Leverage: The Nigerian Job (Episode 101)

It's hard out here for a pimp.Hi, shiny new show!  It’s good to meet you.  This is a tough one to recap, because a lot of the awesomeness comes from stylistic camera angles and other such things that I can’t fit in here, but I’ll try to do it justice.

Right away we learn that the first rule of Leverage is you do not talk about Leverage that this show does not fuck around.  We jump right into the story, no fancy-pants introductions needed.  A man is sitting in a ritzy airport bar, getting his drink on.  An invisible typewriter gives us his id, reading “Nathan Ford: Ex-Insurance Investigator.”  Another man comes over and sits next to him, saying that he knows who he is and recapping some of Nate’s accomplishments with the insurance company he worked for.  WAY later in the episode they reveal that he is Victor Dubenich of Bering Aerospace, but I’m going to cheat and tell you now so I don’t have to keep typing “that guy.”  Victor alludes to the company letting Nate’s family down somehow, but we don’t hear more about that because Nate tells him that they’re almost at “the point in the conversation where I punch you nine or ten times in the neck.”  Heh.  Victor also says that someone stole his airplane designs and that he wants Nate to steal them back.

And see, this is the part of the show that makes me think that it really, REALLY hates recappers, because it cuts back and forth between two different set of events and time frames.  Show, do you know how hard that is to describe in a linear fashion?  Anyway, we’re currently across the street from a high rise building at night.  The invisible typewriter from a minute ago tells us that this is the headquarters of Pierson Avionics.  Nate and three other people are there, and Nate breaks away from the group to set up shop in a different building.

And now we’re back to Nate’s meeting with Victor, who reasserts that the head of Pierson Avionics stole his airplane designs.  Because he has a shareholders' meeting at the end of the month, he doesn’t have time to get them back through the court system, so he’s hired three thieves to help them.  Nate looks over their profiles and sees that their all people he’s chased at one point or another and that they’re all people who typically work alone. Nate is hesitant, since he’s not a criminal, but that’s exactly Victor’s point.  “I already have thieves,” he explains.  “What I need is one honest man to watch over them.”

And we’re back at the building across the street from Pierson Avionics.  Nate fiddles with his computer until a blue-print of the tower is projected on the wall. Impressive.

Aaaaaaaaaaand we’re back at the meeting! Nate doesn’t see how this can possibly work, given that each of the thieves likes to fly solo, but apparently even the most anti-social criminals will play nice if offered $300,000.  Victor offers Nate twice that if he signs on and, more importantly, he offers him revenge against “the insurance company that let [his] son die.”  As soon as he says that, Nate’s along for the ride.

Back at Pierson Avionics (where we actually get to stay for a while, thank God), we meet the rest of the thieves.  First is Alex Hardison, who specializes in “Internet and Computer Fraud.”  We get a flashback of him from five years ago, in which security guards break into his hotel suite looking for Mick Jagger.  There are women around him in Princess Leia bikinis, playing with light sabers, and he casually tells the guards that “this is not the room you’re looking for.”  Awesome. Back in the present, he hands off some new communications devices to the second thief, who seems a bit surly.  His name is Eliot Spencer, he’s a “Retrieval Specialist,” and he’s rocking some serious Billy Ray Cyrus hair.  We get another flashback, this time of Eliot in Serbia three years ago.  He walks up to a big group of thugs, sipping something from a mug while his luxurious locks frame his face artfully, and asks for “the merchandise.”  The thugs draw their guns and we cut to an exterior shot while shots fire.  When we get back to the room Eliot is still just sipping from his mug while all the thugs lay dead on the floor, and their boss hands Eliot a baseball card.  We go back to the present and meet the third thief, the apparently crazy and last-nameless Parker.  And boy, did they pick the right person to play the crazy chick, because Beth Riesgraf is the loon who named her son Pilot Inspektor.  I will never understand that one.  Anyway, the invisible typewriter lets us know that Parker specializes in “Security Circum, Infiltration,” and is just a thief in general.  Her flashback is a little more unsettling, as it involves domestic violence, child abuse, and murder.   We see her as a little girl nineteen years ago.  Her father takes away her bunny and says that if she wants it back she’ll have to do what he says or “be a better thief.”  This gives her an idea, and she walks away with her bunny while she blows up her house and (presumably) her parents.  Ah, nostalgia.

