LEVERAGE #401 "The Long Way Down Job" Post-Game

This the first time we've started the season without the team split. This stripped us of a very valuable writing tool. As we've discussed, I'm a pulp writer. I like a good corner to be painted into, with the paint being ninjas and robots and redheads with guns. No corner -- that's a bit tricky.

Nicely enough, in the pre-season writing period of about 6 weeks, an interesting fact came up while we were breaking stories. Joe Hortua, one of our new Executive Story Editors, climbs. I mean climbs, spike-y bits and ropes and oxygen and screws-in-ice-walls stuff. When I say "climb" I mean "those goddam stairs to the writers' room."

In fourth season, we're far enough in to play with the format. The audience is familiar with con mechanics, we've plumbed the depths of security systems (although we found some funky real-life ones we're using soon) -- time to toss the team into some extreme circumstances.

I walked into Dean's office and said "How'd you like to shoot the premiere on Mt. Hood?"

To which he replied, "Will it be unreasonably dangerous and possibly kill us?"

No, he did not say that. But he might as well have. Because he is Dean Devlin, and the only thing he likes better than blowing shit up is impossible locations.

So, having our location, we constructed the episode. A con on a mountain was interesting, but most of that would play out in tents. Why the hell would our guys have to be on the mountainside? That led to a treasure hunt -- and stories of frozen climbers scattered across the great peaks of the world, lost forever, gave us macabre inspiration. And if you read any stories of the tragedies in modern climbing, you quickly come to the realization that a lot of rich people who should not be going up these mountains are going up these mountains. If I were going to dispose of an unpleasant colleague, doing so on a mountain in a blizzard would be a pretty surefire way to get away with it.

Alan Scott (thank Geoff Thorne for that, not me) had valuable evidence of corporate malfeasance hidden somewhere on his body. What evidence? For that the writers went to one of my little habits -- I have a Moleskine with all the Leverage season 3 & 4 notes in it. Every note, summaries of each week's work, re-breaks and outlines of most episodes, all my relevant research pulled from my Evernote files ... if you wanted to know what was going on in the Leverage writers room, hacking my email and Evernote would not help you. But if I had a sneaking suspicion that, say, Filthy Assistant-turned-Spunky-Staff-Writer Rebecca Kirsch were systematically poisoning the other writers in order to advance more quickly, you would find my evidence in my Moleskine.

So the writers -- with a little too much fucking glee, might I add -- pitched that I was dead on a mountain, and the Leverage team had to find me before Kirsch's foul plot came to fruition.

That began a week of "How many things can go wrong on a mountain, and how many ways can you die?" Short answer to both questions: A lot. For our mountain we took the real stats of Denali (formerly Mount McKinley), including the death and climb success rates. The idea that our guys would summit was ridiculous, of course, not to mention unfilmable on Mt. Hood. But experienced athletes and climbers like Parker and Hardison could pretty competently hack around base camp -- which led to our device of Alan Scott disappearing just shy of base camp. People almost making it back is a heartbreaking standard of climbing tragedy stories. The reason nobody had found the body was because the mountain was closed after the murderous blizzard that had claimed Alan Scott's life -- that timeline is the only one that makes senes, otherwise search teams might have found the body first.

We tweaked the height of base camp to make sure altitude sickness would kick it at the right spot -- at about 10,000, above base camp, which we established at 8,000 feet. There are people who are unaware that altitude sickness can kick in that low. Those people often wind up dead. Particularly for people who have not acclimated to this height like, say, a team of thieves who just choppered in, you're going to want oxygen tanks.

We also found out that even when the slope does not look too steep, and you are not too high, you want to be roped up. Why? This is why:

In a word: HOLYSHIT.

Mechanics aside, there were specific writing things we wanted to accomplish here. This was our first season in the same time slot in four years. We wanted to reset all the relationships from last year, make sure all our new friends from the Falling Skies premiere got a good sense of what the show was, and launch everyone's arc for this year.

