The First and Second David Jobs: The Recurring Nemesis
Note: The blog broke last night so I didn’t get to revise this and clean it up, but it’s Sunday and it’s getting late so this is going up as is. Apologies for the sloppy work.
“The First and Second David Jobs” are just good storytelling, period, but they’re also great community building because “The First David Job” destroys the community and “The Second David Job” restores it, stronger than before. And all of that happens because the team meets Nate’s nemesis and doppelgänger, James Sterling, aka “The Guy Who Never Loses.”
Oh, Sterling, I do love you.
A nemesis is “the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall,” a pursuing fury that does not rest until it has defeated its mark. Nate Ford’s nemesis is James Sterling, an insurance investigator who has Nate’s old job and intends to keep it, but there’s more at play than that. Sterling IS Nate, he’s as smart as Nate, as underhanded as Nate, as ruthless as Nate, as fast as Nate. He knows what Nate’s going to do because it’s what he’d do, just as Nate knows him. There’s bitter rivalry there but there’s also healthy respect and not a little admiration. But if they’re so evenly matched, how can Sterling always win?
Because Sterling’s the good guy. Sterling’s the one who plays on the side of law and order while Nate creates chaos. Sterling has the full force of the law behind him, while Nate has Sophie, Hardison, Eliot, and Parker. Sterling still has a reputation to polish, a child to protect, a career to advance. Nate is a drunk with a son he couldn’t save and a career he walked away from. Sterling is the Golden Boy and Nate is the Dark Horse. This is a show about justice being served, and you can’t serve justice by defeating the good guy, so Sterling Always Wins.
On the other hand, it’s hard to root for the guy who holds all the cards. Nate may be the bad guy in Sterling’s world, but in the world of the show, Nate’s the wild card in the justice game, the guy who comes out of nowhere and sweeps the board, righting the wrongs that justice and Sterling cannot fix. So Nate also has to win, which is one of the reasons that the stories get so much more interesting when Sterling shows up.
Another thing that gets more interesting is character. Just by existing, Sterling makes Nate face the truth about himself because Sterling is the perfect foil. Nate tells himself that he not a thief, he’s not a drunk, that he’s just fine, but when he sees Sterling, he can’t escape recognition of how far he’s fallen because he used to be Sterling. It’s not a coincidence that when Nate begins to hallucinate in detox, it’s Sterling he sees taunting him with his failures and his fall. Sterling’s very existence rips aside Nate’s rationalizations, so in a way, Sterling is the best thing that happens to Nate: just by breathing, he drives Nate to face the truth about himself.
Of course, Sterling does a lot more than breathe. He knows Nate’s gone over to the other side, so whenever Nate shows up on his radar, Sterling takes note and pursues. This isn’t good for the team any time, but it’s especially bad when the job the team is doing is complicated, Sophie’s hiding something, Nate’s emotionally involved in the con which blunts his judgment, and worst of all, he’s still drinking heavily. Add to that the rule in the Leverage writer’s room–Sterling Always Wins–and you have all the elements of disaster. Sterling’s appeared in episodes before these and he’s going to come back into the Leverage team’s lives again and again, but this is the job that sets the bar, the job that shows Sterling exactly what he’s up against and shows the team exactly how much trouble they’re in every time he comes into view.
Fun fact: Sterling was written specifically for Mark Sheppard to play.
So what’s the value of a nemesis to a story about community? It’s a unifying element. Each week the team defeats a different antagonist which reinforces their sense of teamwork, and each week they learn a little more about each other which reinforces their sense of family, but the things that help meld them into a group are the things that recur and become a shared language: the brotherly sparring of Hardison and Eliot, the team effort to bring Parker into the land of the reasonably sane (“You’re Alice”), shared goals, shared memories, and a mutual loathing of one guy who pursues them, their leader’s doppelgänger, the guy Parker calls “Evil Nate.” Sterling is great story fodder because he’s a great character, but what he’s best at is uniting the team against him.
“The First David Job” (aired twelfth)
Sterling may be Nate’s nemesis, but he’s not Nate’s antagonist in this episode. This time he’s a minion of Ian Blackpoole, the CEO of the insurance company that refused treatment for Nate’s son. Blackpoole is about to open an art show in “his” wing of a museum, and the centerpiece of his collection in one of two existing maquettes for Michaelangelo’s David. The opening is Nate drunkenly accosting Blackpoole, but a “Two Weeks Earlier” tag takes the narrative back to the original plan. (I HATE those media res openings.)
