Follow TV Tropes

Following

Recap / Leverage S 02 E 09 The Lost Heir Job

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/levtara_662.png
Miss Tara Carlisle (really Cole)
The truth will win out.
-Tara


In the private wing of a hospital, a woman, Ruth, comes to see one of the patients there, Mr. Kimball. She’s been trying to see him for months, but his lawyer shows up and has her escorted out.

In London, Sophie is surprised to see Nate there. He’s come to beg her to come back since the team seems off without her. He tells her he’s meeting a client in the morning and asks her to be there.

The meeting comes, and no Sophie. Ruth’s lawyer, Tara Carlisle, is there with Ruth. Ruth runs a charity that puts foster children into adoption, and Kimball was one of her larger donors. He told her that he was going to leave his estate to her charity. Kimball’s lawyer cut off all visiting soon afterward. Nate promises her he’ll do what he can to make sure his wishes are fulfilled.

When Ruth leaves, Tara talks to Nate about what she’s heard of him. She insists that the proper way to go about it is through the probate court, which, with no executed will, will not turn out in her favor, and Tara knows it. She insists on being in the loop when Nate does his job, and Nate reluctantly agrees.

The team is not happy about it, but Nate asks Hardison to run a check on her and if she checks out, they can have her along. Hardison then begins the briefing on Kimball and his attorney, Peter Blanchard. Blanchard was the executor and beneficiary of the will, until Kimball changed the will. So he’s keeping that one hidden and bringing the original to court.

Nate asks for something from Kimball’s past, something Blanchard had to clean up, something scary and will not cause Tara to flip out. At a prison, they are waiting for Tara, while Hardison goes over what he found out about her, she’s a crusader. She comes up and Hardison begins to explain what they’re after, Kimball’s old partner, P.J. Orson, doing time for embezzling. There’s evidence that Orson may have paid the Mob, through something called Lamont Holdings, to kill someone on Kimball’s orders.

Nate is about to put a con together, but Tara suggests they just go ask him. When they do, Orson just laughs at them. Since he’s not willing to help, Nate has Hardison and Eliot go in to get something out of him, sends Parker after Blanchard’s office and brings Tara along so she can watch him become a really terrible lawyer.

He finds Blanchard at the probate judge’s office and loudly asks to see the judge, while Hardison and Eliot go under cover as prison guards. Hardison starts talking to Orson while Eliot slips a shiv into his back pocket. Later, Eliot comes up and has another guard search him for weapons, finding it and sending Hardison into a panic attack, accusing him of being Aryan Nation. In Orson’s bunk they find a picture of Hitler and a Nazi flag.

Eliot and Hardison mention something about Lamont, and Orson calls Nate and Tara back to talk. He thinks they’re federal agents, and tells them that he made a payment to someone named George Gilbert.

Nate schedules a meeting with Blanchard as Hardison tries desperately to find something on George Gilbert. Blanchard is not impressed with the credentials Nate has for his character, but Nate drops some mentions of things that Blanchard’s had to clean up over the years. He then starts to go on about Lamont, but it turns out that George Gilbert is actually Georgia Gilbert.

She was a stripper, and Nate finds out that Blanchard sent her away using laundered mob money. Blanchard says Kimball was going to marry her. Nate uses that to spin a tale of Georgia having been pregnant at the time, and now Kimball’s daughter is coming out and wanting her share. He calls Parker, who was in Blanchard’s office trying to break into his safe, into the room and introduces her as Kimball’s daughter, Lizzy, a meth addict. Blanchard thinks he’s being played and dismisses them.

Back at headquarters, Hardison gives them the scoop on Georgia, including the fact that she was indeed pregnant, which Nate figured based on Kimball’s sudden desire to marry her. The problem is, Blanchard could ask for DNA verification, so they have to convince him he can’t. Back in Blanchard's office, Tara is trying to convince him to get a DNA test to prove that Lizzy is not Kimball’s daughter. He, however, starts thinking that that wouldn’t be a very good idea, since the file she has is the one Hardison made, which makes a very compelling case for Lizzy being who she says she is. Tara promises to fight it for years if necessary. After she leaves, he decides to simply have Lizzy removed, after all, who’s going to miss a displaced drug addict?

The next day, Nat and Parker show up at an agreed location as Tara and Ruth are in court, but Blanchard is not there. Fortunately Eliot notices the hitman and is able to intervene. Blanchard is annoyed and shoots one of his guys in the leg, and has the others call it in, saying Parker did it. Moments later, the police are chasing her and Eliot.

At the courthouse, Hardison delays Blanchard by sticking a bunch of keys into his pockets and forcing him to go back and forth through the metal detector, and a piece of aluminum foil in the shape of a gun in his briefcase. It doesn’t hold him very long, and he comes into court a little disheveled and in a bad mood.

Nate has a backup plan which depends on Tara. She questions Ruth, then Blanchard begins to cross-examine her, when Nate comes in and the judge decides to hear him right now.

