The Nigerian Job
Like I mentioned yesterday, over the next couple weeks I'm going to re-watch the show and post meta for each episode.
101. The Nigerian Job.
Parker, after the initial heist: “Come on Nathan, tell the truth. Didn’t you have a little bit of fun playing the black king instead of the white knight, just this once.”
Nate doesn’t answer. He’s good at that.
It’s repeated over and over in this episode: Nate is a white knight, Nate is an honest man, Nate is not a thief.
I do believe that Nate is a good person, but he’s also much more complicated than the white knight. In fact, I think the repetition of “honest man” and “not a thief” has to do with Nate’s (former) self image more than anything else.
When we meet Nate, he’s drinking. (of course.) He’s also already drunk.
More importantly, the morning after the heist, we see that he not only passed out still dressed on top of the covers, but he never even bothered to take off his coat.
In the course of this episode, both jobs seem to keep him sober. (Or at least mostly so; in retrospect I find it hard to believe he didn’t drink at least a little.) Sill, he’s more clear headed than we’ve seen him since. I think that’s because of how personal and unexpected the situation is. He has a personal stake in the initial heist and even more so in the subsequent con, and he wants to be aware for it.
It’s utterly personal. Nate does not take the job because of the supposed injustice of the situation. He’s going to turn it down until Dubenich asks, “How badly do you want to screw the insurance company that let your son die?”
Everything else is just an excuse-including Nate’s recurring insistence that he is not a thief. Later, when Nate proposes they run a game on Dubenich, he reveals the lie, asking “How do you think I got most of my stolen merchandise back?” Maybe Nate never conned or stole from anyone for his own personal gain, but he sure as hell made it all a part of his job.
During the heist itself: as much as we’re told that Hardison, Eliot, and Parker each work alone, and as much as they don’t trust each other, they still make a good team. There’s a modicum of professional respect. It’s Nate who holds himself separate and, as Hardison points out, doesn’t want to be their friend.
Later Eliot starts talking about Nate’s son, and after a few moments Nate shuts him down, abruptly saying “you and I are not friends.” I don’t want to call forward to subsequent episodes too much, but the abruptness here is the first instance of what Nate does when he feels like someone is getting too close or when he feels like someone is questioning his authority.
Returning to the plot of the episode, when the double cross from Dubenich comes, Nate is the one to figure it out, and yes he laughs hysterically. Yes he’s the first to run.
But Nate stays inside the building. He gets to the door, pushes the button so the others can get out, and he has plenty of time to turn around and make the decision to stay in the building. The exterior shot backs this up; we only see Parker, Eliot, and Hardison diving away as the building explodes behind them.
(The size of the explosion is overkill, and frankly, if Nate had been in an explosion that size, he’d be dead. But, y’know, tv. The point is, at the last second Nate decided not to run.)
Nate’s not actively trying to kill himself; I don’t believe that for a second. However, this moment, like so many others in The Nigerian Job, sets up a pattern of behavior.
After, in the hospital, Parker and Eliot are both ready to bail. Every man for himself; it’s in keeping with the fact that they’ve always worked alone. Nate knows that the odds are much better if they work together, and while that’s for the greater good, it’s for his own good too. He doesn’t have any other exit plan. (As an aside, I find it curious that Nate seems as dismayed as the rest of the team that they’ve already been processed. If he’s been a law abiding citizen, he shouldn’t turn up in the system when the police run their fingerprints. It’s possible that he just doesn’t want to deal with the complications of being picked up with Parker, Eliot, and Hardison.)
Still, it’s not yet instinct for the team to work together, and to convince them Nate asks “Do you trust me?” and Eliot responds, “Of course, you’re an honest man,” which is a recall, a repetition, of Dubenich’s reason for hiring Nate in the first place.
But Nate is not an honest man. Not entirely. Con man = confidence man. Nate admits he’s a con man when he wants to run a game on Dubenich, and that he conned people before in the course of his job. Nate is good at running a con, too-and the skill set helps him get the team to work together-because people believe him. People want to believe him. They want to believe in him, and he uses that. Throughout the episode he uses that to keep the team together, but his motivation to do so is more for his own good than anything else.
I use the word “good” loosely.
Later, Eliot is wrong when he theorizes that Dubenich cheated so Nate’s “good guy brain sees him as the bad guy” and Nate’s conscience is clear.
