don't be dull, be fannish

The Rundown Job was the best episode of the whole series, which is funny because Nate and Sophie didn't appear in the ep at all. It's up there with The Big Bang Job as one of the most intense, less slap-stick and more Bourne type of an episode, as is usual for Eliot centric eps.

The Rundown Job is simply stunning. It's a glimpse of what Leverage would've looked like in S6, without Nate and Sophie, just Eliot, Hardison and Parker as the core crew. And wow, just... wow! So much intense action and wonderful character moments, a touch here, a look there, and not just between Hardison and Parker who were a couple by then, but also between Hardison and Eliot, and Parker and Eliot. Like the look Eliot and Parker shared on the subway train, right before he rushed the guy with the gun, taking a bullet in the process and she stopped the virus from releasing. Amazing!

And then the series finale, The Long Good-bye Job! Even though I knew that it was a con, I still bawled my eyes out when Eliot, Hardison and Parker "died". It was because of HOW they died: holding hands. The whole episode was an ode to their threesome. The exec basically admitted on Twitter that it was written that way (his "You're welcome" when someone asked if those three ended up in a ménage). I mean, I get that they were probably NOT written as a romantic threeway ship, but they were also NOT written as NOT a romantic threeway ship, if you get my meaning. Basically, they let it to your imagination and that's the best part. I choose to interpret it as them ending up in a threesome. Because as Eliot said to Nate, he had been looking for SOMETHING his whole life long, but now he could finally stop because he found it right there - and he looked at Parker and Hardison. When you take that together with The Rundown Job... Yup, they were an actual working OT3!

Overall, S5 was a bit of a disappointment. The best part were the character moments with Eliot, Hardison and Parker. And the ending was simply perfect, it couldn't have ended in a better way, it was THAT good. But I think it ended at the right time because it started to feel like the writers were running out of ideas since they kept coming up with more and more convoluted plots.

The second half of the season had more than a few duds, IMO. Like The Office Job, I only hop-skipped through that one. I don't like this... documentary style, almost lost footage kind of film making. Or The Lonely Hearts Job which was all about Sophie and Nathan's ship. Eh. I don't mind them as a couple but I consider them quite... boring.

Then there were episodes that were rather... meh. Like The Girls' Night Out Job and The Boys' Night Out Job. I really liked the style, how the episodes meshed together. I also loved seeing some of the guest stars again. But the plots were a bit... well... meh.

I liked The Queen Gambit Job because we found out a LOT about Sterling, that was nice! And The Last Dam Job because of all the guest stars that came back, that was wonderful! I especially liked the Eliot & Quinn combo.

Overall, S4 was - except for a handful of episodes - not as good as S3. In S3, I really loved the season arc, Damien Moreau (well, except for how it ended). The S4 villain just wasn't on par with him. Though the surprising twist in the second to last episode was great.

TNT picked up The Librarians for a 10 ep long TV series to be aired in late 2014! But the hammer? It's made by the people behind Leverage, Dean Devlin and John Rogers, and CHRISTIAN frickin' KANE is in it!!! Noah Wyle, the original Librarian, is executing and recurring and Rebecca Romijn is the lead! HUZZAH, folks, HUZZAH!!!

The Librarians centers on an ancient organization hidden beneath the Metropolitan Public Library that solves impossible mysteries, fights supernatural threats and recovers powerful artifacts from around the world. For the past 10 years, Flynn Carsen (Wyle) has served as the Librarian, collecting and protecting these artifacts and preventing them from falling into the wrong hands. But as great as Flynn is, the job of Librarian has become more than one person can handle. To aid him in his duties, the Library has recruited four people from around the world: Eve Baird (Romijn), a highly skilled counter-terrorism agent who is responsible for protecting the group and keeping them all alive; Jake Stone (Kane), an Oklahoma oil worker with an IQ of 190 and an encyclopedic knowledge of art history; Cassandra (Booth), a quirky young woman with the special gift of auditory and sensory hallucinations linked to memory retrieval, known as synesthesia; and Ezekiel Jones (Kim), a master of new technologies and aficionado of old classic crimes who enjoys playing the role of international man of mystery. Overseeing the new team of Librarians is the cantankerous Jenkins (Larroquette), an expert in ancient lore who has been working out of the Library’s branch office for longer than anyone knows. Together, they must tangle with many adversaries, chief of whom is the Serpent Brotherhood, an ancient cult led by the mysterious immortal Dulaque (Frewer).