Dean was the one who codified the theme for this year: Consequences. These people have been emotionally evolving, and also pissing off a lot of very powerful humans. You'll see a lot of the personal growth come to fruition (not always in the most positive way), and see some past actions start to catch up to them.

For Nate, this is the conflict between him being smart enough to know his anger, not his drinking would destroy him -- and at the same time knowing his anger was what drove him. He's not going to be angry all the time, of course, but what makes him a wolf is that single, primal urge to hunt.

For Sophie, it's confidence -- she's a full peer, able to run the crew when she needs to and operate as a full free agent. Much as Hardison does, she's going to chafe a bit at the limitations in her relationship with Nate, both personal and professional.

For Eliot, he's the anchor. This is a man who's, well, not a peace but at equilibrium with being damned. A man who knows his swing, as my grandfather would say. And with equilibrium comes the willingness to help others out in their time of -- disequilibrium.

Parker has to deal with the fact that with vulnerability, with emotions, with relationships, come a lot of good things ... and pain and doubt, for the first time.

Hardison wants to move the relationship with Parker along, and move along his own evolution as a team leader.

We managed to peg most of those in this episode, with good representative beats of what each team member did. The only thing we're missing is a representative Eliot fight. We had one -- a rock wall fight -- that was unfortunately nixed because the rock wall we picked was too dangerous to work on. Note, not too dangerous for Kane to want to work on it, but just generally "we ain't putting cameras on this thing" dangerous.

That said, Eliot gets, for me, the best scene in the show. Don't get me wrong, Beth nailed Parker's torment at wanting to do the right thing, her frustration at how she wants to -- well, she said it all in the scene, and much more than what was there in dialogue. It's one of the finest pieces of acting I've seen in twenty years as a writer. But Eliot's scene afterwards, explaining that it was okay to be Parker at the same time she was trying to be a better Parker -- that's not a speech anyone else would have given. That's why we need all five. Separately they're kind of broken, and together they make one pretty decent human being.

We can't move on from performances without mentioning Eric Stoltz, of course. He's an old friend of Dean's, and was super-generous to come in and play the two scenes we needed for Alan Scott. For the episode to work, Alan Scott's last speech had to be devastating. While filming it, the crew was watching ti through the video feed, meaning they saw it from the camera POV. By the end of the first take, people had to leave the set, they were crying so hard. Stoltz had mad chops, yo. As the kids say.

He also sat there and played a corpse, saving us dummy money. We owe him a steak, still, for that.

Right, this is long enough. I'll leave the stories as to how we almost died on the mountain filming this goddam thing at 8,000 feet for the DVD commentary. As Dean said: "It's not every day you see 'avalanche warning' on a call sheet." So we should end by giving a giant, very special shout-out to the CREW, who hauled all the equipment up that mountain in a blizzard, set it all up and kept it working, and then packed it all back down long after we'd hauled ass to warmer climes. Leverage has the best crew in the business, full stop.

To your filthy questions!

@Sherri: congrats on getting 18 episodes -- did that change anything for the season? Was it harder to find 18 episodes worth of scripts or did you find the extra room gave you more time to do different sorts of stories?

A mixed blessing. We had room to do some more off-speed eps, like the linked "The Girls' Night Out Job" and "The Boys' Night out Job" later in the season. At the same time, that's a full half-season longer than our first. That's near network order, without the money to hire and keep the staff for full network prep. Luckily Downey had the prescience to break a couple episodes for this season at the end of last season while I was up in Portland dealing with the epic finale. That gave us a buffer, which by ... right now has burned away.

@The Goozer: When are they gonna fight some aliens? Or steal a chalice?

Season 5. In the same episode.

@Steue: 1.) Does Nate actually know(or remember) Sophie's real name? 2.)Is the 10/8 split harder to write for? 3.) Is there another seasonal episode this year?

1.) He does not remember. He is fucked. 2.) We don;t tend to write for the break. That said, I prefer a longer winter season. 3.) No.

@Mercedes: How did you get the crack down the ice shot?

