History Recap / LeverageS03E11TheRashomonJob

In her story, Sophie first poses as the Duchess of Barrington-Highsworth, a patron of the arts who donated artworks to gain admission to the gallery. She then introduces the current custodian of the dagger, Edgar Gladstorn, who flirts with her, and the head of the museum security, Coswell, who she tells everyone to be careful of since he's quite skilled. Her plan is to cause a commotion by spiking a drink and asks a waitress to give it to the Zimbabwe's art minister, Robert Bioko, who's allergic to shrimp. While she waits for it to happen, she meets with a surgeon, Dr. Wes Abernathy and has a little chat. Just as Bioko's allergic reaction kicks in and Abernathy deals with him, Sophie secretly slips into the storage room and changes her dress and identity to Dr. Karen Ipcress, who's worked in the restoration department for the past 4 months.

Sophie blames Eliot for ruining her con, but Eliot claims the moment he opened the crate, he found a mug instead. In the end, Gutman's heat on him was off as Gutman was arrested a couple of weeks later for something. Just then Hardison laughs as it's his turn to tell his side of the story. Hardison's motive for stealing the dagger was because the museum had installed the Tanuki security system from Japan, and anyone who'd manage to hack it and show proof that they'd stolen something would be legendary.

Parker is actually the waitress, though she's doing a horrible job. She ignores Hardison, who's hording big amounts of hors 'doerves into his pockets, then runs into Sophie, who is just speaking gibberish.

Everyone keeps arguing, believing that somebody lied. Parker suddenly realizes Nate's expression and immediately questions him if he knows something. Nate then simply asks the others if they knew that the insurance company insuring the museum at the time of the theft was ''his'' old company, IYS. Nate finally tells them what happened to the dagger...

Nate's story starts with him speaking to Coswell. Everyone else remembers Coswell as a tough, wary, skilled security expert, but he's actually a shy, bumbling guy who's pretty sweet. Nate chats with him, as he's there to investigate the recent thefts from the museum. He tells Coswell that IYS most likely will not insure the dagger. Coswell never actually caught on to Sophie's cons, he just thought she was pretty and wanted to ask her out. In reality, the drink Sophie spiked found its way to Eliot, not Hardison, and it was the glass of wine that he accidentally spilled on her due to tasting the shrimp in it. Coswell meets "Dr. Ipcress" but can't work up his courage to talk to her, and leaves. He tells the guards to find her, but while the team wrongly remembered it as him knowing she was a fake, in reality, he wanted to give her some roses at it's her last day working. (He ends up giving them to Nate.) He even asks Eliot but fails to notice that he's a fake guard. He then meets Hardison, disguised as a worker, and sobs about how he missed his chance to confess his love to Ipcress. He notices the guard Eliot mugged, but gets pushed inside by Hardison. Inside the storage room, he tells the guard that he'll get them out. He opens Parker's bag, filled with rappelling rope, assumes it's the janitor's stuff and uses it to climb inside the air vent. He bumps into Parker, who punches him in the face. The dagger drops down the shaft... and falls out of a ceiling vent, directly into Nate's hand.

* MacGuffin: The Dagger of Aqu'Abi has absolutely no significance other than as a valuable item that four thieves would want to steal and that Nate's company would insure. (In fact, neither Eliot, Hardison or Parker cared about the dagger itself at all - Eliot is stealing it for someone else to get him off his back, Hardison just wanted to prove he beat the security system protecting it, and Parker is a thief and would steal anything for the hell of it).
* MistakenForBadass: Coswell, the head of security. Everyone thought he was a stone-cold competent [[TheChessmaster badass]], able to match their every move - In actual fact he was just a shy, bumbling sweetheart who was lovestruck for Sophie's second persona; Dr. Ipcress. This really highlights the sociopathic tendencies of the crew, misreading emotions and social cues.

* UnreliableNarrator: You could probably use this episode as an URExample if it weren't so late to the party. Each story is more unreliable than the last it seems, except for Nate's version of events which recounts what actually happened...or so we think. Perhaps the best part is that each of the Team - when they were uncertain which part others played - perceived their future teammates as magnificent; Eliot's "Dr. Wes Abernathy"(played by soap-opera heartthrob Creator/RileySmith) was soft-spoken and charming even to Sophie's trained eye - despite him shamelessly flirting with her (humorously, after she hears him depicting her accent as godawful Cockney, Sophie demands the chance to revise her story in order to frame him as a beer-swilling hick). Hardison's "Minister Robert Bioko" (played by the powerfully built multi-athlete Juan Canopii) was intimidating even to ''Eliot'' (and was ''[[SarcasticConfession sarcastically thanking him]]'' for smuggling him past security!). And the socially-awkward Parker blended in so well that she was ''invisible'' to all of them save Nate, although unlike in the other two cases the extra who plays the cater waitress does bear a good deal of resemblance to Beth Riesgraf.

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Sophie's English accent gets sillier and sillier with each story repeat. Sophie even lampshades the tendency for Americans to think all accents are the same after Hardison depicts her as Scottish.

** Eliots voice can be heard when shouting about the London delivery for the crate.

** The head of security is depicted as being scarily competent by every members' retelling of events, except for Nate's.
** The head of security is in the ventilation ducts because he had found Parker's equipment Sophie had accidentally swapped for her clothes for her second persona. He wasn't in the ducts because he was trying to find a robber, he was in the ducts out of sheer curiosity.

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Sophie's English accent gets sillier and sillier with each story repeat. Sophie even lampshades the tendency for Americans to think all accents are the same after Eliot depicts her as Cockney.

