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rsadelleI'm fascinated that there's so little interest in Leverage: Redemption season 2. I don't mean "why is no one talking about this??!!!?111?"; I mean I follow multiple Leverage blogs on Tumblr and none of them are posting about it.
I need to talk about episode 6, "The Fractured Job." But first we have to backtrack to episode 5, "The Walk in the Woods Job." In that episode, we meet Dr. Paul Orozco who is very clearly Eliot's boyfriend. (Side note: one of my disappointments about Tumbr not being into this is that now I need an extension of the "Quinn is our boyfriend-in-law" joke to include Paul.) We get a flashback of the two of them in a bar four years ago having a chat where Paul encourages Eliot to go fix something which Eliot says he can't. When Eliot finds out the whole story and that Paul isn't dead but faked his death to go after the villain, he gets upset that Paul didn't tell him, with the kind of emphasis that makes it clear that they're very close and Eliot expects Paul to share his secrets with him. At the end of the episode, they're having a goodbye beer in the romantic courtyard where Breanna had a date the previous episode, and Eliot says that he is going to fix it.
In "The Fractured Job," Eliot comes down the stairs with his bag and tells the team he's going to Oklahoma. Sophie, Parker, and Hardison (who is calling in from space where he's on a literal satellite) all know what that means, and Harry asks what's in Oklahoma. Eliot is going to talk to his dad. He takes one of his food trucks and Parker and Breanna go with him. When they get there, they find out that Eliot's dad Billy (Keith David) is Black and Eliot was adopted. They also find a job: helping Billy fight the fracking rig in town. Things are tense between Eliot and his dad. Eliot makes breakfast, and his dad won't stay and sit with just him - but takes the plate with him as he leaves. Eliot keeps trying to talk to and help his dad, and his dad doesn't want to accept it. Finally, near the end, Eliot tells his dad he's sorry he couldn't come home for Mom's funeral, but that he was special forces and they wouldn't let him. Billy says that Eliot was a natural athlete and could have been a football player, and Eliot essentially says he wanted to be a hero like his dad, who told him stories about his military career. Billy makes the point that the glory went to a white man and not to him, and Eliot says that the guys he saved know he was a hero. At the end, they have made up and they both cry when they say goodbye.
So here's the thing about this episode: aaaahhhh, Christian Kane! Okay, so if you're reading this, you know that I love Christian Kane. Love him. However, he is not a great actor. He's good at being Eliot and he can be very funny, but his acting skills are definitely limited. One of the funniest to me moments in Almost Paradise is when he plays guitar and sings and suddenly stops being Alex (the character) and very clearly becomes Chris (the actor). He's so good in "The Fractured Job." You can see his feelings, and he does such a good job of showing them and navigating the complicated relationship with his dad while also being honest and upfront with Hardison in particular about his emotions. He said on Instagram that he's been working on Eliot's backstory about his dad with John Rogers and Dean Devlin since the very beginning of the original Leverage. Also, Chris's dad died of COVID. So I am just having feelings about Chris taking all this emotional attachment - both to the character whose backstory he helped develop and to stories about dads and to his own emotions about his dad - and pouring it into that episode. So many feelings!
And then I went to the Tumblr Leverage tag and had some annoyed feelings. People really aren't into Leverage: Redemption. I kind of get it, because it's not the same as Leverage, but also: it's fun! And it's a different show in part because it's a different time now. I was more annoyed by the people talking about how "The Fractured Job" ruined/jossed years and years of headcanons about Eliot having a neglectful/bad white man dad. First of all, I disagree with the take that Eliot's dad was abusive/neglectful. We knew they didn't have a good relationship now, that they were from "the heartland," and that Eliot's dad wasn't happy that he went into the military, but I don't think anything really holds up the idea that his dad was a generally bad dad. Which, whatever, people can have their own interpretations of things and that's fine. More importantly, part of what's fun about fandom and fan fiction is that you can have lots of different interpretations all at once. There didn't need to be one and only one interpretation before, and just because we now know Eliot's actual backstory doesn't mean that people's speculating before was wrong and bad! Part of having an open canon fandom is that sometimes you learn things that contradict your guesses. Even in a closed canon, there can be a lot of different interpretations that are all reasonable. I just wanted to reblog some gifsets and maybe see some jokes and instead I know this is how fandom thinks now and I'm annoyed about it.
