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.
Tropes stolen in this job:
- Affably Evil: Navid comes across as a GENUINELY nice guy. Right up until he tries to kill everyone, in which case he's a nice guy for a murderer.
- Break the Fake: Milton does this to the phony scarab to convince everyone.
- Chekhov's Skill: Milton worked as a forensic accountant for an insurance company. When all seems lost, he spots the fact that the Zafir Scarab is insured for way lower than it should be. He quickly deduces that it is a fake and the real one must have been sold off long ago. This means that King Navid cannot pay his mercenaries.
- Continuity Nod:
- The events of "The Stork Job" are briefly mentioned.
- In a flashback, Milton claims to a date that he exposed the insurance fraud surrounding a dagger IYS insured, something Nate actually did and revealed in "The Rashomon Job".
- Cursed with Awesome:
- Milton is so boring, he puts people to sleep just by talking. Which makes him perfect for one of Leverage's franchise crews.
- Parker doesn't like the idea of being legendary, being feared means no challenge.
- Didn't Think This Through: Sophie, disguised as a reporter, asks Milton how he feels about the risk that all of the people he's claiming to have taken down in his book will come seeking revenge. A terrified Milton admits he hadn't considered that.
- Forensic Accounting: Fake Nate/Milton used to be Nate's forensic accountant and describes Nate as the only one of the insurance investigators who recognized the accountants' valuable contributions to the cases they closed and bothered to come down to the accountants' floor on their birthdays and such. Fake Nate/Milton has a decent memory for numbers and irregularities (getting a Chekhov's Lecture about Liliana's unusual insurance policy), but is capable of talking about little else and tends to bore people.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: While Fake Nate/Milton isn't able to hold a candle to Nate Ford's ability to plan heists, he does have the ability to recite bureaucratic regulation in such excruciating detail that anyone listening to it will fall asleep. This is proves incredibly useful to the team and eventually lands him a position helping out the sub-teams mentioned in the first episode.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Because Nate felt Sophie was too personal a subject to mention in his notes, Milton has absolutely no idea about her and so doesn't include her in the memoir. Which also leaves him not grasping how badly a team needs a con artist like her on jobs.
- This gets played on when Navid says he didn't mention her and Milton states it was because she was "too important to mention."
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The crew's first goal is to stop the memoir from being published. However, Milton (the Fake Nate) and Harry are kidnapped by thugs who want them to steal the Zafir Scarab for their boss, forcing the crew to rescue them and thwart said boss. The villain turns out to be (former) King Navid of Zafir, who was deposed by a rebellion that installed a democracy in his country, so he needs the Scarab to sell so he can pay his mercenary forces, who will help him get back his throne.
- Mockguffin: The artifact that King Navid is targeting turns out to have been replaced with a fake long before the events of the episode. Navid's ex is thought to have already sold the real one to fund her lavish lifestyle.
- Only in It for the Money: Navid's mercenaries turned on him the second they realized he didn't have the money to pay them.
- Qurac: Zafir.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Navid's full title is so long, he gives up before finishing it.