The team gets ready to move in, but Parker decides to repel down the side of the building a bit ahead of schedule.  She dangles outside an office, cuts a hole in the glass, deactivates the motions detector and gracefully flips inside.  She sneaks into a room with all sorts of wire, some of which connect to an elevator.  Hardison and Eliot, who snuck into the building through a vent, ride the elevator down when Parker gets it working.  They get to a door and Hardison starts to crack the ten digit password.  There’s a potential problem, though, because some of the security guards are doing their rounds early so they can watch the basketball playoffs.  Eliot hides so they can use Hardison as bait, and the security guards quickly find the hacker and hold him at gunpoint.  Never fear, though, because Eliot comes strolling to the rescue and WHOA BABY is he STACKED!  Those are some impressive guns, boy.  Eliot makes quick work of the security guards, disarming them and knocking them out with impossible speed.  When he’s done he stands amongst the bodies and ejects the clip from a gun, saying “That’s what I do.”  UNF UNF UNF.

They finally crack the password and open the door, revealing Pierson Avionics’ hard drive.  Hardison gets all the files and backups, leaving a few viruses as a parting gift.  When they try to leave Parker realizes that the guards reset all the alarms on the floors above them, meaning they have to go incognito to get out on the ground floor.  They change into buisness-wear and give Parker a leg brace and crutch.  They also draw on her face, but I still can’t figure out what that’s about.  The three of them make it out of the building successfully and Nate drives the getaway car.  A few hours later they watch as Hardison sends Victor the files, and everyone seems relieved that they no longer have to work together.  Actually, Hardison does seem open to the idea of future collaborations, but everyone else basically tells him to GTFO.  We get a nice aerial shot of them standing in the middle of a crossroads before they all walk off in separate directions.

The next morning, Nate is woken up by his cell phone ringing.  He answers it, knocking over some empty nip bottles on the way (am I sensing a theme here?), and hears Victor yelling at him on the line.  Victor is five kinds of pissed because he never got the designs, even though Nate watched Hardison send them.  He’s freezing all of the payments, and he tells Nate to go to an undisclosed address in an hour.  I smell trouble!  An hour later Nate arrives at a warehouse and finds Hardison holding a gun on Eliot.  Nate tricks him and gets the gun away, because Hardison is one of those super smart guys who is super dumb about real world situations.  Eliot isn’t packing because he doesn’t like guns, and methinks that will come up again at some point.  Parker arrives a moment later, saying the lack of money hurts her “in [her] special, angry place.”  Once they’re all there it takes Nate about two seconds to figure out that this is a set up, and they manage to run out of the building just before it explodes.

Tragically, they can’t get far enough away to avoid being knocked out by the blast, and when Nate wakes up he’s handcuffed to a hospital bed.  Eliot is handcuffed to a chair near the window, and Parker and Hardison are stuck in the next room.  The police printed them twenty minutes ago, meaning they have about ten minutes to get out before the state police call and reveal who they really are.  Though the thieves all want to try and escape individually, Nate asks them to follow his plan.  They don’t trust each other but do trust Nate (who is “an honest man”), so they agree to follow his lead.  First, Parker makes herself throw up in order to get a phone.  I really thought she had SWALLOWED a phone at some point just in case she needed one and was regurgitating it, but it turns out she was just trying to attract people that they could steal phones from.  That makes more sense.  Eliot uses one of the phones to pose as the state police, and then Nate poses as the FBI.  Nate says that Hardison is actually an undercover officer, and they use a fake badge Hardison created with a picture phone he stole as proof of this fact.  The ruse works, and the group gets away just as the real state police make contact with the local sheriff.  Victory!

Once they’re out of dodge, the group goes to Hardison’s apartment to get some tickets out of the country.  Eliot is more interesting in beating Victor to a bloody pulp for trying to kill them, while Parker has more of a problem with the fact that he didn’t pay them.  “I take that personally,” she says, looking off into space.  Hey, you know what your son takes personally?  Being named Pilot Inspektor.  You got what you had coming, sister.  Anyway, Hardison does some digging and finds proof that Pierson Avionics really did come up with the designs; Victor hired them to steal the designs, not to steal them back.  He pretended to be a wronged party so the thieves wouldn’t think he’d double cross them.  They’re about to cut their losses anyway when Nate suggests that they do a job on Victor, set him up to lose his fortune.  His plan should work for everyone; Eliot wants revenge, Parker wants money, Hardison also wants revenge but can’t think of anything better than “sending a thousand porno magazines to his office,” and Nate wants Victor to pay for using his son to convince him to do the job.  An unholy alliance, it has been formed.