I need to talk about episode 6, "The Fractured Job." But first we have to backtrack to episode 5, "The Walk in the Woods Job." In that episode, we meet Dr. Paul Orozco who is very clearly Eliot's boyfriend. (Side note: one of my disappointments about Tumbr not being into this is that now I need an extension of the "Quinn is our boyfriend-in-law" joke to include Paul.) We get a flashback of the two of them in a bar four years ago having a chat where Paul encourages Eliot to go fix something which Eliot says he can't. When Eliot finds out the whole story and that Paul isn't dead but faked his death to go after the villain, he gets upset that Paul didn't tell him, with the kind of emphasis that makes it clear that they're very close and Eliot expects Paul to share his secrets with him. At the end of the episode, they're having a goodbye beer in the romantic courtyard where Breanna had a date the previous episode, and Eliot says that he is going to fix it.
In "The Fractured Job," Eliot comes down the stairs with his bag and tells the team he's going to Oklahoma. Sophie, Parker, and Hardison (who is calling in from space where he's on a literal satellite) all know what that means, and Harry asks what's in Oklahoma. Eliot is going to talk to his dad. He takes one of his food trucks and Parker and Breanna go with him. When they get there, they find out that Eliot's dad Billy (Keith David) is Black and Eliot was adopted. They also find a job: helping Billy fight the fracking rig in town. Things are tense between Eliot and his dad. Eliot makes breakfast, and his dad won't stay and sit with just him - but takes the plate with him as he leaves. Eliot keeps trying to talk to and help his dad, and his dad doesn't want to accept it. Finally, near the end, Eliot tells his dad he's sorry he couldn't come home for Mom's funeral, but that he was special forces and they wouldn't let him. Billy says that Eliot was a natural athlete and could have been a football player, and Eliot essentially says he wanted to be a hero like his dad, who told him stories about his military career. Billy makes the point that the glory went to a white man and not to him, and Eliot says that the guys he saved know he was a hero. At the end, they have made up and they both cry when they say goodbye.
So here's the thing about this episode: aaaahhhh, Christian Kane! Okay, so if you're reading this, you know that I love Christian Kane. Love him. However, he is not a great actor. He's good at being Eliot and he can be very funny, but his acting skills are definitely limited. One of the funniest to me moments in Almost Paradise is when he plays guitar and sings and suddenly stops being Alex (the character) and very clearly becomes Chris (the actor). He's so good in "The Fractured Job." You can see his feelings, and he does such a good job of showing them and navigating the complicated relationship with his dad while also being honest and upfront with Hardison in particular about his emotions. He said on Instagram that he's been working on Eliot's backstory about his dad with John Rogers and Dean Devlin since the very beginning of the original Leverage. Also, Chris's dad died of COVID. So I am just having feelings about Chris taking all this emotional attachment - both to the character whose backstory he helped develop and to stories about dads and to his own emotions about his dad - and pouring it into that episode. So many feelings!
And then I went to the Tumblr Leverage tag and had some annoyed feelings. People really aren't into Leverage: Redemption. I kind of get it, because it's not the same as Leverage, but also: it's fun! And it's a different show in part because it's a different time now. I was more annoyed by the people talking about how "The Fractured Job" ruined/jossed years and years of headcanons about Eliot having a neglectful/bad white man dad. First of all, I disagree with the take that Eliot's dad was abusive/neglectful. We knew they didn't have a good relationship now, that they were from "the heartland," and that Eliot's dad wasn't happy that he went into the military, but I don't think anything really holds up the idea that his dad was a generally bad dad. Which, whatever, people can have their own interpretations of things and that's fine. More importantly, part of what's fun about fandom and fan fiction is that you can have lots of different interpretations all at once. There didn't need to be one and only one interpretation before, and just because we now know Eliot's actual backstory doesn't mean that people's speculating before was wrong and bad! Part of having an open canon fandom is that sometimes you learn things that contradict your guesses. Even in a closed canon, there can be a lot of different interpretations that are all reasonable. I just wanted to reblog some gifsets and maybe see some jokes and instead I know this is how fandom thinks now and I'm annoyed about it.