Leverage Season One

I imagine I'm like a lot of people, in that I first discovered Leverage when it was in repeats on Ion instead of during it's original runs on TNT. Which is a shame, and says something, I think, about how much TNT must have advertised it. So it's a bit of a shame that I'm only getting into the show now that it's been cancelled after five seasons, but I think it's still worth looking at so that people can check out the DVDs. Which I think is a very good idea, because Leverage is a very good show. I had been watching episodes here and there when they were in repeats, but finally we sat down to start renting the discs in order and watching the show the right way. While it's actually not that hard to catch up and know what's going on in any given episode, the show does benefit from being watched properly.

Which is kind of refreshing actually, American television seems to have gotten itself into this binary where either a show is like a simple sitcom where nothing changes too much and there's no overall continuity between one episode and the next OR it's a Lost-style puzzle where if you miss one episode you've missed out on so much important story that you have no idea what's going on. I miss the in between stuff, and Leverage is perfect for that particular problem of mine.

If you haven't caught the rerunning marathons, the story is basically that a former good guy and insurance investigator has teamed up with a band of professional thieves. He leads them on complicated con jobs and heists, not for money for themselves, but to help people who have no other course of action. His rationalization is he picks up where the law leaves off. How well that rationalization works for him and those around him becomes a pretty good plot point during season one.

Now the one big problem with season one is that the order of the episodes is a mess. I've not seen something this messed up outside of cartoons in a long time. It aired in one order, it was shot in another, it was put on the dvds in a third configuration, and it was intended to be a completely different way. At least that's the best I can glean from Wikipedia, because it becomes glaringly obvious that the episodes on the DVD aren't in the proper order. Character development seems to bounce all over the place, and the relationship between Nate and Sophie especially suffers. In the end, I think the reason I'm not buying into their relationship and their chemistry even as I watch season two is because season one was so messed up on the DVDs. I believed it more when I was watching whatever random episode was on in syndication.

Every episode of the show follows a pretty specific formula, but instead of becoming boring and predictable, this makes the show more fun. You can see some of the plot twists coming, once you know how the story usually goes, but you still enjoy the ride. The con always goes bad, but in a way that the team expected and that was always part of their plan from the beginning, which you find out about in flashbacks at the end when Nate explains to the mark exactly how they got to them.

The first episode, The Nigerian Job, is a great pilot for the series. It sets up the characters, it gives Nate his motivation, it shows you all of their special skills in memorable ways, and it sets up the formula as well. It also sets up something else that's great about Leverage, the talent of the guest stars. It's hard to run a series where every episode has to rely on the talent of the guest stars, and I've seen some really fail on that front, but Leverage doesn't.

Now, one thing you have to do to love this show is let go of a need for realism because there are a few things where you're just going to be too confused to let it go otherwise. Especially The Mile High Job, where the team foils an evil plot while they're all on a plane. Almost nothing about that episode really holds up to much scrutiny (especially the fight in the plane's bathroom, they try to make it look small but yeah right). But you let it go because Hardison is so hilarious that it's okay.

Which is really what the show is about, the characters on the team. To be honest, I find the main protagonist the least interesting of the bunch. His backstory is compelling but the "my fatal flaw is being so depressed I've become an alcoholic" bit doesn't really do anything for me. Parker, Hardison, and Elliot are the stars of the show and their antagonistic friendships and complicated personalities shine from the very beginning. Parker is an especially well done character, because they've managed to take somebody with some large and obvious problems and managed to not just play it for laughs or melodrama, but for a realistic mix of both that fits the tone of the show and still takes her seriously while making you like her.

They play a bit in the first season with an overall bad guy in Nate's former co-worker, Jim Sterling, and he's interesting enough (and played by the always enjoyable Mark Sheppard) but he doesn't really become too strong a plot thread which I'm thankful for. We needed more time to see the team enjoying themselves and getting good at what they do before they're ready for a real nemesis.

The first season obviously ended in a way that shows that the creators weren't sure if they would get picked up for another season, and it's actually pretty touching and a good place to end, if it had to be that way. But I'm glad there's more, because there's too many fun cons for them to pull and too many annoying untouchable bad guys for them too take down.

If you liked the A-Team at all, then you absolutely need to watch Leverage. If you have even a slight interest in heists and complicated con jobs, then it's also your kind of show. But if you just also enjoy shows with good, complicated characters then you really should give it a try. There's five seasons now, so time to get started.

You can't see it, so why is it important?

For no good reason lately, there's been a rash of people grumping again about how many spaces are "proper" to put after a period.

You can't see it, but everything I type for this blog has two spaces after every period, and it's going to stay that way. You know why?

Because it doesn't actually matter.

Listen, I get the arguments that we should start teaching that it's proper to only put one space. Because the idea of putting two spaces was due to an outdated technology (specifically, typewriters, which is where a lot of our randomness comes from, including how our keys are laid out, or so I've heard). Okay, we change with the times, that's cool. Kids today already pretty much know how to type from birth, so I can't imagine we have typing classes anymore, but sure, let's teach them that you put one space.

After all, with the code for most webpages, it doesn't actually even recognize the second space half the time. Or at least that was the way of it back in the day when I did HTML coding by hand.

Because you see, I'm also very old school when it comes to how long I've been doing this stuff, and that's why I think we need to lay off of people about this whole thing. No, teachers in communications classes shouldn't be teaching two spaces.

But we also shouldn't act like it's incorrect either. At the moment, because we're in a transition, BOTH are correct. It's like fish or fishes. It's not wrong, people who put two spaces aren't evil, and getting angry about it or even cranky is actually really dumb. Save your energy for something important, like defending the Oxford Comma.

