I Already Had Half A Mind To Go Off About This And Then A Set Of Eliot And Parker Came Across My Dash

I already had half a mind to go off about this and then a set of Eliot and Parker came across my dash from the same episode I was thinking of and that pushed me over the edge.

So let’s talk about The Big Bang Job in Leverage and something they pulled off only by nature of being Leverage because it’s practically magic tbh.

The thing about The Big Bang Job is that the climax of the episode is a gigantic, over the top shootout between one of the main characters (Eliot) and a literal warehouse full of goons with automatic weapons. And Eliot not only walks out of it without a scratch, he starts with only his fists to fight back with. I’m talking complete and utter cheese; stormtrooper-like aim from the goons, Eliot never misses a shot, Eliot takes cover behind wooden boxes and doesn’t get hit, infinite bullets, and the scene ends with Eliot sliding on his knees while spinning 360 firing all the while and hitting every single one of his remaining targets.

This scene is objectively utterly laughable, it should flop. It doesn’t. 

It doesn’t because this is Eliot. Eliot, who the show is very, very careful to establish “doesn’t like guns”. Not, “doesn’t USE guns”, “doesn’t LIKE guns”. It has been consistent, up to this point and actually after this point, that Eliot before he met the team was not a nice person. He’s a hitter, he’s not exactly the nicest person now, but before the team it is heavily implied that he did some nasty, assassin-esque work for an even nastier guy. 

He’s killed people before, for a living, and he was very good at it.

But by the time we meet him, by the time the team meets him, he is out of that line of work. He doesn’t touch guns anymore, not for personal use. Every single time we see him with one on-screen it’s because he’s disarming someone else who had one and unloading it to make it useless in whatever fight is going on at the moment. Eliot doesn’t like guns. Eliot doesn’t use guns. And it is because that character fact is well and consistently established for three seasons before we get to The Big Bang Job that the over the top shootout is dramatically weighted instead of funny.

That scene, which should read as celebration of a gory bloodbath, is instead an extremely grim and serious character moment. This is Eliot breaking an unspoken vow; this is a promise that he made to himself and that we the audience have seen him hold himself to without fail, and we have to watch him go back on it, for the sake of his team. This is watching Eliot be the man, the monster, he believes he is, the person that he will spend the rest of his life atoning for without ever truly feeling he can have or deserves forgiveness. 

It is the context of that character, the back story firmly in place and present in the moment he makes the decision, that makes the warehouse shootout devastatingly gutwrenching instead of what it should be.

It is the only reason Leverage gets away with it and significantly they never do it again. This is the only time we ever see this from Eliot and that’s what gives that moment so much weight. 

what if jack isnt actually the face of boe and he was just fucking with the doctor. like jack still KNOWS the face of boe so those two teamed up to fuck with the doctor and be like ‘yeah im jack and jack is me we are one and the same’ and jack is just behind that jar losing his mind

Eliot: Everyone always asks how I manage Parker and Hardison.

Eliot: The secret is I have no control over them whatsoever.

Eliot: Earlier Hardison called my name and when I showed up to see what was going on, Parker shot me with a Nerf pistol

~~~~some time later~~~~

Hardison: Yeah that was a bad idea. Never challenge a former hitman to a Nerf battle.

About 1 out of 5 Parental!RoyEd fics: “When his youngest subordinate goes missing, the Flame Alchemist will stop at nothing to bring Ed safely home.”

Meanwhile, Roy in Brotherhood: “Fullmetal’s gone missing up North? Hmm, sounds like a personal problem to me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a coup to plan.”

Thank you Maine Millennial for this efficient summary of Leverage