History YMMV / Leverage

* EvilIsSexy: Parker possibly qualifies; although she isn't truly evil, she is one of the greatest thieves in the world. The pure pleasure she shows when pulling of a job or when surrounded by money also helps this.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Nate has sociopathic tendencies in terms of the way he manipulates others. While Parker is seen as a HeroicComedicSociopath, Nate is a much darker version in that he genuinely doesn't care about the people he must manipulate to help others. While those people [[AssholeVictim almost certainly deserve it]], it is still interesting how little he cares about their fates. He also has a habit of risking himself and his team in ways that are almost unnecessary for the purpose of truly defeating his enemies. This is also seen in "The Boys Night Out Job" in which Nate is shown to literally have no friends outside of work; while his team is making fun of him over this fact, it is shown to in fact be true. Later in this episode, he's shown having difficulty making small talk with a former client. Even Parker is capable of this with her friend Peggy.

** "[[Recap/LeverageS03E03TheInsideJob The Inside Job]]": [[OnlyInItForTheMoney Dr. Anne Hannity]] wanted to kill off the world's wheat market with a super-plague, willing to starve the whole planet, so that her own plague-resistant super-wheat would make her and, by extension, her company [[{{Greed}} money]]. She also threatens Archie Leach's family to make him help her, and tries to kill the Leverage team when they find her out, asking them how they would like to be killed ("[[TheDragon Mister Voorhees]] is flexible.") On a show where most villains are interested in stealing patents and building strip malls she, and her [[TheDragon Dragon]], cold-blooded Security Chief Voorhees, really stand out.

** The team as a whole are essentially '''[[VillainProtagonist industrial saboteurs]]''', and can either be seen as mainly type 3 or 4 {{AntiHero}}es or as type 3 {{AntiVillain}}s. WordOfGod sees them as the bad guys, and actually points out that the premise is a bunch of con artists taking the rich and powerful for a ride. Fans often ask how the Team finds [[WeHelpTheHelpless clients to help]], but this is actually spelled out in the second episode, "The Homecoming Job" - Hardison has back doors into every electronic banking system in the world and is constantly monitoring every online news site looking for scandals and whatnot. It's rather like an epidemiological study; they don't look for victims, they look for rich criminals, then work backwards to find people who can benefit from their comeuppance. Clients find the team mostly by word of mouth or outright ''accident'' - most of the time, they're just a team of con artists looking for marks to run cons on. They just limit themselves to AcceptableTargets and AssholeVictims - and pay back the victims JustLikeRobinHood. If the team ever got caught, Hardison would get absolutely ''nailed'' for insider trading, as the Team's "Alternative revenue stream" is '''shorting the stock of the companies they target!'''

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: Beyond her need to compulsively steal, Parker also has some other quirks that seem to impede her ability to understand the emotions of others and react appropriately (be it for the purpose of a con or when actually interacting with others). WordOfGod confirms that she has Asperger’s.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment:
** "The Mile-High Job" (set largely on a plane) occurs the week after a plane made [[Film/{{Sully}} a (safe) water landing on the Hudson]]. Parker, as a stewardess, even makes a joke about a water landing being likely to kill everyone. Funny thing is, the episode was long finished by the time of the accident, and it's entirely within Parker's character to make such a joke. Creator/JohnRogers, commenting on his blog, says: "We of course didn't write a water landing, because at that point, every water landing had fatalities. Didn't bank on a miracle."
** The plot of "The Homecoming Job" (head of PrivateMilitaryContractors firm tries to off witness to company's illicit activities) [[http://www.thenation.com/article/blackwater-founder-implicated-murder qualifies as well]].
** In "The Tap Out Job", the scene where Parker (a white woman) keeps Hardison (a Black man) in a prolonged chokehold while everyone else (all white) ignores him asking her to stop doesn't seem so funny after the high-profile murders of Eric Garner and George Floyd (among others). His gasps of "I can’t breathe" are downright chilling with such events in mind.
** Throughout the first few seasons, Eliot makes several throwaway comments about himself that are played for laughs -- for instance, remarking "I actually hurt people," when the others protest that their crimes never hurt anyone in "The Homecoming Job," or telling Hardison "I'm a bad guy," during their conversation about how every bad guy seems to know at least one stripper in "The 12-Step Job." Then came "The Big Bang Job" and the subsequent revelations about just how dark some of Eliot's past really is. Those offhand comments become rather less funny once you know that Eliot really ''means'' them.