* UnreliableNarrator: You could probably use this episode as an URExample if it weren't so late to the party. Each story is more unreliable than the last it seems, except for Nate's version of events which recounts what actually happened...or so we think. Perhaps the best part is that each of the Team - when they were uncertain which part others played - perceived their future teammates as magnificent; Eliot's "Dr. Wes Abernathy"(played by soap-opera heartthrob Creator/RileySmith) was soft-spoken and charming even to Sophie's trained eye - despite him shamelessly flirting with her (humorously, after she hears him depicting her accent as godawful Cockney, Sophie demands the chance to revise her story in order to frame him as a beer-swilling hick). Hardison's "Minister Robert Bioko" (played by the powerfully built multi-athlete Juan Canopii) was intimidating even to ''Eliot'' (and was ''[[SarcasticConfession sarcastically thanking him]]'' for smuggling him past security!). And the socially-awkward Parker blended in so well that she was ''invisible'' to all of them save Nate.

* ChekhovsArmory: Lots of details get set up, and then get fired off in later story repeats, clarifying events, or adding details past versions of the story missed.

** WordOfGod [[http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2010/12/leverage-311-rashomon-job-post-game.html is;]] "Nate is still an unreliable narrator, although about 80% accurate. He's not making up the crush, or the crime plot, or how they interfered with each other." The remainder is most likely him being annoyed at Sophie believing that Coswell, "[[GreenEyedMonster ...could be even smarter than Nate]]." Instead, no-one except ''he'', Nathan Ford, knew ''exactly'' what was going down the entire time -- ''but failed to finger any of the four at the time!'' He just pieced together the four stories after hearing them to figure out who did what when.
* UnrequitedLove: Coswell for Sophie, or rather an alias she has.

* RashomonStyle: Named after the trope, or rather [[Film/Rashomon the film]]. The story of the theft unfolds as each of the team tells their version of events, but with distinct difference in minor details.

* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** An alert viewer would recall that Dr Wes Abernathy was the alias Eliot used in The Jailhouse Job, hinting that the doctor Sophie bumps into is actually Eliot before we get to his part of the story.
** A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but everyone sees the object Coswell was carrying down the stairs as a gun -- except for Eliot. Even though he misread Coswell as a dangerous, competent head of security, he would never mistake a box of roses for a weapon.
* GambitPileup: Sophie, Eliot, Hardison, and Parker all had well-thought-out plans for stealing the Dagger of Aqu'Abi, and the episode suggests that any of them would have been successful...except that they all implemented them simultaneously, unaware of the others, and interfered with each other.
* MacGuffin: The Dagger of Aqu'Abi has absolutely no significance other than as a valuable item that four thieves would want to steal and that Nate's company would insure. (In fact, neither Eliot nor Hardison cared about the dagger itself at all--Eliot is stealing it for someone else to get him off his back, and Hardison just wanted to prove he beat the security system protecting it.)
* MistakenForBadass: Coswell, head of security. Everyone thought he was a stone-cold competent badass able to match their every move, when in actual fact he was just a shy, bumbling sweetheart who was lovestruck for Sophie's second persona, Dr. Ipcress.

* NoMacGuffinNoWinner: As far as the four thieves are concerned, but then it turned out that the owner was trying to defraud the insurance company with a fake that he was going to declare stole. Their actions enabled Nate to nail him for it.
* RashomonStyle: The story of the theft unfolds as each of the team tells their version of events.
* RetroactiveRecognition: A rare in-universe example. Since they all had brief encounters with each other, none of the crew remembered that they all met at the gallery. When each crew member tells their version another actor replaces the others until they have been identified in the story. Since Sophie goes first, another actor doesn't replace her.
* RunningGag: Sophie's accent; each version has her sounding more ridiculous than the previous. (Except Nate's)
* SpannerInTheWorks: Each character does this for each other character at least once, as each of the four would have succeeded if not for the actions of everyone else.

* UnreliableNarrator: All over the place! Each one is more unreliable than the last it seems, except for Nate...we think. Perhaps the best part is that each of the Team - when they were uncertain which part others played - perceived their future teammates as magnificent; Eliot's "Dr. Wes Abernathy"(played by soap-opera heartthrob Creator/RileySmith) was soft-spoken and charming even to Sophie's trained eye - despite him shamelessly flirting with her (humorously, after she hears him depicting her accent as godawful Cockney, Sophie demands the chance to revise her story in order to frame him as a beer-swilling hick). Hardison's "Minister Robert Bioko" (played by the powerfully built multi-athlete Juan Canopii) was intimidating even to ''Eliot'' (and was ''[[SarcasticConfession sarcastically thanking him]]'' for smuggling him past security!). And the socially-awkward Parker blended in so well that she was ''invisible'' to all of them save Nate.

* UnrequitedLove: Coswell for Sophie.

* UnreliableNarrator: All over the place! Each one is more unreliable than the last it seems, except for Nate...we think. Perhaps the best part is that each of the Team - when they were uncertain which part others played - perceived their future teammates as magnificent; Eliot's "Dr. Wes Abernathy"(played by soap-opera heartthrob Riley Smith) was soft-spoken and charming even to Sophie's trained eye - despite him shamelessly flirting with her (humorously, after she hears him depicting her accent as godawful Cockney, Sophie demands the chance to revise her story in order to frame him as a beer-swilling hick). Hardison's "Minister Robert Bioko" (played by the powerfully built multi-athlete Juan Canopii) was intimidating even to ''Eliot'' (and was ''[[SarcasticConfession sarcastically thanking him]]'' for smuggling him past security!). And the socially-awkward Parker blended in so well that she was ''invisible'' to all of them save Nate.