The Second David Job

“	You know your entire plan depended on me being a self-serving utter bastard.	”
— Jim Sterling

Season finale, Part 2. Nate comes out of hiding to challenge Sterling and Ian Blackpoole. This time, he's going to steal both The First David and The Second David statuettes right out from under their noses. But Nate's bigger challenge is to get his fractured team to work together again. The stakes have never been higher; either Nate gets his vengeance, or his friends go to jail for the rest of their lives.

The Client[]

There were no clients in this episode.

The Marks[]

Ian Blackpoole
Sterling and his associates

The Con[]

At IYS, Blackpoole congratulates Sterling on his promotion to vice president, and Sterling gives a presentation to the other executives about his proposal for IYS to both cover insurance and security for their clients' art. Blackpoole supports Sterling's initiative and offers to make his wing of the museum the showcase for this initative, where all the art will be either Blackpoole's or owned by a prominent client of IYS, with the two Davids as the centerpiece.

After Sterling's presentation, Blackpoole shows him to his new office, where Nathan Ford has been lying in wait for them. Nate openly declares his intention to rob the museum and suggests Blackpoole call the police, which Blackpoole dismisses. Nate then makes Blackpoole an offer: if Blackpoole resigns as CEO and donates all his assets to charity, Nate will not rob the museum. Rejecting the offer, Blackpoole leaves, and Nate follows suit.

After scattering in The First David Job, Parker, Eliot, Hardison, and Sophie all run into each other independently casing the museum where Ian Blackpoole is set to open a new wing in three days. As the museum guards notice them and give chase, they end up fleeing the museum together, only to find Nate waiting outside with a getaway car.

Hardison directs Nate to a new safe house of his, a mansion he says "used to be MC Hammer's" before the IRS foreclosed on it. In the mansion's dining room, the team is still under stress, with trust in short supply after Sophie conned the crew into stealing the First David. Nate pushes them to focus on the job at hand, analyzing the security system for the Davids and identifying the restoration room below the gallery as a possible in.

Parker suggests they use Maggie as their inside person, since she's already involved with the museum, so Eliot (as Dr. Sinclair, the art historian) contacts Maggie to set up a coffee date. Maggie agrees readily, and Eliot meets her at a coffee shop, wearing Nate's button camera so the team can watch and listen in from a nearby van. To Nate's embarassment, Maggie rattles off a list of Nate's negative qualities before revealing that she recognizes Nate's button camera on Eliot and knows he's watching. She goes to the van and confronts Nate and the rest of the team.

Back at the mansion, Maggie feels used by Nate and asks him for an explanation. Teary-eyed, Nate confesses that Blackpoole and IYS denied the claim for their son's cancer treatment, and he's been keeping it secret from her because of his fear that Maggie would end up hating him the way he hates himself. Maggie holds Nate as he cries, and back in the mansion she agrees to help the team with the con. Meanwhile, Sterling's security lead Geary alerts him that Eliot and Maggie have been in contact.

At the gallery, Parker switches the allergy medicine of the museum director, Darien Lloyd, with pollen and amphetamines and swaps out his glasses with a blurry pair, and the team sends Maggie in to nudge him towards Sophie in the Egyptian Room. When the director arrives, Sophie poses as an expert on Egyptian art and offhandedly mentions a fabled curse on a sarcophagus he's about to display. Paranoid, Lloyd looks up the history of the sarcophagus on his laptop and finds several news articles planted by Hardison discussing the deaths of various museum professionals related to the sarcophagus. Maggie comes in to seal the con, telling Lloyd that the curse is really a fungus found on Egyptian artifacts and that its symptoms are congestion, memory loss, and blurry vision (exactly what the team's ensured Lloyd is experiencing), so Lloyd hastily has the sarcophagus moved into storage by museum workers who turn out to be Nate, Hardison, and Eliot.