Our amazing Production Designer, Randall Groves, built that entire cave on set. Once we lit it, we kept looking at the monitor, wandering back out onto the set, then running back to the monitor. Holy crap," we'd mutter, then run back and forth again. He and our substitute DP Alan Caso made that cave look real as hell.

We then dropped two stunties through the hole, a 14 foot fall. While trying to ignore Kane grumbling "It's only fourteen feet," off to our left, because we wouldn't let him do it. Fucking Oklahoma.

@iTimOSX: Are you guys still using Final Cut Pro and will you use Final Cut Pro X?

We're using Final Cut Pro, and will not be switching to Final Cut Pro X until plug-ins for Red and other workflow considerations are implemented.

@Anonymous: 1.) Did you have a hard time getting Christian to stop riding the snowmobile? 2.) When Parker walks away is it because she's upset that he hugged everyone else first? Or does she even think like that?

1.) Guess. 2.) No, it just never occurs to her to do the casual hug. After all, it's only been two weeks since San Lorenzo, and although they're just starting out what might become a relationship -- as she says, "this isn't going to become a thing, is it?" Anyone who has dated a charming but emotionally unavailable woman has heard this phrase. It's going to be ... complicated.

@Brittany: How was it working on Mt. Hood?

I'm in the red parka:

@Nooch: What do each of you find most challenging in the creation of an episode? Also, each character has had someone from his/her "past" play a role. When will that happen with Hardison?

Each writer has a swing. For example, Downey doesn't really see the episode until he sees the "hats" the characters will wear. I tend to drive him crazy because for me, that stuff is just "making license plates" -- I can't see the episode until I see the causal chain of the underlying plot -- character or con. Jenn Kao, one of our new writers, is like the Wonder Twins, a research fiend. Newcomers Jeremy Bernstein and Paul Guyot tend to favor the emo. They were hard-pitching on the Parker/Alan Scott story in this episode. Everyone's got there thing, eh?

Hardison's Nana ... well, not yet.

@Jackie's TV Media Thoughts: 1.) Will Jeri Ryan and Wil Wheaton make guest appearances this season? 2.) Will there be any "art imitates life" episodes, like the West Virginia coal miners and the swindling Hockey owner?

1.) Yes, possibly on both. 2.) all our villains are based on real people. My only real disappointment is that we didn't have time in "The Hot Potato Job" to really explain just how truly terrifying Big Agriculture is. I mean, yikes, topping out the list of nasty legal maneuvers and utter ruthlessness -- way above any mining/drilling consortium you can find.

@dogdragon86: 1.) How did Parker get her name? 2.) Will Nate ever where a moustache? 3.) Will there be actor commentaries on the Season 4 DVD?

1.) You will never find that out. 2.) No. And ... no. 3.) If they're available when we record them.

@Georgia: Who are the big guest stars this season?

All our guest stars are big. It's the screen that is small!

... No, literally, people are watching on their computers, those are small screens.

How's Danny Glover? Michael Gladis from Mad Men? David Snell from The Wire? Danny frikkin' Glover? Plus some other spoiler-y ones!

@TomGalloway: How come Alan Scott wasn't an engineer or a broadcasting executive? Or have a magic ring?

Because in this reality, the ring wen to a douche-baggy test pilot with daddy issues who fought space poo.

@Scavener: "Let's go steal a mountain. "Again" That bit was for us, wasn't it? :D

After three years, you've earned your in-jokes. Although it took me aback to do the math on that one -- "two years ago" is the right answer. "The Snow Job" aired January 27, 2009. We keep the Leverage-verse aligned with real time pretty carefully (with the exception of this year, saying this job came just weeks after San Lorenzo). That meant that a mountain job happening around June 2011 was just two and a bit years after the first example.

@mephron: So is it going to be buyable through the Apple Store? @theragingcelt: ... and Netflix?

Not just buyable on the Apple Store, but the first episode's free. Netflix, on the other hand, is still a no go.

@Video Beagle: Can't these guys do something about the Etrade baby?

Hardison researched it, but when he discovered the baby's name is "Ftaghn", he decided to let it go.

@Improper Bostonian: Did Beth and Christian really trek in the snow for the mountain scenes or were doubles used?