He explains the story about Lizzy again, Blanchard protesting the entire way, then requests to ask Ruth some questions. He asks her what color his tie is, and she admits she’s color blind, the same as Kimball and Georgia, and a child between them could only be color blind. He continues on, explaining how Kimball didn't choose her charity, which places children into adoptable homes (Ruth was herself adopted), by chance; he chose it because he had been looking for her, his daughter. Blanchard requests that all this be struck and Tara agrees, but requests a DNA test to prove that Ruth is Kimball’s daughter. The judge agrees and adjourns the court.

Parker arrives and says she finished cleaning out Blanchard’s safe, finding all sorts of interesting stuff in his files, and since he’s not getting the estate money, he can’t pay off his cop friends, including the one he shot earlier, who aren't covering for him anymore.

At the pub, Nate and Ruth talk a bit, and then he asks where her lawyer is. She says she’d never met Tara before this week. Tara had told her she was with Nate.

Going up to Nate’s apartment, they find Tara there. She introduces herself as Tara Cole, a friend of Sophie’s. She has a letter from Sophie explaining it. Nate agrees to take her on, and she hands him an invoice for her part of the inheritance. The team turns and glares at Nate.


Tropes stolen in this job:

  • Amoral Attorney: Peter Blanchard really is one, while Nate poses as one.
  • Artistic License – Biology: Nate says that you need two color blind parents to create a color blind daughter. You can't get a color blind girl without a color blind father, but a mother can carry the color blind gene and pass it to her child without being color blind herself.
    • This would be true if Ruth had congenital red-green color blindness. However, the fact that Ruth mixes up blue and yellow flowers indicates that she has a much rarer condition called tritan-type color blindness, which is not sex-linked. It doesn't matter which gene came from which parent.
  • The Atoner: Mr. Kimball's sudden turn of philanthropy towards Ruth's cause seems to be making penance for his life of illicit behavior. It goes a bit deeper when it's revealed he is really seeking her out because Ruth is his long-lost daughter, and Kimball is trying to build a relationship with her without her knowing why he wasn't there for her.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: Nate when Sophie asks if the team needs her, or if he needs her.
  • Chekhov's Gun: When Ruth comes to the bar, she has flowers for Kimball's grave. She says they are blue irises, but they are white and yellow. This is a hint at her color-blindness.
  • Color Blind Confusion: Ruth's color blindness is hinted at when she brings flowers for a grave and calls them blue irises when they're clearly yellow. This is later used to prove that she's really the daughter of the wealthy Mr. Kimball and a stripper named Georgia, who were both color blind and correctly shows the mechanism of inheritance as coming from both sides.
  • Contrived Coincidence: Tara notes that it’s an interesting coincidence that Blanchard is at the probate court just as she and Nate get there. Nate is about to explain it, but then decides against it.
  • Crusading Lawyer: What Tara seems to be from what Hardison found on her.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Nate has a moment in court, while collecting his thoughts and putting things together.
    "According to these health records which opposing council was kind enough to offer into evidence, which he was...."
  • Dirty Cop: Blanchard has a couple in his pocket.
  • The Dog Bites Back: He gets turned in by said guy in the end.
  • Frame-Up:
    • Orson is framed by Elliot and Hardison for two prison violations, a shiv and Nazi paraphernalia, before pressuring him for information. If he gets a third, he gets transferred to supermax.
    • Blanchard shoots one of his guys in the leg then tips the police off saying Parker did it.
  • Gilligan Cut:
    • After Nate mutters how the team’s going to hate having Tara along, it cuts to Eliot saying, “I hate this.”
    • Tara’s saying Orson might be willing to help them is followed by him laughing at the notion.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The image Tara gives the team…at first.
  • Impossibly Tacky Clothes: Nate’s alias, Jimmy Popodokolos.
  • Kick the Dog: After the hit on Parker fails, Blanchard shoots one of his guys, who it turns out is a cop, to make it look like there was a shootout.
  • Offhand Backhand: Parker pulls off a really, really cool one with a frickin' tazer.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Nate says this about Parker’s character, Lizzy.
  • Sixth Ranger: Tara Cole gets introduced.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Deliberate in this case, as Tara was sent by Sophie to fill in while she's out on her journey.
  • Take a Third Option: Rather than let “Lizzy” show up and possibly be Kimball’s daughter or drag it out for years in court, Blanchard decides to simply remove the variable.
  • Temporary Scrappy: Tara Cole (played by Jeri Ryan) is brought in mid-con and already in-character to accommodate Gina Bellman's (who plays Sophie Devereaux) maternity leave. The in-story explanation is that Con Woman Sophie Devereaux has created so many false identities that she lost herself in the process. So, in order to find herself, she has to go and kill off her other personas. Despite being clear from the start that Tara's stay is going to be transitory, she grates on characters and audience alike. Primarily, for being much colder, more detached, and more explicit about wanting her cut of whatever profits their cons brought in.note  She does a good job of showing how well the original team fit together, though.
  • Villain of Another Story: Kimball made his fortune by union-busting, polluting, and every other evil trick in the book. He spent most of his life being no different from every Corrupt Corporate Executive the team ever took down.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Blanchard has a slow one, a lot of it involving getting Nate’s cover’s name right. In fact Nate spends a good part of the courtroom scene just getting under his skin. “I don’t think that one’s even a lawyer!”

Top