John Rogers's Blog, page 5
August 21, 2012
LEVERAGE #503 "The First Contact Job" Post-Game
Once we had our pickup last year, late, Chris Downey stayed in LA and worked with some writers on interim scripts while I went to Portland and wrestled the hot dam action to the ground. The scripts are actually contracted under a separate deal with the network, not technically assigned to the next year. Contract bullshit.
During this time our writer's assistant Aaron pitched him some concepts. Aaron is our new Scrappy Writers Assistant now that Kirsch has transitioned to a seat at the big table (with an attitude to match ...). He'd thrown a couple ideas against the wall during the previous year, including a restaurant one that didn't quite work but landed in the strike zone of the culinary school episode we did as ep #504. Finally he came in with a pretty interesting story based around first contact research, specifically the most famous "hey, that could be an alien signal" incident, the "Wow" signal. Of particular interest is the idea that the signal could have been Earth-based bounce-back -- meaning we could fake it. It's worth noting that Marvin, the super on-off device is real tech, much like the EMP gun that fries cars from Season Two is real tech. Remember, if it's cool it's usually real, if it's boring we usually made it up.
This is how scrappy writers assistants get their scripts. They pay attention, they learn how the show works, and then they pick their shots with with well-researched, high-concept hooks. Downey worked with Aaron during the hiatus, then we presented the idea in the opening weeks of the writing year. The room responded, everyone chipped in as usual and boom, first produced script.
I wish I had a better "holy shit, hail Mary" story, but no, this is how it works in a non-crisis-based writers room (at least in the first few weeks, before everything goes to hell). The only really interesting sidebar was that we briefly toyed with stealing a satellite for the story; it turns out satellites are actually shipped by truck to the launch sites in Central America, and a truck hijack of a satellite was intriguing. In the end we went with a smaller, more budget-conscious episode.
Why? Well, you can always use the buffer, but this season we knew we had some big blow-out episodes coming down the pike -- 512, the summer season finale, was already shaping up to be a mini-movie. Not every writers room gives a shit about the budget, by the way, leading to the long-standing room/set tension. On one hand I'm sympathetic to the idea that the writers should have creative freedom. On the other, some day you will be a showrunner, and you will be the one the studio hits up on the budget, and it would be nice if this wasn't the first time you had to wrap your head around the amort. Which happens more often in in television with first-time showrunners than you may think.
In our situation, I don't mind the trade-off. Writing to the budget, planning as far ahead as possible in partnership with production allows MORE creative freedom. By shooting with available funds we have fewer masters to answer to, and so we can really maximize the choices we do make. Something which would be impossible dropped on the line producer's desk on Day One of prep is eminently possible if the production designer has two months to wrap his head around it.
Phil Goldfarb, our line producer first year, is the kind of old hand who can look at a scene and tell you the cheapest. fastest shotlist before you've turned the page. He beat into my head: "The most important thing in television is the timely delivery of scripted material." All joking aside I can just say the first two words of that sentence, and every writer who's ever worked for me will snap out the rest faster than a West Point Cadet. This will not land for most of you, but those in the industry will appreciate it: in five season of Leverage, we have only once started prep without a full shooting script, and we have never thrown out a script once prep has started. The exception was the cross-boarded Season Two finale, which started a 14 day prep three days early because of a holiday shift, and so began prep with the outlines. In general the finales tend to be monsters, often only fully complete once I'm on site so I can scout locations to shoot around. When that happens, production scouts and preps for the first two or three days (of the 14 day crossboard prep) off our outlines. But our outlines run 10-15 pages per episode. I mean, they're not the infamous The Closer outlines that run 40 pages each (!!), but I've seen shows shoot off less, never mind prep.
Sometimes that script will change quite a bit based on that location scouting, actor availabilities, etc. I always say "It's not the real script until the blues." But we have a good long ramp on the scripts, and I think that development time really shows in this one, where it allowed us to work with Aaron and really let him be the one to take it all the way from pitch to finished script without a showrunner rewrite.
If I had my druthers, I'd move the writers room completely off the production cycle -- I believe Breaking Bad does this. All scripts written before prep, so you're not laying track just in front fo the train. There are contract issues with that plan, however, and this would mean changing our practice of having the writers on set, which we favor. But maybe someday.
Well, not super episode specific, but those of you who come here for the TV geek-wonk got your treat. Let's see what questions you have ...
@IMForeman: I loved Eliot's characterization for Riker. After this, I'd love to see him as crazy, mumbly guy again.
Kane is channeling his good friend Chuck Goff, Toby Keith's bass player. Hearing Kane tell drinking stories, alternating between his own voice and Chuck's, is ridiculously funny. One day he's going to realize that landing jokes pays better and lasts longer then being an action lead, and I'll be shit out of luck.
@PurpleOps: 1.) Why would Kanack confine his search for a satellite provider to the Portland area? If he needed something shipped in a hurry, it could come same-day from most places in the U.S. If he needed an expert, all he had to do was contact one.2.) Agents Fix and Kelsey - were those references to the Star Trek second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before, which guest-starred Paul Fix and had a character names Kelso? Seems like a stretch, so maybe I'm missing something.
3. )Wasn't it uncharacteristic of Nate to assume that money was what the victim wanted? Until now, Nate has been reluctant to help someone until he heard them express the right motivation. Certainly, it reinforced the "listen" message of the ep, but it seemed forced.
4.) The rain toward the end was certainly visible, even unlit. And then you used it to great effect in the tag. Was that in the script, or was the rain worked in since a few shots couldn't hide it?
5.) In the "seriously" column: Caught the Riker reference on screen, and then you had to make it Willie Riker? And the MIB "We make this look good" - seriously?
6.) Since when does ELIOT drink (or ask for) orange soda??
1.) We had a bit in the script where he didn't want togo wide with the search, and really helped sell Portland as a high-tech hub -- wound up trimming it in the edit. Also, there are only so many launch providers -- the business is remarkably like the real estate industry, which we alluded to in the dialogue but didn't have room to explore. Pity, as I love that sort of quirky background stuff. The expert issue was about confidentiality. 2.) Nope. Random, I think.3.) Huh, interesting. Nate's never waited for the right motivation -- it's the writers, by only presenting victims with the right motivations, trying to maintain the moral clarity of a show that starts from a very morally grey premise. Chicken/egg thing. I'd argue what we were going for here was a lapse. Nate is very gung-ho, and can forget himself in his pursuit of the mark, and you are meant to get the hunt that he is a bit ... distracted. I'm always annoyed when character arcs only move one way. Assuming he wasn't just secretly testing Sophie ...4.) Nope, it just goddam rained.
5.) "Willie Riker" was a placeholder. When Frakes showed up, he insisted we keep it in.
6.) He's in character. He's playing an obsessive techie, that's what obsessive techies drink. It's a way of showing how Sophie's coaching paid off.
7.) We are very lucky to have those lads.
@Anonymous: 1.) Why did you send Eliot in as the computer guy and Hardison in as the MIB? Obviously Hardison filled out the tall dark and threatening suit well but Eliot as the nerd? Unbelievable to me, even if Hardison was whispering in his ear the whole time. 2.) Also, the device on the back of Kanack's suit was obvious from the beginning... why didn't the goons see it and remark on it? Don't get me wrong, I absoluteluy LOVE Leverage and support everyone whole-heartedly, but this ep seemed a little forced and off the wall.
1.) Two reasons. First, there was a good chance the techie would have to fight his way out, so they dropped Eliot in. Now, as to the other reason -- yes, WHY DID WE SEND IN ELIOT AS THE COMPUTER GUY? Sometimes when a show makes you ask a question, it's on purpose. Like, why do we seem to be having different people practice what they've learned from each other over the last 4 years... 2.) We amped up that bug in post for visibility, and we screwed up and made it too big. Our bad.
@Susy: I'm really wondering what Nate meant by "What happens when eventually comes too late?"
So am I.
@Sarah W: How less stressful is it now that you guys don't have to worry about filming around the weather in Oregon.
To be fair, filming around it wasn't hard -- light to moderate rain doesn't show up unless backlit. It's more just dealing with the constant ... wet. Cold year, too.
@USRaider: There is a gnawing concern of mine, however. Parker and Hardison are tremendously happy, Nate and Sophie are very happy with each other, Eliot is...well, he's Eliot and single (you do the mental gymnastics). They have been able to shed anyone who is hunting for them from their Boston escapades... Why do I have a bad feeling about this?
Come on, people. I'm not Whedon.
@LindaS: Fess up, John. Who wrote the "Two ol' Boys" song? Was it a Kane and Hodge improv?
Half-scripted, for just Hardison. Then Kane pointed out that by this point the two of them are pretty close, and Eliot would find it amusing. So they worked with Aaron to build it into a bigger bit.
@bravos: I almost get the feeling that Nate is doing some of these things on purpose. Like having Parker come up with the plan to get Rising's secret money and now "not listening" to see if Sophie listened. It seems more like he's secretly testing them. And the whole brew pub and theater are soo staged by Nate and/or Hardison ..
Ahem.
@thebacardiqueen: LOVED tonight's episode and Aaron Denius did a superb job. My questions are: 1) whose idea was it to name Eliot's alias Willie Riker (coincidence that Jonathan Frakes was direction this one?) 2) will we see more of Eliot grifting this year? 3.) Also, in the answers to 501 you said we met the big bad in the last minute...wasn't that just Hardison & Nate talking? Are you saying one of them is the big bad, or did I miss something?
1.) As noted, a placeholder Frakes was amused by.2.) Lots of Eliot grifting. And more backstory.3.) You missed nothing. Of course, your definition of"big bad" and mine may be different.
@adc1966: This was the most fun episode in quite some time, I thought. Sophie and Eliot were especially good with their techie characters. 1.) How many people in the world besides Parker can poke Eliot in the face and not be rewarded with pain? 2.) This might have been asked before, but... do any of the team members know Parker's real, full name? Even Hardison? 3.) Pardison is indeed adorable, but... Parker does have some emotional problems which should make a serious relationship challenging. We haven't really seen anything but the cuteness yet. Is there a rocky road ahead, or has Parker truly grown out of her issues? 4.) I know during the Alien Abduction scene, the team was counting on Kanack being too freaked out to act logically. But what did they plan to do if he'd had the presence of mind to check Eliot/Willy's pulse after his death scene? 5.) One thing that surprised me was the reaction of the press to Kanack's final press conference. I would think if a prominent wunderkind inventor/CEO had what appeared to be a schizophrenic break right in front of their cameras, the last thing they'd do is get up and file out of the room. No way they'd pass up a viral video like that.
1.) Four. 2.) Parker's name is, for all intents and purposes, Parker. Parker calls herself Parker when she looks in the mirror. 3.) They have their issues, but we're not Grey's Anatomy. You won't see that sturm and drang, although you'll get omse bumps. You know, sometimes the writers like writing happy couples ... 4.) Eliot can stop his heart for thirty seconds. 5.) The reporters camera left were using their cell phones to record him. Assume he's on the Gawker front page right now.
@MosNoogaMara: . Any chance the chase song is gonna make it to iTunes? I'd buy it!
It's up on the LeverageFans.com site.
@Shane: One question though, when the Mooks are taking Eliot away in a hood, in the background a man in a suit and dark sunglasses pokes out from behind the trailer. At first I thought this was going to be an actual government agent who would throw a wrench into the team's plans, but then he's never referenced again in the episode. What's the deal there? Was something cut, or was he just part of Kenickie's goon squad?
Ah, caught that? That was writer Aaron Garcia in a cameo as, yes, a real MiB, who once he determined this was all a hoax went back to his underground bunker. A small indulgence.
@Nyctotherion: Just one for ya: how does Kanack going insane on national television invalidate his having patented the victim's invention?
As the Apple/Samsung suit has taught us, patents are adorable.
@Anonymous: OK, settle an argument: Marvin as in Marvin the Martian or Marvin as in Marvin the robot in "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy." I say Marvin the Martian because he's always outsmarted by Bugs Bunny.
Aaron says it is, indeed ... one of those.
@Sarai: Was the fight with Eliot in the office based on some of Jackie Chan's fights? Maybe it was just me, but I immediately thought of Jackie Chan's fights where he's trying to not break anything while taking out the bad guys.
Got it in one. Long-time readers know I created The Jackie Chan Adventures . I got the gig because I was a Jackie super-fan. He's used the bit several times in his early career, but notably in Rush Hour in the museum.
@Zeyneb: Parker cloned the mark's phone when they were introducing themselves as agents. (loved them as man in black!) did they ever use the cloning of the phone, was it cut out? Or you did it just to sow that you normally do stuff like that?
It was one of the ways we steered Kanack to Nate as the satellite dealer. Trimmed, I think.
@Ally: 1. Was Eliot fighting in character? I loved it. 2. How did you do the thing with Sophie getting sucked away? It was pretty epic. 3. Was Eliot mocking/imitating/otherwise poking fun at Hardison when he asked for orange soda? 3a. Did he ever get the orange soda? I didn't see it anywhere.
1.) As noted, a Jackie riff. 2.) A stuntie on a pull-line, with digital blending. 3.) He was in character, but definitely teasing. 3a.) Huh. Thought he got it. It;s on the desk somewhere, I know.
@Ken: Are y'all ever gonna show Hardison and Parker kissing? Did they show it and I just looked away at the wrong time?
We used up all our kissing time when they weren't dating, in "The Experimental Job".
@Anonymous: 1) Will we finally meet any of the relatives you've hinted at in the past, such as Nate's sister, Elliot's nephew, or Hardison's Nana? I personally would love to see Nana meet Archie Leach. 2) I love the cons with the really outrageous personas, such as Sophie's Nadia. Could you give a hint of some of the characterizations coming down the pipe, without spoiling?
1.) Not this season, although there's an episode where you hear a LOT about Eliot's family.2.) I think Nadia's the biggest one this year. She has some nice characters in #509, which is the Nate & Sophie half of the summer finale. Nate's got a great one as a union organizer, Hardison has role as an avant-garde artist coming up in two eps.
@Amelia: 1.) Parker and Hardison are one of my favorite things about this new season, and I am delighted at how you are handling them, in such a sweet and adorable way. Having said that, I have to ask: Are they living together at the HQ? 2.) Also I spent the entire episode expecting a Doctor Who reference so I must ask if the reporter in a bow tie was in any way intentional. 3.) And because it's my first time commenting, I have to thank you for taking the time to keep this blog and connect with the fans. It's great to learn more about the making of the episodes and it certainly makes us feel more a part of it.
1.) They have separate places, but Hardison's crash pad at the brew pub is becoming a pretty common hangout.2.) Yep.3.) Hell, thank you guys for watching and sticking with us for five seasons.
@Lydia: With that episode almost permanently scrambling my brain into incoherent fangirl thoughts, I did manage to come up with a question or two... 1.) How are the episodes' directors chosen (like Frakes directing the scifi episode)? 2.) Was the epic chase music duet a shout out to The Dukes of Hazzard?
1.) We line the directors up based on their availabilities, then try to match the scripts to the directors. That's why so many of our shows wind up shuffled -- we'd rather have the right director, and then adjust in the post production schedule. This one just happend to work out perfectly. 2.) That was the nub of it, anyway.
@Pixie: Just promise that you haven't broken your word -- if it's the end, it's emotionally satisfying (if painful) and if it's not, you have a back door or a trap door or some kind of rocket-pack you can use to escape. Please. This is the only show my dad and I can stand to watch together. For that alone, it is magic.
I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear that. Downey and I, when first discussing the show, literally said "Where's the show you can watch with your dad? Like we had with Rockford Files?"
I promise, you will be satisfied. Ish.
@Sabine: 1.) Drake's Equation, military satellite static - I love when Eliot lets out his inner smartie pants. I think you told us once that Eliot enlisted; he didn't go to one of the military academies. Why? Someone that sharp could easily have become an officer if he wanted, so I assume he wanted something else out of his military career? 2.) And I adore Willie Riker but I'm baffled. Can you explain how when Eliot wears that beanie, he is smoking, but on Willie that exact same hat is total goober? Special effects?
1.) Entrance to the Academies often requires political clout that Eliot's family did not have. Also there were ... extenuating circumstances about Eliot's enlistment which you will learn about this year. That said, he certainly got plenty of scholling once he was in.2.) ACTING!!!
@Calla: Someone commented that this is actually episode #6 - did you intend it to air (this much) out of order? And, if not, do you think that this could negatively impact the buildup of tension leading up to the season finale or decrease the number of people who catch the little hints relating to the over-arcing theme of the season?
No, we knew this was a floater. Light, non-arc episode. We always have a few of these kicking around a season. We actually shifted a few eps from the front half to the back half this year -- and it will be pretty clear to you which ones.
@Amber: I was wondering, though, if this season would be the season that we finally meet someone from Hardison's past (Nana, hacker/online buddy, etc)? We've seen QUITE a few people from Nate's past, Sophie's past, Eliot's past (with the next episode and this season's Vance character adding to the number) and even Archie from Parker's past, but no one from Hardison's. Will we see someone this season, or will we have to go to TNT with cap in hand for another season before Nana or anyone else from pre-Leverage Hardison pops up asking for help or something? Nothing major, I was just watching season 1 again and realized that you meet (or see in flashbacks) quite a few people from everyone else's past, with the exception being Hardison.
I actually answer this in the podcast, but its worth addressing here. Hardison is a paradox. He's the character we meet earliest in his arc, but at the same time he's a pretty well-adjusted guy when he joins the team. His arc isn't about his baggage, and we don't tend to do backstory for backstory's sake. FWIW Jeremy Bernstein and Kirsch pitched a Nana episode this year and I shot it down. So you can love them even more and hate on me.
@TJ: Observations, theories and questions, yes I’m a dork and I numbered them all. And this is Part 1...
O1) Actually for me, it doesn't seem that out of character with Nate to miss what a client really needs. He's been doing this for four years or so, he's seen innumerable people and they all end up with what they want PLUS money (just to help them out). Even Robin Hood can get a little jaded and unfocused and think "Hey, this guy made something, it got stolen, didn't get the profits - he wants his stuff and money. Cool, easy job." His mind has already moved on to the job.
I think that’s the approaching problem of the season. Caring is hard and taking action for what you care about is even harder, because it makes you see all the other things there are to do in the world. For the people you help, you’re amazing. For you, there’s just another name on the list. How long can you sustain an endeavor like this? Is it like holding your finger in the dam?
Also, it feels like Nate’s prepping something in the background and only about half of his brain is dedicated to the con… which considering Nate’s brain is. Terrifying. Punctuation completely on purpose.
Q1)Eliot’s symbols for “Hardison” (type-y fingers) and Parker (crazy + whistle) = hilarious. Whose idea?