Sure, Dubenich is a bad guy, but Nate is in it for revenge, plain and simple. That’s not an abstract concept, and Nate’s conscience doesn’t give a damn. Dubenich used Nate’s son to pull him in to the game, and for that Nate is going to ruin Dubenich. None of this is about justice. None of this is about returning the plans to their rightful owner. None of this is about putting things right. Justice is only the excuse.
In Nate’s mind, the only thing that’s right is that Dubenich be punished.
(I will be coming back to this thought in subsequent reviews.)
It’s also no coincidence that in the last scene, the clients with whom they’re meeting are parents whose teenage daughter has been killed, and a faceless corporation is responsible.
The mother says, “I want them hurt.”
Again, it’s not about justice, it’s about vengeance.
(Also, Nate’s pretty good at not revealing parts of himself (con man). While he isn’t showing it in that final scene, it has to be hell on him to be exposed to parents’ grief.)
Incidentally, Hardison is the most, uh, socialized of the crew. Probably the most sane, too. He doesn’t have a problem letting the team into his (gorgeous) apartment. He never wants to cut and run and leave the others behind. After the first heist, he’s the one who says it was cool working together, and after the second heist, he’s the first to come up behind Nate and propose they all keep working together.
Parker has clear priorities, and other people are not very high on that list. At this point, there’s not much else to say about her relationships. While Eliot does try to talk to Nate about Nate’s son, he underestimates the emotional side largely because he’s focused on business. As I mentioned, he misreads Nate’s motivations. Nate does enjoy the game, but that’s not his reason for doing any of this. Love of the game is not why Nate’s pulled himself out of his previous plan to do nothing much but drink all day.
But to return to the narrative, now we meet Sophie.
While Parker, Eliot, and Hardison are (rightfully) horrified by Sophie’s performance in the play, Nate has this strangely fond look on his face. He’s seen her on stage before, I think. In the alley they say very little; in fact, Nate says almost nothing. He doesn’t need to. Everything is written on his face, and this is by far the most open we’ve seen him. They have a history, and it’s a personal history. We know that regardless of the flashback to Paris, seven years ago.
This is also the one and only time Nate doesn’t deny being a thief.
Sophie: “I’m a citizen now, honest.”
Nate: “I’m not.”
Their conversation is incredibly brief, but those two words are really all he needs to convince her to join the game.
So they start the con on Dubenich. We see that Sophie is in fact very good at what she does. Like Nate, she can get the mark to believe in her, but she never turns this on the team.
We also see that the team itself is getting comfortable. They still poke at each other, but the edge is gone from their conversation because now they’ve seen each other in action. I won’t say that trust itself is starting to grow between them, but that detached professional respect has grown into confidence everyone can and will hold up his or her end of the bargain. Trust will come soon after.
Thematically, the most important moment during the con involves the meeting between Dubenich and the Nigerians. This is the real turning point for Nate; this is the moment he says fuck it. They need to distract Dubenich for a few seconds, and Nate buys the time by busting the windows of three cars. It’s casual property damage-collateral damage-and he’s not subtle about it at all. He also doesn’t care. Clearly this was one of his back-up plans, but this is the action that he flat out cannot hide behind some (altruistic) excuse.
(Because he can hide the initial heist behind the excuse of returning stolen property-which seems to be a large part of his job description as an insurance cop-even though we know, for him, the heist was really about screwing over his old bosses.)
Nate’s good at hiding behind excuses because his excuses are all true. They’re true, but they’re not his real motivation. You can do something that results in a greater good, while having selfish motives.
They play on Dubenich’s arrogance, and the con goes down as planned. (And I’d like to note for later that pride is one of the seven deadly sins.) Pierson gets their plans back, the team gets a ridiculous amount of money, and Nate gets his revenge. Nate is very pleased with his revenge, as is evident when he talks to Dubenich on the phone.
In Millennium Park, the team is gathered in a circle with their obscenely large checks, there’s a beat of awkward silence, and Nate is the first to walk away.
Of course everyone chases after him, but unsurprisingly, it’s Sophie who tips the scales. With her we have the recall to Parker’s earlier line: “Go find some bad guys. Bad guys have money. Black king, white knight.”
While it’s true that her line can be interpreted as helping the victims-which in fact they do-the emphasis here is on punishing the bad guys. “Bad guys have money.”
The actions are two sides of the same coin, and the question becomes which side lands face up. Which is the driving impulse. That is the key to the “black king, white knight” duality we are given here in Nate.
