| “ | Sports is war. | ” |
— Eliot | ||
An old friend visits, sparking a self-doubting Harry to uncover an unlikely client on the link at his exclusive golf club.
The Client[]
Bao, a young Vietnamese man and his mother Tien are the clients. Tien works at a nail salon run by the Mark (Carl Bishop). Bao is a talented golfer, who finds himself playing caddy to the Mark as part of the Mark's con.
The Mark[]
Carl Bishop owns the nail salon where Tien and a number of other undocumented Asian people work. The salon is managed by Mai. Carl is trafficking people to work in the salon but is in debt to his partner(s). When he discovers Bao's talent for golfing, he drafts the young man as his caddy, planning to turn a high-stakes game over to Bao to finish out and win.
The Con[]
Eliot, Harry, and Hurley are playing golf where Bishop and Bao are. Harry slices into the rough, where he sees Bishop setting someone up and threatening his caddy. He also overhears where Bishop is to pick up "merchandise" for "cash on delivery" at the "truck stop off I-10."
Hurley plays caddy to Eliot (as loose canon Reed Wilkins, oil heir to get close to Bao and gain his trust) while Harry hack's Bishop's lawyer's computer by calling Bishop's lawyer (Rick Saffron, on parental leave), pretending to be IT to get him to change his password to a "temporary" one Harry gives him to fix a security problem. While there, he meets new associate, Sarah Nichols, and assumes Saffron's identity with her. Harry recruits Sarah as an ally. Using the law firm's files on Bishop, Harry discovers the nail salons Bishop owns, comes to the conclusion with Eliot that the crime is money laundering.
Harry and Sarah determine that the nail salon employees' documents are in the safe in the back. Harry tries to get into it, ends up faking a bomb setup to buy time.
Bao verbally refuses to help Hurley and Eliot entrap Bishop, but we later see him slip Bishop's cell phone to Hurley. This allows Hurley to text both Bishop's lawyer and his "supplier," Frank to meet him at 504 Nails while Sarah alerts the FBI to the conspiracy.
Episode wraps up with Hurley and Eliot giving Bao a new set of clubs and calling in a recruiter from LSU to see him play.
Locations[]
- 504 Nails - Nail salon owned by Carl Bishop and managed by Mai.
- Branch Briar Golf Club - Club where Harry Wilson has a membership and where Sophie convinces him to bring Eliot and Hurley to golf.
Guest Cast[]
- Drew Powell as Jack Hurley
- Morgan Lindholm as Sarah Nichols
- James Masters as Carl Bishop
- Kevin Phan as Bao
- Amy Le as Tien
- Jamie Tran as Mai
Episode Notes[]
- Eliot, Harry, and Hurley are largely on their own for this con. Breanna is at a computer coding camp with Hardison and Sophie and Parker are on a job in Columbia. Harry does "phone a friend" for input/help from Sophie and Parker occasionally, but is mostly encouraged to follow his own gut/have confidence in the skills he's been developing.
- Eliot starts off golfing terribly. Hurley hacks Eliot, realizing he thrives in chaos and the calm of the golf course is messing him up.
- While recruiting Sarah, Harry also offers advice on how to avoid becoming the type of lawyer he was as part of his redemption. Ultimately, she steps up and volunteers to help the salon employees as their lawyer.
- One of the big themes of the episode is confirmation bias, which Sophie explains to Harry in the opening. He progressively leans into that as the episode goes on, building to the fake bomb.
- Eliot spends much of the early part of the episode complaining that he's supposed to be taking the weekend off and that they don't have enough of a plan to pull off this con. He only gets one brief actual fight in, near the end, but as they wrap up, takes credit for the case being his idea.
Trivia[]
- At the end of the episode, Jack Hurley calls Parker "Sister Lupe! Sister Lupe!" since she and Sophie apparently stole a gold cross from a Catholic church in Columbia. This is a reference to the "impossibly hot nun" (who turned out NOT to be a nun) who tricked Hurley into smuggling cancer drugs for needy sick children in "The Boys' Night Out Job".
- This episode, along with The Paranormal Hacktivity Job, mirror a similar set up of The Girls' Night Job and The Boys' Night Out Job, in which the girls and the boys of the team are separated for their own episodes.
- Breanna is with Hardison in this episode.
- The episode makes reference to the Korean version of Leverage, Leverage: Con Artists, by mentioning that Roy has a dog named after Eliot who bites everyone. The references alludes to that this team would be part of Leverage International's Korea team.
- The woman at the proshop, Jennifer, is played by Noah Wyle's wife
- One alias Sophie uses is "Carol Hathaway". Carol Hathaway was a character on the series "ER" in which Noah Wyle (Harry Wilson) starred.
- Sarah's comment about the rich and powerful is similar Nate's narration for the opening of the original series.
- Christian Kane (Eliot Spencer) and guest star, James Marsters (Carl) appeared together on the series Angel.
- Noah Wyle (Harry Wilson) directs Christian Kane (Eliot Spencer) and guest star, Drew Powell (Jack Hurley) again in this episode. He also directed and appeared with them in The Librarians: And the Hollow Men.
- Carl Bishop says his nail salon is at the corner of Laurel and Felicity, possibly a reference to Laurel Lance and Felicity Smoak, from the series Arrow.