The Inciting Event
Nate’s drinking is getting worse, so the team stages an intervention, telling him that he doesn’t need rehab, he needs revenge, and then telling him about Blackpoole’s show. This con isn’t about saving someone helpless, it’s about fixing their leader’s past because the demons that torment him are hurting the team.
The team figures out the plan to con Blackpoole out of eight million dollars by selling him a second David, thereby making a fool out of him and destroying his reputation when the statue is found out to be a fake. They put the plan into action, getting Sophie into Blackpoole’s circle as a representative from the Vatican and Eliot in as the expert who will examine the statue to establish it’s authenticity. Nate fakes being drunk to accost Blackpoole and offer him the statue which is being sold by a middle Eastern prince (that would be Hardison) while Hardison and Parker wait in the van. The team is doing great, Nate explaining to Blackpool why he’s brokering the deal–he’s broke, he’s living in his car, etc.–when he’s overheard by the blonde that Eliot has been chatting up. Unfortunately, she’s Nate’s ex-wife Maggie, and his past comes back to kneecap his team again.
The Change of Plans To help Nate make the sale because she feels sorry for him, Maggie volunteers to examine the statue for Blackpool. Since Maggie is an art expert, the story now changes from a con–sell the fake David–to a theft–Parker has to go in and steal the real first David, switching it with the fake, so that the statue that Maggie examines will be real.
As the team scrambles to make the new plan work, Sophy suggests they up the con, switch the real first David they’re going to sell Blackpool after the sale, leaving him with two fakes and a ruined reputation. The team is enthusiastic about it, but Nate takes Sophie into his office and tells her that he know what she sounds like when she’s running a con, telling her “You don’t con us.” Sophie’s more interested in Maggie, wondering how she can work for Blackpoole, the man who let her son die, and Nate, distracted, tells her that Maggie doesn’t know, he never told her. But as she goes out the door, he says under his breath, “There’s that voice again . . .” and the seed is planted that Nate’s past isn’t the only history threatening the team.
Point of No Return: They decide to steal back the first David to destroy Blackpool completely. The story turns again (that’s why they call these “turning points,” folks), this time from a single theft to an elaborate con.
The team goes off and pulls the job exactly as they’d planned except that there’s a hitter named Quinn waiting in the hanger to take Eliot out, goons in suits break into the offices and knock Hardison out, and Sterling is waiting for Parker when she breaks into the van to steal the First David back. The kids are in big trouble because Mom and Dad are trapped by the past.
Crisis: Sterling meets Nate and says, “I know how you think;” his price for giving them Hardison and Parker back will be the second David. When Nate says, honestly, “I don’t have it,” Sterling says, “Of course you do. Just ask yourself, ‘Who came up with the plan to break Ian Blackpoole?’” And light dawns as Nate turns to a guilty Sophie: the entire Blackpoole con has been a set-up for the real con, Sophie conning the team to get the second David, something Sterling can see because he’s not blinded by drink and an affection for Sophie. It’s a devastating last blow in Sterling’s attack. He’s divided and conquered Nate’s team–Eliot’s injured, Parker and Hardison have been captured, and Sophie’s betrayed him–and the story now swings from a triumphant con to a frantic scramble to save two captured team members even as everything they’ve worked for falls apart.
Sophie takes Nate to the Second David, and Nate angrily tells her she’s addicted to theft. “We’re all addicts to our pasts,” she tells him, and then getting to the heart of the problem with the community, tells him: “You still think of us as just criminals. There’s always going to be a part of you that thinks you’re better than us,” forgetting that there’s still a part of her that thinks her needs are more important than the team. But she’s right about one thing: as long as Nate is addicted to and driven by the idea that he’s an honest man, he can’t embrace the team that’s his future and walk away from the bottle.
Nate moves on to the practical problem of getting Hardison and Parker back. Sophie tells him they can’t win because Sterling knows how they think.
“So we think like somebody else,” Nate says and thinks like Parker and Hardison. (Sophie and Parker’s escape from the roof is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series.)