He is, without a doubt, playing the black king.
101. The Nigerian Job.
Parker, after the initial heist: “Come on Nathan, tell the truth. Didn’t you have a little bit of fun playing the black king instead of the white knight, just this once.”
Nate doesn’t answer. He’s good at that.
It’s repeated over and over in this episode: Nate is a white knight, Nate is an honest man, Nate is not a thief.
I do believe that Nate is a good person, but he’s also much more complicated than the white knight. In fact, I think the repetition of “honest man” and “not a thief” has to do with Nate’s (former) self image more than anything else.
When we meet Nate, he’s drinking. (of course.) He’s also already drunk.
More importantly, the morning after the heist, we see that he not only passed out still dressed on top of the covers, but he never even bothered to take off his coat.
In the course of this episode, both jobs seem to keep him sober. (Or at least mostly so; in retrospect I find it hard to believe he didn’t drink at least a little.) Sill, he’s more clear headed than we’ve seen him since. I think that’s because of how personal and unexpected the situation is. He has a personal stake in the initial heist and even more so in the subsequent con, and he wants to be aware for it.
It’s utterly personal. Nate does not take the job because of the supposed injustice of the situation. He’s going to turn it down until Dubenich asks, “How badly do you want to screw the insurance company that let your son die?”
Everything else is just an excuse-including Nate’s recurring insistence that he is not a thief. Later, when Nate proposes they run a game on Dubenich, he reveals the lie, asking “How do you think I got most of my stolen merchandise back?” Maybe Nate never conned or stole from anyone for his own personal gain, but he sure as hell made it all a part of his job.
During the heist itself: as much as we’re told that Hardison, Eliot, and Parker each work alone, and as much as they don’t trust each other, they still make a good team. There’s a modicum of professional respect. It’s Nate who holds himself separate and, as Hardison points out, doesn’t want to be their friend.
Later Eliot starts talking about Nate’s son, and after a few moments Nate shuts him down, abruptly saying “you and I are not friends.” I don’t want to call forward to subsequent episodes too much, but the abruptness here is the first instance of what Nate does when he feels like someone is getting too close or when he feels like someone is questioning his authority.
Returning to the plot of the episode, when the double cross from Dubenich comes, Nate is the one to figure it out, and yes he laughs hysterically. Yes he’s the first to run.
But Nate stays inside the building. He gets to the door, pushes the button so the others can get out, and he has plenty of time to turn around and make the decision to stay in the building. The exterior shot backs this up; we only see Parker, Eliot, and Hardison diving away as the building explodes behind them.
(The size of the explosion is overkill, and frankly, if Nate had been in an explosion that size, he’d be dead. But, y’know, tv. The point is, at the last second Nate decided not to run.)
Nate’s not actively trying to kill himself; I don’t believe that for a second. However, this moment, like so many others in The Nigerian Job, sets up a pattern of behavior.
After, in the hospital, Parker and Eliot are both ready to bail. Every man for himself; it’s in keeping with the fact that they’ve always worked alone. Nate knows that the odds are much better if they work together, and while that’s for the greater good, it’s for his own good too. He doesn’t have any other exit plan. (As an aside, I find it curious that Nate seems as dismayed as the rest of the team that they’ve already been processed. If he’s been a law abiding citizen, he shouldn’t turn up in the system when the police run their fingerprints. It’s possible that he just doesn’t want to deal with the complications of being picked up with Parker, Eliot, and Hardison.)
Still, it’s not yet instinct for the team to work together, and to convince them Nate asks “Do you trust me?” and Eliot responds, “Of course, you’re an honest man,” which is a recall, a repetition, of Dubenich’s reason for hiring Nate in the first place.
But Nate is not an honest man. Not entirely. Con man = confidence man. Nate admits he’s a con man when he wants to run a game on Dubenich, and that he conned people before in the course of his job. Nate is good at running a con, too-and the skill set helps him get the team to work together-because people believe him. People want to believe him. They want to believe in him, and he uses that. Throughout the episode he uses that to keep the team together, but his motivation to do so is more for his own good than anything else.
I use the word “good” loosely.
Later, Eliot is wrong when he theorizes that Dubenich cheated so Nate’s “good guy brain sees him as the bad guy” and Nate’s conscience is clear.