In the Blackpoole Gallery, Maggie instructs workmen to install benches, all under Sterling's watchful eye. Once the gallery is set up, Blackpoole presents the two Davids in their glass display case as Sterling and Geary go over the many countries in which the Leverage crew is wanted. Just then, Nate strolls up to the museum, having bought a ticket to the opening, and when Sterling attempts to turn Nate away, Blackpoole stops him, thinking they'll be able to catch Nate in the act of robbing the museum. As Nate wanders off, Sterling is on high alert. He orders security to follow Nate and quickly learns from Lloyd that a sarcophagus was moved to the restoration room after his conversation with Maggie. Realizing that the restoration room is just below the gallery, Sterling rushes down to open the sarcophagus but finds that it only contains a mummy, rather than a member of the crew hiding inside.

As an alarm triggers, the glass case guarding the Davids back in the gallery fills with smoke, and the team synchronizes their clocks in preparation for the heist. As panic starts to spread among the museumgoers about the potential of a chemical attack or robbery, the museum is evacuated (including Blackpoole and Sterling's security personnel), and in the lobby, Sterling and Blackpoole discover that all the guests have been given identical copies of the Davids. Outside, Sterling orders the museumgoers to hand over their statues to his men, and as he's doing so Hardison electronically locks the museum doors.

Responding to another tripped alarm, Geary and his men rush up to the roof to find Nate, who descends via rope and harness into the gallery and pulls the rope down with him, and Nate and the team have their run of the locked Blackpoole Gallery. When the locks are finally released, Sterling, Blackpoole, Lloyd, and Maggie return to the unlit gallery to find Nate standing in front of the glass display, where the two Davids remain. Blackpoole is initially relieved, but as the lights come back up, Nate reveals that their target wasn't the two Davids-- it was the $150 million worth of other IYS-loaned and insured artwork on display, which Blackpoole was personally responsible for. The Davids are still there, but the rest of the gallery walls have been stripped bare.

In desperation, Blackpoole grabs a gun from one of the guards and points it at Nate, demanding Nate tell him where the art has gone. Sterling orders the room cleared so that it's only him, Blackpoole, and Nate remaining. Rather than addressing Blackpoole's threat, Nate offers Sterling a deal. Blackpoole will be stripped of his position and holdings in IYS and the company's policy of denying every claim without review ends, and in exchange Nate will return all the stolen art. In addition, Nate provides Sterling with a recording he'd made of Blackpoole previously dismissing Nate's threat to rob the gallery. Nate remarks that once the owners of the art realize Blackpoole knew there was going to be a theft, they're going to sue him, and Sterling realizes he can come out of this on top by returning the paintings and selling out Blackpoole.

When Blackpoole trains the gun on Nate again, Nate quickly disarms him, and Blackpoole backs off. Blackpoole attempts to approach Maggie, who simply clocks him and walks off. Nate hands Sterling the gun and leaves as Sterling makes the necessary arrangements.

A little later, Nate and Maggie chat in the gallery as Nate admits he's not sure what he'll do next. The call comes in-- Blackpoole is out, and Nate can return the art. Nate lifts the cushion from a bench in the gallery to reveal a hole down to a storage room next to the restoration room. The team had stashed the art and hidden the doorway between the storage room and the restoration room with the sarcophagus crate. Sophie remarks that the team will transport the art to the loading dock and make it look like someone else had dropped it off, completing the con, and Nate and Maggie part on somewhat better terms than they'd been on before.

At an airport hanger, the crew is dressed for travel. Nate thanks them all, and as they say their goodbyes, the five of them reluctantly part ways once more.

Guest Cast[]

Mark A Sheppard as James Sterling
Kari Matchett as Maggie Collins
Alex Carter as Sterling's Henchman
Erick Avari as Dr Lloyd
Kevin Tighe as Ian Blackpoole

Episode Notes[]

The team's temporary headquarters is the Merritt mansion on the grounds of what was the Pasadena campus of Ambassador College.

Trivia[]

Nate refers to the Glenn-Rieder security system. Glenn-Rieder is a reference to the Leverage "Wonder Twins", writers Melissa Glenn and Jessica Rieder.