The Thing That Pisses Me off in Leverage: MOAR WHITE GUYS

[cimorene]

I think that Leverage would be a lot better without Timothy Hutton.

Now, bear with me here.

It's not that I don't like Timothy. He's good and he's charming. And I kind of like his character, I mean, he's not a bad guy. It's not like he's such an asshole that I just can't stand to look at him at ALL although later in the season I started to sort of feel that way.

But I'm talking about on a meta level, here. We've got this team and everyone in their specialised roles... except him. He's just the "mastermind". Obviously a team of talented and reasonably diverse individuals can't be lead than anyone other than a middle-aged American white guy. And you know, I am fucking sick of it! I don't want to see any more of the leadership of middle-aged American white guys: I am looking at you, every ensemble show that I can think of. I've had enough of that shit in real life to last me forever. I think I can speak for most of the world's population when I say that - except for white American men, and Hollywood (Oregon?), apparently.

There's no reason on a meta level that Gina Bellman's mature, preternaturally gifted grifter shouldn't lead the group, or that the hacker, Hardison, shouldn't coordinate the team tasks. It is not necessary for the story to add another fucking middle-aged white guy to tv canon.

And then, as if his presence wasn't already a bit insulting, we get his storyline swallowing more and more of the ongoing plot. And it's not even an external storyline. No, it's his priviledged white male... alcoholism? Seriously? With the backgrounds of all these other characters, our big arc is the survivor's guilt and regret of a daddy driven to drink - oh yeah, and how the emotional wounds of the white man with a saviour complex make him turn his back on love. No really, I'm facinated, TNT. Tell me more.

Comments

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

hahaaah, yes. So much yes. I have in fact the same issue with Lie To Me (and many, many other shows of course, but the newer ones are getting the OMG CAMEL'S BACK BROKN NAO full force effect of the annoyance). And I can more easily give a pass to Lie to Me because, well, Tim Roth, and I like his character better, even if it's also somehow a heroic daddy character (I have had my fill of heroid daddies of late).

Anyway, so, yes. And even if we keep the character - the mastermind, the guy who was good but turned outlaw, the alcoholic, etc - he could Not Be White! HOW NOVEL! Or, if you (by you of course I mean 'them thar, tptb') are too scared to have that, he could be a SHE! Why yes, sometimes women also can turn to drink, and turn to RobinHood-ness, and LEAD PEOPLE.

Sometimes I wonder if 'the leading character has to be a middle-aged white man' is actually a contractual clause somewhere. How pathetic.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hmmm yes, but Lie To Me is a semi-autobiographical show like Bones. Tim Roth is playing the consultant/producer dude just like Emily Deschanel is playing Kathy Reichs, so... I mean, I don't think the show would even have been conceived without that.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

ah! I did not know this. :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

The consultant dude has a little blog (linked from the show site I think...?) where he explains the SCIENCE bits in the episodes and corrects anything that he is worried might be misrepresented. It's kind of like if Bones were writing it actually. Really cute. XD

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

Shiny! I might look that up, thanks.

[retrofit88.livejournal.com]

OMG. You have so totally hit a nail on the head with this one. I was blathering on (http://retrofit88.livejournal.com/35061.html) the other day about the body types we see for athletic/fighting women in visual media, but this is totally another aspect of the same thing. It's like, okay, SURELY we can break out of this rut by NOW??? It's the 21st century, dammit! Do we need _yet_ _another_ William Petersen/Gary Sinise leading the team?

Ironically, it almost feels like it _was_ getting better a few years ago, and now they're going the other way out of laziness or something. Because, Isaac and Dana on Sports Night? Kerry on ER? Lt. Giardello on Homicide? I can come up with more women and people of color leading ensemble dramas a few years ago, than I can now. I wonder if the increasing complexity of the plotlines means they're relying on stereotyping more to convey character traits, so going "leader=middle-aged white dude" is just the easy way out...

