Leverage. Hmm.

[sholio]

I hate to break with my f'list here, but ... I'm not really feeling the love. We watched the first two episodes tonight and so far I'm not overly impressed. Character-wise, I love Hardison and Parker, and I like Elliot okay (as a source of entertainment, anyway, not really as a person), and there's some fun banter, but this is offset by feeling massively emotionally manipulated by the whole show. I just feel like it's deliberately and obviously tweaking at the heartstrings, holding a flashing sign over the characters' heads reading These Are People You Will Like. You Will Like Them. and bending over backwards to prove that they aren't really bad guys, they're people who steal money from evil corporations to cause massive tax problems for help disabled veterans!

I think I'd like the show a lot better if the characters would just revel in their lawbreaking ways rather than trying to convince the audience that they're not that bad after all. Butch and Sundance didn't steal money to give to hospitals! They stole it because they were self-indulgent thrill-seekers and they liked it that way! As it is, I feel like the show's trying to do some moral sleight of hand ("They're stealing from corporations and smugglers! It's not really stealing!") that's not quite working. The whole disabled-veterans thing was so over-the-top I couldn't believe they actually went there. Why not just go all the way and use handicapped orphans, guys? (Maybe they're saving that one for a future episode...) I'm having trouble articulating this -- I just feel like the show is stuck in some kind of weird limbo between having its characters be bastards gleefully revelling in their bastardness, and having them be selfless heroes, and it seems like its efforts to sell us on the idea that they're really selfless heroes while showing their bastardness makes it seem like a thin rationalization and makes me like them less, not more.

There's a certain amount of distance to most heist movies; you know that what the characters are doing is wrong, so there's a gleeful kind of self-indulgence to suspending your awareness of the consequences and going along for the ride. I feel like the show is trying too hard to sell us on the idea that what the characters are doing is right, which just makes me feel sort of awkward and, like I said, a bit manipulated.

I certainly didn't hate it. I like some of the characters, and there are a lot of neat/fun moments to offset the moments when I eyeroll at the screen, but I'm not really sure if it's worth sticking it out for another episode or two. I feel vaguely guilty because a lot of my f'list seems to love this show; I just can't seem to get into it.

Comments

[asugar.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Hustle? It's an awesome British/AMC show that Leverage completely rips off except that Hustle is awesome and they definitely do revel in their conman ways as you long for above. How awesome is it? ROBERT VAUGHN is one of the leads. Yup, that good. It's available on DVD and there were 4-5 seasons on about 2-3 years ago.

[naye]

Oooh, if you want a show where the characters do revel in their shameless lawbreaking ways, you should watch Hustle. ♥ I keep running into the problem of liking Leverage (with reservations), but finding it lacking in comparison to Hustle.

I don't want to spoil Hustle for you, but - they all have fun, and I absolutely love the whole crew, even though I acknowledge that they can all be horrible, horrible people. *g* (Usually, though, they're much much better about going after people that makes you go \o/ when they own them at the end.) Plus, Hustle pokes holes in the fourth wall to flirt with the audience. Sometimes by doing a dance routine. How could you resist that?

On top of everything else, the Hustle crew feels like family in a way I'm really not getting from Leverage (yet?).

In Leverage, like you, I find Parker and Hardison to be quite fantastic. They're fun and unusual characters - I haven't seen anyone quite like them in anything else! So that scores huge points with me. And Elliot is the world's most dangerous puppy. ♥ Overall, though, Leverage has yet to win me over, and I've seen all episodes but the season finale. I would go into why, but that would entail spoilers, so I won't.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

I love Leverage, but I freely admit that a big part of why is that I'm comparing it to SGA. They've gotten a lot of points from me for a) the EP not being an asshole, b) having women on the writing staff, c) keeping it an ensemble show instead of "Guy We Like and Some Other People", d) having a diverse pool of extras, and the big one, e) not making the character of color into a walking, talking stereotype. I'm willing to forgive an awful lot for being able to watch a show where I can look at one of the main characters and go, "That's my people!"

I honestly don't mind the heartstring-tugging, especially not with eps like "The Homecoming Job" that are very thinly-veiled takes on real-life events. I've watched that episode multiple times, and each time I get a visceral thrill out of seeing Blackwater Castleman brought down. There are few entities I loathe more than insurance companies, so the idea that Nate's doing what he does because the company he worked for screwed him is easy for me to buy because they're doing something I wish I could do.

It doesn't hurt that the Alec/Eliot was obvious to me in the first ten minutes, and that the EP is quite clear when he's throwing in the fanservice that he knows about the slash and it doesn't bother him.

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

Still haven't watched Leverage yet. I didn't really get into Hustle and it's got Robert Vaughan in it.

