Several homeless vets turn up missing, and at least one of them was found dead in the river. The daughter of said vet comes to the Leverage team for help, suspecting foul play in her father's wrongful death. The team goes and infiltrates a college that was near where the missing cases incidents have been occurring. While Hardison goes undercover as a college student, Eliot goes undercover as a vet to find out what happened to the homeless taken off the streets.
Tropes stolen in this job:
- An Aesop: We need to take better care of our veterans rather than leave them to try, and fail, to deal with PTSD on their own.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Eliot has spent days not merely enduring torture, but using his indifference to it to torture the people trying to torture him. He gives zero fucks. Then Hardison needs help, so Eliot has to get out, now... Well, take a look at the Jack Bauer technique below.
- Character Catchphrase: Parker rescues Hardison from a beating at the hands of the fascist Frat brats.Brat: Nerd! You hear me?! You're never gonna be one of us! You're no Dustman, you're a geek!
Parker: Should I tell him it's the Age of the Geek?
Hardison: They'll figure it out eventually.
Parker: [Boot] - Chairman of the Brawl: Parker smashes a chair onto a dustman to stop him and his cohorts from beating on Hardison.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Frat Bro walks into Hardison's room, "Good news!" Hardison thinks he's in. Frat boy hands him his CIA file... pulls a gun.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Inverted when Eliot stops playing along, beats the CIA mook unconscious and starts freeing his fellow test subjects. The marine who tried to take his food, and who immediately recognized Eliot as special forces, comments, "Took you long enough." and gets to opening up the other cells.
- Fighting Fingerprint: At the homeless shelter, someone tries to steal Eliot's food. Eliot responds appropriately, with extreme violence. The would-be thief, a fellow veteran, correctly identifies Eliot as special forces, then reveals himself to be a former Marine.
- Government Agency of Fiction: The fraternity is recruiting for one. Eliot used to work for one. Which way should credibility lean that the Frat Bro still in college is able to request and receive Eliot's apparently unredacted file?
- Hannibal Lecture: The interrogator interviewing Eliot tries to do this on him, only for it to get turned back around on the interrogator by Eliot.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Parker pretends to be one early on to help Hardison sell his cover as a cool college student and infiltrate the fraternity.
- Historical In-Joke:
- The main frat brat's name (Zilgram) is a dual shout-out to the infamous psychological experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram (pushing people to torture innocent victims) and Philip Zimbardo (pushing students to abuse one another in a mock prison).
- The program, which tricks homeless vets into participating in a torture program in an effort to develop mind control techniques, is being run by the CIA, which got in trouble in the 70s for running Project MKULTRA, which tricked homeless vets into participating in a torture program in an effort to develop mind control techniques.
- The torture techniques used, on the other hand, are very much of the early 2000's "enhanced interrogation" style.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: When learning that Hardison's cover was blown and was in danger, Eliot decides to break out, but first, he interrogates the interrogator who had been trying (and failing) to psychologically break him.Eliot: (throws table aside and grabs interrogator's neck) We're gonna do things a little bit differently today, alright? I ask, you answer. Now I got four minutes to prove your theory wrong.Interrogator: What theory!?Eliot: That torture doesn't work! (proceeds to brutally beat interrogator) WHERE IS HE!? (beats him more) WHERE IS HE!? (four minutes pass and Eliot leaves the broken body of the interrogator) I know where they took Hardison.
- Prisoner's Dilemma: Discussed and invoked. Nate impersonates a college professor in the mark's psychology class and discusses the dilemma, reaching the conclusion that it's always best to betray your partner. Whether or not Nate believes this (he probably doesn't, given how the team would never betray each other) is irrelevant, since he was just trying to subconsciously influence the mark to betray his government backers so they'd remove their protection. (Note that he doesn't bring up the simple rebuttal, which is that it falls apart if there are repeated games.)
- Sarcastic Clapping: Hardison in his cover identity gives Nate a sarcastic standing ovation for his Prisoner's Dilemma lecture, the better to get on the mark's good side.
- Shout-Out: One of the pieces of music used to torture the experiment's subjects is Ride of the Valkyries, in an obvious allusion to the mentally disturbed soldiers of Apocalypse Now.
- Smug Snake: Travis arrogantly believes himself to be untouchable by the police and thereby free to do his inhumane experiments without incident. When in the interrogation room, he brags about how his arrest will end with his release since he “knows people in high places”, until he saw said person arrested and being escorted to another room.
- Talk to the Fist: After Eliot frees the vets from their cells, a student guard tries to stop them, only to get punched out by one of the vets. When Parker saves Hardison from the Dustmen group, one of them angrily shouts out that Hardison is nothing but a geek and will never be one of them. Parker kicks the bastard in the face to shut him up.Parker: Do you want to tell them it's the Age of the Geek?
Hardison: Nah, they'll figure it out. - Teens Are Monsters: Travis is an undergrad student who conducts inhuman sleep deprivation experiments on homeless vets which lead to several deaths. Then it turns out it was a cover for illegal "research" for how to break people and instill PTSD. Also his frat brothers taking part in helping.
- Too Dumb to Live: The college kids being recruited into the CIA take the for more than a decade internationally renowned criminal feared by governments to their basement and decide to try and torture him. Without, like, tying him up. Fair enough, Hardison isn't Eliot, but for fuck's sake. He's got a Parker.