** Interestingly, related to the above, in the FiveManBand, Parker could be seen as TheLancer and Sophie as TheChick. Parker does seem to have some similarity to Nate in terms personality as compared with Sophie. Sophie is also more worried about the emotions of the rest of the team, while Parker is a mild sociopath. In addition, Parker is the one with the least leadership potential relative to the rest of the team, also fitting into that requirement.

* EvilIsCool:
** Sterling. He is played by Creator/MarkSheppard, after all.
** Subverted in that Sterling may be the team's ArchEnemy and a MagnificentBastard, but [[WordOfGod he is in fact]] the [[HeroAntagonist good guy]]. The True Companions themselves might count.
** Chaos is a more straight example in that he largely adopts this as his personal philosophy.

* PoorMansSubstitute: Subverted. They wanted someone like Creator/TimothyHutton to play Nate -- and ended up with Timothy Hutton.

* CriticalResearchFailure:
** In "The Rundown Job," Hardison gives an SOS signal as "long-long-long short-short-short" - which in actual Morse code would read "OS." While an argument could be made that since the signal is looped and he was in a rush, Hardison entered two characters instead of three as a quick-and-dirty shortcut which while not technically correct would still get the job done, but there's no excuse for starting with the long signals ("O") instead of the short ones ("S").
** In "The Top Hat Job", the contents of a food company's patent portfolio is treated as an immensely valuable secret, the revealing of which would cost the company billions. But one of the requirements of patent law is that, in order to obtain a patent, the process involved ''must be published and filed with the Patent Office as a public record''.
*** WordOfGod states that they made a deliberate choice to use the wrong but commonly misused term "patents" instead of the correct but barely known "trade secrets", for reasons of time and clarity. No network is going to sacrifice 5 minutes of commercial time, so a show can run 5 minutes longer, in order to educate the viewers on the correct technical terminology that is not actually required to understand the plot.
** In "The Tap-Out Job", the GPS map shown at the end is filled with roads and an entire town that don't exist in Nebraska, and from the landmarks that are accurate, the mark is pretty clearly headed for Kansas.
** They also appear to believe Lincoln, Nebraska is a one-horse hick town, as opposed to a small city that is home to both the state government and flagship state university. Then there's the locals' southern accents, despite Nebraska's midwestern speech being the most neutral organically occuring American accent.

** [[ThoseTwoGuys Taggart and McSweeten.]]

* FoeYay: Nate and Sterling
** Eliot and his "Two Live Crew" counterpart. Taken up to SlapSlapKiss.
** Also taken to near-ridiculous levels with Nate and the Italian.
** The interaction between Nate and The Italian is thick with it. Also implied to be how Nate and Sophie initially became attracted to each other.
** There's a little bit of Eliot and Damien Moreau as Eliot seems to be the only person Moreau actually kind of likes in his sociopathic way.

** {{Recurring Character}} Jack Hurley's bumbling attempts to do good, trusting nature, and taco addiction can make him surprisingly adorable.

** During the commentaries, the producers keep stopping the narrative to repeat their belief that "Nate Ford is not a nice man" with maddening frequency even if you agree with them. It can feel like they're trying to make a drinking game out of it for anyone binge-watching the commentaries

--> '''Hardison''': "It's cute how you still believe in privacy."

'''Parker''': Like that one over there that says all the major wars of the past fifty years were ordered by members of the council.\\

* PoorMansSubstitute: Subverted. They wanted someone like Timothy Hutton to play Nate -- and ended up with Timothy Hutton.

* {{Moe}}: Parker is utterly adorable.