See the above video. We did use doubles just to get some additional footage for editing, but almost all the shots we wound up using were of Beth and Christian.

@Sherri: I was surprised at Nate coming down stairs with the whole speech about them having dinner in "his" apartment. That sort of came out of left field -- it hasn't been "his" apartment in a long while (he lost control of it during Beantown Bailout). It's been the home of the team for quite a while, the home for his "family". Is Nate putting down walls now, trying to draw boundaries, pull back emotionally from these people, deny the whole family vibe in some attempt to protect himself from...something? Or was that just a throw away to remind us that Nate is not a Nice Guy? (If that was it, that was...overkill, kinda clumsy, so I'm REALLY voting for the first idea. Lie to me and say it was subtle boundaries as part of a new Nate spiral, if you have to.)

Nothing as significant as either. He cranks at them being in his living room like I crank when somebody at the table steals my excellent pens. Faux affectionate annoyance.

@Anonymous: 1. why wasn't tara shown in the one flashback of Hardison hanging from the window in the season 2 ep the maltese falcon job? 2. how much of this ep was filmed on location? 3. was that a little glimpse into Eliot's past the way he signaled to Parker when approaching the Russian's tent? 4. Did Sophie tell Nate her real name on the Xmas ep last season or when they slept together? The fact that Nate doesn't remember it, was he drunk (haha) when she told him and that's why he doesn't remember? 5. they mentioned Sterling at the end of someone that might bug them - whether it's him or not, will Mark Shepard be coming back this season? Will anyone from the past be resurfacing? 6. nana's still alive?

1.) You're going to laugh, but residuals. Showing Jeri in that shot would have cost us multipel thousands of dollars. 2.) Almost everything was filmed on location. 3.) Yep. 4.) When they slept together. She wrote a very detailed clue to her name on the napkin in "The Ho Ho Ho Job." 5.) Mark Sheppard will be joining us this season, in the summer season finale. 6.) Yep.

@C_otter: My question: my understanding is that your team is almost done writing the scripts for the season. Do you make plot adjustments as the season progresses based on overall audience reaction or not? If you do make adjustments - how?

Every episode but the last four were written by the premiere, this year. We tend to make plot adjustments base don how the shows shoot, how we discuss the stories, etc. We're not highly serialized, so it's not too big a concern of us.

Although I dig viewer feedback, previously here we've discussed the boundary that I think every show has to keep -- we write. If we start going to the viewer well, we give up creative agency. Sometimes the right thing to write is NOT what the viewers want ... right now. But hopefully they'll see we honored the contract with the viewers. You will be entertained, the characters will be consistent, and the finale of the show will be satisfying, if not exactly what you were hoping for.

And we will not tell you everything you though you knew was wrong in the last thirty seconds of the season. That is some BULLSHIT right there.

@JoellaBlue: My question is: Since the team is losing their teflon and coming into so many others' sights, will they deal with more past jobs prior to joining the team? Eliot's past with Moreau came up last season and he surely has many other enemies that are hardcore. Hardison's enemies seem to be Chaos and Iceland. We have no idea about Sophie or Parker's past enemies. And then there's Nate. Will we be able to delve deeper into each of the characters this season?

"Consequences." Bad ones.

@Brave: Have only 2 weeks passed in the Leverage-verse since "The San Lorenzo Job"?

Yes. You could in theory watch S3 and 4 back to back.

@buzzby Why is oxygen being used when they're not even above the treeline?

Treeline and altitude sickness are not linked. Altitude sickness kicks in pretty reliably around 8,000 ft with minor symptoms, getting worse as you head higher. Treelines can wander anywhere from 7000 feet to 14,000 feet, depending on the mountain. We were at around 7,000 - 8,000 feet on Mt. Hood, and there were scattered trees.

@marisa: I would love to know how long it takes to write an episode!

Anywhere from 3 days (with me very drunk) to two to three weeks. Assume that if the writer comes in with research and some prep on an idea already accomplished, the eps take a week and a bit to break, then the writer has two weeks to write the episode. Revisions are done sporadically after that.