But what’s that, kids?  How can they work a job when they can’t be seen by Victor?  An excellent question, and one that Nate has already found an answer to.  They go to see a woman named Sophie, who is absolutely BUTCHERING Lady Macbeth’s “unsex me” monologue.  No, really, it’s painful.  The thieves agree, but Nate assures them that “this is not her stage.”  They meet her in a very shady alley after her performance, and the invisible typewriter tells us that her name is Sophie Devereaux and that she’s a grifter.  We flashback to Paris seven years ago.  Sophie is trying to steal a bunch of paintings and Nate catches her in the act.  They both shoot each other, but are evidently not severely harmed.  Back in the present, Sophie and Nate are brewing up a big pot of unresolved sexual tension.  She tells him that she’s living honestly now, and he simply replies that he’s not.  “I always thought you had it in you,” she says, and agrees to join the team.

The team gathers back at Hardison’s apartment, and show FINALLY tells us Victor’s name and profession.  Aren’t you glad that I didn’t make you guys wait that long?  Because he’s a thief, Hardison made copies of the plane designs.  They look them over and Nate says a whole bunch of stuff that basically amounts to “I know a shitload about planes,” though he says he’s just picked up the info here and there.  “You pick up a lot of stuff,” Hardison says, and Parker lets out a loud laugh.  It took me a while to get that, but I think the joke is about picking up STDs, right?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  In any case, Nate seems to have a plan already, and it has something to do with Nigerians.  Of course it does.

Over at Victor’s office, his secretary tells him that his “nine o’clock is here.”  The camera pans over and we see that it’s Sophie, posing as a very hot representative from the African Commercial Transport and Trade Initiative.  And let me tell you guys, she is rocking the business suit and the African accent.  Hardison is still back at his apartment with Nate, and he comments on how not sucky Sophie sounds over their communication system.  “This is her stage,” Nate informs him.  “She’s the finest actress you’ve ever seen…when she’s breaking the law.”  Sophie tells Victor that her company tries to create jobs in Africa and keep stealing manageable, and that she thinks they should talk “somewhere less formal.”  Probably stunned that a gorgeous woman is actually acknowledging his existence, Victor starts to refuse.  Seriously man, hop on that!  If you don’t I will, sexual orientation be damned!  After a few moments Victor manages to follow Sophie out of the office, and then the real fun begins.

Hardison hacks into the secretary’s computer and makes it crash, causing her to call IT.  Of course, Parker has hacked into the phone lines and poses as IT, telling the secretary that someone will be with her in a moment.  That someone turns out to be Eliot, geeked out with everything from a pocket protector to horn rimmed glasses.  Somehow this makes him look even more like Billy Ray Cyrus, which is both hilarious and a little unsettling.  While he distracts the secretary with his geeky swagger, Parker sneaks into Victor’s office.  She plants a bug under his desk, does something to his computer and gets out. We hear pieces of Eliot’s conversation with the secretary while she does this, including his confession that he “loves dressing up like a Kling On and going to all those conventions.”  Show, if you actually make this happen I will be yours forever.

Meanwhile, Sophie is still making Victor feel all funny inside with her flirtations and business propositions.  She tells him she wants his company to build all of their new planes in Nigeria, using the country as a base of operations.  Initially he refuses to even meet with the Nigerian representatives, but when she threatens to take the offer to Pierson he caves.  Success!

That night the group gathers back at Hardison’s apartment.  Hardison looks through the files Parker got and everyone else chillaxes.  This, of course, leads to some guy love.  Eliot and Nate have a heart to heart over a game of pool, as Nate is a little uncomfortable with just how good it feels to be a criminal.  Dude, have you been watching?  This is the LIFE.  I’d quit this job to pull of heists with my peeps in an instant.  When Nate tries to redirect the conversation Eliot offers his condolences about Nate’s son.  Apparently the boy was sick, and the insurance company Nate worked for refused to pay for treatment on the grounds that it was experimental. We briefly see the child on his deathbed via flashback before Nate abruptly (and rudely) ends the conversation.  Sophie comes over and momentarily revives the UST, and Hardison watches them with childish glee.

