Two others in the line by Penguin Books: March 2013 has "The Zoo Job" by Keith R.A. De Candido where once again, the team must help a client but beware of Interpol Agent Jim Sterling. Greg Cox in May 2013 has "The Bestseller Job."
How do the clients find the Leverage team? Do they have a website that advertises "extra-legal" vengeance for white-collar crime victims? Is there a victim support network where word of mouth gets passed around? Does the team hunt down cases then approach the victims?
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Hardison runs a web crawler looking for clients. He says so at the beginning of The Homecoming Job. Nate also crawls the internet by hand to do the same thing, but usually he only does this when he is trying to avoid talking to Sophie.
"The Double-Blind Job" had a client literally run into Hardison and Eliot as they came back from coffee. She was chased by "FBI agents" who Hardison quickly sees through. While the "agents" then get taken out by Eliot for making him spill his coffee. The tie-in book "The Con Job" has the daughter of an ailing comic-book artist hear about the team.
Why did the page get changed to a bunch of links? I've never seen it been done like that, even for really, really trope-heavy pages. The links aren't indexed, and don't really seem to change the page up at all except for making it less functional. Can someone please revert or explain?
On the Trivia page under Irony as She Is Cast Nate is referred to as the worst actor on the team. I hardly see how this is true. It took Parker years to learn to do a short con, whereas Nate was capable of it from the beginning. He doesn't usually get into trouble by overselling the way Hardison does, and while Eliot is capable of grifting he seems to get impatient with it, as in "The 10 Little Grifters Job." So I'd say that the only one better than Nate in all areas of grifting is Sophie.
OK, the overlaps between Hustle and Leverage mentioned in the introduction (above the line), I figured out the guest star was Richard Chamberlain, but who was the "one of Leverage's stars appeared on Hustle before Leverage began airing"? my google-fu has failed me, and i've been watching Hustle eps, and nothing's coming up. who is it?
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I remember reading somewhere that Hutton had a cameo in Series 4 of Hustle.
Under Some Anvils need to be dropped the statement "It was also a chilling demonstration that Parker really has no understanding of basic facial cues due to her personality and odd upbringing." has some Unfortunate Implications. Asperger's Syndrome, like all other forms of Autism has NOTHING to do with your upbringing.
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I think you're overreacting a bit- remember, it's NEVER been stated in-show that Parker has Asperger's. From Word of God, we know that to be so- but some people don't read creator's blogs. I think just changing your comment to something like "Word of God states Parker has Asperger's Syndrome, which would account for her inability to understand facial cues." or some such. Remember, the original poster may not know about the Wordof God. If that is true, their are NO Unfortunate Implications- just a lack of information.
Not to mention Word of God is rather divided on the subject. Dean Devlin says Parker has mild (high-functioning) Asperger's, but John Rogers on the season 1 commentary (either 12-Step or First David) says her problems are "Asperger's-like," but ultimately stem from her upbringing. Due to the way she was raised, her emotional development just stopped after a certain point.
I find it amusing that Aspergers Syndrome is becoming a kind of catch-all diagnosis for people who could be weird for any number of completely different or unrelated reasons.
Further muddying the Word of God waters: At a 2010 Comic-Con panel, both co-executive producer Chris Downey and Beth "Parker" Riesgraf stated that Parker probably does not have Asperger's Syndrome, as such a well-established condition would impose too many restrictions on how the character was written and performed. They prefer to just say that she has "problems" and leave it at that.
Glad to hear that. Parker doesn't really match up with any diagnosis. She's just plain old raised by wolves.
Bald of Evil
So, got a DVD, watched "First David Job". Parkers improvised break-in int the vault - 1) Infrared sensor. It reacts to the change in thermal image of a room. Hardison puts a bag of Ice in front of it. It was room-temp, now its ice cold, alarm tripped, BUSTED! 2) Lasers. 2.A) Visible???, Well ok, It's classic. 2.B) How the hell do they work? Why are beams projected from both sides of the room? Where are the sensitive elements, then?
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I can't vouch for the others (though I'd guess 1 would have something to do with it not actually touching the sensor), but as far as 2A, Word of God jokingly states that in the Leverage-verse lasers are visible. Yes, this is a complete hand-wave that breaks the laws of physics, but maybe it makes more sense if the Leverage-verse is just exceedingly dusty?
Scouts — left handed salute?!?
"Did Not Do The Research: There's a quick one in "The Two Horse Job" where Elliot says "Scout's honour" and salutes with his left hand, to which Nate replies "Wrong hand". The thing is that scouts, unlike the military, actually do salute with their left hands. "
Scouts salute with their right hand (Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Venturers, Sea Scouts, Girl Scouts...). Boy Scouts shake hands with their left hand.
I like this show. The characters are fun, the writing is damned clever, and the tech is "just right" (not too realistic, not too far out) for a here-and-now show that isn't meant to be taken seriously.
I just have one pet peeve. The main page notes that the producers intend for every ep to involve a CMOA. But the CMOA's invariably involve a "reveal," told in a brief flashbacks. To me it feels as if the writer is saying "Here's why we're not in as much trouble as it looks. You didn't catch this before, did you? Of course you didn't catch it before! We didn't let you see it! Haha!" A couple of times per season, ok, but every episode? It's cheating. It's sort of an inverted Chekhov's Gun: The gun is fired, but we didn't see it before.
Is there a trope for this? Other than just "Chekhov's Gun, inverted"?
Ok, the writers are conning the viewer too. I get it. It's still annoying and as a way to get to a CMOA, I still think it's cheating. In a proper mystery the viewer or reader has all the clues needed to solve the puzzle. Either that's not the case here, or I'm not trying hard enough.
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I kind of agree with you and I kind of don't. In most episodes the gun is there but they way it's placed is so strange you've really, reeeeeeeeeally got to be looking for it. I just watched The Two Live Crew Job episode and a random moment with the other team's thief pickpocketing Parker's phone. I thought it was just a way of showing the rivalry. I didn't have a problem when it came back later. Watch for the really small things more and it might become more obvious.
That's kind of how it works with cons too. People can be conned because we don't always look at the small details.
The lifts and so on are one thing (and according to WordOfGod
the actors are actually doing them on-camera, and are getting pretty good at it! Which makes it much more fun). But plot elements like a conversation that seems to have one meaning until the flashback when they show you the first part of the conversation, which gives it a whole different meaning... this isn't a matter of "watching for the really small things," I don't think. I still like the show, though. :)
Unspoken Plan Guarantee, with the slight caveat that we're not even shown it all being put in place until the flashback?
(Note that I'm guessing based on Hustle's way of doing things, which I assume is similar.)
xkcd? There was a shout-out to xkcd? Which episode? How did I miss that?
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It was in "The Gone Fishin' Job." Hardison takes a guy down with a booby trap. Just as he's about to knock him out, he utters, "Science: it works." The only thing that's missing is the word "bitches" at the end, but they were probably trying to keep things cleanish.
World's Toughest Milkman
I'd like to correct a typo, but I can't, so I'll mention it here. On the character page, there are some nice pics associated with the main characters—nice enough that I assumed they were some sort of professionally-done promo images until I noticed that the one for Parker says "Theif".
Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
Should there be a new "The Merch" trope for the show? Looking at my local Barnes and Noble they have a new tie-in original "Leverage" story, "The Con Job" by Matt Forbeck on sale now. The team heads to the San Diego Comic-Con, and helps do some good there. I won't spoil too much more than that.
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