@Guru: As I watched, I found myself assuming that Alan Scott would be found alive simply because you'd cast an actor of Eric Stoltz's caliber. Was that deliberate, or did you simply want a heavyweight to carry the big scene talking to his wife?

I am a little surprised how many people thought we'd find him alive. He was gone three months. He is an ex-Stolt! He's not pining for the fjords --

Ahem. We needed a great actor for that last speech, and Mr. Stoltz did us a favor.

@Anonymous: OMG!!! The technical inaccuracies surrounding the "mountain" were atrocious and really made the episode hard to get into. From trees being at 8000' above sea level in Alaskan Mountains, to being roped off on what was supposed to be a mountain but looked like a bunny hill. Pretty silly stuff. They really needed some technical consultants; or I know maybe actually film it in Alaska...

I rarely say this, but seeing as we shot in six feet of snow for fourteen hours a day, I almost got buried in an avalanche, and we had one of the world's best climbers on set as a consultant -- you are utterly, utterly wrong. Choke on it.

@Oona: 1.) I thought Nate's speech to the widow was interesting, and I loved the way you guys brought the line "It's a long way down" back up in the end. Is the idea of running up against an obstacle your anger can't beat a bit of foreshadowing for Nate's character arc this season? 2.) Also, it was interesting that Eliot emphasized that Hardison especially would have frozen to death trying to retrieve the body. I thought that was spot on, but also raised the question - if something might ultimately create some tension between Hardison and Parker, will it be the fact that Parker's morality is more slippery than Hardison's? 3.) Annnnnnd, finally - clearly Nate doesn't remember what exactly went down the last night in San Lorenzo, but does Sophie? It's not surprising that Nate was too drunk, but they both seemed surprised by where they ended up, so I would suspect she was pretty snockered as well. Was she testing to find out what he knew or testing to find out something she might want to know?

1.) Not the most subtle foreshadowing, either. 2.) There will be tensions between Parker and Hardison as their relationship progresses, but their differing moralities is not one of them. 3.) Sophie remembers. Hazily, but she remembers.

@Liz: Can I say? Eliot hugging Hardison? Awesome.

Not in the script. Kane improv-ed that as he walked past.

@evening-shadow: 1) I echo the 'What did Sophie write down in Ho Ho Ho Job if Nate found out her real name in San Lorenzo Job' question. If the implication is he used it for the first time while in the throes and has known it for a while, it didn't really come across too clearly.
2) What was Hardison's motivation for denying that Parker should meet his Nana? A fear of commitment? Does he think Parker wouldn't fit in with "the real family?" It seemed a little out of character for him and it was the only sour note in the whole ep for me.
3) Does anyone know of any place where the commentaries are transcribed or, at least, bits and pieces of them? Since I'm hearing-impaired, the traditional commentary set-up doesn't work too well for me and I am especially interested in anything regarding Parker and Hardison. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

1.) Nope, she wrote down a clue, as noted above.

2.) Not fear of committment. Nana + Parker = Hardison does not stand a chance.

3.) oof, we've had issues with making sure our stuff is accessible to the hearing-impaired before. I'm sorry to say that there are no transcripts of the commentaries. I'll see if there's a solve, but I doubt it.

@SueN: At the end, when Hardison finds the bug, Nate says something like, "I thought you swept the place," which implies that's a regular practice So, have they been sweeping for bugs all along, and it's just one of those "invisible things the team has always done," or is it something that evolved out of the Italian-Moreau arc?

One of those maintenance things Hardison does that the team takes for granted. Too much for granted. Which he shall make abundantly clear to them in #416.

@Lydia: 1. (general Leverage question): Watching the “auditions” video that TNT put on their website got me thinking. You've said several times that you wrote Eliot's character with Christian in mind. If the script had stayed behind Christian's couch, who else would you have looked at to play Eliot? Or would you just called him up and demanded he read the whole script? 2. If it's only been less than two weeks since the team took down Moreau and they're already onto more jobs, is Eliot ever going to get the down time he's been asking for for several episodes in S3? 3. Each of them is the best at what they do... is it possible for Sophie to run out of cons, or will her brilliant grifting skills save her?