Q2) Is Hardison ever going to learn to pick a lock? Like in a decent amount of time? And did Parker know about the real key and just con Hardison?
Q3)What was the image that clued everyone in that he was looking for extraterrestrial life? I can see it but I can’t identify it?
Q4) Which dance was Hardison trying to get Eliot to do? It looked like the Electric Slide for a minute until the hop…?
Q5) Did Sophie just like being one up on Nate the whole time and that’s why she didn’t try harder to tell him about the problem with the client?
Q6) Did the Men in Black figure out it was just a big con (the guy behind the trailer) or was he just a throw in?
Q7)HOW DID HE MISS WILLIE RIKER? After hearing it repeated six billion times I had to ask…and then I realized that Jonathan Frakes directed. Never mind.
Q8)How long did it take you to realize all the inherent ET/Eliot jokes?
Q9)Did the first check go into the victim pile or to Sophie?
Q10) How much fun did Kane have being Willie Riker?
O5/Q11)Why was Parker surprised at the “getting the reputation back” thing? They’ve done that before with Monica Hunter…
Q12) How many people did Eliot end up beating up? Those were a lot of pairs of shoes…
Q13)Could the crowd spot the speaker on his back or just assume Karnack was nuts?
Q14) Did the airplane company just not care that Karnack had the plans or just not want to deal with the publicly crazy man? Private crazy guy vs. public crazy guy?
Q15) Why didn’t Parker and Hardison join in the gloat? Everyone had fun freaking Karnack out, especially Nate with that cocked puppy look. Where were Type-y and Crazy?O1.) Pretty spot on, actually. It's also kind of a meta-reference to how hard it is to stay fresh and dedicated to anything, even a TV show, after five years. When you finish the season, you'll be able to go back and see that some of these eps get their emotional core off the issues we as writers were dealing with.
Q1.) Came out of the writers room. Can't remember who.
Q2.) Hardison is just damn shitty with locks.
Q3.) All the space/astronomy stuff on the shelves.
Q4.) Nope, just fucking with him.
Q5.) That is a good question. The top level one is that she was waiting to see how Nate had changed after his little sojourn.
Q6.) As above.
Q7.) I'll now throw TV Tropes into madness and say there was a slightly different cast and character list on Next Gen n the Leverage-verse.
Q8.) That was all Aaron.
Q9.) Victim pile, with the usual cut.
Q10) Too much fun. Only beaten by the 70's ep.
Q11.) It's not the usual gig, and we needed to reset it for newer viewers.
Q12.) Enough.
Q13.) Nuts. That speaker got pulled up in highlights too much. Should have blanded better. My fault.
Q14.) Private crazy and working for you is always better than a publicly crazy partner.
Q15.) Shooting scenes from the next episode, actually. Or previous. But it was a straight availability issue.
@Beth P: Do you guys ever hang out with/run into the other guys filming in Portland (Grimm and Portlandia)? I have this funny image in my head of a shot of the Leverage crew walking down the street and a stray werewolf runs across the screen in the distance behind them, Nate accidentally bumping into Fred Armisen as he walks by and keeps going like nothing is amiss.
We've actually been drinking with the Grimm folks a few times. The bitch of it for them is they alway shoot nights, so they live the werewolf's schedule. Brutal. Fred's been on set and we had a GREAT cameo for him in the Season opener, but the scheduling didn't work out.
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As always, thanks for your time, and we'll see you Sunday at 9 for the big flashback ep of the season, "the D.B. Cooper Job".
During this time our writer's assistant Aaron pitched him some concepts. Aaron is our new Scrappy Writers Assistant now that Kirsch has transitioned to a seat at the big table (with an attitude to match ...). He'd thrown a couple ideas against the wall during the previous year, including a restaurant one that didn't quite work but landed in the strike zone of the culinary school episode we did as ep #504. Finally he came in with a pretty interesting story based around first contact research, specifically the most famous "hey, that could be an alien signal" incident, the "Wow" signal. Of particular interest is the idea that the signal could have been Earth-based bounce-back -- meaning we could fake it. It's worth noting that Marvin, the super on-off device is real tech, much like the EMP gun that fries cars from Season Two is real tech. Remember, if it's cool it's usually real, if it's boring we usually made it up.
This is how scrappy writers assistants get their scripts. They pay attention, they learn how the show works, and then they pick their shots with with well-researched, high-concept hooks. Downey worked with Aaron during the hiatus, then we presented the idea in the opening weeks of the writing year. The room responded, everyone chipped in as usual and boom, first produced script.
I wish I had a better "holy shit, hail Mary" story, but no, this is how it works in a non-crisis-based writers room (at least in the first few weeks, before everything goes to hell). The only really interesting sidebar was that we briefly toyed with stealing a satellite for the story; it turns out satellites are actually shipped by truck to the launch sites in Central America, and a truck hijack of a satellite was intriguing. In the end we went with a smaller, more budget-conscious episode.
Why? Well, you can always use the buffer, but this season we knew we had some big blow-out episodes coming down the pike -- 512, the summer season finale, was already shaping up to be a mini-movie. Not every writers room gives a shit about the budget, by the way, leading to the long-standing room/set tension. On one hand I'm sympathetic to the idea that the writers should have creative freedom. On the other, some day you will be a showrunner, and you will be the one the studio hits up on the budget, and it would be nice if this wasn't the first time you had to wrap your head around the amort. Which happens more often in in television with first-time showrunners than you may think.
In our situation, I don't mind the trade-off. Writing to the budget, planning as far ahead as possible in partnership with production allows MORE creative freedom. By shooting with available funds we have fewer masters to answer to, and so we can really maximize the choices we do make. Something which would be impossible dropped on the line producer's desk on Day One of prep is eminently possible if the production designer has two months to wrap his head around it.
Phil Goldfarb, our line producer first year, is the kind of old hand who can look at a scene and tell you the cheapest. fastest shotlist before you've turned the page. He beat into my head: "The most important thing in television is the timely delivery of scripted material." All joking aside I can just say the first two words of that sentence, and every writer who's ever worked for me will snap out the rest faster than a West Point Cadet. This will not land for most of you, but those in the industry will appreciate it: in five season of Leverage, we have only once started prep without a full shooting script, and we have never thrown out a script once prep has started. The exception was the cross-boarded Season Two finale, which started a 14 day prep three days early because of a holiday shift, and so began prep with the outlines. In general the finales tend to be monsters, often only fully complete once I'm on site so I can scout locations to shoot around. When that happens, production scouts and preps for the first two or three days (of the 14 day crossboard prep) off our outlines. But our outlines run 10-15 pages per episode. I mean, they're not the infamous The Closer outlines that run 40 pages each (!!), but I've seen shows shoot off less, never mind prep.
Sometimes that script will change quite a bit based on that location scouting, actor availabilities, etc. I always say "It's not the real script until the blues." But we have a good long ramp on the scripts, and I think that development time really shows in this one, where it allowed us to work with Aaron and really let him be the one to take it all the way from pitch to finished script without a showrunner rewrite.
If I had my druthers, I'd move the writers room completely off the production cycle -- I believe Breaking Bad does this. All scripts written before prep, so you're not laying track just in front fo the train. There are contract issues with that plan, however, and this would mean changing our practice of having the writers on set, which we favor. But maybe someday.
Well, not super episode specific, but those of you who come here for the TV geek-wonk got your treat. Let's see what questions you have ...
@IMForeman: I loved Eliot's characterization for Riker. After this, I'd love to see him as crazy, mumbly guy again.
Kane is channeling his good friend Chuck Goff, Toby Keith's bass player. Hearing Kane tell drinking stories, alternating between his own voice and Chuck's, is ridiculously funny. One day he's going to realize that landing jokes pays better and lasts longer then being an action lead, and I'll be shit out of luck.
@PurpleOps: 1.) Why would Kanack confine his search for a satellite provider to the Portland area? If he needed something shipped in a hurry, it could come same-day from most places in the U.S. If he needed an expert, all he had to do was contact one.2.) Agents Fix and Kelsey - were those references to the Star Trek second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before, which guest-starred Paul Fix and had a character names Kelso? Seems like a stretch, so maybe I'm missing something.
3. )Wasn't it uncharacteristic of Nate to assume that money was what the victim wanted? Until now, Nate has been reluctant to help someone until he heard them express the right motivation. Certainly, it reinforced the "listen" message of the ep, but it seemed forced.
4.) The rain toward the end was certainly visible, even unlit. And then you used it to great effect in the tag. Was that in the script, or was the rain worked in since a few shots couldn't hide it?
5.) In the "seriously" column: Caught the Riker reference on screen, and then you had to make it Willie Riker? And the MIB "We make this look good" - seriously?
6.) Since when does ELIOT drink (or ask for) orange soda??
1.) We had a bit in the script where he didn't want togo wide with the search, and really helped sell Portland as a high-tech hub -- wound up trimming it in the edit. Also, there are only so many launch providers -- the business is remarkably like the real estate industry, which we alluded to in the dialogue but didn't have room to explore. Pity, as I love that sort of quirky background stuff. The expert issue was about confidentiality. 2.) Nope. Random, I think.3.) Huh, interesting. Nate's never waited for the right motivation -- it's the writers, by only presenting victims with the right motivations, trying to maintain the moral clarity of a show that starts from a very morally grey premise. Chicken/egg thing. I'd argue what we were going for here was a lapse. Nate is very gung-ho, and can forget himself in his pursuit of the mark, and you are meant to get the hunt that he is a bit ... distracted. I'm always annoyed when character arcs only move one way. Assuming he wasn't just secretly testing Sophie ...4.) Nope, it just goddam rained.
5.) "Willie Riker" was a placeholder. When Frakes showed up, he insisted we keep it in.
6.) He's in character. He's playing an obsessive techie, that's what obsessive techies drink. It's a way of showing how Sophie's coaching paid off.
7.) We are very lucky to have those lads.
@Anonymous: 1.) Why did you send Eliot in as the computer guy and Hardison in as the MIB? Obviously Hardison filled out the tall dark and threatening suit well but Eliot as the nerd? Unbelievable to me, even if Hardison was whispering in his ear the whole time. 2.) Also, the device on the back of Kanack's suit was obvious from the beginning... why didn't the goons see it and remark on it? Don't get me wrong, I absoluteluy LOVE Leverage and support everyone whole-heartedly, but this ep seemed a little forced and off the wall.
1.) Two reasons. First, there was a good chance the techie would have to fight his way out, so they dropped Eliot in. Now, as to the other reason -- yes, WHY DID WE SEND IN ELIOT AS THE COMPUTER GUY? Sometimes when a show makes you ask a question, it's on purpose. Like, why do we seem to be having different people practice what they've learned from each other over the last 4 years... 2.) We amped up that bug in post for visibility, and we screwed up and made it too big. Our bad.
@Susy: I'm really wondering what Nate meant by "What happens when eventually comes too late?"
So am I.
@Sarah W: How less stressful is it now that you guys don't have to worry about filming around the weather in Oregon.
To be fair, filming around it wasn't hard -- light to moderate rain doesn't show up unless backlit. It's more just dealing with the constant ... wet. Cold year, too.
@USRaider: There is a gnawing concern of mine, however. Parker and Hardison are tremendously happy, Nate and Sophie are very happy with each other, Eliot is...well, he's Eliot and single (you do the mental gymnastics). They have been able to shed anyone who is hunting for them from their Boston escapades... Why do I have a bad feeling about this?
Come on, people. I'm not Whedon.
@LindaS: Fess up, John. Who wrote the "Two ol' Boys" song? Was it a Kane and Hodge improv?
Half-scripted, for just Hardison. Then Kane pointed out that by this point the two of them are pretty close, and Eliot would find it amusing. So they worked with Aaron to build it into a bigger bit.
@bravos: I almost get the feeling that Nate is doing some of these things on purpose. Like having Parker come up with the plan to get Rising's secret money and now "not listening" to see if Sophie listened. It seems more like he's secretly testing them. And the whole brew pub and theater are soo staged by Nate and/or Hardison ..
Ahem.
@thebacardiqueen: LOVED tonight's episode and Aaron Denius did a superb job. My questions are: 1) whose idea was it to name Eliot's alias Willie Riker (coincidence that Jonathan Frakes was direction this one?) 2) will we see more of Eliot grifting this year? 3.) Also, in the answers to 501 you said we met the big bad in the last minute...wasn't that just Hardison & Nate talking? Are you saying one of them is the big bad, or did I miss something?
1.) As noted, a placeholder Frakes was amused by.2.) Lots of Eliot grifting. And more backstory.3.) You missed nothing. Of course, your definition of"big bad" and mine may be different.
@adc1966: This was the most fun episode in quite some time, I thought. Sophie and Eliot were especially good with their techie characters. 1.) How many people in the world besides Parker can poke Eliot in the face and not be rewarded with pain? 2.) This might have been asked before, but... do any of the team members know Parker's real, full name? Even Hardison? 3.) Pardison is indeed adorable, but... Parker does have some emotional problems which should make a serious relationship challenging. We haven't really seen anything but the cuteness yet. Is there a rocky road ahead, or has Parker truly grown out of her issues? 4.) I know during the Alien Abduction scene, the team was counting on Kanack being too freaked out to act logically. But what did they plan to do if he'd had the presence of mind to check Eliot/Willy's pulse after his death scene? 5.) One thing that surprised me was the reaction of the press to Kanack's final press conference. I would think if a prominent wunderkind inventor/CEO had what appeared to be a schizophrenic break right in front of their cameras, the last thing they'd do is get up and file out of the room. No way they'd pass up a viral video like that.
1.) Four. 2.) Parker's name is, for all intents and purposes, Parker. Parker calls herself Parker when she looks in the mirror. 3.) They have their issues, but we're not Grey's Anatomy. You won't see that sturm and drang, although you'll get omse bumps. You know, sometimes the writers like writing happy couples ... 4.) Eliot can stop his heart for thirty seconds. 5.) The reporters camera left were using their cell phones to record him. Assume he's on the Gawker front page right now.
@MosNoogaMara: . Any chance the chase song is gonna make it to iTunes? I'd buy it!
It's up on the LeverageFans.com site.
@Shane: One question though, when the Mooks are taking Eliot away in a hood, in the background a man in a suit and dark sunglasses pokes out from behind the trailer. At first I thought this was going to be an actual government agent who would throw a wrench into the team's plans, but then he's never referenced again in the episode. What's the deal there? Was something cut, or was he just part of Kenickie's goon squad?
Ah, caught that? That was writer Aaron Garcia in a cameo as, yes, a real MiB, who once he determined this was all a hoax went back to his underground bunker. A small indulgence.
@Nyctotherion: Just one for ya: how does Kanack going insane on national television invalidate his having patented the victim's invention?
As the Apple/Samsung suit has taught us, patents are adorable.
@Anonymous: OK, settle an argument: Marvin as in Marvin the Martian or Marvin as in Marvin the robot in "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy." I say Marvin the Martian because he's always outsmarted by Bugs Bunny.
Aaron says it is, indeed ... one of those.
@Sarai: Was the fight with Eliot in the office based on some of Jackie Chan's fights? Maybe it was just me, but I immediately thought of Jackie Chan's fights where he's trying to not break anything while taking out the bad guys.
Got it in one. Long-time readers know I created The Jackie Chan Adventures . I got the gig because I was a Jackie super-fan. He's used the bit several times in his early career, but notably in Rush Hour in the museum.
@Zeyneb: Parker cloned the mark's phone when they were introducing themselves as agents. (loved them as man in black!) did they ever use the cloning of the phone, was it cut out? Or you did it just to sow that you normally do stuff like that?
It was one of the ways we steered Kanack to Nate as the satellite dealer. Trimmed, I think.
@Ally: 1. Was Eliot fighting in character? I loved it. 2. How did you do the thing with Sophie getting sucked away? It was pretty epic. 3. Was Eliot mocking/imitating/otherwise poking fun at Hardison when he asked for orange soda? 3a. Did he ever get the orange soda? I didn't see it anywhere.
1.) As noted, a Jackie riff. 2.) A stuntie on a pull-line, with digital blending. 3.) He was in character, but definitely teasing. 3a.) Huh. Thought he got it. It;s on the desk somewhere, I know.
@Ken: Are y'all ever gonna show Hardison and Parker kissing? Did they show it and I just looked away at the wrong time?
We used up all our kissing time when they weren't dating, in "The Experimental Job".
@Anonymous: 1) Will we finally meet any of the relatives you've hinted at in the past, such as Nate's sister, Elliot's nephew, or Hardison's Nana? I personally would love to see Nana meet Archie Leach. 2) I love the cons with the really outrageous personas, such as Sophie's Nadia. Could you give a hint of some of the characterizations coming down the pipe, without spoiling?
1.) Not this season, although there's an episode where you hear a LOT about Eliot's family.2.) I think Nadia's the biggest one this year. She has some nice characters in #509, which is the Nate & Sophie half of the summer finale. Nate's got a great one as a union organizer, Hardison has role as an avant-garde artist coming up in two eps.
@Amelia: 1.) Parker and Hardison are one of my favorite things about this new season, and I am delighted at how you are handling them, in such a sweet and adorable way. Having said that, I have to ask: Are they living together at the HQ? 2.) Also I spent the entire episode expecting a Doctor Who reference so I must ask if the reporter in a bow tie was in any way intentional. 3.) And because it's my first time commenting, I have to thank you for taking the time to keep this blog and connect with the fans. It's great to learn more about the making of the episodes and it certainly makes us feel more a part of it.
1.) They have separate places, but Hardison's crash pad at the brew pub is becoming a pretty common hangout.2.) Yep.3.) Hell, thank you guys for watching and sticking with us for five seasons.
@Lydia: With that episode almost permanently scrambling my brain into incoherent fangirl thoughts, I did manage to come up with a question or two... 1.) How are the episodes' directors chosen (like Frakes directing the scifi episode)? 2.) Was the epic chase music duet a shout out to The Dukes of Hazzard?
1.) We line the directors up based on their availabilities, then try to match the scripts to the directors. That's why so many of our shows wind up shuffled -- we'd rather have the right director, and then adjust in the post production schedule. This one just happend to work out perfectly. 2.) That was the nub of it, anyway.
@Pixie: Just promise that you haven't broken your word -- if it's the end, it's emotionally satisfying (if painful) and if it's not, you have a back door or a trap door or some kind of rocket-pack you can use to escape. Please. This is the only show my dad and I can stand to watch together. For that alone, it is magic.
I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear that. Downey and I, when first discussing the show, literally said "Where's the show you can watch with your dad? Like we had with Rockford Files?"
I promise, you will be satisfied. Ish.