I used to type about 60 WPM when I was in middle school, and it was through a sort of slapped together hunt and peck style coupled with so many years experience that I just knew where the keys were. But I looked at the keyboard, and despite being fast by the standards of the day, it wasn't as great as it could be. Then I took a typing class because it got rid of a requirement for school, and the teacher forced me to learn to "touch type" or whatever the kids today are calling it. Proper typing technique, fingers in the right places, not looking at the keyboard, all that fun stuff. She actually put stickers on my keyboard so that I couldn't see the letters anymore.

I learned to type not just faster, but twice as fast. I can get to 120 WPM without even trying that hard these days, and actually at the moment my typing speed is one of the things I can use to earn money. It's a marketable skill, the fact that I can type so quickly. And I do it because I don't actually think about it. It's all muscle memory and mostly unconscious. I don't think out "now I need to type B, here's the B, now I need to type E, here's the E." I just think the word and then it's there on the screen because I've practiced so much that this is the way it is. My typing speed is a necessary part of my life, and again, it makes me money.

Part of that typing speed is that I don't think when I put a period at the end of a sentence. I just hit the space bar twice and move on because I'm not actually thinking about anything that my hands are doing, it's a weird disconnect when you think about it, but there it is.

So if you're going to sit there and be snotty and sneer at somebody for putting two spaces at after a period when I do that because I'm actually REALLY GOOD at what I do, then you just come across looking like a jerk. Just shut up and ignore how many spaces are there unless there's 3 or 50 or something, and move on with your life. The teenagers will put what they want to put, and in twenty years we'll be doing something else entirely. They're already changing communication entirely, just let them do it and be the old fogy who does what they want anyway.

So let's get back to arguing about the Oxford Comma. Because I will defend that one to my last breath.

Queen of Versailles

It's been two years now, but when I was in the beginning stages of the documentary I've been working on, I was trying to explain the way it worked to somebody I was pitching the idea to. I told them that basically when you go to make a documentary, you go in with an idea of what you want it to be about. You make outlines, you probably write a script. You have this idea of what the story is going to be. And then that all gets thrown completely out the window by the story of what actually happens. There probably few more perfect examples of this than Queen of Versailles, where director Lauren Greenfield started out making a movie about a couple building the largest private home in America. Then the recession happened.

Greenfield did the best thing she could have done - she kept filming. As real estate mogul David Siegel's financial empire quickly dwindles, Greenfield's camera stays in the house. When they put their unfinished dream home up for sale, Greenfield asks difficult questions and gets realistic and heartfelt answers. There were moments that I began to think might have been staged, but at the same time I don't think that Jackie Siegel was the type of person to go along with staging. When she goes to the Hertz counter to rent a car instead of a limo for the first time, she asks what their driver's name is going to be. The guy at the counter is genuinely confused and doesn't understand what she could possibly mean. A lesser film by a lesser director would have set up things like that, but Greenfield doesn't need to. She just had the good sense to be there and keep the camera rolling.

There are things about Queen of Versailles that are very hard to watch, but not because it's poorly made. It's well structured, and shows a lot of skill from Greenfield and her editor, Victor Livingston. The story becomes this distillation of a typical American story, from rags to riches to rags again. David Siegel has probably never been poor before, but he shows very clearly that he didn't get to be rich by being stupid about money. Though the film doesn't shy away from showing exactly how he got to be rich, which borders on dishonesty in selling time shares to people who probably can't afford them. Part of how his business comes crashing down is that suddenly these couples they've been selling to who couldn't afford the properties in the first place find themselves unable to pay their bills, which leaves Siegel in the same situation.

But the real star of the story is the queen herself, Jackie Siegel. She's oddly likable even as she continues to be so completely clueless about money that you wonder how she's survived so far. Even after they've lost all their money, she continues to overspend and insist on buying extravagant things, getting plastic surgery procedures, buying herself $2,000 worth of caviar for Christmas, and refusing to sell off items that could help them pay for everything. She stands in her living room talking to her son, wearing an expensive fur coat, and he asks the time. She makes a joke about being unable to afford a watch.

The story becomes a strange cautionary tale, without actually being degrading or making fun of the Siegel's it gives a perfect example of some of the worst excesses of American culture. Jackie says that if she knew she wouldn't be able to have as many nannies as she wanted, she wouldn't have had so many kids because they're too much work. On the brink of bankruptcy, David gets upset that Jackie didn't hire a bartender or a server for a Christmas party. Jackie rides around the neighborhood in the back of her limo, discussing the number of foreclosures in her neighborhood with her driver. After they have to let go of most of their household staff, the family quickly finds themselves unable to care for their own home, which Greenfield illustrates with a few too many close-ups of dog feces and a really tragic shot of a dead pet lizard.

It's a movie that at the same time angered me and made me feel sympathetic. The children in the house really do seem just victims of their circumstances, and like they have better heads on their shoulders than the adults. So it's upsetting when Jackie points out that she's had to tell her kids to prepare to go to college and earn their own way and David admits in a separate interview that he hasn't' saved any money for their college tuition and they'll have to go straight to work. Even David's son from a previous marriage, who works for him, points out that except for one year of living with his dad when he was in high school, he hardly got anything from him and was poor most of his life. These people wanted to build a palace, the largest single family home in the country, and neither of them has ever had their own children's interests at heart.

That's probably the biggest tragedy of them all, and the film does a great job at capturing it, even when that wasn't what they set out to do.