The team targets a music producer with a history of sexual assaults, but when they learn that two civilians are already trying to take the producer down, the team decides to stay in the background and guide the civilians through a con of their own.
Tropes stolen in this job:
- Apple of Discord: Jenna is able to get Hogan and Carol to turn on each other by showing that Carol’s name, and only her name, is on the paperwork, leaving her The Scapegoat for the embezzlement while Hogan would get off scot free.
- Badass Normal: Jenna and Keith. The Leverage team helps them out with the major logistic beats - sending Carol out of the office on a date, setting a fire alarm, taking care of the security following Jenna - but all the investigative and major legwork is their own. They end up getting a calling card from Leverage International.
- Contrived Coincidence: Played With. It seems to Jenna and Keith like a lot of ducks are lining up suspiciously in their favor, but it's just the Leverage team.
- A Day in the Limelight: Of a regular person in the world of Leverage.
- Did Not See That Coming:
- The team's operation gets thrown Off the Rails when Jenna gets the job by going into the office when not called and convinces them to hire her.
- Then again when Jenna notices the alias Sophie is using to meet Hogan and warns him that the name is from Doctor Who, meaning it's an alias.
- At the end of the episode, the Leverage team are surprised when Jenna and Keith walk right past without even noticing them, despite the fact that they have met nearly all of them (some in multiple roles) throughout the con.
- Did Not Think This Through: In hindsight, it might have been a bad idea to go out with Hogan (a sexual predator) as Jenna realizes as he comes close to making her his next victim. Luckily the team prepared for this and earlier roofied his drink, knocking him out cold.
- Dirty Old Man: Hogan sexually assaults his female employees, and all of his victims that we see are younger than he is.
- Dramatic Irony: Jenna and Keith are impressed and amazed they were able to get Hogan taken down all by themselves while the audience knows the team has been backing them up.
- The Ghost: Hogan mentions his ex-wife and gets a phone call from her in one scene, but she remains off-screen.
- Has a Type: Carol REALLY has a thing for the King Incognito trope, to the point where she has a dating profile deliberately designed to attract it.
- Hope Spot: Jenna theorizes near the end that all of Carol's cold behavior and insistence on keeping her away from Hogan were a way of keeping her safe. Nope, Carol just didn't want to have to deal with cleaning up the inevitable mess.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Downplayed. Keith got the idea to get Hogan convicted of embezzlement so that he can't victimize any other women from listening to True Crime podcasts.
- Justice by Other Legal Means: When Jenna and Keith realize that Hogan is guilty of embezzlement, they decide to get the proof as it'll get him off the streets. Meanwhile, the authorities can gather evidence of his numerous sexual assaults which are harder to prove.
- Large Ham: Harry as Carol's date - a Belgian prince who is in hiding as a lumberjack.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Parker roofies Hogan when he comes to the Leverage bar to Breanna's approval. It conveniently kicks right as he's about to try something on Jenna and as a bonus leaves with the mother of all hangovers the next day.
- Lower-Deck Episode: The protagonists of the episode are characters who would be minor background characters in any other episode.
- Mistaken Confession: When two cops show up right as Hogan and Carol are arguing about how much evidence there is linking them to sexual assault and embezzlement, the two quickly start accusing each other. The cops reveal they just came to respond to a fire alarm, but end up arresting the two criminals largely because of that accidental confession.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Keith used to be in charge of wiping and resetting computers of fired employees, but then Brimley took over. Brimley wasn't as competent, so he didn't fully wipe it, allowing Keith and Jenna to find the notes April had compiled about Hogan's other victims.
- Origins Episode: The ending implies this for both Jenna and Keith as they find Leverage International card left for them, hinting they are being invited to join.
- Out of Focus: This happens to Leverage in this episode. Instead of showing them pull off their con against Hogan, the plot focuses on Keith and Jenna as they try to expose Hogan as a sexual predator, which brings them right into the middle of Leverage's operation.
- Perspective Flip: This episode shows what one of Leverage's cons looks like from the viewpoint of an ordinary person. Without the audience knowledge of The Plan, their interventions come off as random coincidences.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The mark Hogan is a serial sexual predator being targeted by the team when Jenna stumbles into the plot by accident. It really tells you how bad a guy this makes him when she learns of this on her own, Jenna's immediate reaction is to do everything in her power to take him down even if by less-than-legal means.
- Shout-Out: Sophie initially has a meeting with Hogan under the name Lethbridge Stewart from Doctor Who, but it gets Deconstructed when Jenna, who's familiar with the show, notices this and warns Hogan that it may hint at a scam.
- In a Freeze-Frame Bonus, the two cops at the end are also named for Doctor Who characters: (Amelia) Pond and (Donna) Noble.
- The Smart Guy: Keith is an IT employee who is also a very skilled hacker, which allows him to become Jenna's equivalent to Hardison and Breanna. He even provides her with an earbud he made himself near the end so they can communicate.
- Spanner in the Works: Jenna getting hired as Hogan's new assistant derails whatever con Leverage initially had planned, which apparently involved Breanna getting the job. She also clocks "Lethbridge Stewart" as a fake name, which derails their plan B. Fortunately, they roll with it by helping Jenna with her own attempt to bring Hogan down.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Doctor Who is a well-known television show with a large audience. The use of Themed Aliases based on it was bound to get spotted eventually.