@Sabine: 1.) Drake's Equation, military satellite static - I love when Eliot lets out his inner smartie pants. I think you told us once that Eliot enlisted; he didn't go to one of the military academies. Why? Someone that sharp could easily have become an officer if he wanted, so I assume he wanted something else out of his military career? 2.) And I adore Willie Riker but I'm baffled. Can you explain how when Eliot wears that beanie, he is smoking, but on Willie that exact same hat is total goober? Special effects?
1.) Entrance to the Academies often requires political clout that Eliot's family did not have. Also there were ... extenuating circumstances about Eliot's enlistment which you will learn about this year. That said, he certainly got plenty of scholling once he was in.2.) ACTING!!!
@Calla: Someone commented that this is actually episode #6 - did you intend it to air (this much) out of order? And, if not, do you think that this could negatively impact the buildup of tension leading up to the season finale or decrease the number of people who catch the little hints relating to the over-arcing theme of the season?
No, we knew this was a floater. Light, non-arc episode. We always have a few of these kicking around a season. We actually shifted a few eps from the front half to the back half this year -- and it will be pretty clear to you which ones.
@Amber: I was wondering, though, if this season would be the season that we finally meet someone from Hardison's past (Nana, hacker/online buddy, etc)? We've seen QUITE a few people from Nate's past, Sophie's past, Eliot's past (with the next episode and this season's Vance character adding to the number) and even Archie from Parker's past, but no one from Hardison's. Will we see someone this season, or will we have to go to TNT with cap in hand for another season before Nana or anyone else from pre-Leverage Hardison pops up asking for help or something? Nothing major, I was just watching season 1 again and realized that you meet (or see in flashbacks) quite a few people from everyone else's past, with the exception being Hardison.
I actually answer this in the podcast, but its worth addressing here. Hardison is a paradox. He's the character we meet earliest in his arc, but at the same time he's a pretty well-adjusted guy when he joins the team. His arc isn't about his baggage, and we don't tend to do backstory for backstory's sake. FWIW Jeremy Bernstein and Kirsch pitched a Nana episode this year and I shot it down. So you can love them even more and hate on me.
@TJ: Observations, theories and questions, yes I’m a dork and I numbered them all. And this is Part 1...
O1) Actually for me, it doesn't seem that out of character with Nate to miss what a client really needs. He's been doing this for four years or so, he's seen innumerable people and they all end up with what they want PLUS money (just to help them out). Even Robin Hood can get a little jaded and unfocused and think "Hey, this guy made something, it got stolen, didn't get the profits - he wants his stuff and money. Cool, easy job." His mind has already moved on to the job.
I think that’s the approaching problem of the season. Caring is hard and taking action for what you care about is even harder, because it makes you see all the other things there are to do in the world. For the people you help, you’re amazing. For you, there’s just another name on the list. How long can you sustain an endeavor like this? Is it like holding your finger in the dam?
Also, it feels like Nate’s prepping something in the background and only about half of his brain is dedicated to the con… which considering Nate’s brain is. Terrifying. Punctuation completely on purpose.
Q1)Eliot’s symbols for “Hardison” (type-y fingers) and Parker (crazy + whistle) = hilarious. Whose idea?
Q2) Is Hardison ever going to learn to pick a lock? Like in a decent amount of time? And did Parker know about the real key and just con Hardison?
Q3)What was the image that clued everyone in that he was looking for extraterrestrial life? I can see it but I can’t identify it?
Q4) Which dance was Hardison trying to get Eliot to do? It looked like the Electric Slide for a minute until the hop…?
Q5) Did Sophie just like being one up on Nate the whole time and that’s why she didn’t try harder to tell him about the problem with the client?
Q6) Did the Men in Black figure out it was just a big con (the guy behind the trailer) or was he just a throw in?
Q7)HOW DID HE MISS WILLIE RIKER? After hearing it repeated six billion times I had to ask…and then I realized that Jonathan Frakes directed. Never mind.
Q8)How long did it take you to realize all the inherent ET/Eliot jokes?
Q9)Did the first check go into the victim pile or to Sophie?
Q10) How much fun did Kane have being Willie Riker?
O5/Q11)Why was Parker surprised at the “getting the reputation back” thing? They’ve done that before with Monica Hunter…
Q12) How many people did Eliot end up beating up? Those were a lot of pairs of shoes…
Q13)Could the crowd spot the speaker on his back or just assume Karnack was nuts?
Q14) Did the airplane company just not care that Karnack had the plans or just not want to deal with the publicly crazy man? Private crazy guy vs. public crazy guy?
Q15) Why didn’t Parker and Hardison join in the gloat? Everyone had fun freaking Karnack out, especially Nate with that cocked puppy look. Where were Type-y and Crazy?O1.) Pretty spot on, actually. It's also kind of a meta-reference to how hard it is to stay fresh and dedicated to anything, even a TV show, after five years. When you finish the season, you'll be able to go back and see that some of these eps get their emotional core off the issues we as writers were dealing with.
Q1.) Came out of the writers room. Can't remember who.
Q2.) Hardison is just damn shitty with locks.
Q3.) All the space/astronomy stuff on the shelves.
Q4.) Nope, just fucking with him.
Q5.) That is a good question. The top level one is that she was waiting to see how Nate had changed after his little sojourn.
Q6.) As above.
Q7.) I'll now throw TV Tropes into madness and say there was a slightly different cast and character list on Next Gen n the Leverage-verse.
Q8.) That was all Aaron.
Q9.) Victim pile, with the usual cut.
Q10) Too much fun. Only beaten by the 70's ep.
Q11.) It's not the usual gig, and we needed to reset it for newer viewers.
Q12.) Enough.
Q13.) Nuts. That speaker got pulled up in highlights too much. Should have blanded better. My fault.
Q14.) Private crazy and working for you is always better than a publicly crazy partner.
Q15.) Shooting scenes from the next episode, actually. Or previous. But it was a straight availability issue.
@Beth P: Do you guys ever hang out with/run into the other guys filming in Portland (Grimm and Portlandia)? I have this funny image in my head of a shot of the Leverage crew walking down the street and a stray werewolf runs across the screen in the distance behind them, Nate accidentally bumping into Fred Armisen as he walks by and keeps going like nothing is amiss.
We've actually been drinking with the Grimm folks a few times. The bitch of it for them is they alway shoot nights, so they live the werewolf's schedule. Brutal. Fred's been on set and we had a GREAT cameo for him in the Season opener, but the scheduling didn't work out.
*************************************
As always, thanks for your time, and we'll see you Sunday at 9 for the big flashback ep of the season, "the D.B. Cooper Job".
August 19, 2012
LEVERAGE #505 "The 'Gimme a K' Street Job" Question post
"Her hoo-ha, sir! HER HOO-HA!" Whatever you want to ask or yell, it goes in the Comments.
August 18, 2012
LEVERAGE #502 "The Blue Line Job" Post-Game
There's a pretty deep base of hockey players among the Leverage crew. Dean played in a Hollywood league back in the day (with Wil Wheaton, as a matter of fact), and there's a pick-up team up in Portland. Aldis plays on that team. He was rather annoyed that he's the only actor who does skate, and he didn't get to strut his stuff.
Technically, he was the only actor who did skate. That changed. As soon as we knew we were doing this episode, we gave Kane a call.
"We need you to play hockey and fight on the ice."
"When's it shoot?"
"Third episode."
"(beat) No problem."
Kane flew up to Portland a month early, got a coach, and there he is -- annoying me by doing his stunts in a whole new environment. Joy.
Big props have to go to director Mark Roskin and the crew. Not just for making it a fine-looking episode as always, but for shooting on the ice for 14 hours at a time. Human body's not made for that, either on skates or shoes, and everybody went home very, very sore. Finest crew I've worked with in 20 years, I can't say it enough. Although, frankly as long as we never go back to that goddam mountain , they consider everything else pretty much a cakewalk.
So where'd this episode come from? Well, we'd been talking about the Derek Boogaard story for a while in the room even before we knew we had a rink. The cumulative effect of years of fighting on hockey enforcers and the NHL's tacit tolerance of the tradition were just hitting the news. Closer to my heart, however was the John Kordic story. I knew a little about the tragic tale, but my friend and occasional writing partner DJ McCarthey had researched a TV movie on Kordic and filled me in. Kordic had been a promising player, but was forced into the goon role when he hit his growth spurt. The league turned a blind eye to his drug use, and eventually he binged out and died in a shitty Quebec hotel room under a pile of cops.
Coincidentally, just after we finished writing this one the movie Goon premiered. Goon was co-written by Jay Baruchel, a Canadian actor who loves his damn hockey. Seriously, he has a Maple Leaf tattoo. One of the joys of going to the infrequent Habs/Kings games is watching Jay rally the attending Canadiens fans into a frenzy. The movie gave us some nice tips on how to shoot and pace our own games for the episode. Goon is available on Netflix for both disc and streaming, btw. You will not regret the rental.
Goon actually brought about one of the more surreal moments in the writers room this year. In Goon Liev Schreiber plays a very Terry O'Riley style enforcer, and one morning I spent a good 15 minutes waxing poetic on that brutal, fast left hand of O'Riley's from back in the day. Finally Scott Veach snapped "This is the first sports we've heard you talk in five years. Who ARE you? " Well yeah. I'm not a big basketball fan. I like the Red Sox but ... yeah, the Bruins. Still hardwired in. I'm actually getting into soccer a bit, now that I see it's structured like hockey on grass.
Right, back to the episode. The mark's scam was originally built out as a team move rather than just a bankruptcy. This was based on the infamous 1984 midnight move of the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis. That got us into a swamp of explaining the relationship of owners to franchises and the league, all sorts of ugly exposition, so we eventually turned it into a money-laundering scam on top of the bounty plotline. There have been no proven bounties in the NHL like there were in the recent NFL scandal, but nobody who watches hockey believes for a second there aren't a few floating around.
The theme of the episode -- the role of the enforcer -- was tailor-made for Eliot. You can directly compare this episode to the MMA one in Season Two. In that episode he reflects, with Sophie, on his relationship with violence; here he extends that out to considering how he wound up in his life. I've always said Eliot doesn't enjoy fighting -- he's just a negotiator who understands that sometimes the most effective negotiating tactic is a precise amount of violence. Oddly, like that episode, this was third one shot and second one aired. Hmm.
Getting Treat Williams was a pleasure and a surprise. He was great, of course. Unlike most procedurals, our show really does kind of rise and fall on its villains. I think, though, we had a nice deep bench on this one. Graham Shiels was a lovely blend of tough and damaged -- and MAN, did Thure Reifenstein nail Vlad! One of those performances where, as you watch the dailies, you want ot go back and rewrite the script to give him more. Maybe next time ...
The episode really is a perfect example of how some writers rooms are accretion rooms. I (improbably) knew some hockey and some money laundering (remember, the key to money laundering is no physical sales), someone else brought in the Colts story, Veach was all about the magnets -- I think every writer tossed in some part of this thing, which Scott and Paul spot welded into a pretty tight little episode. The heist was eventually a pain in the ass to coordinate as the location didn't exactly agree with what we wanted to do in the script, but it got there.
I'm sure your questions cover the rest of wat I might address, including how this episode is kind of crucial to the season finale. I'm sure.
@briddle: Were the hockey players all from Portland?
Yep, a mix of our crew and many of the minor league players from the Portland area, along with some folks who just straight up auditioned.
@ChelseaNH: So was that really Rogers and Downey at the face-off?
God no. I haven't been on skates in 15 years. And we have to protect my head.
@EllenZ: Who's brilliant idea was it to have a staring contest with a turtle?
The turtle began as a falcon, then an owl, then eventually a morphed into a turtle. (Hellooo cable budget). The gag was a mix of Tim improvising and some on-set writing.
@Sarah: Did Nate ever figure out what happened to his watch?
He's got a pretty good idea. Whenever anything goes missing, he assumes Hardison has welded it to something.
@DangerGirl: Where DID Sophie put Lord Stanley's Cup?
In Providence, RI. (Trust me. Watch it. It's amazing. It's available for streaming -- which I did not know, and makes it my next Netflix Friday post)
@Petticoat: 1.) Why did Hardison blowtorch the cash box? Was that where they got the $500,000 that went ot Marko? (It just didn't look like $500k in those pouches) 2.) I have always wondered about the back story thay attributed Eliot's fondness for kids ... Any chance that will pop up this season?
1.) Treat's character had converted his stolen cash into cash receipts and slid them into the night's take, hiding them among the ticket sales for the whole playoff series. By cleaning him out, we took away his leverage. And you know what? You're right -- the bags should have been bigger, and so should the carts. That was a combo of the location issues and poor conceptualization on our part. It happens, but that one bugs me too. Mea culpa.
2.) Nope. What's past is (generally) past. I'm not much fond of explicit backstory.
@MCRyan: 1.) OMG was that a Hansen Brother in the penalty box? 2.) When I pickd up the first episode from i-tunes I noticed it was shorther than last season's episodes. Is that why you eliminated the opening? If so, it was a great way to keep from sacrificing another minute of story.
1.) Sadly no, but the resemblance is intentional. 2.) As noted.
@lindas: Did Vlad call Sophie "Rosa" before he left? Could that be her real name?
He did. And it could be. Could be.
@Anonymous: Why drop the show opening? Not complaining, just curious.
In year 5 we really don't think we need to explain the premise anymore, and that's 30 seconds out of our very valuable storytelling real-estate. Hell, one-hour shows are at 42 minutes now.
@SueN: re: Parker's "did I fall asleep again?" and Hardison's "Soylent Green is people!" (which, btw, was priceless). Does Hardison live at the new headquarters?
There's a crash apartment upstairs that has kind of morphed into Hardison and Parker's shared space, although they both still keep separate lairs.
@Tom Galloway: 1.) C. Marko = Juggernaut? And was Busiek a reference to Portland-area based comics writer Kurt Busiek? And you realize if this had happened last season in Boston, Eliot would've fought a Bruin/Bear. 2.) I can't buy that a World Hockey League would even consider Portland for a single USA team. It's only got the population to support 1.5 major league teams (the .5 for the soccer team, which is doing quite well with respect to other MLS teams), It's not a major media outlet. It's got the West Coast time zone disadvantage for East and Central viewing, and isn't a hockey hotbed. Such a team would shoot for New York, maybe Chicago, Boston, or Philly. 3.) Ditto the base plot; so Marko gets 500K if he fights in every single game, and so they're trying to take him out by putting bounties on him. But doesn't he get taken out if the team doctor says "This man will die if he gets hit with a feather pillow" and has the MRI/x-rays to prove it? 4.) And sorry, I know the answer to me back when is your canonical goto for when folk complain about how easy it is to find the team and why it just doesn't matter, but really; a 15-17 year old kid finds them when they've been in town for maybe a couple of weeks? That's hitting A-Team levels.
1.) Yes, that was a Juggernaut reference. The Busiek reference was random. Although I dig Kurt.
2.) The problem with that objection is the NHL -- if they try to poach a major franchise, they go head to head and start spending stupid money. Now, there's a good argument that the NHL is in financial trouble enough that they'd consider being bought out by enough cash, but there's no way they're going to let go of a major TV franchise. Nope, for international expansion Portland's actually not a bad argument. Not a great investment, but not a bad argument.
3.) Why would Treat give up the income he's getting from stacking the games with Marko fights? Pull Marko and your ticket sales go down, and your opportunity for graft. You sir, are not thinking like a criminal. On a lesser note, there's no way Marko wouldn't have an injury clause in that contract. it;s like when I was a stand-up. You cancel the gig, you don't get paid. You show up, and they have to pay you. Or, alternatively, the "all episodes produced" writer. Known a few people who got fired and sat home collecting a season's worth of checks. That's probably one of those things that most people wouldn't think of, but our bias was against it, so we didn't go that way.
4.) The fact they're in town a few weeks doesn't matter -- people finding them is location-independent, done through the web and Hardison's data crawlers. Hardison may well have lined up the kids inquiries during the break, and they're just getting to him now. The team functions nationally, at least.
@Susy: ... Why didn't Nate get jealous with that Vlad guy kissing Sophie?
Never show you're jealous. Cedes control. (And that's probably more revealing of me than the character)
@jamesfirecat: Was it really necessary to do the last scene between Nate and the mark the way you did? We all know that Nate is a vindictive son of a bitch, but usually his vindictiveness shows up in more dramatic ways than "Okay here's the final stage of the plan, we're gonna corner the guy we don't like with a bunch of hockey players and force him to give us what we want or else we'll beat the shit out of him?" Isn't that a little too cut and dried for our team?
Answered adroitly in the Comments by Art_Connery and Jamesfoiecat themselves:
"Ahh, the idea that those enforcers that Nate had with him were the exact same people (minus Elliot) who the villain had hired to start fights an appropriately karmic twist to the entire situation (as he is being destroyed by those he set out to manipulate much like the... I want to say Glowfish, whatever, was back in season 4 that I had not considered before and feels much more appropriate than Nate just rounding up some Hockey Themed backup with which to shake down the mark."
@Ally: Can we see Nadia Olyenkov again? PLEASE? She is now my favorite Sophie alias.
Maybe. That hair was amazing, wasn't it? And the bit with her head on Nate's lap was an on-set improv between the two of them.
@MacSTL: 1) Glad there wasn't too much of the announcers on camera because the voice didn't match the picture. 2) How did Nate know the numbers Sophie found were dates? 3) In the dressing room after Game 6, why was the son so upset w/Eliot? Was he really upset or was he faking his own involvement? 4) I really expected to hear Eliot give the speech to Marko that if he really cared about his kid he wouldn't risk his health... What was the reason to hold that back? 5) Is Parker living with Hardison at the BrewPub? 6) Did Kane actually take that hit over the boards on to the bench himself? 7) What was the reason for the camera shot of Rising shredding the tickets?
1.) Well, hey. Not liked we played real games.
2.) Nate looks for patterns in numbers. If they hadn't been dates, he would have tried something else. Pretty easy guess actually. Not a lock combination because of the range, etc.
3.) He was embarrassed and worried about his dad, so he was lashing out. Probably also frustrated that the problem wasn't solved yet.
4.) Because it wouldn't work. Marko was convinced (and states explicitly) that caring about his kid meant ensuring his future with the money. Eliot knew talking him out of that belief wasn't going to happen.
5.) Crashing non-exclusively.
6.) Guess.
7.) Shred the tickets so they're "sold", those receipts match the extra money in the take. That's how the laundering works.
@Anonymous: 1) Did Timothy Hutton do all of his own skating? 2) Hardison was under the metal floor panel at the loading dock to secure the money box with the super powered magnets. And then he saws through the floor panel and the money box so that the cash receipt bags fall into his hands. So after that, what is securing the money box to that metal floor panel, and does the does the bank representative see a hole at the bottom of the money box that goes through to the level below?