More over on Deadline, the source of this news (which can't be linked or LJ will refused this post, pah!)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I was already looking forward to this show but with Romijn and Kane - who played siblings in King & Maxwell - I can't bloody wait!!!

Out of these 4 - The Long Way Down Job, The 10 Li'l Grifters Job, The 15 Minutes Job & The Van Gogh Job - I liked the first one best. I actually liked it so much so that I immediately listened to the audio commentary, which doesn't happen often. I usually watch the whole season first, then do the audio commentaries. But this one... Was really great. And the commentary was amazing!

In this episode, my favorite scenes were the Parker and Eliot ones, especially those where they were stuck in the cave together and Parker wanted to do the right thing. That was fantastic. And when they then had to leave the body behind and Eliot told her that it was good that it was them who had found the dead man because they were able and willing to do what was necessary for survival - they left the body there and saved themselves. As Eliot said, if it had been anyone else, and especially Hardison, they would have tried again and again to get the dead man to back to his wife - and they would've died trying.

This is the reason why I love Eliot and Parker best. They are willing to get their hands dirty. They are morally ambiguous and they know it. And they both hurt because of it which is why they understand each other so well that they can communicate without words. I loved what the exec. producer said about them: they are not a brother and a sister and they are not lovers, yet in some ways they are closer than any other two members of the team.

What hit me the most, though, was what the producer said about Eliot: everybody else does the right thing to redeem themselves - he doesn't. Eliot knows he's going to hell but along the way, he wants to help his friends. That really got to me. That and the fact that he's balancing out the rest of the team, he's there to deal with their problems and protect them, even at the cost of his own life. It's amazing, this insight the writers and producers have, how well they know their characters.

Last night, I finished S3 with audio commentaries. And it was PRECIOUS! If you like the show, do buy the DVDs. The commentaries are so worth it. They actually talk about the episodes, about the actors, how the plot came to be, how and where and when it was filmed. It's excellent!

Best commentary? Episodes 315 and 316. Aldis Hodge and Christian Kane joined the writers and directors and execs. And it was glorious. I loved listening to them talking about the huge Eliot-centric shoot-out. It's all Christian Kane, no stunt double. And the slide-bent-shoot part? Christian's idea! 2500 rounds a day during the two day long shoot. I loved it when they talked about the character's motivations, what was behind the Damien-Eliot-Chapman relationship, that Chapman was jealous of Eliot because, even though he left, Damien still respected the hell out of him and Chapman knew that he would never measure up to that.

Also, Hardison and Parker running on top of the moving train? Really Aldis Hodge and Beth Riesgraf! When the exec first heard of it, he almost had a stroke because they risked so much! LOL!

And all the great stuff they had to say about Goran Visnjic! Beautiful.

Do buy it, folks! It's excellent and I can't recommend it enough. Also, I NOW OWN SEASON 4 ON DVD! Just found it in my mail box! *pets the box set* But first, I need to finish ST:V S1 and NCIS:LA S1 which I already started. But - SEASON 4 IS MINE, BEWARE! MWAHAHAHA!

So, I started watching S3 from the beginning, this time with audio commentaries. This is something I really adore about the Leverage DVDs - all episodes have an audio commentary, every one of them. And they're awesome! Because they actually discuss the episode, not just some completely unrelated crap!

Stuff that I learned...

* Christian Kane is a Cherokee! I remember reading somewhere, a long time ago, that he had American Indian - as he himself calls it - ancestry but I didn't know that he identified himself as a Cherokee. I read that he got to play an Indian only once and he made the most of it because he knew that, with his looks, he wouldn't get a role like that often/again.

* Aldis Hodge really plays a violin. It was really him playing the violin solo in The Scheherazade Job. The writers asked him back during S1 what he would like to do on the show, if he had a special wish. And he told them that he had been playing violin for 5 years and he would like to give it a go on the show - and they gave him one of the most difficult violin solos ever written! LOL!

* The victim in The Jailhouse Job? Aldis Hodge's older brother! The part was written for him specifically.

* I didn't know that Gina Bellman was from New Zealand! I thought she was English. New Zealand! Huh!

* I really loved what the writers said, that they were always on the set and that they always worked with the actors, asked their opinions, let them adlib stuff, whatever, that cooperation was their goal, not a dictate. That's so, so awesome. Especially compared to the attitude of writers on shows like SGA whose ego would fill the room to overflowing. I guess that's why the Leverage characters were so awesome and consistent, why they didn't do OOC stuff. Because the actors were allowed to keep track of them.

