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you really are beautiful....

— Nate, to Sophie


From TNT: While searching for a philanthropist’s missing wife, the team comes up against a grifter ring running a web of sophisticated “Sweetheart Scams”. Now, Nate must learn how to steal hearts… or risk losing Sophie’s for good.

The Client[]

Wealthy businessman and philanthropist Walt Whitman Wellesley IV contacts Nate and the team to find his young wife, Lacey, who went missing four days previously, with no indication of abduction or a ransom demand. Lacey, who turns out to have been a part of a dangerous ring in a series of Sweetheart Scams, seduced Wellesley and married him for access to his money, only to fall in love with him. Nate skeptically agrees to help Wellesley in return for an indeterminate favor.

The Mark[]

Meredith and her partner Oscar San Guillermo run charity bachelor auctions which are, in actuality, a front for their ring of "black widows" - pretty, young women who seduce the wealthy bachelors they bid on in order to marry them for their money. Oscar is the face of the auction and Meredith's muscle. Meredith has already murdered several of their unsuspecting victims, some of whom were her own husbands.

The Con[]

After learning about Meredith's operation, Nate says he is running a "hohe minne" scam (pronounced by him as "high minnie") on Meredith, where he will earn her trust by wooing Sophie's Lady Charlotte Prentiss persona, thereby proving his skills as a fellow grifter and potential business partner. This is not an existing con; he appears to be comparing the act of him proving himself to the mark to the practice of a chivalric knight undergoing a challenge to prove his worthiness to the noblewoman he loves (hohe minne being German for courtly love). This may have been intended to highlight the subplot relating to his relationship with Sophie, since she is using her duchess persona for the con (Parker comments that in this scenario, Sophie is the challenge, not the noblewoman). While Meredith is busy vetting (and then double-crossing) Nate, the rest of the team steals her phone, sending her records to the authorities. This causes her to make a run for it, leaving Wellesley and "Lacey" (whose real name is Christine) safe to reunite.

Guest Cast[]

Leon Rippy continues his recurring role as Latimer in this episode.

  • Walt Whitman Wellesley IV (David Ogden Stiers)
  • Meredith (Emma Caulfield)
  • Oscar San Guillermo (Cas Anvar)

Episode Notes[]

  • As Nate notes, Walt Whitman Wellesley IV is the type of person the team usually targets, and Nate is openly hostile to him in the episode's opening scenes. Consequently, Nate agrees to take Wellesley's case only with the understanding that he can call in a favor and take advantage of Wellesley's power and influence at some time in the future. This is the second lofty connection Nate has made during the winter season, the first being his acquaintance with Mr. Conrad (CIA) in The Experimental Job. The season ends before Nate collects on the favor.
  • Parker mentions that fact that her plant "does something", a callback to the second episode of the first season when she asks Hardison "What do plants do?" after buying one for her office.
  • Sophie introduces herself to the marks as Lady Charlotte Prentiss, the alias we first saw her use in The King George Job. This is the second of 3 episodes where Sophie takes the alias of a British Duchess.

Trivia[]

  • David Ogden Stiers' character's name, Walt Whitman Wellesley IV, is very likely in part a wink to Stiers' most famous role, Boston Brahmin surgeon Charles Emerson Winchester III, in the 1970s television comedy M*A*S*H. The character's name itself is a combination of the names of American poet Walt Whitman, known for his patriotic poetry written during the Civil War, and Wellesley College, a private liberal arts college located in Boston. One of the "Seven Sisters" women's colleges, Wellesley was founded in 1870.
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