One other thing:

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

If you do decide to watch more, I strongly recommend watching the episodes in their intended order, rather than in the airing order:

1.) The Nigerian Job
2.) The Homecoming Job
3.) The Wedding Job
4.) The Snow Job
5.) The Mile High Job
6.) The Miracle Job
7.) The Two Horse Job
8.) The Bank Shot Job
9.) The Stork Job
10.) The Juror #6 Job
11.) The 12 Step Job
12.) The First David Job
13.) The Second David Job

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem with the morality (and also how ham-handed the liberal anti-corporate agenda is - not that I'm not liberal pinko wacko myself, but some of Leverage makes s1 NCIS's political message look subtle!) Also (as everyone has been saying) it doesn't fare well compared to Hustle; Hustle's got sharper writing, while as with Leverage I too often feel like they're spoon-feeding the plot; they over-explain the cons, rather than let the audience figure stuff out for themselves.

Hardison, Parker, and Elliot are worth watching the show for, but yeah - "trying too hard" is how I felt for a lot of it.

[mitchy.livejournal.com]

You gotta give it a couple more eps. It really starts to hit its stride later on and the latter 4 episodes are some of the best TV I've seen. For what is essentially a comedy there's a surprising amount of depth in the characters. Please give it a little longer? I didn't like the second ep much but stuck with it and I'm really glad I did :)

[zillah975]

I've enjoyed the eps I've seen, though the series hasn't gotten me hooked enough yet to grab what little free time I have. But the whole "why can't they just be bastards instead of bastards for Good!" thing makes me curious: how do you feel about Robin Hood?

That's not rhetorical -- just wondering if it's the trope in general you dislike or if there's something about Leverage that makes it different from the Robin Hood thing, which is what I always thought they were doing with the show. Not, "we want them to be bastards, but we want people to like them, so let's make them bastards for Good!" but "how about a modern-day Robin Hood with thieves who use their mad-hot thievery skillz to help the poor and downtrodden?"

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

I hate to break with my f'list here, but ... I'm not really feeling the love

It's not just me!
My flist is going nuts about it and....meh.
beanpot showed me an episode when I was at her place in January and I don't think being half-asleep on jetlag helped, but it didn't really draw me. And nothing people have said has really intrigued me.
(but, well, between Sanctuary and my new complete infatuation with The Sarah Connor Chronicles I don't really need another show)

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

I really couldn't stand that show. It's full of bad writer's tricks and product placement. Very irritating. I can elaborate if you want, but I tend to volunteer too much opinion when people are talking about something I have a vested interest in bitching about.

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

The ep order bit makes a difference and you do get to see them reveling a bit more later. I admit I am biased-I will forgive them just about anything for Hardison and Parker:) Let it marinate for a bit and maybe reserve judgment until the latter part of the arc but if it doesn't do it for you, it just doesn't. *runs off to put Hustle in the Netflix queue*

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

I think it's the sort of thing that if you go into it hoping to just love it to bits, it'll disappoint. But if you go into it for an entertaining hour, it'll grow on you. I recall liking the first ep, being majorly disappointed in the second (because yeah, uber heavy-handed) and then... I don't know... it grew on me. :)

[leenys.livejournal.com]

I didn't know Hustle was on again! *checks tivo*

[renisanz.livejournal.com]

I saw "The Miracle Job", which I thought was only meh, after all the hype in the advertisements. However, I really loved the finale. I thought the chemistry of the cast was great, especially Alec and Parker. Parker was especially hilarious for her idiosyncracies. So, I'll be going back to watch the other episodes.

[tipper-green.livejournal.com]

I'll admit, I love Leverage, mostly because I don't watch a lot of TV, and most of the TV I like has a lot of humor underlying it, and this show brings the humor. The characters just got funnier and funnier with each ep, even when they were being serious. Then there's one episode -- the 12-Step Job -- which is really wonderful. If you watch just one more, I'd suggest that one.

But I get that you might want something more, something more intellectually stimulating. I don't think that exists on TV at the moment. The comedies are generally the most intelligent things on TV ("Scrubs", "The Office", "30 Rock"...even the new show, "Better Off Ted", looks like its going to be of that class). But the dramas are mostly meh. I watch "Lie to Me" mostly for Tim Roth, but it doesn't grab me. I also like the characters on "Life", but the story lines aren't great. There are just too many police procedurals on TV right now. Whatever happened to the old, awesome PI shows?

I can't help but love the characters on Leverage, though. I love it the way I like Reaper, Chuck, Psych, and Monk. They just make me happy. But, yeah, I'd never fan it. There's nothing yet to make me want to fan it.

(Oh, as for the "evil corporation" trope. I work for one of them, so I thought it would bother me as well, but they went away from that pretty quickly, and just went after greedy individuals for most of the season).