1.) Christian was in mind, but I didn't even know if he was available at the time. If he'd passed we would have moved on, regretfully. I don't hound actors. We had seom really great auditions, and we may well have wound up with an African-American Eliot. 2.) Eliot will never get the down time he is looking for. because that would bore you, and our job is to entertain you. 3.) Sophie will never run out of cons, because that would bore you , and we are here to entertain you.

Jesus Murphy, how many more of these things? >sucks oxygen< Okay, let's go.

@Anonymous: Finally, and I'm sorry if I'm being completely obtuse here, but I couldn't understand why Eliot didn't tell Parker they'd go back for Alan Scott's body? If they found it once, what was to stop them either going back themselves or, if that were to be impossible as they needed to clear out ASAP following the con, direct others to it?

Because it was more important to get Parker to understand what she was feeling was okay than to logic her out of it. Trying to logic a loved one out of emotional moment is one of those classic mistakes people make. Even after twenty years of marriage. Ahem.

@Anonymous: 1. How does/will Eliot feel about all the 'coupling' in the group and with the particular couples (nate/sophie, parker/hardison)? Will he ever 'interfer' or 'interject' with either couple?

2. Sophie has known and noticed the little things between them for a while, but are Nate and Eliot aware of what's happening between Parker and Hardison?
3. You have mentioned in your commentaries that Parker and Eliot are the most dangerous of the group. Eliot, obviously, knows that he is dangerous, but does he know how dangerous parker is or can be, and is he aware of how dangerous they are (just the two of them) together?
4. Is Parker trying to make amends for her past, or is she just trying to be a better person, now that she has an idea of what that is?
5. Has Parker ever killed anyone?
6. Who is 'watching' them? (I know you aren't going to answer that one, but it was worth a try).

1.) Later in the season, he may offer advice. Eliot has a full social life outside his workplace.

2.) Oh yes.

3.) Eliot is fully aware that they would cut a bloody swath through anyone they chose to. See "The Lost Heir Job".

4.) Less the abstract "being a better person", more the concrete "be like the people I care for." She doesn't feel she has to make amends.

5.) ... probably not.

6.) You are.

@Crescent Moon: 1) Will we ever meet Nana?

2) If we meet Nana, who would be your ideal actress to play her?
3) Does Nana know that Hardison was/is a hacker?
4) Why doesn't Hardison want Parker to meet Nana?

1.) yes.

2.) Not telling.

3.) Wait for it.

4.) See above.

@Famous4it: All your questions were answered above, but I just wanted to welcome you and our other viewers from Pakistan to the show and the blog.

@Anonymous: Is the Italian coming back this season? Does she have anything to do with the bugs in Nate's home?

Nope, our seasons are roughly stand-alone. Every season could be, in theory, the last season of Leverage.

@Anonymous: I'm a little confused as to why Alan Scott would take the incriminating evidence up the mountain with him. Obviously he suspected correctly that his boss could get to his home if he suspected anything but surely there's a happy medium between leaving it at his house and keeping it next to his heart. Or was this a personal journal he took everywhere that where he also jotted down the incriminating evidence?

Explained above, although we did lose some dialogue in the edit where we explained he was gathering evidence from other execs while on the climbing trip. I think you can hear a little bit of it in the Stoltz speech at the end when we're off him.

@Jamesfirecat: 1: Why did Parker need to slip the Russian bad guy the cell, when she and Elliot could have just carried it down themselves, given that they showed up at the tent in time to see the arrest they couldn't have been that far behind him, (they did show up didn't they?) so the cell message would have only gotten played a few minuets later still in time to nail the bad guy
2: It seemed like the Russian guy got arrested in the tent at the end, and if so, for what? Yes he effectively kidnapped/took Parker hostage in order to steal the journal but there's next to no proof that he did it, unless Parker managed to somehow record the entire threatening conversation on the cell phone they'd just recovered... which combined with point one is only more proof for why they should have held onto the cell phone.
3: The hiker's dieing words may be admissible in court, doubtlessly enough to get the guy arrested and bring him to trial, but would it really be enough to get the guy convicted without some physical from the crime scene as well? Unless Parker and Eliot found some in the cave which they took with them before they escaped (since they did listen to it just before they left) but if so, there was never anything saying they did that was there?
Or was the resolution that the guy would get tied up in legal battles with the murder charge long enough for the Leverage team to prove his wheeling and dealing when it came to the phony foreclosures? Either I zoned out during the episode or it felt like they needed another 3 to 5 min to wrap things up properly....

