Recap / Leverage S 04 E 14 The Boys Night Out Job

The second half of the two-parter begun with The Girls' Night Out Job. It begins with a poker game, which spirals wildly out of control.

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• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: After telling Hardison to be more confident and direct, Eliot backs his play (claiming to be a dirty cop) and only does his hitting when Hardison isn't looking, and very quietly.
• Blatant Lies: "Sister" Lupe claimed to be a nun when she met Hurley. She was holding a daquiri and wearing a bikini. And it's not a subversion. At the end of the episode she leaves with Eliot.
  Nate: You are. Yes, you are. You're a good guy, and I'm sure you're doing great work and she's a nun. An improbably hot nun, by the way.
  • Eliot refuses to give Hardison relationship advice, because "That would mean I think about you and Parker, which I never do!" He then immediately gives Hardison relationship advice. "You're slow-playing it too much."
• Brick Joke: Shelly's mildly disappointed Eliot and Hardison aren't coming back with pizza. When he shows up at the end of the episode to help Bonnano bust the Irish and Mexicans, he knocks down the Irish boys while eating a slice.
• The Bus Came Back: Hurley, who we last saw in the season 1 episode The 12-Step Job.
• Church Going Villain: One of the Irish goons wants to go into the church after Hurley. The other objects strongly. Then, later, after holding Lupe at gunpoint.
  Churchgoing Goon: Sister Lupe? I'm going to hell.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Hardison buys a drug test from a pharmacy to figure out what they got their hands on - red indicates hard drugs, while green means they’re clean (or at the very least, not what’s being tested for).
• Funny Background Event: As Hardison, trying to be assertive, faces off with the Mexicans, Eliot keeps beating up Mexicans behind him and hiding that so Hardison gets to still take a stand.
• Gambit Pileup: Hurley gets duped into smuggling drugs... cancer drugs that the poor ordinarily can't afford. The Mexican Cartel learns that he's a pipeline into the US, so they slip a stash of narcotics in his car for their people in Boston to grab. The Irish mob finds out about this and go to get the drugs for themselves and kill Hurley to send the Mexicans a message. And then Nate and the boys get caught up in this whole mess. This also somehow collides with the theft at the Venezuelan consulate that the girls are caught up in.
• Gambit Roulette: Nate's plan to get the Mexicans and the Irish to meet at the entrance requires the Mexicans to pull out and leave the parking garage just ahead of the Irish.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The Irish demand Hurley so they can send a message to the Mexicans about encroaching on Irish turf. Nate initially refuses, but Hurley tells him to do it. He wants to prove he earned the second chance they gave him in The Twelve Step Job.
• Improbable Weapon User: Eliot, of course. He stops a speeding car with an umbrella. He throws it through the open driver's side window so it opens up and blocks the windshield.
• Insistent Terminology: Nate keeps correcting Hurley: he's not drinking again, he's still drinking; he's not Hurley's friend; he wasn't helping Hurley, he wanted to send him to prison...
• Meet Cute: At the end of the episode, Hurley bumps into Alice's friend ("You are Alice, Parker."), Peggy, at the bar, and they walk out, arm in arm discussing his love of tacos and her love of cats.
• Multitasked Conversation: Nate's stuck in a 12-step meeting, so he has to disguise his conversation with Hardison and Eliot as an apology to his wife. Irish church == Irish goons. Sorry about the car == find Hurley's car. Sorry about the bag of drugs == Hurley's a dumbass drug mule.
• Oh, Crap!: Nate and Hurley, chased by men with guns, duck into a church to get off the street. Then...
  Nate: Hurley, you are in over your head. Again. Until I figure out what's going on, we're not leaving this basement. [opens door to find an addiction support group on the other side] Uh, we are leaving this basement.
  • Hurley gets one, too, when Sister Lupe shows up at the church they're hiding in.
  Hurley: [beaming with delight] Sister Lupe! [she draws a gun, he drops his arm and goes sad puppy] Sister Lupe...
• Once More, with Clarity: We finally get some insight into the weird crap we saw Hardison doing when he got phone calls in the last episode.
• Overly Long Gag: In the middle of the argument over whether they should go into the church after Hurley, the goons have an argument over whether the church's basement also counts as holy ground that devolves into an argument about the kinds of groups that use the basement, leading to a discussion of the boy scouts.
  Churchgoing Goon: A boy scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent! Reverent is right there at the end because it is, if not a faith-based organization, not entirely secular!
  Irreverent Goon: ... So you're not coming in with me.
• Properly Paranoid: Nate goes down to the bar for a bottle of scotch. A few minutes later, Eliot hears gunshots outside. He immediately assumes Nate's in trouble and drags Hardison out to go find him.
• Refuge in Audacity: Nate tries this one time too often.
  Churchgoing Goon: Father, why is there a nun's habit here without the nun inside?
  Nate: ... Rapture!
• Rule of Three: As soon as he sees Lupe's picture, Nate realizes she's not a nun. Eliot, too. And when he meets her, Callahan says so, too.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Callahan, boss of the Irish mob, is a little annoyed that his goons haven't gotten Hurley yet.
  Callahan: Oh, I see your point. You can't go shooting a man in church! Well, go in there, and drag him out of the church. Shoot him in the face in the church parking lot!
• Shown Their Work: Spanish, like English, has multiple words for "in", just like English does, with differences in meaning based on context.
  Mexican boss: They said they were sending heroin and cocaine. This is not heroin and cocaine.
  Mexican goon: When Vasquez called he said the drugs were in the car!
  Boss: In the car?
  Goon: "Las drogas están en el coche"!
  Boss: "En el coche" o "dentro del coche"? [In the car or inside the car]
  Goon: ... "En" el coche?
  Boss: Are you asking me or telling me?
• Too Dumb to Live: Hurley is transporting statues of the Virgin Mary for a nun... to warehouses... at night... across the border from Mexico to the US.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: Nate and Hurley stumble into a meeting and Hurley refuses to let Nate leave (he wants Nate to stop drinking, of course). Everyone stonewalls Nate and prevent him getting his hands on a phone, so he has to abuse the meeting's standards and goals.
  Nate: I need to make amends! Like with my ex-wife! If I had a cell phone, I would call her right now, just so you could get the credit!
  Literally everyone there: [holds up cell phone]
• Unfazed Everyman: Bonanno has been interacting with the team for so long that he just rolls with their weirdness.
  Shelley: He was in prison?
  Eliot: Yeah he went to jail, but he escaped.
  Shelley: [to Bonanno] Shouldn't that bug you, being a cop and all?
  Bonanno: You get used to it.
  • This gets a Call-Back 15 minutes later when Nate calls Bonanno and asks, hypothetically, where he might find some safehouses for the Mexican Cartel.
    Shelley: So they're not coming back with those pizzas, are they.
    Bonanno: You get used to it.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Subverted. It looks like Nate's about to chew Hardison out for giving Hurley info on how to get in touch with Nate.
  Nate: How in the hell would you give Hurley information about how to find me? Ever.
  Hardison: You know what, Nate, it seems like lately you've been so focused on the part of the job where we wreck people, I thought it might be nice to show you we actually do some good in the world. I know you're mad, but...
  Nate: Hardison? Thanks.
• Would Hit a Girl: Nate takes advantage of Lupe's momentary distraction to grab her gun and knock her out.
  Hurley: Whoa! You just cold-cocked a nun! In church! ... Talk about making amends.
  Nate: [Eye Roll]