1.) Yes
2.) He left the magnets. And yes, the bank manager sees the hole. But the money hasn't reached the armored car yet, so their insurance doesn't kick in. We had a bigger explanation of how the Mark's screwed here by the transition state, but it was cut for time.
@Alayne Stone: 1.) Why is it necessary for the con to include a turtle? That seems weirdly specific and other than adding to Nadja's weirdness it didn't really seem to add anything (in-text I mean, it was a lot of fun for us!) 2.) Does the Stanley Cup thing mean Sophie still has hangars all over the world filled with valuables for a rainy day? 3.) Surely Hardison knows how to pick a lock by now, was he just being lazy? 4.) Is Parker/Hardison movie night a regular thing? If so, what movies do they watch? :P
1.) The turtle/animal is meant to add an element of eccentricity and to set the mark off his game. Assume its just tradition from the many versions of this con that've been played.
2.) She's liquidated most of them. The Cup isn't in one of them and never was. The first draft of the script revealed its final hiding place, but we cut it.
3.) He not very good at it, frankly. All of them have their niches, and Sophie's just faster.
4.) Yes, and Hardions primarily is taking her through all the sci-fi and horror greats. He is considering showing her STAR WARS in the Machete Order.
@Carl: Is Parker being comfortable enough to sleep in the same vicinity as someone else while letting her guard down a big deal for the emotional growth of her character?
Hell yes. We actually teased this in S3, when we revealed she catnaps in Hardison's van.
@Callie Ann: i just have one random little question... the synch app (though AWESOME!) said that Eliot was in the army. previous episodes (namely the San Lorenzo Job, the Experimental Job and the Last Dam Job) have also said this, along with the fact that he was a Commander. being a military brat my entire life, i know that the only commander rankings (aside from Commander-in-Chief, and i think we would have noticed that) are for the Army, Command Sargent Major and for the Navy, Fleet/Command Master Chief. no other branch has the Commander rank. so, was Eliot's ranking his San Lorenzo equivalent cause he was on loan to them, or was he a Sargent Major, or was that just a term used to address him in San Lorenzo cause he was in charge, or what? i am very confused...
"Commander" was his adopted milita title when he helped his friend fight in an unspecified war after switching sides. it was not his Army rank.
@James Geluso: 1.) Were the enforcers on the ice at the end literally the enforcers from around the league? Or members of the Portland team (possibly plus the opponents) who were acting as enforcers in that scene but not designated enforcers on the ice? 2.) Who exactly now owns the team? I came away with the feeling that the Oregon Otters are now the Mondragon Cooperative of hockey. 3.) A best-of-seven series to end the season... that means this was the league championship, right? And the Otters are now champions? I would have expected the announcers to say so.
1.) Around the league. More satisfying.
2.) They're like the Packers.
3.) Yes, we recorded that. Cut it along the way. Not sure why.
@RYan Elizabeth: it was very frustrating to see that not a single member of the Leverage team made the connection between the injuries suffered by hockey players and what that means for Eliot. And no one on here said anything about it either! So what I don't get, is that the entire episode is devoted to the cumulative toll all the fighting took on Marcos body. Yet how did not single a SINGLE person question how much more wear and tear a career military man PLUS career hitter would have? Plus no mention of Eliot's past(assumably numerous) concussions? Even though one is mentioned on the show by Nate (in the First David Job.) Don't get me wrong I loved the episode and the plotline, but I kept waiting for some member of intellegent Leverage team to draw the parallel and not a single one did. Was this intentional? Or did they just miss it?
Huh. We talked about this in the room, but we felt Eliot had more agency than Marko -- Eliot at any point can retire, and he's in the business of not getting hit. When Marko does his job, he gets hammered; when Eliot does his job right, nobody touches him. I suppose it's salt to taste, but we just wanted to focus on Marko here, primarily.
@Rein ... We're just glad you like the show. And Gina is indeed great.
@Video Beagle: I don't believe there is such thing as a "rare earth electromagnet" In fact, I believe that such a thing would be impossible by the laws of physics. Unless, it was a RareUrth Brand Electromaget...the most electroey magnets you can buy!
Sorry, V.B. They are based on neodymium magnets, the most powerful rare earth magnets on earth. These magnets actually have a long history in the Leverage writers room. They were a plot point in our second episode we broke, our first thrown out, a fine piece by Christine Boylan (@Kitmoxie) that never came together. The warning phrase from the manufacturer -- "Strong enough ... to tear the hand off a small child!" -- will still occasionally be shouted in the writers room.
@Anonymous: You said in earlier posts that Eliot is the one who evolves first and the sense that I'm getting from this season is that he is ready to move on to a new (leverage-free) life. Is he starting to realize that if you live like Jimmy Ford, then you'll die like Jimmy Ford (to paraphrase a line from last season)? Is he is beginning to realize that he can live a different life? Thank you for this show and this blog. I sense that you are leading us slowly to the end and that makes me very sad.
He's drawn his own conclusions, but the mistakes he's seen others make certainly contribute to his evolution. And yeah, Eliot's sensing something coming too ...
@Oona: This ep made me think of all the stuff going on with former football and hockey players committing suicide and/or suffering dementia, but it seemed like the episode was couched as, "just get the guy off hockey and all will be well," despite the fact that he's apparently already suffering what sounds like permanent effects. And I know the Leverage team are not supposed to be gods who can change a guy's medical problems, just curious as to what the thought process was.
Was there a discussion on how far to go with that issue? Was there a conscious choice made by the writers not to address the fact that Marko very likely will still die or face serious consequences from his repetitive brain trauma?
I think I might have liked to see that issue addressed directly. It would have made it more poignant (okay and maybe a little tragic) to confront the fact that the decisions Marko had made in hockey could never be fully undone and to know that the team did what they could but that sometimes, there are limitations to their powers.
But then maybe that approach is a little less fun train, I admit. (It's true, sometimes, I want DARK ANYBODY COULD DIE AT ANY TIME LEVERAGE. I'm trying to work through it.)
We really could only address the immediate threat to his life -- sure, we talked about the after-effects, but that's a pretty heavy downer to end the show on. We're light drama, and our few forays into darkness are doled out sparingly. It's a very conscious decision not to send you home on a bummer note. Enough shows have that handled. I will admit that even we struggle with the tone, sometimes.
I 'm occasionalyl annoyed with reviewers when they suddenly realize "This show is great, it seems to have stumbled into that niche of 1970's light crime dramas." We built it that way. If we wanted to go dark, we certainly could -- but then we wouldn't be in Season 5 on the network we're on.
@hhgt: Question: Is Hardison secretly running the cons this season? It's just, they seem a lot like his cons; lots of moving parts, very complicated end-games, overwhelming the mark, etc
"Overwhelming the mark" is certainly a Nate tactic -- see "Order 23 Job" among others. I think that in the few eps that have aired (and we have moved a few around) you've seen a slightly higher percentage of gaslights. That does not hold up for the rest of the season. You might note, however, that the heist was quite distinctly Parker's plan ...
@ellabell: 1.) I know a lot about hockey, but I let most of the errors go -- but the one that couldn't get over was that there was an assumption that the series would go to 7 games. Was there a discussion about this? I mean, it could have been easily written in -- the added element of suspense of whether or not the bounty would be fulfilled within before the series was over -- or if they started the con in game 3 or 4 -- I just got caught on that if they had won in 4 games, then the manager would have had to pay the bonus. Leaving it to the last minute was risky2.) Also: how was the approach different to a hockey episode than the baseball episode, in that most Americans really don't know much about hockey, but know a lot about baseball?
1.) We actually had dialogue addressing this. Cut it, since most people didn't even notice. 2.) That was tricky. It's always hard to judge deep people's knowledge of something culturally widespread is. I mean, most people will look at a hockey game and say "oh, hockey, there's a goalie, that's called a penalty box ..." and at the same time, I had to explain offsides to the writers room about four times. Eventually we aired on the side of people having some base knowledge, and moving past the bits that might need explanation. Veyr much a judgement call.
@Tuesday: 1a.) I assume Sophie and Vlad stole the Stanley Cup together, but my question is why? Nate's questioning implies that Sophie didn't sell it and they replaced it with a copy so no one knows they stole it. b.) Did this heist happen pre-Leverage or on one of their breaks? c.) Was Sophie just messing with Nate about not remembering? At the end when Nate asks again about the trophy and Sophie says she doesn't remember Parker is cracking up which makes me think Sophie is just yanking his chain. If so, I approve. 2.) It seemed to me that Vlad's relationship with Sophie was affectionate, but not romantic (therefore not a rival for Nate) and that part of his reason for coming was to "evaluate" Nate and make sure he was treating Sophie well. a.) Am I wrong? b.) Will Vlad return? I liked his interactions with Nate and Sophie. 3.) The turtle was amazing! Did they keep him? He would be an excellent office pet! Plus, Nate could have more staring contests whenever he needed to take his mind off things. 4.) In the pilot when we meet Sophie she says she is an honest citizen now. a. Was she just on a break between cons or did something happen to make her "go straight"? b. If its the latter will we ever find out?
1a) It was a ransom scam gone wrong.1b.) Pre-Leverage1c.) Messing with him. Definitely.2a.) Formerly romantic, but hell yeah, he;'s checking out the new guy.2b.) If we can bring him back, we will. I loved his performance.3.) He's upstairs in the crash pad.4a) She was trying to go straight. She would try, sometimes.4b) well, one factor was definitely losing her favorite detective chasing her ...
@Anonymous: Ok..so you said we will hear Her name spoken aloud but will we know it is The Name? You know who I mean.
You will know. No mistaking.
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Lovely. Always a pleasure. I'll try to get "First Contact" up midweek, so we'll be caught up by the time 506 airs. As always, thanks for watching!
Technically, he was the only actor who did skate. That changed. As soon as we knew we were doing this episode, we gave Kane a call.
"We need you to play hockey and fight on the ice."
"When's it shoot?"
"Third episode."
"(beat) No problem."
Kane flew up to Portland a month early, got a coach, and there he is -- annoying me by doing his stunts in a whole new environment. Joy.
Big props have to go to director Mark Roskin and the crew. Not just for making it a fine-looking episode as always, but for shooting on the ice for 14 hours at a time. Human body's not made for that, either on skates or shoes, and everybody went home very, very sore. Finest crew I've worked with in 20 years, I can't say it enough. Although, frankly as long as we never go back to that goddam mountain , they consider everything else pretty much a cakewalk.
So where'd this episode come from? Well, we'd been talking about the Derek Boogaard story for a while in the room even before we knew we had a rink. The cumulative effect of years of fighting on hockey enforcers and the NHL's tacit tolerance of the tradition were just hitting the news. Closer to my heart, however was the John Kordic story. I knew a little about the tragic tale, but my friend and occasional writing partner DJ McCarthey had researched a TV movie on Kordic and filled me in. Kordic had been a promising player, but was forced into the goon role when he hit his growth spurt. The league turned a blind eye to his drug use, and eventually he binged out and died in a shitty Quebec hotel room under a pile of cops.
Coincidentally, just after we finished writing this one the movie Goon premiered. Goon was co-written by Jay Baruchel, a Canadian actor who loves his damn hockey. Seriously, he has a Maple Leaf tattoo. One of the joys of going to the infrequent Habs/Kings games is watching Jay rally the attending Canadiens fans into a frenzy. The movie gave us some nice tips on how to shoot and pace our own games for the episode. Goon is available on Netflix for both disc and streaming, btw. You will not regret the rental.
Goon actually brought about one of the more surreal moments in the writers room this year. In Goon Liev Schreiber plays a very Terry O'Riley style enforcer, and one morning I spent a good 15 minutes waxing poetic on that brutal, fast left hand of O'Riley's from back in the day. Finally Scott Veach snapped "This is the first sports we've heard you talk in five years. Who ARE you? " Well yeah. I'm not a big basketball fan. I like the Red Sox but ... yeah, the Bruins. Still hardwired in. I'm actually getting into soccer a bit, now that I see it's structured like hockey on grass.
Right, back to the episode. The mark's scam was originally built out as a team move rather than just a bankruptcy. This was based on the infamous 1984 midnight move of the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis. That got us into a swamp of explaining the relationship of owners to franchises and the league, all sorts of ugly exposition, so we eventually turned it into a money-laundering scam on top of the bounty plotline. There have been no proven bounties in the NHL like there were in the recent NFL scandal, but nobody who watches hockey believes for a second there aren't a few floating around.
The theme of the episode -- the role of the enforcer -- was tailor-made for Eliot. You can directly compare this episode to the MMA one in Season Two. In that episode he reflects, with Sophie, on his relationship with violence; here he extends that out to considering how he wound up in his life. I've always said Eliot doesn't enjoy fighting -- he's just a negotiator who understands that sometimes the most effective negotiating tactic is a precise amount of violence. Oddly, like that episode, this was third one shot and second one aired. Hmm.
Getting Treat Williams was a pleasure and a surprise. He was great, of course. Unlike most procedurals, our show really does kind of rise and fall on its villains. I think, though, we had a nice deep bench on this one. Graham Shiels was a lovely blend of tough and damaged -- and MAN, did Thure Reifenstein nail Vlad! One of those performances where, as you watch the dailies, you want ot go back and rewrite the script to give him more. Maybe next time ...
The episode really is a perfect example of how some writers rooms are accretion rooms. I (improbably) knew some hockey and some money laundering (remember, the key to money laundering is no physical sales), someone else brought in the Colts story, Veach was all about the magnets -- I think every writer tossed in some part of this thing, which Scott and Paul spot welded into a pretty tight little episode. The heist was eventually a pain in the ass to coordinate as the location didn't exactly agree with what we wanted to do in the script, but it got there.
I'm sure your questions cover the rest of wat I might address, including how this episode is kind of crucial to the season finale. I'm sure.
@briddle: Were the hockey players all from Portland?
Yep, a mix of our crew and many of the minor league players from the Portland area, along with some folks who just straight up auditioned.
@ChelseaNH: So was that really Rogers and Downey at the face-off?
God no. I haven't been on skates in 15 years. And we have to protect my head.
@EllenZ: Who's brilliant idea was it to have a staring contest with a turtle?
The turtle began as a falcon, then an owl, then eventually a morphed into a turtle. (Hellooo cable budget). The gag was a mix of Tim improvising and some on-set writing.
@Sarah: Did Nate ever figure out what happened to his watch?
He's got a pretty good idea. Whenever anything goes missing, he assumes Hardison has welded it to something.
@DangerGirl: Where DID Sophie put Lord Stanley's Cup?
In Providence, RI. (Trust me. Watch it. It's amazing. It's available for streaming -- which I did not know, and makes it my next Netflix Friday post)
@Petticoat: 1.) Why did Hardison blowtorch the cash box? Was that where they got the $500,000 that went ot Marko? (It just didn't look like $500k in those pouches) 2.) I have always wondered about the back story thay attributed Eliot's fondness for kids ... Any chance that will pop up this season?
1.) Treat's character had converted his stolen cash into cash receipts and slid them into the night's take, hiding them among the ticket sales for the whole playoff series. By cleaning him out, we took away his leverage. And you know what? You're right -- the bags should have been bigger, and so should the carts. That was a combo of the location issues and poor conceptualization on our part. It happens, but that one bugs me too. Mea culpa.
2.) Nope. What's past is (generally) past. I'm not much fond of explicit backstory.
@MCRyan: 1.) OMG was that a Hansen Brother in the penalty box? 2.) When I pickd up the first episode from i-tunes I noticed it was shorther than last season's episodes. Is that why you eliminated the opening? If so, it was a great way to keep from sacrificing another minute of story.
1.) Sadly no, but the resemblance is intentional. 2.) As noted.
@lindas: Did Vlad call Sophie "Rosa" before he left? Could that be her real name?
He did. And it could be. Could be.
@Anonymous: Why drop the show opening? Not complaining, just curious.
In year 5 we really don't think we need to explain the premise anymore, and that's 30 seconds out of our very valuable storytelling real-estate. Hell, one-hour shows are at 42 minutes now.
@SueN: re: Parker's "did I fall asleep again?" and Hardison's "Soylent Green is people!" (which, btw, was priceless). Does Hardison live at the new headquarters?
There's a crash apartment upstairs that has kind of morphed into Hardison and Parker's shared space, although they both still keep separate lairs.
@Tom Galloway: 1.) C. Marko = Juggernaut? And was Busiek a reference to Portland-area based comics writer Kurt Busiek? And you realize if this had happened last season in Boston, Eliot would've fought a Bruin/Bear. 2.) I can't buy that a World Hockey League would even consider Portland for a single USA team. It's only got the population to support 1.5 major league teams (the .5 for the soccer team, which is doing quite well with respect to other MLS teams), It's not a major media outlet. It's got the West Coast time zone disadvantage for East and Central viewing, and isn't a hockey hotbed. Such a team would shoot for New York, maybe Chicago, Boston, or Philly. 3.) Ditto the base plot; so Marko gets 500K if he fights in every single game, and so they're trying to take him out by putting bounties on him. But doesn't he get taken out if the team doctor says "This man will die if he gets hit with a feather pillow" and has the MRI/x-rays to prove it? 4.) And sorry, I know the answer to me back when is your canonical goto for when folk complain about how easy it is to find the team and why it just doesn't matter, but really; a 15-17 year old kid finds them when they've been in town for maybe a couple of weeks? That's hitting A-Team levels.
1.) Yes, that was a Juggernaut reference. The Busiek reference was random. Although I dig Kurt.
2.) The problem with that objection is the NHL -- if they try to poach a major franchise, they go head to head and start spending stupid money. Now, there's a good argument that the NHL is in financial trouble enough that they'd consider being bought out by enough cash, but there's no way they're going to let go of a major TV franchise. Nope, for international expansion Portland's actually not a bad argument. Not a great investment, but not a bad argument.
3.) Why would Treat give up the income he's getting from stacking the games with Marko fights? Pull Marko and your ticket sales go down, and your opportunity for graft. You sir, are not thinking like a criminal. On a lesser note, there's no way Marko wouldn't have an injury clause in that contract. it;s like when I was a stand-up. You cancel the gig, you don't get paid. You show up, and they have to pay you. Or, alternatively, the "all episodes produced" writer. Known a few people who got fired and sat home collecting a season's worth of checks. That's probably one of those things that most people wouldn't think of, but our bias was against it, so we didn't go that way.
4.) The fact they're in town a few weeks doesn't matter -- people finding them is location-independent, done through the web and Hardison's data crawlers. Hardison may well have lined up the kids inquiries during the break, and they're just getting to him now. The team functions nationally, at least.
@Susy: ... Why didn't Nate get jealous with that Vlad guy kissing Sophie?