1.) There was no guarantee they'd get down the mountain that fast. You're meant to understand that they got a ride from the Forest Rangers shortly after their encounter with the Russian. In the first draft we had them arrive later, but we really wanted to have the moment where Parker sees the effect the tape had on the widow. Shortened for emo.

2.) Tampering with evidence, having a gun on a mountain, which is kind of a no-no. No real reason to believe the charges will stick on him, to tell the truth.

3.) The mortgage fraud will provide motive to support the murder charge, not to mention his downfall as a businessman. @ChelseaNH did a nice job in the comments of summing up the depressing practice of robo-signing, for those interested.

@Scot Boyd: Given Eric Stoltz's stature, I'm curious if the dead body in the crevasse was played by Eric Stoltz in makeup or a mannequin exhibiting cutting edge fake-Eric Stoltz technology.

The one and only Stoltz. Holding his breath when we're on him, btw.

@Sandy: In my endless quest to ferret out the sources of names in Leverage-verse, I'd like to ask if Parker was named after the thief Parker in the Richard Stark (pen name of Donald Westlake)novels? Check into the world of the Stark/Westlake Parker at : http://violentworldofparker.com/.
Also, is Nate's father Jimmy named after the conman from LOST? It came to me one day that Jimmy Ford = James Ford = Sawyer from LOST.

Parker is named after Parker, in homage. Jimmy is just a good Irish name.

@TJ ... Jesus, no way I'm reprinting all those. But, in order: 1.) Two weeks. 2.) A couple chats. 3.) We haven't. 4.) Nate's not a hugger. 5.) Thanks. 6.) Beth and Christian rocked it out. Tim had to pretend to be sik, so he didn't get to show off. 7.) Both altitude sickness and withdrawal. 8.) Type of boot 9.) Because he was needed in the tent. Probably. 10.) Hardison runs a mission this year. 11.) Different woman. 12.) "Coming out of? No no no. 13.) Not her first dead body. 14.) The Moscow Circus is real, not called that, and complicated. 15.) Yes. 16.) No. 17.) I can;t even parse that one. :) 18.) His whole life. 19) There's worse buried in there. 20.) Everyone cried. 21.) Yes. 22.) Interesting. 23.) Whatever makes him most interesting to you. 24.) Natural evolution. 25.) ...

@Anna: 1) I know nothing about mountain climbing, but why didn't Parker, Eliot, Karen and Nate get in trouble for going up the mountain without registering? Also, won't they have to testify at the trials for Mr. Evil of the Week and the Russian, and won't that put them on awkward ground if they're investigated?2) Will Eliot ever straight out know one of the badass evil henchmen? I half expected the Russian to be one of his old mercenary buddies or something. Does Eliot even have old mercenary buddies?
3) Been asked before, but to put it bluntly, are Parker and Hardison "official"? Will there be awkward dates involved?
4) Is Nate's speech to the Karen about anger a sign that he's moving on, or, at least, beginning to heal a little?
5) Will there ever be an episode where Hardison's Nana needs help, and that's how the team gets to meet her? Because that would be awesome, even though Nana doesn't sound like the kind of woman who'd need help.
6) Can we have an episode where Maggie shows up right in time to create a crazy awesome UST triangle? If so, can the con of the week involve her spending extensive amounts of time alone with Sophie?
7) When Parker refused to go on without the body... It seemed to me like there was something more than her growing social skills driving that, something akin to how she refused to leave the orphans behind in The Stork Job. If this is so, would that thing be her younger brother, or something else? Will we ever find out what that something is?
8) Will poor Eliot ever get a steady girl of his own? I just feel like he must feel kind of left out with all this pairing up going on, and even Batman gets to date Catwoman from time to time. Hopefully this year Eliot can do better than his scheduled once a season hookup!

