aqueerkettleofish:cinematv:PARKER & HARDISON | 3.05 The Double-Blind Job

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aqueerkettleofish:cinematv:PARKER & HARDISON | 3.05 The Double-Blind Job THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. One of my favorite things is trope subversion– when you start with the trope, and then completely deconstruct it and do something else. But what they did with Parker was something else entirely– a trope bypass. Parker was built with the ingredients of several tropes–most notably Manic Pixie Dream Girl and a double scoop of Born Sexy Yesterday. But none of those tropes are actually used, because the writers are just… unwilling to do that. She’s not MPDG because the trope requires her quirkiness to be primarily for the benefit of a man, usually one who is not happy with the chaos she’s wreaking, even though he’s having fun and it ultimately benefits him. Parker’s “quirkiness” is a combination of neurodivergence, isolation, and trauma, and it’s not just there for entertainment value. She’s not Born Sexy Yesterday because the men she’s surrounded by respect her and don’t take advantage of her. She’s not even the “crazy girlfriend”– again, because of the respect of the people around her, and most specifically one Alec Hardison. Her behavior throughout this episode is not “this is an unpleasant woman being jealous for dramatic tension/comedic hijinks”. Normally when a woman behaves like this in media, the focus would be on Hardison, and the impact it has on him. Instead, the behavior is shown through the lens of “this is a woman dealing with Some Issues, and this is very difficult for her”, and even the guy who’s caught in it understands that it’s because she cares about him and doesn’t know how to cope with that. And because he cares about her and understands that she’s not doing this to be petty or harmful, he shows her patience– without, for the record, coddling her. He does not, for example, place an artificial distance between himself and Ashley, who is a delightful woman and, in my headcanon, got bit by the bug and now runs one of the satellite teams of Leverage International. Nor does he try to take control of her emotions– he knows she’s got to work through this. So when she starts talking about pretzels, he just lets her know the pretzels will be there when she’s ready.Alec Hardison is a cinnamon roll, yes, but the women who wrote this episode deserve massive props for the artfulness. (The women in question were Melissa Glenn and Jessica Rieder (now Grasl), and are saluted every time Parker finds a good safe.) I also love that in any other comedic show, the pretzel statement would be taken at face value, leaving Hardison going “I never knew she liked pretzels so much” and Parker unable to spit it out, keeping her secret to maintain the sexual tension longer, haha comedy of misunderstanding etc. And people are not that obtuse in real life, but they ALWAYS are in fiction. But we don’t get that here. It is handled with absolute sincerity, and manages to be funny and heartwarming and completely true to the characters. -- source link
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