"LEVERAGE // run this town" (Watch on YouTube)

You know, if I should show someone just one vid to get them to watch Leverage, I think it would be this one. The scenes fit the music so well: "I'm addicted to the thrill, it's a dangerous love affair." Pretty much. Yes, the team are do-gooders, they really are, but they do it because they ~are~ addicted to the thrill.

Oh man, I just loved episode 315, The Big Bang Job. It was so incredibly intense. After that, 316, The San Lorenzo Job, was a bit of a letdown. A sweet episode but I think it would've been better if the season had ended with 315. So much suspense in that one episode. I just love funny shows because when they go dark, usually very unexpectedly, it hits you so much harder.

Like in 315, when we found out about Eliot's past, that he used to be Damien Moreau's right hand, his pet killer. I mean, we - the viewers and the team - all knew that Eliot used to "hurt people" as he described it. But to have it laid bare like that... Eliot used to kill people for Moreau and it still haunts him. It was obvious, what he had done for Moreau, when Moreau asked him to kill Atherton as a favor, the way Moreau expected Eliot to do it without questions or hesitation... So very dark, not something I expected, which is awesome! And when Eliot then picked up the gun and killed everybody in the warehouse, in cold blood - and then he asked Nate not to tell the team what he had done. Ouch.

But back to Moreau. The strange thing about Eliot and Moreau's relationship? You could see that Moreau respected the hell out of Eliot. He had no respect for his lackeys - but the way he treated Eliot, like an equal. Even in 316, he was actually amused by seeing Eliot with the puppy. Or at the end of 315, when he told Eliot he loved his longer hair... I just found their relationship so fascinating. Also, it helped that Moreau was played by Goran Visnjic *_*

And the rest of the team! I loved how Parker and Hardison destroyed the bomb. But I also adored that when ass-kicking was needed, it was Eliot and Parker who risked their lives. As the writers said, Eliot and Parker were the most dangerous members of the team. The rest of the team had scruples - Parker and Eliot? Not so much. And that's just awesome.

And yes, Parker/Hardison/Eliot are still my OTP in this show. I know that the writers planned Nate and Sophie to be THE item, then Parker/Hardison but... the way the show's going, I just can't help but feeling that it actually might really end with an OT3 - after the show's finale, that is, not in the show itself, of course. But Parker/Hardison/Eliot give me the same vibes as Audrey/Nathan/Duke in Haven. They just fit. Yes, in the show itself, Parker and Hardison make googly eyes at each other, but at the same time, it's Eliot with whom Parker feels comfortable enough to rest against him, to lay her head on his shoulder... And it's lovely, so very, very lovely!

And yes, I immediately ordered S4 on DVD! Though it won't be here for another month because I had to order it from the US, it's still not out in the UK. Pah! :(

So many famous guest stars. Clancy Brown, Richard Chamberlain, Alona Tal... Awesome!

It was great to see Christian Kane singing in the show. I loved how stunned the team was that Eliot could actually sing so well. That was so very, very lovely. And I laughed at the scene where Eliot beat the guy in the studio and because it was soundproof, the others didn't notice what was going on behind them, LOL! So funny.

My favorite bit was the chase through the woods, though, Eliot and Hardison cuffed together. That was hilarious! The way Hardison kept complaining that it was all Eliot's fault, because he wanted to go fishing! And then they ended up fishing on a computer!

Also, love the backstory on Parker. Great stuff. When she hugged Archie... ;_;

I was actually sorry to see Tara go. Jeri Ryan was excellent in the role. Though I'm glad that in episodes like the Fashion Week one they didn't try to pass her off as a model. As gorgeous as she is - and she's stunning! - she isn't the youngest anymore and it shows. But I'm glad that they actually chose an actress with the appropriate age for the role of Tara.

I loved Sophie's return. Her Annie Croy is fabulous. So absolutely cold. The bit where she pretends to shoot Eliot in 201 is my favorite part of the season premiere.

I love the dynamic in the team, that every one of them has a role to play and that they can rely on each other to do their job well. I especially adore that Eliot's not just the bruiser, he's also the team's guardian, it's his job to get them out of tough spots even if it means to get beaten bloody while doing it. And he takes his responsibility seriously, as he told Nate in the season finale - I don't agree with what you're doing but I will get you through this.

And Mark A. Sheppard! Gosh, the man is everywhere and I love him in every one of his parts. His Sterling is simply fabulous. So wickedly smart! Love him so much!

And done with season 2. Woohoo, go me!