Never show you're jealous. Cedes control. (And that's probably more revealing of me than the character)
@jamesfirecat: Was it really necessary to do the last scene between Nate and the mark the way you did? We all know that Nate is a vindictive son of a bitch, but usually his vindictiveness shows up in more dramatic ways than "Okay here's the final stage of the plan, we're gonna corner the guy we don't like with a bunch of hockey players and force him to give us what we want or else we'll beat the shit out of him?" Isn't that a little too cut and dried for our team?
Answered adroitly in the Comments by Art_Connery and Jamesfoiecat themselves:
"Ahh, the idea that those enforcers that Nate had with him were the exact same people (minus Elliot) who the villain had hired to start fights an appropriately karmic twist to the entire situation (as he is being destroyed by those he set out to manipulate much like the... I want to say Glowfish, whatever, was back in season 4 that I had not considered before and feels much more appropriate than Nate just rounding up some Hockey Themed backup with which to shake down the mark."
@Ally: Can we see Nadia Olyenkov again? PLEASE? She is now my favorite Sophie alias.
Maybe. That hair was amazing, wasn't it? And the bit with her head on Nate's lap was an on-set improv between the two of them.
@MacSTL: 1) Glad there wasn't too much of the announcers on camera because the voice didn't match the picture. 2) How did Nate know the numbers Sophie found were dates? 3) In the dressing room after Game 6, why was the son so upset w/Eliot? Was he really upset or was he faking his own involvement? 4) I really expected to hear Eliot give the speech to Marko that if he really cared about his kid he wouldn't risk his health... What was the reason to hold that back? 5) Is Parker living with Hardison at the BrewPub? 6) Did Kane actually take that hit over the boards on to the bench himself? 7) What was the reason for the camera shot of Rising shredding the tickets?
1.) Well, hey. Not liked we played real games.
2.) Nate looks for patterns in numbers. If they hadn't been dates, he would have tried something else. Pretty easy guess actually. Not a lock combination because of the range, etc.
3.) He was embarrassed and worried about his dad, so he was lashing out. Probably also frustrated that the problem wasn't solved yet.
4.) Because it wouldn't work. Marko was convinced (and states explicitly) that caring about his kid meant ensuring his future with the money. Eliot knew talking him out of that belief wasn't going to happen.
5.) Crashing non-exclusively.
6.) Guess.
7.) Shred the tickets so they're "sold", those receipts match the extra money in the take. That's how the laundering works.
@Anonymous: 1) Did Timothy Hutton do all of his own skating? 2) Hardison was under the metal floor panel at the loading dock to secure the money box with the super powered magnets. And then he saws through the floor panel and the money box so that the cash receipt bags fall into his hands. So after that, what is securing the money box to that metal floor panel, and does the does the bank representative see a hole at the bottom of the money box that goes through to the level below?
1.) Yes
2.) He left the magnets. And yes, the bank manager sees the hole. But the money hasn't reached the armored car yet, so their insurance doesn't kick in. We had a bigger explanation of how the Mark's screwed here by the transition state, but it was cut for time.
@Alayne Stone: 1.) Why is it necessary for the con to include a turtle? That seems weirdly specific and other than adding to Nadja's weirdness it didn't really seem to add anything (in-text I mean, it was a lot of fun for us!) 2.) Does the Stanley Cup thing mean Sophie still has hangars all over the world filled with valuables for a rainy day? 3.) Surely Hardison knows how to pick a lock by now, was he just being lazy? 4.) Is Parker/Hardison movie night a regular thing? If so, what movies do they watch? :P
1.) The turtle/animal is meant to add an element of eccentricity and to set the mark off his game. Assume its just tradition from the many versions of this con that've been played.
2.) She's liquidated most of them. The Cup isn't in one of them and never was. The first draft of the script revealed its final hiding place, but we cut it.
3.) He not very good at it, frankly. All of them have their niches, and Sophie's just faster.
4.) Yes, and Hardions primarily is taking her through all the sci-fi and horror greats. He is considering showing her STAR WARS in the Machete Order.
@Carl: Is Parker being comfortable enough to sleep in the same vicinity as someone else while letting her guard down a big deal for the emotional growth of her character?
Hell yes. We actually teased this in S3, when we revealed she catnaps in Hardison's van.
@Callie Ann: i just have one random little question... the synch app (though AWESOME!) said that Eliot was in the army. previous episodes (namely the San Lorenzo Job, the Experimental Job and the Last Dam Job) have also said this, along with the fact that he was a Commander. being a military brat my entire life, i know that the only commander rankings (aside from Commander-in-Chief, and i think we would have noticed that) are for the Army, Command Sargent Major and for the Navy, Fleet/Command Master Chief. no other branch has the Commander rank. so, was Eliot's ranking his San Lorenzo equivalent cause he was on loan to them, or was he a Sargent Major, or was that just a term used to address him in San Lorenzo cause he was in charge, or what? i am very confused...
"Commander" was his adopted milita title when he helped his friend fight in an unspecified war after switching sides. it was not his Army rank.
@James Geluso: 1.) Were the enforcers on the ice at the end literally the enforcers from around the league? Or members of the Portland team (possibly plus the opponents) who were acting as enforcers in that scene but not designated enforcers on the ice? 2.) Who exactly now owns the team? I came away with the feeling that the Oregon Otters are now the Mondragon Cooperative of hockey. 3.) A best-of-seven series to end the season... that means this was the league championship, right? And the Otters are now champions? I would have expected the announcers to say so.
1.) Around the league. More satisfying.
2.) They're like the Packers.
3.) Yes, we recorded that. Cut it along the way. Not sure why.
@RYan Elizabeth: it was very frustrating to see that not a single member of the Leverage team made the connection between the injuries suffered by hockey players and what that means for Eliot. And no one on here said anything about it either! So what I don't get, is that the entire episode is devoted to the cumulative toll all the fighting took on Marcos body. Yet how did not single a SINGLE person question how much more wear and tear a career military man PLUS career hitter would have? Plus no mention of Eliot's past(assumably numerous) concussions? Even though one is mentioned on the show by Nate (in the First David Job.) Don't get me wrong I loved the episode and the plotline, but I kept waiting for some member of intellegent Leverage team to draw the parallel and not a single one did. Was this intentional? Or did they just miss it?
Huh. We talked about this in the room, but we felt Eliot had more agency than Marko -- Eliot at any point can retire, and he's in the business of not getting hit. When Marko does his job, he gets hammered; when Eliot does his job right, nobody touches him. I suppose it's salt to taste, but we just wanted to focus on Marko here, primarily.
@Rein ... We're just glad you like the show. And Gina is indeed great.
@Video Beagle: I don't believe there is such thing as a "rare earth electromagnet" In fact, I believe that such a thing would be impossible by the laws of physics. Unless, it was a RareUrth Brand Electromaget...the most electroey magnets you can buy!
Sorry, V.B. They are based on neodymium magnets, the most powerful rare earth magnets on earth. These magnets actually have a long history in the Leverage writers room. They were a plot point in our second episode we broke, our first thrown out, a fine piece by Christine Boylan (@Kitmoxie) that never came together. The warning phrase from the manufacturer -- "Strong enough ... to tear the hand off a small child!" -- will still occasionally be shouted in the writers room.
@Anonymous: You said in earlier posts that Eliot is the one who evolves first and the sense that I'm getting from this season is that he is ready to move on to a new (leverage-free) life. Is he starting to realize that if you live like Jimmy Ford, then you'll die like Jimmy Ford (to paraphrase a line from last season)? Is he is beginning to realize that he can live a different life? Thank you for this show and this blog. I sense that you are leading us slowly to the end and that makes me very sad.
He's drawn his own conclusions, but the mistakes he's seen others make certainly contribute to his evolution. And yeah, Eliot's sensing something coming too ...
@Oona: This ep made me think of all the stuff going on with former football and hockey players committing suicide and/or suffering dementia, but it seemed like the episode was couched as, "just get the guy off hockey and all will be well," despite the fact that he's apparently already suffering what sounds like permanent effects. And I know the Leverage team are not supposed to be gods who can change a guy's medical problems, just curious as to what the thought process was.
Was there a discussion on how far to go with that issue? Was there a conscious choice made by the writers not to address the fact that Marko very likely will still die or face serious consequences from his repetitive brain trauma?
I think I might have liked to see that issue addressed directly. It would have made it more poignant (okay and maybe a little tragic) to confront the fact that the decisions Marko had made in hockey could never be fully undone and to know that the team did what they could but that sometimes, there are limitations to their powers.
But then maybe that approach is a little less fun train, I admit. (It's true, sometimes, I want DARK ANYBODY COULD DIE AT ANY TIME LEVERAGE. I'm trying to work through it.)
We really could only address the immediate threat to his life -- sure, we talked about the after-effects, but that's a pretty heavy downer to end the show on. We're light drama, and our few forays into darkness are doled out sparingly. It's a very conscious decision not to send you home on a bummer note. Enough shows have that handled. I will admit that even we struggle with the tone, sometimes.
I 'm occasionalyl annoyed with reviewers when they suddenly realize "This show is great, it seems to have stumbled into that niche of 1970's light crime dramas." We built it that way. If we wanted to go dark, we certainly could -- but then we wouldn't be in Season 5 on the network we're on.
@hhgt: Question: Is Hardison secretly running the cons this season? It's just, they seem a lot like his cons; lots of moving parts, very complicated end-games, overwhelming the mark, etc
"Overwhelming the mark" is certainly a Nate tactic -- see "Order 23 Job" among others. I think that in the few eps that have aired (and we have moved a few around) you've seen a slightly higher percentage of gaslights. That does not hold up for the rest of the season. You might note, however, that the heist was quite distinctly Parker's plan ...
@ellabell: 1.) I know a lot about hockey, but I let most of the errors go -- but the one that couldn't get over was that there was an assumption that the series would go to 7 games. Was there a discussion about this? I mean, it could have been easily written in -- the added element of suspense of whether or not the bounty would be fulfilled within before the series was over -- or if they started the con in game 3 or 4 -- I just got caught on that if they had won in 4 games, then the manager would have had to pay the bonus. Leaving it to the last minute was risky2.) Also: how was the approach different to a hockey episode than the baseball episode, in that most Americans really don't know much about hockey, but know a lot about baseball?
1.) We actually had dialogue addressing this. Cut it, since most people didn't even notice. 2.) That was tricky. It's always hard to judge deep people's knowledge of something culturally widespread is. I mean, most people will look at a hockey game and say "oh, hockey, there's a goalie, that's called a penalty box ..." and at the same time, I had to explain offsides to the writers room about four times. Eventually we aired on the side of people having some base knowledge, and moving past the bits that might need explanation. Veyr much a judgement call.
@Tuesday: 1a.) I assume Sophie and Vlad stole the Stanley Cup together, but my question is why? Nate's questioning implies that Sophie didn't sell it and they replaced it with a copy so no one knows they stole it. b.) Did this heist happen pre-Leverage or on one of their breaks? c.) Was Sophie just messing with Nate about not remembering? At the end when Nate asks again about the trophy and Sophie says she doesn't remember Parker is cracking up which makes me think Sophie is just yanking his chain. If so, I approve. 2.) It seemed to me that Vlad's relationship with Sophie was affectionate, but not romantic (therefore not a rival for Nate) and that part of his reason for coming was to "evaluate" Nate and make sure he was treating Sophie well. a.) Am I wrong? b.) Will Vlad return? I liked his interactions with Nate and Sophie. 3.) The turtle was amazing! Did they keep him? He would be an excellent office pet! Plus, Nate could have more staring contests whenever he needed to take his mind off things. 4.) In the pilot when we meet Sophie she says she is an honest citizen now. a. Was she just on a break between cons or did something happen to make her "go straight"? b. If its the latter will we ever find out?
1a) It was a ransom scam gone wrong.1b.) Pre-Leverage1c.) Messing with him. Definitely.2a.) Formerly romantic, but hell yeah, he;'s checking out the new guy.2b.) If we can bring him back, we will. I loved his performance.3.) He's upstairs in the crash pad.4a) She was trying to go straight. She would try, sometimes.4b) well, one factor was definitely losing her favorite detective chasing her ...
@Anonymous: Ok..so you said we will hear Her name spoken aloud but will we know it is The Name? You know who I mean.
You will know. No mistaking.
***************************************
Lovely. Always a pleasure. I'll try to get "First Contact" up midweek, so we'll be caught up by the time 506 airs. As always, thanks for watching!
August 15, 2012
Harry Harrison has Escaped ...
... dead? Please. Too clever.
Harrison is one of the Godfathers of Leverage. If you stroll around in the eternally crowded pub in my head, past Ellery Queen, just before Simon Templar's booth, having a beer with Alexander Monday you find Slippery Jim DiGriz.
DiGriz is the gentleman con/man thief of the future, eventually recruited as a sort of spy just because, well, it seemed a shame to waste a man of his talents. DiGriz is a fighter, a hacker, a con man, a thief and a mastermind -- we just split him up into a bunch of different characters. But even more important than the mechanical influences is the thematic one, the paragraph I can still quote a third of a century on, hearing my own twelve-year old voice in my head:
Whatever caper you're on now Harry, give 'em hell.
In the comments, toss me the crime book or TV series you read you still hold dear. The detective, the spy, the con man -- who are your rats in the joints?
*This is the reason the hacker in The Core was named "Rat." In one of the script cuts which made that movie less cool, in the original script Aaron Eckhardt's character recognizes the quote, setting the foundation for he and DJ Qualls' friendship. (Blame the Paramount exec who was convinced we were making Das Boot.)
Harrison is one of the Godfathers of Leverage. If you stroll around in the eternally crowded pub in my head, past Ellery Queen, just before Simon Templar's booth, having a beer with Alexander Monday you find Slippery Jim DiGriz.
DiGriz is the gentleman con/man thief of the future, eventually recruited as a sort of spy just because, well, it seemed a shame to waste a man of his talents. DiGriz is a fighter, a hacker, a con man, a thief and a mastermind -- we just split him up into a bunch of different characters. But even more important than the mechanical influences is the thematic one, the paragraph I can still quote a third of a century on, hearing my own twelve-year old voice in my head:
"We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days, of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the building now as well. Now that society is all ferrocrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment."*DiGriz is one of the reasons I always shake my head when some fans ask "Wouldn't law enforcement have caught up with our guys by now?" There are still gaps in the joints, plenty of room for cunning justice- rats of the 21st Century.
Whatever caper you're on now Harry, give 'em hell.
In the comments, toss me the crime book or TV series you read you still hold dear. The detective, the spy, the con man -- who are your rats in the joints?
*This is the reason the hacker in The Core was named "Rat." In one of the script cuts which made that movie less cool, in the original script Aaron Eckhardt's character recognizes the quote, setting the foundation for he and DJ Qualls' friendship. (Blame the Paramount exec who was convinced we were making Das Boot.)
August 13, 2012
Thank you, Mitt Romney
... for making a three year old blog post of mine suddenly ridiculously relevant. FWIW, despite some confusion, yeah, that's mine. If someone could drop Paul Krugman a line I'd appreciate it.
Charles Pierce, the writer I'd like to be when I grow up, summarizes my opinions on Mr. Ryan adroitly. I'll defend to the death your right to have an opinion different from mine, but when you're just a mendacious hypocrite, well, life's too goddam short. Paul Ryan's family fortune was based on being paid by the government to build highways, he's never had a job other than "Congressman", none of his budget numbers add up -- at all -- and he's trying to push a budget that would raise taxes on the middle class, hand giant tax breaks to the rich, gut the country's infrastructure, and end Medicare -- which no matter what shit they sling at you is the plan because strangely, his plan doesn't apply to anybody over 55. Why not, if it's so awesome? Because old folk know bullshit when they smell it, that's why.
And why is he pursuing these policies? Because, well, "job creators."
You know what? I type for a living, and my stupid little typing creates a couple hundred jobs. I'm an actual job creator, which was the last damn thing anybody (including my perpetually surprised father) expected when I started telling jokes in bars. And I don't think that raising my tax rate by 3.4% (back the bad old Clinton Socialism Rate) so you, my fellow citizen, won't lose your fucking house when your kid gets cancer, or maybe we get a functioning power grid or roads that wouldn't be substandard in ZIMBABWE is "socialism". It's basic. Goddam. Decency.
When the hell did we get talked out of that?
Phew. That's been a few years of "don't talk politics while the show's on" building up. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. And a reminder -- if the post doesn't say "Leverage" in the title, I can type whatever the hell I like.
Charles Pierce, the writer I'd like to be when I grow up, summarizes my opinions on Mr. Ryan adroitly. I'll defend to the death your right to have an opinion different from mine, but when you're just a mendacious hypocrite, well, life's too goddam short. Paul Ryan's family fortune was based on being paid by the government to build highways, he's never had a job other than "Congressman", none of his budget numbers add up -- at all -- and he's trying to push a budget that would raise taxes on the middle class, hand giant tax breaks to the rich, gut the country's infrastructure, and end Medicare -- which no matter what shit they sling at you is the plan because strangely, his plan doesn't apply to anybody over 55. Why not, if it's so awesome? Because old folk know bullshit when they smell it, that's why.
And why is he pursuing these policies? Because, well, "job creators."
You know what? I type for a living, and my stupid little typing creates a couple hundred jobs. I'm an actual job creator, which was the last damn thing anybody (including my perpetually surprised father) expected when I started telling jokes in bars. And I don't think that raising my tax rate by 3.4% (back the bad old Clinton Socialism Rate) so you, my fellow citizen, won't lose your fucking house when your kid gets cancer, or maybe we get a functioning power grid or roads that wouldn't be substandard in ZIMBABWE is "socialism". It's basic. Goddam. Decency.
When the hell did we get talked out of that?
Phew. That's been a few years of "don't talk politics while the show's on" building up. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. And a reminder -- if the post doesn't say "Leverage" in the title, I can type whatever the hell I like.
August 12, 2012
LEVERAGE #504 "The French Connection Job" Question Post
The boy does indeed love to cook. Put your questions, comments, wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Comments.
August 9, 2012
Hey Girl, That's a Sweet Biosphere You Got.
I figured Earth could use a little attention, considering all the love Mars is getting. (From RealNASA)
August 8, 2012
DCW #1: It's made of pixels!
My God, two posts in a week. I'm trying to get back up to three, so let's all cross our fingers for Friday. But for now, the first installment of Digital Comics Wednesday. Because Wednesday is New Comics Day.
Today, there's a new installment of Mark Waid and Peter Krouse's Insufferable up on our digital comics website THRILLBENT. We're in Week 13 of the soft launch, slightly extended by Waid's convention schedule and my shooting the finale of the TV show Leverage. (Damn showrunner day job.)
So for 13 straight weeks, installment-based digital comics, 8-10 screens a pop, with both CBZ and PSF files of each installment offered for free.
