Leverage 2x07: The Two Live Crew Job
Aug. 28th, 2009 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eruthrosI can post episode reviews! So I am.
The good:
1. Oh my god, Hardison and Kaos had a quickdraw keyboard battle with gunfight music and stances and I loved it times a million.
2. Oh my god, Parker and ... Apollo? Had a stealing-things-fight, and it was awesome. Oh Parker.
3. Oh my god, Eliot and Raquel not-fighting but both being so good at reading body language that they were flashing into how the fight was going to go? AWESOME.
4. Parker thought Sophie was really dead and kept poking her!
5. The bit with the bomb in the vase was really well done, actually; Parker and the pudding, Sophie insisting they all leave. I could've done without Nate being an idiot, there, but I still loved it a lot. (Although, seriously, who do they think they're fooling when they come back from a commercial break to a graveyard?
6. "I would have gone with a scarlet tanager." "That was my second choice."
7. Parker admitting to getting the Kobayashi Maru reference, and reluctantly fist-bumping! I now imagine Hardison sitting Parker and Elliot down for a Star Trek Marathon/Education Session after Eliot nearly missed the Wrath of Khan reference a few episodes back. Parker likes Data best. Or, wait, Q. She likes Q best of all.
8. They trust Sophie to make sure they're all okay.
The bad:
1. The pacing. The jokes were awesome, the genre play was awesome, the team fights were awesome. But the twist and the end felt underplayed; there was too much setup here and not enough time spent on the payoff.
2. Asthingswithwings and I were watching the opening set-up with the initial attempt to steal the Klimt we started out really pleased -- the uniforms! Hardison's little "talk to the boss!" And then almost immediately went "what? no." Here is the thing: Sophie and Nate's attempt to distract the receptionist had nothing to do with the rest of the plot. They could have distracted her with anything; embezzlement plots or corporate espionage or, well, anything. And instead they went with implied sexual assault ("you're his type") and murder; they went with foot fetishes ("has he ever expressed interest in your toenail polish"); they went with sexualized threats. In the context of American crime shows, those questions pretty strongly imply sexual assault; they imply sexualized power dynamics, if not actual rape. It was really startling, and offputting, and suddenly unpleasant -- especially in context of the awesome shakesville article (trigger warning) on rape culture that I read not long before watching the episode. Way to argue that threatening sexual violence and making women afraid is a legitimate way to get what you want, show.
3. Did we really, seriously have to rip off Raquel Diane's shirt off? The fight was amazing and hot and I loved it, until the exact moment when they started doing strip-fighting, until they started trying to make it hot. And then, suddenly, ugh. I'm sure they would say it was supposed to be ironic, that it was supposed to be a humorous use of the cliche like the keyboard-fight. But there's a difference between playing genre games with a gunfight, and playing genre games with stripping a fighting woman down to her bra before getting her wet and making out with her. They might argue that it's ironic, but we still see a woman wearing only a bra mashed up against Eliot. (I was trying to think of ways that this could have worked, andthingswithwings suggested that it might've read better if Eliot had been stripped topless, really topless, first, and then she'd stripped down to an undershirt or something instead of a bra.)
I really would have loved this episode; I would have ranked it pretty high in my list of Leverage episodes, despite the pacing problem, just for the genre-play and the Hardison/Chaos keyboard battle and Parker being Parker. But when I think back on it, I get distracted by points two and three; they overwhelm my love for Hardison and Elliot and Parker.
Why do I still not have a Leverage icon? I'll have to go with Star Trek in honor of Hardison.
The good:
1. Oh my god, Hardison and Kaos had a quickdraw keyboard battle with gunfight music and stances and I loved it times a million.
2. Oh my god, Parker and ... Apollo? Had a stealing-things-fight, and it was awesome. Oh Parker.
3. Oh my god, Eliot and Raquel not-fighting but both being so good at reading body language that they were flashing into how the fight was going to go? AWESOME.
4. Parker thought Sophie was really dead and kept poking her!
5. The bit with the bomb in the vase was really well done, actually; Parker and the pudding, Sophie insisting they all leave. I could've done without Nate being an idiot, there, but I still loved it a lot. (Although, seriously, who do they think they're fooling when they come back from a commercial break to a graveyard?
6. "I would have gone with a scarlet tanager." "That was my second choice."
7. Parker admitting to getting the Kobayashi Maru reference, and reluctantly fist-bumping! I now imagine Hardison sitting Parker and Elliot down for a Star Trek Marathon/Education Session after Eliot nearly missed the Wrath of Khan reference a few episodes back. Parker likes Data best. Or, wait, Q. She likes Q best of all.
8. They trust Sophie to make sure they're all okay.
The bad:
1. The pacing. The jokes were awesome, the genre play was awesome, the team fights were awesome. But the twist and the end felt underplayed; there was too much setup here and not enough time spent on the payoff.
2. As
thingswithwings and I were watching the opening set-up with the initial attempt to steal the Klimt we started out really pleased -- the uniforms! Hardison's little "talk to the boss!" And then almost immediately went "what? no." Here is the thing: Sophie and Nate's attempt to distract the receptionist had nothing to do with the rest of the plot. They could have distracted her with anything; embezzlement plots or corporate espionage or, well, anything. And instead they went with implied sexual assault ("you're his type") and murder; they went with foot fetishes ("has he ever expressed interest in your toenail polish"); they went with sexualized threats. In the context of American crime shows, those questions pretty strongly imply sexual assault; they imply sexualized power dynamics, if not actual rape. It was really startling, and offputting, and suddenly unpleasant -- especially in context of the awesome shakesville article (trigger warning) on rape culture that I read not long before watching the episode. Way to argue that threatening sexual violence and making women afraid is a legitimate way to get what you want, show. 3. Did we really, seriously have to rip off Raquel Diane's shirt off? The fight was amazing and hot and I loved it, until the exact moment when they started doing strip-fighting, until they started trying to make it hot. And then, suddenly, ugh. I'm sure they would say it was supposed to be ironic, that it was supposed to be a humorous use of the cliche like the keyboard-fight. But there's a difference between playing genre games with a gunfight, and playing genre games with stripping a fighting woman down to her bra before getting her wet and making out with her. They might argue that it's ironic, but we still see a woman wearing only a bra mashed up against Eliot. (I was trying to think of ways that this could have worked, and
thingswithwings suggested that it might've read better if Eliot had been stripped topless, really topless, first, and then she'd stripped down to an undershirt or something instead of a bra.) I really would have loved this episode; I would have ranked it pretty high in my list of Leverage episodes, despite the pacing problem, just for the genre-play and the Hardison/Chaos keyboard battle and Parker being Parker. But when I think back on it, I get distracted by points two and three; they overwhelm my love for Hardison and Elliot and Parker.
Why do I still not have a Leverage icon? I'll have to go with Star Trek in honor of Hardison.
