| “ | There’s no pyramid schemes in jazz! | ” |
— Ronald | ||
Sophie is asked by an old accomplice to help his daughter, who has fallen victim to a multi-level marketing scheme.
Client[]
Miranda
Mark[]
Richard and Debra Prosper
Summary[]
After taking down some thugs alongside Eliot, Sophie is greeted by an old friend, Billy the Gent. He contacted Sophie as his daughter, Miranda, had gotten involved in an MLM while struggling financially and pregnant. The company Miranda is working at is called Magiq Baby and is run by Debra and her husband, Richard. Billy guilts Sophie further into helping him as he went to prison alongside Arthur.
Breanna plans to install a virus into Magiq Baby’s programming that automatically allows sellers to return their goods instead of going through the company’s bosses. Sophie puts Breanna as a “cubical” worker at the company, but Breanna quickly finds many safeguards surrounding the system. An employee at the company, Ronald, tells her that the bracelets they wear allow them access; the higher up they are in the company, the more access they have. Breanna deduces that they’ll need Debra’s or Richard’s bracelets to put her virus onto the company’s system.
The team then divides and conquers with Sophie focusing on Debra. She sends Harry to “bromance” Richard. Eliot reluctantly lets Harry use his car. Magiq Baby has a celebration ceremony in which Sophie infiltrates, with Parker working as a waitress at the event. Sophie introduces herself to Debra.
Meanwhile, Harry fakes the car breaking down outside the building, and when Richard goes to investigate the disturbance, Harry asks Richard to help him fix it. After, Harry offers Richard a spin in the car. Debra immediately becomes suspicious of Sophie and puts her on the spot, asking her to recite the five key principles in front of everyone. Sophie manages to get the crowd to help her and then figures the rest out as they are common self-help principles.
Parker lends Sophie some more help by faking being pregnant with a fake belly while Sophie recruits her into Magiq Baby. Debra then calls Sophie over and forces her to downgrade Miranda as a test. Debra then invites Sophie up to her office. Parker consoles Miranda and offers her assurance.
Meanwhile, Eliot goes to investigate Billy, having not trusted him. Billy tells Eliot about when Sophie got him, and Arthur arrested. Billy says he was the getaway driver and doesn’t blame Sophie for his arrest, but can understand why Arthur does as the two were close and she could have easily helped him out.
Richard invites Harry to his office, where Harry notes a safe that may hold Richard’s access bracelet. Parker crawls through the vents of Richard’s office, and when Harry and Richard leave, she cracks open the safe. Inside she finds gold bars and a land contract in Uzbek but not Richard’s bracelet. Richard invites Harry to his mancave, where he and Harry get dressed up in Viking gear and fight with weapons. Harry’s com falls out during the fight, and Richard begins to swing a sword at him.
Breanna helps Ronald see he’s in a pyramid scheme and asks what his dream is. He says he wanted to be a part of a jazz band and runs off during his lunch to grab his trumpet.
Debra asks Sophie for her story of how she joined Magiq Baby, and Sophie lies about being in a bad relationship before the company saved her. Debra immediately calls out Sophie’s lie. Sophie realizes that she won’t be able to lie to Debra and tells her about how she lost Nate. Debra then asks the other girls in the room to leave and pries more at Sophie to get her to open up. Sophie tells Debra how she had someone who trusted her, someone she chose to leave and how the choice should have haunted her, but Sophie never let it; she moved on and made herself forget. After opening up, Sophie goes into Debra and her company’s practices. Debra admits the truth about taking people for their money. Sophie timed Debra’s confession so it’d be live for her daily 4 pm announcements to the entire company.
Having run away from his fight with Harry, Richard enters Debra’s office and inserts his access bracelet into the server. Breanna took it and put her virus on it while Harry and Richard were fighting, so the virus infiltrates the system. As the team leaves with Debra and Richard defeated, Debra implies that Sophie was talking about her daughter.
Back at the Leverage base, Ronald is playing his trumpet outside.
Sophie and Eliot go to confront Billy. They deduced that he was after Richard’s land contract. Billy admits that his boss wanted the land for his runway. Sophie recognizes that Billy is still working for Ramsey, and when Eliot asks who Ramsey is, Sophie says, “someone I hoped thought I was dead.”
Guest Cast[]
- Max Baker as Billy the Gent
- Christopher Gorham as Richard Prosper
- Virginia Williams as Debra Prosper
- Taina Dominguez as Miranda
- Rashif Holmes as Ronald
Aliases[]
- Sophie: Margaret Bentley
Episode Notes[]
- Parker's name tag as a waitress reads Alice, a reference to her Alice White alias
- While faking being pregnant, Parker refers to the unborn child as "little Alec", after Hardison, of course
- While pretending to be pregnant, Parker struggles to answer how long she’s been pregnant, saying, “Forty… four… fourteen months”, implying Parker doesn’t know how long pregnancy lasts.
Trivia[]
- One of the DOJ SUVs that pull up to the Prospers' building has a number of NCC1701 on it: the same number as the USS Enterprise in 'Star Trek'.
- Eliot says, “This isn’t sneaking, it’s lurking. Big difference.” A line that closely mirrors something Spike said in Buffy the Vampire Slayer 5×13 “I wasn’t lurking, I was standing about. It’s a whole different vibe.” Christian Kane played a role in the Buffy spin-off Angel
- When speaking with Sophie, Debra claims she can hear a bit of Boston in her English accent. The Leverage team were based out of Boston for seasons 2 - 4 in the original series.