We 're pretty happy with how this is turning out artistically -- this was the test format, and the test format is working well. It's long-form comic storytelling hacked down to a screen-centric style and pulp pacing, all running on the engine of the 3-panel gag schedule the Webcomics guys were proving worked ten years ago and nobody in the published comics field was paying any attention. It wobbles a bit when you put her in fourth gear, but she's steady enough. Now it's time, as Mark mentioned at Comic-con and in his recent interviews, to actually roll the bastard out on to the highway.
I feel strongly that one of the main reason the Leverage fans are so devoted is that we had a core of enthusiasts from the first days, before we even aired, who dug in on the behind the scenes material. So as I develop my title, Arcanum, I'll try to keep you in the loop as well as I can without spoiling anything.
On the THRILLBENT front, you'll start to see other titles -- some short-form, some long form serials -- appearing on the site in September. Hopefully we'll get some stuff up in late August, but we have an ironclad rule at THRILLBENT: your stuff does not "air" until you have at least two months of strips backlogged. We are asking people to show up every week, we must deliver unto their eyeballs content. We're driving some nice traffic right now, and the idea is that the titles will begin to reinforce each other and the topsite. There should be new content every day. Waid's Insufferable will be Wednesdays. Arcanum may well be Fridays, etc.
I think, after another meeting we have tomorrow, Mark will put up the official list of upcoming titles, plus dropping some names of people in development.
On Arcanum: I have a great artist, and as soon as we've finished the business side of things I'll announce. Waid himself expressed a little puzzlement over the premise, so I'll lay it out again -- It's 24, with magic. But to tell the truth, it's a little bit more -- the inspirational font is actually the mod-trippy 70's British 70's show UFO.
Well, that and the ass-kicking Brit show Ultraviolet, about the secret (and cranky) police squad hunting very smart, very evil vampires. And yes, that is a young Idris Elba. You're welcome.
So Arcanum is less straight-up urban fantasy, and more conspiracy-based. It'll wind up being a quirky little team book, as most of my work tends to be. We'll see how soon we can roll out some art for you.
That's this week's update. Next week we'll probably talk about some of our hare-brained monetization schemes (including the app, and the joy of the Apple application process). In the meantime, let me recommend a fine digital comic over on Comixology right now, by indie publisher Monkeybrain -- Wander by Kevin Church and Grace Allison. A modern hipster chick, in my head played by
In the Comments -- toss me your favorite longform indie webcomics or digital books, so I can take a look and pass along the news!
Today, there's a new installment of Mark Waid and Peter Krouse's Insufferable up on our digital comics website THRILLBENT. We're in Week 13 of the soft launch, slightly extended by Waid's convention schedule and my shooting the finale of the TV show Leverage. (Damn showrunner day job.)
So for 13 straight weeks, installment-based digital comics, 8-10 screens a pop, with both CBZ and PSF files of each installment offered for free.
We 're pretty happy with how this is turning out artistically -- this was the test format, and the test format is working well. It's long-form comic storytelling hacked down to a screen-centric style and pulp pacing, all running on the engine of the 3-panel gag schedule the Webcomics guys were proving worked ten years ago and nobody in the published comics field was paying any attention. It wobbles a bit when you put her in fourth gear, but she's steady enough. Now it's time, as Mark mentioned at Comic-con and in his recent interviews, to actually roll the bastard out on to the highway.
I feel strongly that one of the main reason the Leverage fans are so devoted is that we had a core of enthusiasts from the first days, before we even aired, who dug in on the behind the scenes material. So as I develop my title, Arcanum, I'll try to keep you in the loop as well as I can without spoiling anything.
On the THRILLBENT front, you'll start to see other titles -- some short-form, some long form serials -- appearing on the site in September. Hopefully we'll get some stuff up in late August, but we have an ironclad rule at THRILLBENT: your stuff does not "air" until you have at least two months of strips backlogged. We are asking people to show up every week, we must deliver unto their eyeballs content. We're driving some nice traffic right now, and the idea is that the titles will begin to reinforce each other and the topsite. There should be new content every day. Waid's Insufferable will be Wednesdays. Arcanum may well be Fridays, etc.
I think, after another meeting we have tomorrow, Mark will put up the official list of upcoming titles, plus dropping some names of people in development.
On Arcanum: I have a great artist, and as soon as we've finished the business side of things I'll announce. Waid himself expressed a little puzzlement over the premise, so I'll lay it out again -- It's 24, with magic. But to tell the truth, it's a little bit more -- the inspirational font is actually the mod-trippy 70's British 70's show UFO.
Well, that and the ass-kicking Brit show Ultraviolet, about the secret (and cranky) police squad hunting very smart, very evil vampires. And yes, that is a young Idris Elba. You're welcome.
So Arcanum is less straight-up urban fantasy, and more conspiracy-based. It'll wind up being a quirky little team book, as most of my work tends to be. We'll see how soon we can roll out some art for you.
That's this week's update. Next week we'll probably talk about some of our hare-brained monetization schemes (including the app, and the joy of the Apple application process). In the meantime, let me recommend a fine digital comic over on Comixology right now, by indie publisher Monkeybrain -- Wander by Kevin Church and Grace Allison. A modern hipster chick, in my head played by
In the Comments -- toss me your favorite longform indie webcomics or digital books, so I can take a look and pass along the news!
August 5, 2012
LEVERAGE #501 "The (Very) Big Bird Job" Post-game
I can't help but the think the very excellent video post-games made by our scrappy assistants/podcast producers will eventually answer all your questions about the episodes. But for now, I'll indulge.
Right. First, the crime; second, the meta.
The crime was inspired, much like "The Van Gogh Job", by our annual scouting trip around the Portland area. Once a year, our location scouts take us out to different places we may not have seen, places with high production value -- and in this case, the world's largest airplane. Just kinda sitting there. At the awesome Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, and watched over by a super friendly, helpful and knowledgeable staff.
I'd actually missed this trip. I was back in LA doing work when I received a text with a photo attached. It was Dean Devlin sitting in Howard Hughes's pilot seat, looking happier than I have ever seen him look. So we knew he was in.
Also, the sheer ballsiness of the crime was intriguing. The world's biggest airplane is right there. I mean, it's impossible to steal the thing. Completely impossible.
But I'd seen David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear ....
... which was the first run at this, actually. I mean, it's not like you can actually move the goddam thing. It's a seaplane. It can't taxi. But you might tow it, cut it apart, or say we stored it somewhere near the water and then taxi or tow it down the river ... there are ways to make it disappear. No, the trick to this con, as in every Landmark Con, is The Blow.
What's The Blow? We'll get to that.
As we developed the idea, we realized the real big swing was to have somebody fly the plane. It turns out, we were told as we walked through the Hercules H-4, that in theory -- IN THEORY -- it could fly. The original engines had been repo'd by the Air Force, but the replacement engines were up to snuff. They are actually started with --I am simplifying here, for you aerospace geeks -- what is essentially a giant primer engine, a helicopter engine, that sits way back in the cockpit.
This plotline was very much inspired by the TrueFact we drop in the episode -- the bit about most of the other planes in the museum, be they P-40B's or Spitfires, being flyable. Some of them were private restorations acquired by this amazing museum over the years from collectors, some of them were salvage from old airfields. As we pointed out in the show, many of them have oil drip pans underneath to catch the leakage of fluids from the FULLY OPERATIONAL WW2 FIGHTER PLANES.
Have I mentioned how ridiculously awesome this museum is?
Anyway, we had a villain - an exec obsessed with Hughes. Making him an airplane guy kept everything thematically unified. We gave him the sin of carelessness, and we had a ton of research on the real-life off-shoring of airplane maintenance (notably to El Salvador) and the concerns people had about these practices.
No one sane would steal the plane, but being part of a coalition to buy it, and then eventually winding up in a crisis where things are moving too fast to stop and think, a crisis where the only reasonable thing is to fly it -- we could get him there. That's the key to getting sane people to do crazy things, according to our con artist friends -- slowly slide them into situations where the crazy is sane in context. Even better if the crazy thing is something they desperately want to do anyway.
This is how small business owners from Ohio wind up in Nigeria with briefcases full of their life savings.
We landed on putting the Mark in a simulator gimmicked to look like the Spruce Goose cockpit. If he approaches in the dark, being chased, using one signature piece of the Spruce Goose architecture to frame the scene -- in this case, we were going to use the spiral staircase that led up to the cockpit -- all that would work. But we were still faced with several problems.
Problem 1.) The Spruce Goose has to be near or on water, or it can't fly. It has no landing gear, per se.Problem 2.) Fueling the son of a bitch would take ages. So the Mark had to believe that the Goose was fueled when he got in her. Why? Were the thieves fueling it, were they going to fly it? But then THEIR plan would be crazy, and in a non-crisis situation, the crazy's harder to sell.Problem 3.) The Blow.
So, let us say you are a showrunner on a big-ass pulp show. How do you deal with these issues?
Problem 1.) Nobody knows the Spruce Goose has no landing gear. Except for .0000001% of the audience, who may get very angry. If there were only a blog where they could go to express their anger ...
Nope, that goes in the Don't Give A Shit bag. You all have a Don't Give A Shit bag, you Don't-Care-About-Gravity-on-Firefly, Why-Do-They-Keep-The-Bourne-Files-in-an-Office-Safe, CSI-Techs-Don't-Talk-to-Witnesses viewers. In this case, obscure engineering fact #2541 goes in the Bag. Hell, I'm pretty sure a large chunk of the audience would have no context for Hughes if not for the Tony Stark crack.
Problem 2.) The fueling thing was tough. Why they hell would there be fuel in the engines? Maybe I was the wrong guy for this -- I'm not a gearhead. I mean, I like tech, but I don't inherently like fast cars or shiny cars, or collect ... things. I had no way in on this. Which is when Chris Downey suggested "Hey, go ask the guy who owns Tesla #009 off the production line, whose office is next door."
I poked my head into Dean's office: "If you owned the Spruce Goose, why would yo put fuel in it?"
I don't think he even lifted his head from his work. "If I owned the Spruce Goose, I'd want to start her up and hear those giant engines roar."
Ah.
And so that problem, timing the con with the anniversary, was solved. We did the effect with CGI, of course, and had to hack the hangar to make it work, but all small sins of storytelling.
Problem 3.) The Blow. The Blow is where you get away with it. The Blow is the bit where the Feds come in and shoot everybody and take the briefcase full of money and the Mark flees and escapes with his life and counts himself lucky.
When your "briefcase full of money" is the biggest airplane in the world, that's a little tricky. Your solve is to stall the Mark, so that when he realizes he's been conned he's a.) too late and b.) discredited. Convincing him he crashed the plane would be the stall, and the crazy story would take care of the rest. Transporting him to a crash site would be a piece of cake, so all we need to do is get him into the simulator....
Problem 4.) ... except we are on a cable budget, and we cannot afford a.) a mocked up simulator or b.) to go to a separate warehouse location to establish the con in the simulator. Especially not in the 7 days we take to shoot each episode. Which we figured out maybe three days before prep.
(Please note, all this is going on while we're breaking and writing four or five other episodes. We had about a week to conceive of the episode and then solve these problems as they arose. Welcome to television.)
The solution, the only solution available to us, was to shoot in the cockpit of the Spruce Goose. Remember what I said about the key to a con being to convince sane people that their only reasonable choice is the crazy one? Yeah. The Leverage production team had somehow become the Marks in our own con.
Okay, on one hand, this is cool. No other film crew in history has filmed in the Spruce Goose cockpit. We would be the first. But how do we jimmy the cockpit? It's not like we can move the damn thing.
This is when I recalled the bank turn. This magazine article has stayed with me for almost 20 years, since I read it as a stand-up comic on the road, flying from city to city. The article explains that while most people think they can tell how a plane's moving, banking, changing course when they're flying, absent visual feedback they do not. And so. They. Die. Welcome to Newtonian Physics, squishy human.
See where this is going? Fool the eye, fool the ear -- and you're done. Or, at least done in Pulp World, where our job is NOT TO BORE YOU.
I will admit that we had a beat where we drugged the Mark to make him disoriented and suggestible, and therefore more likely to buy the con, but the timeline didn't work out -- he'd have to be drugged and woozy for a brief amount of time in con-time, but a very long time in show-time. I didn't want the actor playing the Bad Guy so have to work that way for two acts. So it was cut. Maybe an error, but ... eh. There's 77 of these bastards. Season to taste.
Add Cary Elwes, who totally sold the smart-but-obsessed bad guy, and you have yourself a big, ballsy con of a season opener.
Now, the meta ... we had to move and rebuild our sets over the summer. It occurred to us that if we had to rebuild the damn things, we might as well put the money into some new and shiny. This was coupled with our experience making "The Gold Job" from the previous year. It had been so refreshing to be able to let loose and shoot Portland for Portland, take full of advantage of the city for that episode. And so we arrived at "Is it Crazy or Cool?" Idea #452 for Leverage, just yank up roots and move HQ. It did make sense, after the giant blow-out of the S4 finale.
The clean start and implied six month gap also allowed us to advance the character relationships in ways we wanted to. It was time to get Nate and Sophie on the same page. It was time to get Hardison and Parker together. Being able to skip the "awkward dating episode" and go straight to "they are adorable" was too tempting. We always said we never wanted to do that damn first date episode. Besides, why deprive the fanfic pages of the chance to fill in that time gap? Mi canon es su canon. You're welcome.
Oh, and to our friend at the A.V. Club -- we had a big scene written for Fred Armisen, but scheduling didn't work out.
I'm sure you folks cover anything else interesting in the questions. Let's GO!
@ Anonymous: Oh, John. Not to doubt you but do you really think you will be able to catch up?
Watch me.
@Anonymous: Did I miss it or did we never get to find out Sophie's real name?
Not yet. And remember, when it comes, things... change. I promise you, however, that by the end of Season 5 you will hear someone say it out loud.
@ petticoat said... Great first ep! Two questions: 1. Can you explain a little further how Cary Elwes' character can buy the Spruce Goose when the museum owns it? 2. Not directly related to the episode but what are your go-to news sites for bad guys/story lines? 3.) I second the answering of the question about the cliffhanger being dragged out for the whole season. Please say we'll find out the answer soon! Can't wait until next week!!
1.) The Museum owns it privately. Much like any collection, it's assumed a big enough offer will convince them to part with it. The difference were were explaining was that we weren;t trying to sell him something we plainly didn't have, were were enticing him to partner up.2.) We go pretty much everywhere -- every writer has his favorite sources. I use Evernote to collect my articles, and keep a backlog of shitty rich people and clever criminals in a separate notebook just for the show.
@JoellaBlue: 1.) How soon before we meet the Big Bad? 2.) Our favorite Feds were too busy to come to Portland? How sad. McSweetie will be sad about Parker not being very available 3.) Last minute made me think about what might have happened between Pilot and The Homecoming Job 4.). Will we see Eliot's friend again later this year? The one who he was doing an outside job with?
1.) You did. In the last minute of the show. 2.) Don't assume.3.) That is very perceptive of you.4.) Oh yes. Summer season finale, in fact.
@PurpleOps: It appears the series is now firmly on the satire track, and I'll just need to get used to that. (JR NOTE: We prefer pulp. Say it. Puuuuulp. This show is made to be aired in 1969) Accepting that, it was a fun show, and a better season opener than last year IMHO. Here are the questions - nothing particularly significant, just curious.1.) Was Adam Baldwin playing John Casey from Chuck, or was his character nameless? WONDERFUL cameo!2.) What behavior between Sophie and Nate gave the widow a clue about their relationship? In their scenes together, I didn't notice anything particularly indicative of a relationship.3.) As for that final scene, I'd been under the impression that the show had been renewed for Season 5 AND Season 6. Has that changed, or are we being played with? Or does "All good things must come to an end" have nothing whatsoever to do with the show's renewal or continuation?
1.) As delightful as a Chuck crossover would be, he's got a very big part in the summer season finale so we needed to make him his own character. 2.) She can just tell, as most people can. It was a way of showing that Nate and Sophie are more comfortable with each other, maybe more than even they realize.3.) No renewal yet. And hey, spring comes, snow melts. Change is inevitable...
@Liza: 1) Since the moving of Portland was kind of sprung upon the team (mostly Sophie) will we ever find out if Nate and Sophie buy an apartment?
Nope, separate places. Always good to have separate places.
@Unknown: 1.) As always, loved the writing. The soft reboot to re-establish characters and their relationships was very well done - especially that Hardison is now accepted as equal by Nate (the symbolism of the glass of whiskey). Using Busey for the name of the main henchman was a wonderful insider gag. The con wasn't too complex to keep new viewers away. 2.) Question I do have though, is how much is the series actually 'owned' by TNT? I had gotten the impression through previous posts and comments that Electric Entertainment owned a lot more of the series and TNT was mostly distribution end. Would you (or other commenters in the know) be willing to expand on that a bit?
1.) Hey, I think this is our fifth time slot in five seasons. I'm a bit anal about a soft reboot every year. Glad it worked.2.) I don't think it's any secret that Electric Entertainment is the sole studio involved in Leverage. TNT is our US network.
@Ravenc: Hate to do it but I have to ask...wasn't the Spruce Goose a "flying boat"? It was meant to take off and land on water not a runway, wasn't it? Does it even have landing gear?
You are correct! But not angry, which I will take as a positive result on my hypothesis.
@Jason: I feel like Hardison made a deal with the devil at the end of this episode. Will Parkers trust/emotional issues come into play when Hardsion reveals the secret him and Nate have been keeping?
Good questions. Assuming they ever find out, probably.
@Circling: Absolutely wonderful episode! It just felt right, watching them walk into new digs and having Hardison explain the tech while no one listened. 1) Was that a deliberate call back to The Homecoming Job? The familiarity of that moment was lovely. 2) What's the background scoop on the new office? Is there more than what we've seen? Does anyone live there? 3) Has Hardison really installed a Suggestion Box, and if yes, does anyone but him use it? I would give my right arm for a DVD extra showing the team going through the suggestions in that box. 4) Is Old Nate going to make an appearance in the new space?. 5) CK's comment at the close of the episode that you can't learn how to brew beer online. Was that scripted? Also, his moment with the victim's daughter was lovely. 6) Please tell us other ideas you came up with for the name of the team's beers. Thief Juice? Brilliant. 7) Sophie's constant digs on Portland's weather were great. Any fear of aggravating locals with those? 8) Ooh - speaking of Portland, the outdoor scene of Parker and Sophie - was that filmed the same place the "Don't ask me that Parker" scene was filmed at the end of S3? It sure looked familiar.
