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A meta post on OG Leverage before the new one airs.
I keep seeing the cast, writers and producers talk about how Leverage is a comfort show for most people, and then make some comment about it feeling good to see people take down the bad guys. Now, I don't expect them to get into a deep analysis during janky zoom call interviews, but a lot of shows do that, so it's not really an answer for how it's comfort show for so many. I want to get into why it's a comfort show for me and why it is fundamentally different from a lot of media.
The show seems to take place in the same reality I do. It's a comedy, it's relentlessly optimistic, but it takes place in a dark world with crime and deeply flawed systems. For a lot of shows and movies, the initial status quo is good and the resolution is based on the economic and governmental systems they are in not being all thaaaaat bad. A lot of shows make the plot work by taking place in a better, gentler world. Even if the plots are gritty, those terrible things are out of the norm.
Most shows are about a patch of darkness in the light. Leverage is about a patch of light in the darkness. The wish fulfillment of found family or heroes on most shows doesn't work me for because those shows assume that that systems we live in are basically good and any problems are aberrations. In this show the found family and growth hits me differently. It actually feels accessible, because it takes place in the same world I do. A world with judges sending kids to prison for cash kickbacks, predatory businessmen and the opioid crisis.
I keep wanting to do a deeper dive on plot structure and how it inverts what most 'story structure' theory claims to be the golden ratio below all good stories. And how in other crime stories the baddies just need to be handed off to the police or court system, because the systems we are in are fundamentally good in those stories. But Leverage typically can't do that. The crew can sometimes hand over certain baddies or rely on public outcry, but not reliably and it's never an easy hand off. They have to breadcrumb things carefully. The cops / media / people being basically good actually doesn't ever swoop in and right the wrongs.
This meta isn't fulled baked and I couldn't quite find the right words for a few things. I stand by the structure inversion making it light in the darkness rather than a spot of dark in the daylight. I wanted to get this out before the new show hit ... partially in case it drifted from this theme.
I keep seeing the cast, writers and producers talk about how Leverage is a comfort show for most people, and then make some comment about it feeling good to see people take down the bad guys. Now, I don't expect them to get into a deep analysis during janky zoom call interviews, but a lot of shows do that, so it's not really an answer for how it's comfort show for so many. I want to get into why it's a comfort show for me and why it is fundamentally different from a lot of media.
The show seems to take place in the same reality I do. It's a comedy, it's relentlessly optimistic, but it takes place in a dark world with crime and deeply flawed systems. For a lot of shows and movies, the initial status quo is good and the resolution is based on the economic and governmental systems they are in not being all thaaaaat bad. A lot of shows make the plot work by taking place in a better, gentler world. Even if the plots are gritty, those terrible things are out of the norm.
Most shows are about a patch of darkness in the light. Leverage is about a patch of light in the darkness. The wish fulfillment of found family or heroes on most shows doesn't work me for because those shows assume that that systems we live in are basically good and any problems are aberrations. In this show the found family and growth hits me differently. It actually feels accessible, because it takes place in the same world I do. A world with judges sending kids to prison for cash kickbacks, predatory businessmen and the opioid crisis.
I keep wanting to do a deeper dive on plot structure and how it inverts what most 'story structure' theory claims to be the golden ratio below all good stories. And how in other crime stories the baddies just need to be handed off to the police or court system, because the systems we are in are fundamentally good in those stories. But Leverage typically can't do that. The crew can sometimes hand over certain baddies or rely on public outcry, but not reliably and it's never an easy hand off. They have to breadcrumb things carefully. The cops / media / people being basically good actually doesn't ever swoop in and right the wrongs.
This meta isn't fulled baked and I couldn't quite find the right words for a few things. I stand by the structure inversion making it light in the darkness rather than a spot of dark in the daylight. I wanted to get this out before the new show hit ... partially in case it drifted from this theme.