Sure, Dubenich is a bad guy, but Nate is in it for revenge, plain and simple. That’s not an abstract concept, and Nate’s conscience doesn’t give a damn. Dubenich used Nate’s son to pull him in to the game, and for that Nate is going to ruin Dubenich. None of this is about justice. None of this is about returning the plans to their rightful owner. None of this is about putting things right. Justice is only the excuse.
In Nate’s mind, the only thing that’s right is that Dubenich be punished.
(I will be coming back to this thought in subsequent reviews.)
It’s also no coincidence that in the last scene, the clients with whom they’re meeting are parents whose teenage daughter has been killed, and a faceless corporation is responsible.
The mother says, “I want them hurt.”
Again, it’s not about justice, it’s about vengeance.
(Also, Nate’s pretty good at not revealing parts of himself (con man). While he isn’t showing it in that final scene, it has to be hell on him to be exposed to parents’ grief.)
Incidentally, Hardison is the most, uh, socialized of the crew. Probably the most sane, too. He doesn’t have a problem letting the team into his (gorgeous) apartment. He never wants to cut and run and leave the others behind. After the first heist, he’s the one who says it was cool working together, and after the second heist, he’s the first to come up behind Nate and propose they all keep working together.
Parker has clear priorities, and other people are not very high on that list. At this point, there’s not much else to say about her relationships. While Eliot does try to talk to Nate about Nate’s son, he underestimates the emotional side largely because he’s focused on business. As I mentioned, he misreads Nate’s motivations. Nate does enjoy the game, but that’s not his reason for doing any of this. Love of the game is not why Nate’s pulled himself out of his previous plan to do nothing much but drink all day.
But to return to the narrative, now we meet Sophie.
While Parker, Eliot, and Hardison are (rightfully) horrified by Sophie’s performance in the play, Nate has this strangely fond look on his face. He’s seen her on stage before, I think. In the alley they say very little; in fact, Nate says almost nothing. He doesn’t need to. Everything is written on his face, and this is by far the most open we’ve seen him. They have a history, and it’s a personal history. We know that regardless of the flashback to Paris, seven years ago.
This is also the one and only time Nate doesn’t deny being a thief.
Sophie: “I’m a citizen now, honest.”
Nate: “I’m not.”
Their conversation is incredibly brief, but those two words are really all he needs to convince her to join the game.
So they start the con on Dubenich. We see that Sophie is in fact very good at what she does. Like Nate, she can get the mark to believe in her, but she never turns this on the team.
We also see that the team itself is getting comfortable. They still poke at each other, but the edge is gone from their conversation because now they’ve seen each other in action. I won’t say that trust itself is starting to grow between them, but that detached professional respect has grown into confidence everyone can and will hold up his or her end of the bargain. Trust will come soon after.
Thematically, the most important moment during the con involves the meeting between Dubenich and the Nigerians. This is the real turning point for Nate; this is the moment he says fuck it. They need to distract Dubenich for a few seconds, and Nate buys the time by busting the windows of three cars. It’s casual property damage-collateral damage-and he’s not subtle about it at all. He also doesn’t care. Clearly this was one of his back-up plans, but this is the action that he flat out cannot hide behind some (altruistic) excuse.
(Because he can hide the initial heist behind the excuse of returning stolen property-which seems to be a large part of his job description as an insurance cop-even though we know, for him, the heist was really about screwing over his old bosses.)
Nate’s good at hiding behind excuses because his excuses are all true. They’re true, but they’re not his real motivation. You can do something that results in a greater good, while having selfish motives.
They play on Dubenich’s arrogance, and the con goes down as planned. (And I’d like to note for later that pride is one of the seven deadly sins.) Pierson gets their plans back, the team gets a ridiculous amount of money, and Nate gets his revenge. Nate is very pleased with his revenge, as is evident when he talks to Dubenich on the phone.
In Millennium Park, the team is gathered in a circle with their obscenely large checks, there’s a beat of awkward silence, and Nate is the first to walk away.
Of course everyone chases after him, but unsurprisingly, it’s Sophie who tips the scales. With her we have the recall to Parker’s earlier line: “Go find some bad guys. Bad guys have money. Black king, white knight.”
While it’s true that her line can be interpreted as helping the victims-which in fact they do-the emphasis here is on punishing the bad guys. “Bad guys have money.”
The actions are two sides of the same coin, and the question becomes which side lands face up. Which is the driving impulse. That is the key to the “black king, white knight” duality we are given here in Nate.
He is, without a doubt, playing the black king.