire run of the series is the character who figures out who she is and what she wants to be. She’s described in the first episode over and over again as crazy and she is poorly socialized and wild and unthinking about her or others personal safety but even from the first episode she’s adapting. Ten minutes in and she’s already learnt something and assimilated it to herself. (haircuts parker, count the haircuts.) And suddenly Parker has this crew that thinks she can be better and different than what she is. Nobody has ever said that to her before- not even Archie. (Incidentally at the end of the Stork Job when Hardison tells Parker I like how you turned out it is the one of the finest expressions of love on tv, fight me)

So first season thats the Call and the Rejection- Parker is offered a chance to change and be something different with limited degrees of success. Sophie tries to teach her to grift and she stabs a guy, Nate sends her to jury duty and she tries to help but she’s not certain why she should be helping. Parker operates on pretty limited morality to start because she’s never been given a reason to do otherwise. Money->Personal Safety->Everybody Else.

Season Two is about Parker learning. She’s given further roles in the team- she grifts successfully- in small parts first, as an reporter, an heir, then playing a pregnant woman to avoid getting caught. Parker learns how to read other peoples expectations and use them. But you, the viewer are still not certain she gets it. The Zanzibar Marketplace Job is when we figure out that Parker has figured out how to care, when she’s fluttering about Maggie. The Maltese Falcon Job and we’re still not sure about her motives for do-gooding but we understand how she feels about her team when she hold Tara off of a building and considers dropping her. So Money=Team->Everybody Else

In S3 we get the Inside Job and Parker Gets It. (This is what we do she says)

Same episode- I think Nate looked around that warehouse and thought how can I use this. I think Nate looked at Parker’s plans and thought not how I would have done it. I think Nate was still thinking about the warehouse and those plans when he willingly steps back and says It’s your show. Go for it. Nate does not give up control to people who can’t do his job. Nate goes in after her but the plan and the execution that was all Parker.

The rest of the season is this and Hardison dancing around something good. She’s come to terms with her past and lets it go. She manages two grifts (the Underground Job and the Morning After Job without stabbing anyone and she is learning. So Money=Team->Good Guys->Bad Guys

S4 Parker has already transformed. She just needs to figure out what to do with it. She sorts out her feelings for Hardison, overcomes the last of her insecurities about people leaving and by the time they hit Portland she ready to run a crew. And she does on the side all season.

The Gimma A K Street Job is about leading a team she’s not confident in. The Real Fake Car Job she plays a role that would have been Sophies if Nate weren’t testing them. In The Broken Wing Job, Parker says people who have to help and she’s being sincere- compare with s1e1 when she talks about money. In both the Rundown Job and The White Rabbit- she runs the con. She sacrifices for both of the jobs. Particularly the Rundown Job when Parker choses the needs of the many over the few and this job requires that too, the willingness to set yourself on fire to save a single soul.

(Hardison doesn’t ever forgive himself for the impulse of damn the many, not just because Spock would be disappointed. Eliot. I think, understands it perfectly- Parker looked at him first, than Hardison.)

Then finally the Long Goodbye and here is where Parker fully inhabits the role. She is the character who has traveled the furtherest from where she began and the only one who can do it. So this is simultaneously Passing the Torch and our hero, the Chosen One coming into her destiny as somebody who will provide Leverage- if you want to apply Jungian Archetypes to media that’s not built for it (which i always do)

And she’s the only character ruthless enough to see this through. Nate hands her the job like it’s a gift but it’s really not. The Narrative is on her side.

It had to be her. Somebody else might have gotten it wrong.