The next day Victor arrives at a building in which Sophie’s company is supposed to have an office.  He arrives early, so Nate distracts him by smashing out car windows while Parker helps Sophie repel down the stairwell.  She gets there just in time, though she’s probably knocked a few years off of her life.  In the elevator on the way up to the fake offices, Sophie tells Victor that the Nigerians will expect “compensation” for their business.  In other words, they want a bribe.  By the time they get the offices Eliot has attached a sign bearing the company’s name to the wall, and it all looks quite legit.  The meeting seems to go well, and at the end one of the Nigerians hands Sophie an envelope to give to Victor.  He opens it and finds that the Nigerians have requested $1 million, a sum he finds quite acceptable.  When he gets back to his office, Victor and his assistant look under his desk and find the bug. Turns out Victor did a little research of his own and found out that Sophie and her offer weren’t legit.  He knows he’s being hustled and he calls the FBI to inform them that the Nigerians will be at the shareholders’ meeting the next day.

While the meeting commences the next day, the team prepare to do their thing.  When Sophie gets there and greets Victor he suggests that they close the Nigerian deal immediately.  She seems a bit taken aback by this decision but agrees to get the meeting started.  Victor leads everybody into a conference room.  As soon as they’re there he pages the FBI agents, who promptly try to arrest him.    He’s like “um, what is this fuckery?” and the FBI agent informs him that the Nigerian government officials are in face Nigerian government officials.  See, Sophie contacted them and told them that she worked directly under Victor.  They thought that they were meeting Victor in his other office, and we see a flashback of Eliot changing the sign outside of the office to read “Bering Aerospace.”  When Victor realizes that everything has well and truly gone to hell, he runs outside to try to do damage control with the shareholders.  Unfortunately it is very difficult to explain heavy FBI presence at a meeting, and one of the officers makes matters worse by asking who else was involved in the bribe.  Victor once again realizes that he was tricked, and we see a flashback of Sophie handing him a different envelope from the one the Nigerians gave her.  That one contained a check for $200,000, meaning that Victor accepted a bribe from the nationals.  Thanks to the good ol’ Patriot Act the FBI can seize all of Bering’s papers and computers, and the workers can’t get rid of everything in time.  In all the pandemonium he doesn’t Nate and the gang, dressed in FBI jackets, walking out of the office with boxes of files.

Sometime later, Nate meets with Mr. Pierson, the head of Pierson Avionics.  He gives Pierson a copy of all the files that were stolen and “proof that they were on Bering computers.”  In exchange, Pierson agrees not to press charges against Nate or “his people.”  Though Pierson offers money, Nate turns him down, saying that “this particular project has a different revenue stream.”  Cut over to Victor’s office, where the FBI is having a field day going through his stuff.  The TV news reports that Bering stock plummeted, prompting a massive sellout.   Victor is looking thoroughly depressed when his phone rings.  It’s Nate, explaining exactly how they set him up.  The bribe charge will stick, since Sophie used the money “to buy a truly impressive number of shoes.”  Work it, girl.  He also explains that, since they knew the stock would fall, he and the team managed to make “shattering amounts of money.”  It seems this is the case, since everyone pretty much falls over when they look at the checks Hardison hands them.  At first everyone wants to stick to the “one time only” teamwork deal, but as he walks away they all come running after Nate.  He doesn’t want any part of it, since his job has always been taking down bad guys, so Sophie suggests that he only choose bad guys for them to work over.  He thinks about it, and suddenly we’re in the living room of a very distraught couple.  They explain how a company killed their teenage daughter and that they don’t have the money to pay for revenge.  And now Nate gives us a lovely little summary of the show that usually comes at the beginning of the pilot, explaining exactly what the concept is and what will happen from now on:

People like that, corporations like that, they have all the money and all the power, and they use it to make people like you go away.  Right now you’re suffering under an enormous weight.  We provide...leverage.