* RealLifeRelative: Aldis (Hardison) Hodge's brother Edwin guest-starred as the client in "The Jailhouse Job". His character isn't related to Hardison, but the scam relies on Hardison being able to act as a BodyDouble for him.

* NightmareFuel: Eliot nearly killing Tank in "The Tapout Job".

* UncannyValley: The fake-Hardison from the finale definitely falls into this.

* WhatAnIdiot: Anyone on the team who ever took out his or her ear bud for any reason, ''ever''.

** It becomes harder to watch "The San Lorenzo Job" which is about a loose organization unofficially working for a foreign power tampering with a presidential election through fake news and overruling the actual vote after the 2016 election.
*** Even harder after Jan 6, 2021 to watch an angry mob, tricked by internet rumors and fake news, storming the capitol building preparing to take those who they deemed political opponents hostage and take control of the government by force. Even though it ended positively in the episode, Nate's strategy of "declaring victory from the outset and sticking to the story" feels like a MoralEventHorizon.

** The plot of "The Rundown Job," in which the villain plans to release an even deadlier strain of the Spanish Influenza and kill millions of people, hits a lot closer to home after the outbreak of the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Nate has sociopathic tendencies in terms of the way he manipulates others. While Parker is seen as a HeroicComedicSociopath, Nate is a much darker version in that he genuinely doesn't care about the people he must manipulate to help others. While those people [[AssholeVictim almost certainly deserve it]], it is still interesting how little he cares about their fates. He also has a habit of risking himself and his team in ways that are almost unnecessary for the purpose of truly defeating his enemies. This is also seen in "The Boys Night Out Job" in which Nate is shown to literally have no friends outside of work; while his team is making fun of him over this fact, it is shown to in fact be true. Later in this episode he even has difficultly making small talk with a former client. Even Parker is capable of this with her friend Peggy.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Nate has sociopathic tendencies in terms of the way he manipulates others. While Parker is seen as a HeroicComedicSociopath, Nate is a much darker version in that he genuinely doesn't care about the people he must manipulate to help others. While those people almost certainly deserve it, it is still interesting how little he cares about their fates. He also has a habit of risking himself and his team in ways that are almost unnecessary for the purpose of truly defeating his enemies. This is also seen in "The Boys Night Out Job" in which Nate is shown to literally have no friends outside of work; while his team is making fun of him over this fact, it is shown to in fact be true. Later in this episode he even has difficultly making small talk with a former client. Even Parker is capable of this with her friend Peggy.

** The plot of "The Rundown Job," in which the villain plans to release an even deadlier strain of the Spanish Influenza and kill millions of people, hits a lot closer to home after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

*** Even harder after Jan 6, 2021 to watch an angry mob, tricked by internet rumors and fake news, storming the US capitol building preparing to take those who they deemed political opponents hostage and killing a few Capitol police guards.

** Throughout the first few seasons, Eliot makes several throwaway comments about himself that are played for laughs - for instance, remarking "I actually hurt people," when the others protest that their crimes never hurt anyone in "The Homecoming Job," or telling Hardison "I'm a bad guy," during their conversation about how every bad guy seems to know at least one stripper in "The 12-Step Job." Then came "The Big Bang Job" and the subsequent revelations about just how dark some of Eliot's past really is. Those offhand comments become rather less funny once you know that Eliot really ''means'' them.

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: The first quarter of "The Future Job" has the team show Parker exactly how a phony psychic's "cold read" con works -- how he reads tiny facial indicators and makes good guesses to create an illusion of psychic knowledge. Since the show hardly ever takes time to show how the bad guy's trick works, one wonders if there's an author somewhere with a point to make. WordOfGod says that episode was written to disprove psychics because an EP's family member was about to give money to one.
** Justified that they were doing it to calm her down [[spoiler: when he managed to point out that Parker watched her younger brother die years ago and blames herself for it, driving her to tears on stage.]] Needless to say, it definitely [[ItsPersonal got personal for her]] after that stunt.

* CrazyAwesome: Parker veers between this and BunnyEarsLawyer.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[AwesomeMusic/{{Leverage}} Has it's own page]].