Climax: The team blows up their own home base to destroy the paper trail that Sterling would have used to bring them down–Hardison’s multi-screen “Hey, Sterling, get out of my house”–but Sterling rightfully claims victory: he has the money they scammed from Blackpoole and both Davids which his company had insured. The team’s covers are blown, their faces have been sent to every law enforcement agency in the world, and their base of operations is destroyed. There’s only one smart thing they can do, Sterling tells his henchman, and they’ll do the smart thing because they’re professionals: they’ll scatter, breaking up the team forever. The last scene shows the team walking off in five different directions. Sterling Always Wins.
COMMUNITY STATUS: Destroyed.
Good thing there’s one more episode to go.
The Second David Job (last episode of Season One)
Inciting Event: Sterling is now Vice President at IYS (Insure Your Stuff), but when Blackpool shows him his new office, Nate is sitting in his chair. He tells them, “I’m going to rob the two Davids gallery on opening day,” and then leaves Blackpool laughing and Sterling on guard. (I particularly love this line because he doesn’t say, “I’m going to steal the two Davids,” and for once, Sterling misses the clue.)
Meanwhile, down in the gallery, Sophie, Parker, Hardison, and Eliot are all casing the joint separately, Sophie very nearly running into Maggie. They see each other about the same time that Sterling’s team sees them, and the four of them make a run for it as Nate pulls up a car to help them escape. They end up back at Hardison’s new safe house, arguing and blaming each other until Sophy says, “We’re a mess.” Nate brings them together as they talk about their individual plans for a robbery and then he asks them why they came back when they’d agreed to split up for six months. They all have different reasons–Sophie’s is to hurt their nemesis Sterling–but what they’re facing now is that the robbery is going to be twice as hard as it was before. “Four times,” Nate says and tells them he warned Sterling. Then he tells them that they’re all trying to solve their versions of the crime, adding, “There’s a reason we work together.”
Change of Plans: They agree to get the crew back together, and the story swings from five people planning five different heists to a fragmented crew trying to come together to pull off their last job.
They make their plans which rely on conning Maggie into helping them unaware, but sharp Maggie catches on and they have to read her in on the plan, a new albeit temporary team member, bringing Nate’s past and future together in one place. No wonder he drinks. Nate finally tells Maggie the truth about what happened to their son, and she’s in, but when she hears the plan, she says, “You can’t just make somebody do want you want them to do.” The team unites in their amusement, Hardison saying, “That’s what we do,” and Parker patting her head and saying, “You’re adorable.” The key thing in that scene is that “that’s what we do;” they may be down, but they’re thinking like a family again.
Point of No Return: The story swings from a team trying to con somebody into helping them to a team with a new member going into action.
They scam everybody while Sterling keeps watch, trying to figure out what they’re doing, on top of their every move. Along the way, Parker, Hardison, and Eliot have a come-to-Jesus talk with Sophie about not scamming family–Eliot says, “I was just getting used to be part of a team”–and then they accept Sophie’s non-apology as an apology and move on because it’s show time.
Crisis: Alarms go off as an unknown gas is released into the gallery, and Sterling and Blackpoole and the security team run into gallery to find Nate leaning against the case with the two Davids now obscured by smoke. The story swings from planning to final execution as Nate faces down the man who let his son die and the nemesis who destroyed his team.
Climax: Nate tells Sterling that he can have all the artwork back as long as he ruins Blackpoole. Sterling may know Nate, but Nate knows Sterling: as Sterling says, “You know, your entire plan depended on me being a self-serving, utter bastard.” Still, he agrees, destroying Blackpoole and scoring a promotion for himself because Sterling Always Wins.
Resolution: The team splits up again, but it’s clear that they’re all having second thoughts even as they leave.
COMMUNITY STATUS: Tune In Next Season
The end of the community arc in this first season is a demonstration that the team is so strong it can’t be destroyed. Their leader may be a drunk, their mother figure may have betrayed them, their nemesis may have triumphed, they may be beaten and scattered, but in the end they’ll always come back together, a family tested once again in a crucible and made stronger by adversity.
Next week: “The Beantown Bailout Job” brings them back together after Sophie invites them all to her debut as Maria in “The Sound of Music.” When Parker says, “I didn’t know you could sing,” Sophie says, “Well, not as well as I act,” and still everybody shows up to watch her. That’s family.