1.) Yes, echoed it very strongly. And there's a reason ...2.) Hardison has a crash pad upstairs, at the end of that walkway.3.) Hardison has set up several team-building wikis. No one gives them the respect they deserve.4.) I believe he's hanging in the back work area. But this is new offices. Fresh start.5.) The general revulsion at Hardison's first brew attempts were all improvised.6.) "It's a mouth crime" may be my favorite thing I've written in years. We will unveil his other creations as the show continues.7.) They know it rains.8.) Nope, different park, different part of town. The "Don't ask me,Parker" was over by the Shnitzer theater while this was by the courthouse in the Pearl.
@CC: I really only have one question, which I doubt you'll answer. With all the speculation about this being the last season (I hope it's not, btw) along with the comments from you and the cast about how sad the season (series?) finale is, PLUS this secrecy mess with Hardison and Nate....are we in for a heartbreak if this is the last episode?
Oh God yes. All joking aside, network execs were crying watching the dailies for the finale. Several of the assisitants who are big fans of the show still glare at me when I walk by. I assure you, the finale is ... complicated.
@oppyu: Sophie's Australian impersonation... as an Australian, really? 'g'day'? Why don't you just offer to throw a shrimp on the barbie and show everyone what a real knife is?
Gina as a native New Zealander (you did not know that, did you?) was yanking the chain of our Australian D.P. Dave Connell.
@Evelyn: Nate isn't dying, is he? Because that would suck.
We're all dyin' baby.
@Matt: 1.) Will the opening credits be back for 5.02? 2.) I'd love to see Jeri Ryan again, any chance you could bring Tara back for an episode or two?
1.) We stole the 30 seconds of credits back for the show. I don;t think we need them anymore.2.) As always, it sucks that actual humans who are under contracts are attached to these characters. Jeri didn't work out this year.
@ellabell: 1.) How long were they away for? I didn't hear it, but I'm interested. 2.) Like others, I'm concerned that Old Nate isn't in the new headquarters. Where is he? Why isn't there yet? 3.) I like that they are using Leverage, Inc. again, but how come that one wasn't burned? 4.) ALL the old aliases were burned? Even the ones that came before the team? (I'm kind of heartbroken that Charlotte Prentice would be burned... and not ready for Annie Kroy or Alice White to be gone either!) 5.) I saw on the fermenter that they are brewing an IPA. Is that it? Or do they have a wider selection too? As an aside, what kind of beer would YOU brew? or, what's your favourite beer? (I'm SO hoping for some Maudite or Fin du Monde or Chambly here. :D )
1.) The traditional 6 months. There's been a roughly six month gap between each season except for season 3 and 4, which were separated by a few weeks. Leverage time is roughly lined up with our real-time.2.) He's safe, I promise.3.) Hardison is using that as a metaphor. Although we can argue that there are enough Leverage Inc's around the world, it's a safe haven.4.) They will probably re-use those names if it's in a low-security setting. I know we hear "Alice White" again. Parker is ... comfortable with her.
@Spencer: Any particular reason Christian looks directly into the camera when he shakes the bear? Loved this when I saw it at FanCon2, and still loved it the second time around. I have to admit I had forgotten about the teddy bear scene. ROFL!
He's looking juuust camera left, actually, at Parker.
@Ally: Oh, I missed you guys... A couple of quick questions: 1. Spruce Goose is an orange box. I researched that. But the National Act thingy of 1966: ledger or orange box?
2. Now that the team is actually in Portland, does Christian have to have his hair flatironed?
3. Did Sophie actually buy/lease the theater?
4. I don't see why they actually have to have an operating restaurant to keep up their cover.
5. Where did Sophie and Hardison get the guns? (probably a really stupid question, considering their line of work...)
6. Who actually put the bomb in Roemer's car? Again, fabulous episode, as always, and loving Season 5 so far!
We missed you too!1.) National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 -- orange box. The foreign ownership rules are not as strict as we say, but it's a real thing.2.) Christian's hair is as he wills it at any time. But as I said, things change ...3.) Bought it.4.) They don't -- Hardison is indulging himself. Frankly he's also using it to make Eliot happy, although Eliot would never admit it.5.) Fake guns, they have tons of them.6.) The Leverage team bombed Roemer's car to spook him into panicked paranoia.
@Anonymous: And for those of us that want to send money your way, any idea when the season pass for the show might be available on Amazon or iTunes? (Don't have cable, really don't want to use less legal methods.)
Should be up now.
@Anonymous: I understand the move to Portland because that is where you actually film and they were in Boston way too long considering their chosen profession(s), but does that mean no more poker games for the boys? No more Bonanno? And really, there are a few people in the police, FBI, Interpol, as well as other thieves and grifters that know who they really are - did moving really solve that problem?
Moving solved the "hey, that's where we can wiretap them" problem. Lots of criminals out there, and out of sight means out of mind.
@ellabell: I forgot to add: I'm surprised Roemer made it into Canada, as I hear those Mounties are scrupulously polite and utterly unstoppable -- maybe even the most feared law enforcement agency on earth.
Ellabell is referencing the Leverage-verse convention that the most terrifying law enforcement agency on earth are the Mounties, base don a sadly unproduced episode pitched by @KitMoxie. you'll note he was quickly caught and returned to the US to be questioned by the unflappable FBI agents.
@Group One: Also, at the end of the episode, Hardison and Nate talk about hiding something from the rest of the team, but I thought that team learned to trust each other after finding out about Elliot's previous involvement with Damien Moreau. What is different about this trust issue? Why doesn't Nate trust the others to tell them the truth whatever that truth may be, and why does Hardison go along with the lie?
All will be revealed. But valid questions, certainly. Just note, they do keep each others' secrets -- Nate never told the team about Eliot's warehouse massacre, for example. And the team knows Sophie's real name.
@Bex: Was that a map on Hardison's screen at the end? Not being a US native Interesting locations lit up.
Yes, it was a map of the world.
@Nekussa: As much as I would love to have Leverage go on and on, I'd still prefer that you know when you're going to end it and have the time to wrap the story up, rather than get cancelled and leave us hanging.
Surprise cancellation is why every year the show ends with what I would consider a perfectly good last episode for the show. Maybe not the one you want, but one you could live with.
@briddle: Is Nate's new haircut and neater look indicative of his attitude, or just Timothy Hutton getting tired of the shaggy look? There's a "discussion" going on the imdb boards. I'm of the opinion that it's directly related to Nate's newfound happiness with life.
Kind of both, but mostly Nate-centric. This is the year Nate gets his shit together.
@meanderling: Is Nate's little sailor boy detour connected to the devious planning he and Hardison were up to in the end? Or is it just the S. S. Midlife Crisis?
Combo, although Tim Hutton was the one who came up with it. He said that if Nate was going to get his head together, he;d be the type to go off on a boat and read for six months. That worked for me.
@Sabine: Christian Kane and Adam Baldwin! There aren't many BAMFs I'd call adorable but you managed to get two of them at once. So how long have Eliot and Adam Baldwin's character (Vance, I think?) known each other? Long enough for Vance to know what happened to send Eliot totally off the rails and start working for people like Moreau?
Known each other for most of their lives, actually. So yes, certainly.
@ANonymous: Are real explosions a thing of past? The fake explosions and fires kind of yank a body off the fun-train.
That was actually a real explosion. A BIG real explosion we comped the car onto.
@talea: So is the Spruce Goose REALLY fired up once a year? If so, how do I find the schedule so that my brother (an aerospace engineer) and my dad (an-82-year-old pilot who has three home-builts in his hanger) can be there for the next time? (hey the guy's 82; gotta do these things while we can!)
Sadly, no, although the owner of the Evergreen Museum, Del Smith, was positively giddy when he saw the engine effects. If your Dad is into planes, I can't recommend the Museum highly enough.
@ANonymous: I realize you're not going to give me any absolutes. But there's a rumor going around Tumblr (yeah, I know. Serious business over there) that "Nate and Sophie will only be canon for a short time". Someone who claims to have some inside knowledge is claiming this. What's that about? Is there any truth to this? My instinct is that this person is full of shit. But um. I like Nate and Sophie so I figured I just... ask?
Define "short time." No, we just got them together, we're going to take a while to explore the relationship. Although this could be the last season, so...
@Lydia: 1a. Wouldn't Roemer realize there wasn't enough fuel in the lines from "turning over the engines" to actually get very far, if even off the ground? b Where did the team "acquire" the "wreckage"?
2. If the crew is brewing IPA, will they take over some the production of "Summer Grifter"?
3. Since this season looks like it's going to be focusing on relationships, which non canon fan pairing has surprised you the most over the course of the show?
I like a questioner who labels her sub-questions1a.) We gimmicked the dials to reinforce his assumption.1b.) There was actually a moment of panic as we were prepping, where someone said "But this airplane wreckage is plainly made of wood." "That's okay," I said "because ... SO'S THE SPRUCE GOOSE!" And they clapped, and I drank.2.) I will get right on that.3.) I don't read the fan pairings -- I know what's out there mostly from geek osmosis. But I think there's some Eliot/Maggie stuff kicking around. Or isn't there one where Faith form Buffy is Nate's daughter? That amuses me. The Supernatural crossovers are too easy.
@Anonymous: Let me ask you a more important question: why the hell is EVERYONE who aint on the crew fucking so stupid. EVERYBODY even the victims they helping. Let me ask a question directly to the victim of these bad guys: how you gonna let someone fuck you over that hard and then trust a total stranger to fix everything? ... etc. for a hilarious and long post
You are my favorite comment EVER. You delight me. Although on a more serious projector note, which @Oona also asks, a.) there is such high-def footage available. I know, because we bought it. b.) His projector is wired into a much stronger industrial IMAX (which you can just BARELY see if you freeze-frame that wide projector shot) and projected onto a semi-translucent film, which goes dark when struck form the other side. We cut that explanation for time.
@Anonymous: When you say in the commentary that Sophie and Maggie are "Canon", is that just tongue in cheek? Or is it legit? Or have you stopped giving a shit entirely. I won't say which one seems most obviously the case.
I don't know how long you've been here, but I said back in Season Two, the characters' sexual experiences are... whatever makes you want to watch the show more.
@Oona: As for questions, I read somewhere that most cast contracts run for 5 seasons. Is that true for Leverage?
Our actors' contracts are confidential, but no, industry standards tend to be for 3, then 3 or for more.
@MacSTL: 1) Since you directed, were you sailing w/Nate? 2) When the Busey accosted the little girl - why didn't Parker yell at her to run the other way? She didn't look like she was too far away to stop the guy if the girl took off. 3) Did Beth or her stuntie do the competence porn move when she entered that server room? AMAZING
1.) That sailing shot was Poor Man's Process. He never left the dock. That dock sequence was the first shot, BTW.2.) She's actually a full block away, it just seems shorter in the shot, and not helped by editing.3.) Although it was Beth's stuntie doing the server room break-in, that was Beth doing her own rappelling onto the desk in the opening office scene.
@Anonymous: Why did Gina finish filming before the others? Is she not going to be in the season 5 finale? I know this is getting ahead of myself, but judging by this and some twitter comments, I'm concerned she's not coming back. :-/
Coincidence -- all her locations were blocked out at the beginning of the shoot schedule. She finished no more than a day or so ahead of the rest.
@Zeyneb: As a fan from Turkey, loved that Parker and Hardison were on vacationing in my city!! Whose idea was it? And why?
I have a soft spot for Istanbul, as I spent a long time researching it for the never-shot sequel I wrote for The Thomas Crown Affair. I have mercilessly strip-mined that script for Leverage episodes, so it wasn't wasted time.
@IMForeman: 1.) When Nate and Roemer are looking at the Spruce Goose blueprints, and Roemer comes to the conclusion that Hughes had developed stealth tech in the 40s, Nate says "Nice going on the blueprints, Hardison." I thought for sure Hardison was going to later say that he didn't have time to change the blueprints, and that Hughes may have actually done just that. 2.) I like that you actually named the Busey, "Busey." I'm surprised it cleared.
1.) ... goddamit, I wish I had written that.2.) Hey, there are real Busey's out there.
*********************************Relatively painless. As always thanks for your time and enthusiasm, and enjoy next week's show!
Right. First, the crime; second, the meta.
The crime was inspired, much like "The Van Gogh Job", by our annual scouting trip around the Portland area. Once a year, our location scouts take us out to different places we may not have seen, places with high production value -- and in this case, the world's largest airplane. Just kinda sitting there. At the awesome Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, and watched over by a super friendly, helpful and knowledgeable staff.
I'd actually missed this trip. I was back in LA doing work when I received a text with a photo attached. It was Dean Devlin sitting in Howard Hughes's pilot seat, looking happier than I have ever seen him look. So we knew he was in.
Also, the sheer ballsiness of the crime was intriguing. The world's biggest airplane is right there. I mean, it's impossible to steal the thing. Completely impossible.
But I'd seen David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear ....
... which was the first run at this, actually. I mean, it's not like you can actually move the goddam thing. It's a seaplane. It can't taxi. But you might tow it, cut it apart, or say we stored it somewhere near the water and then taxi or tow it down the river ... there are ways to make it disappear. No, the trick to this con, as in every Landmark Con, is The Blow.
What's The Blow? We'll get to that.
As we developed the idea, we realized the real big swing was to have somebody fly the plane. It turns out, we were told as we walked through the Hercules H-4, that in theory -- IN THEORY -- it could fly. The original engines had been repo'd by the Air Force, but the replacement engines were up to snuff. They are actually started with --I am simplifying here, for you aerospace geeks -- what is essentially a giant primer engine, a helicopter engine, that sits way back in the cockpit.
This plotline was very much inspired by the TrueFact we drop in the episode -- the bit about most of the other planes in the museum, be they P-40B's or Spitfires, being flyable. Some of them were private restorations acquired by this amazing museum over the years from collectors, some of them were salvage from old airfields. As we pointed out in the show, many of them have oil drip pans underneath to catch the leakage of fluids from the FULLY OPERATIONAL WW2 FIGHTER PLANES.
Have I mentioned how ridiculously awesome this museum is?
Anyway, we had a villain - an exec obsessed with Hughes. Making him an airplane guy kept everything thematically unified. We gave him the sin of carelessness, and we had a ton of research on the real-life off-shoring of airplane maintenance (notably to El Salvador) and the concerns people had about these practices.
No one sane would steal the plane, but being part of a coalition to buy it, and then eventually winding up in a crisis where things are moving too fast to stop and think, a crisis where the only reasonable thing is to fly it -- we could get him there. That's the key to getting sane people to do crazy things, according to our con artist friends -- slowly slide them into situations where the crazy is sane in context. Even better if the crazy thing is something they desperately want to do anyway.
This is how small business owners from Ohio wind up in Nigeria with briefcases full of their life savings.
We landed on putting the Mark in a simulator gimmicked to look like the Spruce Goose cockpit. If he approaches in the dark, being chased, using one signature piece of the Spruce Goose architecture to frame the scene -- in this case, we were going to use the spiral staircase that led up to the cockpit -- all that would work. But we were still faced with several problems.
Problem 1.) The Spruce Goose has to be near or on water, or it can't fly. It has no landing gear, per se.Problem 2.) Fueling the son of a bitch would take ages. So the Mark had to believe that the Goose was fueled when he got in her. Why? Were the thieves fueling it, were they going to fly it? But then THEIR plan would be crazy, and in a non-crisis situation, the crazy's harder to sell.Problem 3.) The Blow.
So, let us say you are a showrunner on a big-ass pulp show. How do you deal with these issues?
Problem 1.) Nobody knows the Spruce Goose has no landing gear. Except for .0000001% of the audience, who may get very angry. If there were only a blog where they could go to express their anger ...
Nope, that goes in the Don't Give A Shit bag. You all have a Don't Give A Shit bag, you Don't-Care-About-Gravity-on-Firefly, Why-Do-They-Keep-The-Bourne-Files-in-an-Office-Safe, CSI-Techs-Don't-Talk-to-Witnesses viewers. In this case, obscure engineering fact #2541 goes in the Bag. Hell, I'm pretty sure a large chunk of the audience would have no context for Hughes if not for the Tony Stark crack.
Problem 2.) The fueling thing was tough. Why they hell would there be fuel in the engines? Maybe I was the wrong guy for this -- I'm not a gearhead. I mean, I like tech, but I don't inherently like fast cars or shiny cars, or collect ... things. I had no way in on this. Which is when Chris Downey suggested "Hey, go ask the guy who owns Tesla #009 off the production line, whose office is next door."
I poked my head into Dean's office: "If you owned the Spruce Goose, why would yo put fuel in it?"
I don't think he even lifted his head from his work. "If I owned the Spruce Goose, I'd want to start her up and hear those giant engines roar."
Ah.
And so that problem, timing the con with the anniversary, was solved. We did the effect with CGI, of course, and had to hack the hangar to make it work, but all small sins of storytelling.
Problem 3.) The Blow. The Blow is where you get away with it. The Blow is the bit where the Feds come in and shoot everybody and take the briefcase full of money and the Mark flees and escapes with his life and counts himself lucky.
When your "briefcase full of money" is the biggest airplane in the world, that's a little tricky. Your solve is to stall the Mark, so that when he realizes he's been conned he's a.) too late and b.) discredited. Convincing him he crashed the plane would be the stall, and the crazy story would take care of the rest. Transporting him to a crash site would be a piece of cake, so all we need to do is get him into the simulator....
Problem 4.) ... except we are on a cable budget, and we cannot afford a.) a mocked up simulator or b.) to go to a separate warehouse location to establish the con in the simulator. Especially not in the 7 days we take to shoot each episode. Which we figured out maybe three days before prep.
(Please note, all this is going on while we're breaking and writing four or five other episodes. We had about a week to conceive of the episode and then solve these problems as they arose. Welcome to television.)
The solution, the only solution available to us, was to shoot in the cockpit of the Spruce Goose. Remember what I said about the key to a con being to convince sane people that their only reasonable choice is the crazy one? Yeah. The Leverage production team had somehow become the Marks in our own con.
Okay, on one hand, this is cool. No other film crew in history has filmed in the Spruce Goose cockpit. We would be the first. But how do we jimmy the cockpit? It's not like we can move the damn thing.
This is when I recalled the bank turn. This magazine article has stayed with me for almost 20 years, since I read it as a stand-up comic on the road, flying from city to city. The article explains that while most people think they can tell how a plane's moving, banking, changing course when they're flying, absent visual feedback they do not. And so. They. Die. Welcome to Newtonian Physics, squishy human.
See where this is going? Fool the eye, fool the ear -- and you're done. Or, at least done in Pulp World, where our job is NOT TO BORE YOU.
I will admit that we had a beat where we drugged the Mark to make him disoriented and suggestible, and therefore more likely to buy the con, but the timeline didn't work out -- he'd have to be drugged and woozy for a brief amount of time in con-time, but a very long time in show-time. I didn't want the actor playing the Bad Guy so have to work that way for two acts. So it was cut. Maybe an error, but ... eh. There's 77 of these bastards. Season to taste.
