In the twelfth episode of the fifth season of Leverage<\/i>, the team attempts the impossible con. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Leverage<\/i>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of gaslighting, nonconsensual drugging, ableism<\/b>. <\/span><\/p>\n I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that I like this episode all that much, and part of it is because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much more disturbing than usual. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know if I accept the solution to this con because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure if I even believe it.<\/p>\n Now, this show has fairly liberally used a number of techniques seen here that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve addressed before. From gaslighting, drugging, and manipulation, nothing here is necessarily new<\/i>. But what makes this feel so uncomfortable is that the mark \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who has certainly done some awful things \u00e2\u20ac\u201c clearly has a problem rooted in his mental state and not<\/i> his morality. So the approach here is confusing because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 is Dodgson even a bad guy? I understand that this is meant to seem like an utterly impossible con, and it certainly comes off that way. The team is dealing with subconscious urges and desires, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not something they can control in any real way. My concern this whole time?<\/p>\n What if they made Charles Dodgson worse<\/i>?<\/p>\n That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that I never felt like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The White Rabbit Job\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ever addressed or acknowledged. The threat of a failed con was certainly there, and Dodgson got closer than ever to selling off his company all because of what the team had done. But no one ever seemed to think of another eventuality. The mind can be a fragile thing, and these people could have broken Dodgson, no?<\/p>\n That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to say there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anything here to be entertained. There are a ton of nerdy references to Alice in Wonderland<\/i> and Inception<\/i> and Doctor Who<\/i>. (I hope that Sally Sparrow reference was to Who<\/i>.) We get to see the main cast act absurdly for forty minutes while they manipulate Dodgson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dream world. (ELIOT, OH MY GOD.) And I like it when this team is challenged!<\/p>\n I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d go so far as to say the climax of the episode \u00e2\u20ac\u0153saves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the whole thing, since that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking about this story. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Parker who provides both Dodgson and the story with some much-needed humanity. After the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spent so much time toying with Dodgson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perception of reality (seriously, this is the most intense gaslighting they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever done), Parker is the first one to approach Dodgson with his humanity in mind. I wonder, then, if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just allowed her to do that in the first place, then maybe none of this could have ever happened. I mean, if the team had just done some more research instead of invading the mark\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind, they might have been able to determine the source of Dodgson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grief and guilt.<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Parker who does, though, and I do<\/i> love that the show gives this to her. Dodgson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sense of isolation is tied to the responsibility he feels for his sister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death, but Parker hones in specifically on his loneliness. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a gut-wrenching scene to watch because we know that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only since she joined the Leverage team that she was able to feel like she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t alone. How long had she gone without that feeling? A decade? And here she is, sitting in front of a man who is brutalizing himself over loss and grief, willing to let his father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s company plunge into non-existence in the hopes that he might be able to escape what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feeling.<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a shame that this episode takes so long to get to something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so real. I suppose that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an ironic comment to make, given that the point of the con here was to create a believable \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but untrue \u00e2\u20ac\u201c version of reality. But I expected a bit more sympathy from the team because the show has certainly offered this before. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had antagonists who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t black-and-white-evil, and I think that Dodgson should have been treated that way. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not saying his mental illness or his circumstances meant that he should not have been held accountable; that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not fair either. His behavior was costing people their jobs and their livelihood, and this was definitely the kind of case that the Leverage team should have taken. I just wanted a bit more nuance, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The White Rabbit Job\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – The Mark Does Stuff Tour 2015 is now live and includes dates across the U.S., Canada, Europe, the U.K., and Ireland. Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a> In the twelfth episode of the fifth season of Leverage, the team attempts the impossible con. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Leverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[625],"tags":[626],"class_list":["post-4651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leverage","tag-mark-watches-leverage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches will be the remainder of\u00c2\u00a0The Legend of Korra<\/i>, series 8 of\u00c2\u00a0Doctor Who<\/i>, and Kings<\/i>. On Mark Reads, Diane Duane’s Young Wizards<\/i> series will replace the Emelan books.
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