1.) Nate is very good at making sure the chain of evidence is so strong, there's never a trial, almost always a plea out. Again, you people's faith in the criminal justice system is always vaguely touching.

2) That may well occur.

3.) Official. But, really, dates?

4.) Not healing in the least.

5.) tick tick

6.) Kari's busy. But we'll see Maggie again before the series --not season, series - finale.

7.) Nope. Backstory is boring.

8.) Eliot does just fine. Just offscreen.

@Kevin: Friggin' refrigerator moments. The team didn't actually win, did they? The notebook full of proof got burned. The arrest of the CEO isn't going to immediately stop his company from falsely repossessing 3000-4000 houses a year. The team made no money for the widow and are out their expenses.

Ah, lost in the editing, is the fact that Alan HAS the evidence he needs, all on his smartphone. He was trying to email it, but it had to wait until the phone was back in signal range before the files could go through. That's why we made such a big deal about the "voice/data line" on the map. You can hear Alan explaining that in the video. Just one of the things that became unclear in the edit. That's also why Hardison had the line that Alan Scott was getting his own vengeance.

@USRaider: 1.) I felt that actually filming in such difficult conditions brought an edge to the episode (the knowledge of the avalanche days after you left also makes you shudder). However, Jon, have you ever written anything, for Leverage or otherwise, that you said to yourself, "S**t, someone could get hurt doing this?" Is it the professionalism of youself, the cast and the crew that allowed such an episode to even be done? 2.) I have heard comments from friends that they didn't like this season premiere because "there wasn't enough action". I personally believed there was a conscious effort to make the S4 premiere a more character driven one than a slam-bang action fest. Was this a decision on your part, to kind of show the growth of the team personally with each other and individually?

1.) Someone could get hurt doing the easiest thing in the world. If we ever got to the set on the day and said, "okay, not THAT in these circumstances", then ther'es no way in hell our stunt coordinator Kevin Jackson or one of our directors would let it happen. But you can rarely predict what will be dangerous from the script. 2.) It was intentionally character-driven, but I gotta say, if three days on a mountain ain't enough scope for you people, I got nothing.

@Anonymous: I was surprised that Parker would have a glass of wine. Eliot has a beer, Hardison grabs an orange soda out of the fridge. Nate and Sofie have wine, that totally makes sense. But Parker? I would not have thought so.

We've shown her drinking before. She treats it like a spice. If it's what tastes best with the food, she goes for it. Chalk it up to Eliot's influence.

Okay, we're starting to double up on questions, and turn into conversations in comments her,e let me skip through ...

@AndrewB:This has been bugging me (and consequently, I've been bugging Video Beagle): is there a reason Hardison doesn't bother to scan for the kinds of bugs he can instantly identify? I get you're trying to establish that there's an invisible Big Bad lurking out there and they're good enough into Leverage HQ (like Sterling, the Italian, Nate's dad, and Sterling again), but why go with Hardison immediately recognizing the bug as a passive bug which is a pretty common kind of bug?

We actually talked about this in the room. We had a bit in the script where Hardison explained just how tricky a variant on a passive bug this was, but dropped because you and I and VideoBeagle (and maybe writer Scott Veach) are the .00001% of the audience that would give a shit.

And I would read a Claudiasarker story.

@Lydia: After watching the episode again, did Nate purposely set the other receiver where the widow could reach it and turn his back (as there were several instances of NLP in S3, and Nate did learn how to hypnotize people while in prison), or did it just slip his mind because of his withdrawals/altitude sickness

Slipped his mind.

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Bloody. Hell. I forgot how relentless you people are. All right, see you next week with #402, and probably #312 slipped in there somewhere. I really, really don't want to even consider looking at the season finale question posts ...