Add Cary Elwes, who totally sold the smart-but-obsessed bad guy, and you have yourself a big, ballsy con of a season opener.
Now, the meta ... we had to move and rebuild our sets over the summer. It occurred to us that if we had to rebuild the damn things, we might as well put the money into some new and shiny. This was coupled with our experience making "The Gold Job" from the previous year. It had been so refreshing to be able to let loose and shoot Portland for Portland, take full of advantage of the city for that episode. And so we arrived at "Is it Crazy or Cool?" Idea #452 for Leverage, just yank up roots and move HQ. It did make sense, after the giant blow-out of the S4 finale.
The clean start and implied six month gap also allowed us to advance the character relationships in ways we wanted to. It was time to get Nate and Sophie on the same page. It was time to get Hardison and Parker together. Being able to skip the "awkward dating episode" and go straight to "they are adorable" was too tempting. We always said we never wanted to do that damn first date episode. Besides, why deprive the fanfic pages of the chance to fill in that time gap? Mi canon es su canon. You're welcome.
Oh, and to our friend at the A.V. Club -- we had a big scene written for Fred Armisen, but scheduling didn't work out.
I'm sure you folks cover anything else interesting in the questions. Let's GO!
@ Anonymous: Oh, John. Not to doubt you but do you really think you will be able to catch up?
Watch me.
@Anonymous: Did I miss it or did we never get to find out Sophie's real name?
Not yet. And remember, when it comes, things... change. I promise you, however, that by the end of Season 5 you will hear someone say it out loud.
@ petticoat said... Great first ep! Two questions: 1. Can you explain a little further how Cary Elwes' character can buy the Spruce Goose when the museum owns it? 2. Not directly related to the episode but what are your go-to news sites for bad guys/story lines? 3.) I second the answering of the question about the cliffhanger being dragged out for the whole season. Please say we'll find out the answer soon! Can't wait until next week!!
1.) The Museum owns it privately. Much like any collection, it's assumed a big enough offer will convince them to part with it. The difference were were explaining was that we weren;t trying to sell him something we plainly didn't have, were were enticing him to partner up.2.) We go pretty much everywhere -- every writer has his favorite sources. I use Evernote to collect my articles, and keep a backlog of shitty rich people and clever criminals in a separate notebook just for the show.
@JoellaBlue: 1.) How soon before we meet the Big Bad? 2.) Our favorite Feds were too busy to come to Portland? How sad. McSweetie will be sad about Parker not being very available 3.) Last minute made me think about what might have happened between Pilot and The Homecoming Job 4.). Will we see Eliot's friend again later this year? The one who he was doing an outside job with?
1.) You did. In the last minute of the show. 2.) Don't assume.3.) That is very perceptive of you.4.) Oh yes. Summer season finale, in fact.
@PurpleOps: It appears the series is now firmly on the satire track, and I'll just need to get used to that. (JR NOTE: We prefer pulp. Say it. Puuuuulp. This show is made to be aired in 1969) Accepting that, it was a fun show, and a better season opener than last year IMHO. Here are the questions - nothing particularly significant, just curious.1.) Was Adam Baldwin playing John Casey from Chuck, or was his character nameless? WONDERFUL cameo!2.) What behavior between Sophie and Nate gave the widow a clue about their relationship? In their scenes together, I didn't notice anything particularly indicative of a relationship.3.) As for that final scene, I'd been under the impression that the show had been renewed for Season 5 AND Season 6. Has that changed, or are we being played with? Or does "All good things must come to an end" have nothing whatsoever to do with the show's renewal or continuation?
1.) As delightful as a Chuck crossover would be, he's got a very big part in the summer season finale so we needed to make him his own character. 2.) She can just tell, as most people can. It was a way of showing that Nate and Sophie are more comfortable with each other, maybe more than even they realize.3.) No renewal yet. And hey, spring comes, snow melts. Change is inevitable...
@Liza: 1) Since the moving of Portland was kind of sprung upon the team (mostly Sophie) will we ever find out if Nate and Sophie buy an apartment?
Nope, separate places. Always good to have separate places.
@Unknown: 1.) As always, loved the writing. The soft reboot to re-establish characters and their relationships was very well done - especially that Hardison is now accepted as equal by Nate (the symbolism of the glass of whiskey). Using Busey for the name of the main henchman was a wonderful insider gag. The con wasn't too complex to keep new viewers away. 2.) Question I do have though, is how much is the series actually 'owned' by TNT? I had gotten the impression through previous posts and comments that Electric Entertainment owned a lot more of the series and TNT was mostly distribution end. Would you (or other commenters in the know) be willing to expand on that a bit?
1.) Hey, I think this is our fifth time slot in five seasons. I'm a bit anal about a soft reboot every year. Glad it worked.2.) I don't think it's any secret that Electric Entertainment is the sole studio involved in Leverage. TNT is our US network.
@Ravenc: Hate to do it but I have to ask...wasn't the Spruce Goose a "flying boat"? It was meant to take off and land on water not a runway, wasn't it? Does it even have landing gear?
You are correct! But not angry, which I will take as a positive result on my hypothesis.
@Jason: I feel like Hardison made a deal with the devil at the end of this episode. Will Parkers trust/emotional issues come into play when Hardsion reveals the secret him and Nate have been keeping?
Good questions. Assuming they ever find out, probably.
@Circling: Absolutely wonderful episode! It just felt right, watching them walk into new digs and having Hardison explain the tech while no one listened. 1) Was that a deliberate call back to The Homecoming Job? The familiarity of that moment was lovely. 2) What's the background scoop on the new office? Is there more than what we've seen? Does anyone live there? 3) Has Hardison really installed a Suggestion Box, and if yes, does anyone but him use it? I would give my right arm for a DVD extra showing the team going through the suggestions in that box. 4) Is Old Nate going to make an appearance in the new space?. 5) CK's comment at the close of the episode that you can't learn how to brew beer online. Was that scripted? Also, his moment with the victim's daughter was lovely. 6) Please tell us other ideas you came up with for the name of the team's beers. Thief Juice? Brilliant. 7) Sophie's constant digs on Portland's weather were great. Any fear of aggravating locals with those? 8) Ooh - speaking of Portland, the outdoor scene of Parker and Sophie - was that filmed the same place the "Don't ask me that Parker" scene was filmed at the end of S3? It sure looked familiar.
1.) Yes, echoed it very strongly. And there's a reason ...2.) Hardison has a crash pad upstairs, at the end of that walkway.3.) Hardison has set up several team-building wikis. No one gives them the respect they deserve.4.) I believe he's hanging in the back work area. But this is new offices. Fresh start.5.) The general revulsion at Hardison's first brew attempts were all improvised.6.) "It's a mouth crime" may be my favorite thing I've written in years. We will unveil his other creations as the show continues.7.) They know it rains.8.) Nope, different park, different part of town. The "Don't ask me,Parker" was over by the Shnitzer theater while this was by the courthouse in the Pearl.
@CC: I really only have one question, which I doubt you'll answer. With all the speculation about this being the last season (I hope it's not, btw) along with the comments from you and the cast about how sad the season (series?) finale is, PLUS this secrecy mess with Hardison and Nate....are we in for a heartbreak if this is the last episode?
Oh God yes. All joking aside, network execs were crying watching the dailies for the finale. Several of the assisitants who are big fans of the show still glare at me when I walk by. I assure you, the finale is ... complicated.
@oppyu: Sophie's Australian impersonation... as an Australian, really? 'g'day'? Why don't you just offer to throw a shrimp on the barbie and show everyone what a real knife is?
Gina as a native New Zealander (you did not know that, did you?) was yanking the chain of our Australian D.P. Dave Connell.
@Evelyn: Nate isn't dying, is he? Because that would suck.
We're all dyin' baby.
@Matt: 1.) Will the opening credits be back for 5.02? 2.) I'd love to see Jeri Ryan again, any chance you could bring Tara back for an episode or two?
1.) We stole the 30 seconds of credits back for the show. I don;t think we need them anymore.2.) As always, it sucks that actual humans who are under contracts are attached to these characters. Jeri didn't work out this year.
@ellabell: 1.) How long were they away for? I didn't hear it, but I'm interested. 2.) Like others, I'm concerned that Old Nate isn't in the new headquarters. Where is he? Why isn't there yet? 3.) I like that they are using Leverage, Inc. again, but how come that one wasn't burned? 4.) ALL the old aliases were burned? Even the ones that came before the team? (I'm kind of heartbroken that Charlotte Prentice would be burned... and not ready for Annie Kroy or Alice White to be gone either!) 5.) I saw on the fermenter that they are brewing an IPA. Is that it? Or do they have a wider selection too? As an aside, what kind of beer would YOU brew? or, what's your favourite beer? (I'm SO hoping for some Maudite or Fin du Monde or Chambly here. :D )
1.) The traditional 6 months. There's been a roughly six month gap between each season except for season 3 and 4, which were separated by a few weeks. Leverage time is roughly lined up with our real-time.2.) He's safe, I promise.3.) Hardison is using that as a metaphor. Although we can argue that there are enough Leverage Inc's around the world, it's a safe haven.4.) They will probably re-use those names if it's in a low-security setting. I know we hear "Alice White" again. Parker is ... comfortable with her.
@Spencer: Any particular reason Christian looks directly into the camera when he shakes the bear? Loved this when I saw it at FanCon2, and still loved it the second time around. I have to admit I had forgotten about the teddy bear scene. ROFL!
He's looking juuust camera left, actually, at Parker.
@Ally: Oh, I missed you guys... A couple of quick questions: 1. Spruce Goose is an orange box. I researched that. But the National Act thingy of 1966: ledger or orange box?
2. Now that the team is actually in Portland, does Christian have to have his hair flatironed?
3. Did Sophie actually buy/lease the theater?
4. I don't see why they actually have to have an operating restaurant to keep up their cover.
5. Where did Sophie and Hardison get the guns? (probably a really stupid question, considering their line of work...)
6. Who actually put the bomb in Roemer's car? Again, fabulous episode, as always, and loving Season 5 so far!
We missed you too!1.) National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 -- orange box. The foreign ownership rules are not as strict as we say, but it's a real thing.2.) Christian's hair is as he wills it at any time. But as I said, things change ...3.) Bought it.4.) They don't -- Hardison is indulging himself. Frankly he's also using it to make Eliot happy, although Eliot would never admit it.5.) Fake guns, they have tons of them.6.) The Leverage team bombed Roemer's car to spook him into panicked paranoia.
@Anonymous: And for those of us that want to send money your way, any idea when the season pass for the show might be available on Amazon or iTunes? (Don't have cable, really don't want to use less legal methods.)
Should be up now.
@Anonymous: I understand the move to Portland because that is where you actually film and they were in Boston way too long considering their chosen profession(s), but does that mean no more poker games for the boys? No more Bonanno? And really, there are a few people in the police, FBI, Interpol, as well as other thieves and grifters that know who they really are - did moving really solve that problem?
Moving solved the "hey, that's where we can wiretap them" problem. Lots of criminals out there, and out of sight means out of mind.
@ellabell: I forgot to add: I'm surprised Roemer made it into Canada, as I hear those Mounties are scrupulously polite and utterly unstoppable -- maybe even the most feared law enforcement agency on earth.
Ellabell is referencing the Leverage-verse convention that the most terrifying law enforcement agency on earth are the Mounties, base don a sadly unproduced episode pitched by @KitMoxie. you'll note he was quickly caught and returned to the US to be questioned by the unflappable FBI agents.
@Group One: Also, at the end of the episode, Hardison and Nate talk about hiding something from the rest of the team, but I thought that team learned to trust each other after finding out about Elliot's previous involvement with Damien Moreau. What is different about this trust issue? Why doesn't Nate trust the others to tell them the truth whatever that truth may be, and why does Hardison go along with the lie?
All will be revealed. But valid questions, certainly. Just note, they do keep each others' secrets -- Nate never told the team about Eliot's warehouse massacre, for example. And the team knows Sophie's real name.
@Bex: Was that a map on Hardison's screen at the end? Not being a US native Interesting locations lit up.
Yes, it was a map of the world.
@Nekussa: As much as I would love to have Leverage go on and on, I'd still prefer that you know when you're going to end it and have the time to wrap the story up, rather than get cancelled and leave us hanging.
Surprise cancellation is why every year the show ends with what I would consider a perfectly good last episode for the show. Maybe not the one you want, but one you could live with.
@briddle: Is Nate's new haircut and neater look indicative of his attitude, or just Timothy Hutton getting tired of the shaggy look? There's a "discussion" going on the imdb boards. I'm of the opinion that it's directly related to Nate's newfound happiness with life.
Kind of both, but mostly Nate-centric. This is the year Nate gets his shit together.
@meanderling: Is Nate's little sailor boy detour connected to the devious planning he and Hardison were up to in the end? Or is it just the S. S. Midlife Crisis?
Combo, although Tim Hutton was the one who came up with it. He said that if Nate was going to get his head together, he;d be the type to go off on a boat and read for six months. That worked for me.
@Sabine: Christian Kane and Adam Baldwin! There aren't many BAMFs I'd call adorable but you managed to get two of them at once. So how long have Eliot and Adam Baldwin's character (Vance, I think?) known each other? Long enough for Vance to know what happened to send Eliot totally off the rails and start working for people like Moreau?
Known each other for most of their lives, actually. So yes, certainly.
@ANonymous: Are real explosions a thing of past? The fake explosions and fires kind of yank a body off the fun-train.
That was actually a real explosion. A BIG real explosion we comped the car onto.
@talea: So is the Spruce Goose REALLY fired up once a year? If so, how do I find the schedule so that my brother (an aerospace engineer) and my dad (an-82-year-old pilot who has three home-builts in his hanger) can be there for the next time? (hey the guy's 82; gotta do these things while we can!)
Sadly, no, although the owner of the Evergreen Museum, Del Smith, was positively giddy when he saw the engine effects. If your Dad is into planes, I can't recommend the Museum highly enough.
@ANonymous: I realize you're not going to give me any absolutes. But there's a rumor going around Tumblr (yeah, I know. Serious business over there) that "Nate and Sophie will only be canon for a short time". Someone who claims to have some inside knowledge is claiming this. What's that about? Is there any truth to this? My instinct is that this person is full of shit. But um. I like Nate and Sophie so I figured I just... ask?
Define "short time." No, we just got them together, we're going to take a while to explore the relationship. Although this could be the last season, so...
@Lydia: 1a. Wouldn't Roemer realize there wasn't enough fuel in the lines from "turning over the engines" to actually get very far, if even off the ground? b Where did the team "acquire" the "wreckage"?
2. If the crew is brewing IPA, will they take over some the production of "Summer Grifter"?
3. Since this season looks like it's going to be focusing on relationships, which non canon fan pairing has surprised you the most over the course of the show?
I like a questioner who labels her sub-questions1a.) We gimmicked the dials to reinforce his assumption.1b.) There was actually a moment of panic as we were prepping, where someone said "But this airplane wreckage is plainly made of wood." "That's okay," I said "because ... SO'S THE SPRUCE GOOSE!" And they clapped, and I drank.2.) I will get right on that.3.) I don't read the fan pairings -- I know what's out there mostly from geek osmosis. But I think there's some Eliot/Maggie stuff kicking around. Or isn't there one where Faith form Buffy is Nate's daughter? That amuses me. The Supernatural crossovers are too easy.
@Anonymous: Let me ask you a more important question: why the hell is EVERYONE who aint on the crew fucking so stupid. EVERYBODY even the victims they helping. Let me ask a question directly to the victim of these bad guys: how you gonna let someone fuck you over that hard and then trust a total stranger to fix everything? ... etc. for a hilarious and long post
You are my favorite comment EVER. You delight me. Although on a more serious projector note, which @Oona also asks, a.) there is such high-def footage available. I know, because we bought it. b.) His projector is wired into a much stronger industrial IMAX (which you can just BARELY see if you freeze-frame that wide projector shot) and projected onto a semi-translucent film, which goes dark when struck form the other side. We cut that explanation for time.
@Anonymous: When you say in the commentary that Sophie and Maggie are "Canon", is that just tongue in cheek? Or is it legit? Or have you stopped giving a shit entirely. I won't say which one seems most obviously the case.
I don't know how long you've been here, but I said back in Season Two, the characters' sexual experiences are... whatever makes you want to watch the show more.
@Oona: As for questions, I read somewhere that most cast contracts run for 5 seasons. Is that true for Leverage?
Our actors' contracts are confidential, but no, industry standards tend to be for 3, then 3 or for more.
@MacSTL: 1) Since you directed, were you sailing w/Nate? 2) When the Busey accosted the little girl - why didn't Parker yell at her to run the other way? She didn't look like she was too far away to stop the guy if the girl took off. 3) Did Beth or her stuntie do the competence porn move when she entered that server room? AMAZING
1.) That sailing shot was Poor Man's Process. He never left the dock. That dock sequence was the first shot, BTW.2.) She's actually a full block away, it just seems shorter in the shot, and not helped by editing.3.) Although it was Beth's stuntie doing the server room break-in, that was Beth doing her own rappelling onto the desk in the opening office scene.
@Anonymous: Why did Gina finish filming before the others? Is she not going to be in the season 5 finale? I know this is getting ahead of myself, but judging by this and some twitter comments, I'm concerned she's not coming back. :-/
Coincidence -- all her locations were blocked out at the beginning of the shoot schedule. She finished no more than a day or so ahead of the rest.
@Zeyneb: As a fan from Turkey, loved that Parker and Hardison were on vacationing in my city!! Whose idea was it? And why?
I have a soft spot for Istanbul, as I spent a long time researching it for the never-shot sequel I wrote for The Thomas Crown Affair. I have mercilessly strip-mined that script for Leverage episodes, so it wasn't wasted time.
@IMForeman: 1.) When Nate and Roemer are looking at the Spruce Goose blueprints, and Roemer comes to the conclusion that Hughes had developed stealth tech in the 40s, Nate says "Nice going on the blueprints, Hardison." I thought for sure Hardison was going to later say that he didn't have time to change the blueprints, and that Hughes may have actually done just that. 2.) I like that you actually named the Busey, "Busey." I'm surprised it cleared.
1.) ... goddamit, I wish I had written that.2.) Hey, there are real Busey's out there.
*********************************Relatively painless. As always thanks for your time and enthusiasm, and enjoy next week's show!
LEVERAGE #503 "The First Contact Job" Question Post
Unbelievably, the #501 post is done and will go up tonight, after tonight's ep airs. So welcome brand shiny new writer Aaron Garcia to his first produced episode, a fine comedic romp, and fire away with the questions, snark and rage.
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