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Or maybe it's coincidence or has something to do with the increasing diversity of the supporting casts? It feels like if you look around, the ensembles always have a grab-bag of minorities to draw on and then they're like, "oh, I'm so scared by all these women and races - GIVE ME A WHITE GUY to tie it all together so there will be one person that I, the studio exec, can relate to! :O" I don't know.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

Objectively, I agree. It's hard, though, because I love Timothy Hutton, and I think he's been brilliant.

There's no reason on a meta level that Gina Bellman's mature, preternaturally gifted grifter shouldn't lead the group, or that the hacker, Hardison, shouldn't coordinate the team tasks.

Yes, and no. There's a very good reason that there needs to be someone other than Sophie or Hardison leading the team: the leader has to be someone who's an outsider, since none of the four thieves can trust one another.

However, there's no real reason that character has to be a white male.

With the backgrounds of all these other characters, our big arc is the survivor's guilt and regret of a daddy driven to drink - oh yeah, and how the emotional wounds of the white man with a saviour complex make him turn his back on love.

Again, yes and no. Yes, it's All About the White Guy, but my takeaway from the season is actually something Sterling tells Nate in "Two-Horse Job"--that suffering doesn't make you a hero. Nate's emotional wounds may make him turn his back on love, but what's even more clear is that although he's carrying around a lot of guilt and pain, that doesn't mean he's still not an asshole a lot of the time. (I don't know if you've seen the end-of-season arc, but First David Job has a line from Sophie that is dead on about Nate and his motivations.)

I'm interested in seeing where they go in the second season. Hutton's said in a couple of recent interviews that he things Nate's drinking needs to be resolved so that they can move on. John Rogers posted recently that the writers didn't want Sophie and Nate to hook up this season, because Nate's too fucked up, and Sophie can do better. (Though I'm NOT SEEING the Sophie/Eliot.)

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

There's Sophie/Eliot?

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

After the series finale, some people apparently see it. I don't know how much fic there is, because like I said, I don't see it. Of course, I don't see the Nate/Eliot either; I'm all about the Alec/Eliot or the Alec/Eliot/Parker.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I pretty much see Alec/Eliot or maybe Alec/Eliot/Parker and that's it.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Okay, it's true that the angle is more about how addiction makes him an asshole which includes but is not limited to turning his back on love than about the fact that he's wounded and sad. But I don't find the "alcohol makes you a dick" tragedy more original or interesting than emotional wounds/dead baby/survivor's guilt/not hooking up with the hot woman. Even if it were, again: overprivileged white guy gets addicted and is an asshole. I'm still not impressed.

Also, I've read and watched plenty of storylines about fictional thieves working together and trusting each other to greater or lesser degrees, so I can't agree that they needed a non-conman player, whether that was a middle-aged white man or not.

[norah.livejournal.com]

Amen. SO BORED with his storyline, and when he can't function, the others generally do fine on their own. I really don't get why he's there.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Fixit fanfic:

After that disastrous trip to Alaska and Nate's fatal snowmobile accident, Sophie wasn't the same for a couple of months. She drank a whole bottle of champagne by herself, she wore a tracksuit some days, and Eliot had his suspicions about the disappearance of the Tyrannosaurus from the Museum of Natural History's travelling dinosaur exhibit. But then one day she breezed into headquarters in a new pair of designer shades trailing a Hermes scarf, and when Parker asked her what happened, she smiled, "Vibrator."

[brownbetty]

Yeah. I mean, I enjoy him as a character, can't be bothered with his man-pain, and could do without the blandening.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I mean it's not just that his manpain is boring but that it's EVERYWHERE. If you can't be interested in his manpain, you're doing some finger-tapping in every episode here, like the Bette's dying daddy in s3(?) L-Word. Could we please give equal time to the other storylines? Is this an ensemble or is everyone else a sidekick to his hero? (And if they are I think I have the wrong show and need to not watch it now.)