In the fourth episode of the fourth season of Leverage, let’s go steal my feelings. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Leverage.
Trigger Warning: For discussion of war, Nazism, racism (specifically anti-black racism), and anti-miscegenation
I don’t know how this show is ever going to top this episode.
There’s a lot of risk taken here, from the non-traditional story, to the lack of a mark, to a heist that’s more of a treasure hunt, to the BRILLIANT and bizarre flashbacks… it’s monumental. This was a gamble taken by a team that was clearly willing to be ambitious about staging a World War II flashback that was specifically about how white supremacy kept two lovers apart. And make no mistake, there is absolutely no way you can divorce the racism from this story and have the same episode. It is integral to our understanding of what happened to Charlie Lawson.
I know that Leverage borrows from real-life events and phenomenon frequently, so I’m going to start with a terrible reality of the world: anti-miscegenation laws have been part of our society for over three hundred years. The practice of criminalizing sexual relations or marriage between white and black people was brought over by English colonists, lasted throughout the next couple hundred years, and was only repealed on a federal level on the 12th of June in 1967. Look at that number. Understand that there are a shit-ton of people still alive who lived in this country when that was still on the books. Understand that South Carolina kept their anti-miscegenation language in their constitution until 1998. Alabama? Until 2000.
(And to expand this beyond the United States, the Nazis were huge proponents of anti-miscegenation laws along Aryan lines as well and was also a manifestation of their vicious anti-Semitism. There were also anti-miscegenation laws in South Africa in the 1950s prohibiting marriage between whites and non-whites under Apartheid, and then there was that whole Population Registration Act of 1950, but that gets into an entirely separate form of oppressive discrimination.)
Now, while I urge you to do research to understand what sort of historical context informs “The Van Gogh Job,†I think it’s also important to understand the kind of terror that Charlie Lawson describes here. Something as simple and innocent and pure as flirting with a white woman at that time could have led to Charlie’s death. He had to deal with his fellow soldiers stealing credit from him because that’s official policy. He had to deal with so many microaggressions and outright acts of blatant violence and discrimination, and this was every single day. It was a relentless atmosphere of fear and terror.
With this in mind, the show filters Charlie’s story about the lost Van Gogh painting through Parker’s mind. Again, this is a risky move, but I found it incredibly rewarding to see how she imagined the people in Charlie’s past as the people in her life. Obviously, it was a treat to see these actors get to try out such different roles than usual, particularly Aldis Hodge. But by putting these actors in the past, we could see parallels to the present. Charlie’s entire motivation for telling the truth to Parker was because he saw himself in Hardison. He wanted to tell Parker not to waste time when it came to love. That parallel journey, then, resonates even stronger than it might have because it’s all performed by people we recognize.
But holy shit, y’all, Danny Glover and Aldis Hodge and Beth Riesgraf. How? HOW WE WERE ALLOWED TO WITNESS THESE THREE GIVE THESE KIND OF PERFORMANCES??? I was shocked by Danny GLover’s appearance in the cold open because the man is one of the finest actors of our time, and then ALDIS HODGE COMES IN AND DESTROYS EVERYTHING. The challenge here, of course, is that Hodge could not bring an ounce of Hardison to his performance as Lawson. Even if this was through Parker’s view, she was still hearing the words through Charlie, and that’s the view we get of the past. And so, Aldis Hodge gives us a side of him we’ve never seen. Now, it’s not like Hardison isn’t emotional, but there’s a severity and a weight to his performance as Lawson, one that mimics the kind of character we see Glover play. It’s almost eerie to watch because the two work so well playing the same character.
I think ultimately, there’s a tragic joy to watching this episode unfold. We know fairly early on that this story isn’t going to have a happy ending. Dorothy was married to someone else, and she passed years before Charlie returned to his hometown. So I knew that ultimately, Charlie and Dorothy wouldn’t end up together. Leverage isn’t the kind of show to dwell on tragedy, but it can also give us realism. It’s sadly realistic that these two lovers never got to be with one another. But in that sadness, Charlie offers hope to both Parker and Hardison. He sees how she grips his hand as he leaves the room, and he knows he has to inspire her to pursue love. His message isn’t overbearing, and it’s not condescending, either. He just wants the best for these two, knowing that they still have a chance. Charlie doesn’t devalue his own life or how he chose to live it; instead, he chooses to enrich someone elses.
I won’t be okay with this episode for a long time.
The video for “The Van Gogh Job†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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