| “ | I still say stabbing's an option. | ” |
— Parker | ||
Sophie must keep her feelings in check when she discovers that someone has written a memoir of the team, casting himself as Nate – which leads an exiled criminal to kidnap Harry and “Fake Nate”, forcing the Leverage team to pull a heist.
The Client[]
- The client and the mark could be considered the same person in this episode. One of Nate Ford's former forensic accountants at I.Y.S. Insurance stole his stories and used them to make a book of the team's original adventures--taking Nate's role in the team's cons. Eventually this leads to him getting kidnapped and asked to perform a high stakes theft.
The Mark[]
- Milton Friedlander "Fake Nate"
- King Navid
Summary[]
On the day of the anniversary of when Sophie and Nate first met, a book telling all of the stories of the Leverage crew reaches Breanna’s notice. The book contains all of the crew, except for Sophie. The book's writer claims to be the Leverage team's mastermind, Nate himself. The crew recognizes their clients will be exposed if the book gets out. The team holds a fake TV promotion inviting Fake Nate to promote his book. They then put the idea into Fake Nate’s head that his book will lead to bad people trying to come after him to scare him off of publishing his book.
While about to leave, Fake Nate and Harry get kidnapped by former King Navid, who takes them to the North of France. Navid recruits Fake Nate to steal his wife’s scarab from her secure museum. Navid is planning to use the money from the scarab to hire men to reclaim his title. The team follows them to rescue Harry.
The team find Fake Nate, and he tells them that he was a forensic accountant for IYS. Nate was the only one at IYS to acknowledge him and his team. Nate always told him that one day they’d find his superpower. But when Nate left, Fake Nate never found his superpower and realized he was extremely boring. IYS considered Nate a threat, so they tracked him and the team. One day Fake Nate ran into Nate at a bar. Nate began telling him all of his stories, which Fake Nate borrowed to make him seem more interesting. When Fake Nate got laid off, he needed the money and decided to publish Nate’s stories in a book.
The team uses Fake Nate as a part of their con, trying to steal the scarab to rescue Harry. Harry works from the inside to turn Navid’s men against him, making them realize Navid has no money to pay them. Fake Nate realizes that his superpower is boring people to sleep. The team puts together that the scarab was a fake as Navid’s wife sold it years ago. Fake Nate realizes that Nate never told him about Sophie because he was protecting her. Navid’s team turns on him, and the Leverage team escapes. At the end of the episode, Fake Nate tells Sophie his real name, Milton Friedlander.
Locations[]
- Paris, France. The team drove one of the French food trucks down from Paris to find the mark.
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- Leverage Offices
Guest Cast[]
- Joey Slotnick as Milton Friedlander "Fake Nate"
- Nick E Tarabay as King Navid
- Rasha Zamamiri as Liliana
Episode Notes[]
- Sophie apparently isn't mentioned in the book, but when we see a scene from it while it's read by King Navid that she's part of the team.
Trivia[]
- Eliot is still a brilliant chef, and has been cooking for the group since they reunited with Sophie
- Sophie enjoys vegan meals, and may have become vegan since Leverage.
- Eliot's alias is Frank Farmer. Given the team's fondness for using aliases relating to TV shows, this may be a reference to writer and actor Frank Farmer, who appeared in the Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade.
- Eliot tells Liliana that his name is Frank Farmer, which is Kevin Costner's character in The Bodyguard.
- It was 22 years between jobs with Noah Wyle and Joey Slotnick working together in Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999).
- Parker's Russian character is named "Stolichnaya" which is a brand of vodka, but she delivers with a very convincing accent.
- The 'Mastermind' states he is an accountant. Elliott says he's NOT the accountant, as Elliot worked with the Accountant taking down Hector Madera. Possible reference to the movie The Accountant (2016).
- While speaking to Liliana, Eliot uses a line from The Outpost Season 1 Episode 3 (Another Dean Devlin show) "I swore an oath to protect you, even if it's from myself"