———— send me a # between 1 and 50, and i’ll post a season 1 or 2 meta from that page in my mastermind meta notebook / @analyticallyminded asked for #25
#25 comes from opening scene of “the beantown bailout job” aka the first scene of season two.
this scene begins the episode --- and the season ---- with a cold open that’s played, like many episodes before it, as though we’re seeing nate in the middle of a con. he looks to be playing some kind of inside man, using his own backstory with his experience and good name in the insurance industry rather than an alias.
“WELCOME TO THE INSURANCE GAME,” the man from boston assurance says, having rattled off a list of some of nate’s most lucrative accomplishments at his previous company. “WE’RE GLAD TO HAVE YOU HERE.”
the canned introductory dialogue is very con-like. so is the way that it’s shot, with the camera panning and slowing to show us what and how nate sees as he assesses the situation around him. then, he suddenly disappears, leaving his new boss confused; this is also on-par with his behavior on cons, when he poofs once he has the information that he needs.
the setting then changes to nate walking across the street to a bar. this is one of my favorite nate shots, so here’s a bonus gif of it:
he hesitates, then mutters, “agh... screw it,” and begins walking toward the bar. he never makes it there, however, as a car crashes on the street near him. this car crash sets the plot of the rest of the episode into motion. we learn the significance of this moment with the bar later in the episode when he informs the team that he has quit drinking, meaning, had nate’s path to the bar not been intercepted by that car, this moment would have been nate breaking his sobriety.
as the episode pans out, we discover that this opening scene never gets mentioned or referred to. it has no significance to the rest of the episode nor the season, and the insurance company he was trying to work for is never mentioned again.
this opening scene was our glimpse of nate trying and failing to re-assimilate, to try and get his old life and his old self back. as season 2 pans out, the nate that we see is one who is deluding himself in order to deny the changes that are going on inside of himself : his decision to be sober and then how massively he relapses on it. his continued insistence that he is not a thief. him claiming to maggie in 2.12 that “this isn’t what i wanna do,” which she immediately calls out as a lie. he’s deeply insecure for this entire season, and still pretending, both to the others and to himself, that being a part of leverage is temporary.
and at the end of the episode, after pulling another “just one more” con, sophie asks him if this is really his last one. and this is the conversation that ensues:
Nate: Well, uh, maybe, um… Sophie: Yeah? Nate: I mean, you know, until I find a job I like enough, you know, to stay out of the bars. Hardison: Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Nate: And then I’m out. I’m done. Parker: Sure. Eliot: Yeah. Cause you’re not a thief.
obviously, nate’s words here are a callback to the beginning of the episode. the team doesn’t know that, but we do. we know. we know that the very idea of going back to the insurance world, to the life he knew before, was so triggering that it nearly caused nate to relapse. it would have caused him to relapse, if he hadn’t been intercepted by the car crash that sets the rest of the episode into motion.
so, in essence, he’s admitting here what he spends the literal whole rest of the season denying: that this job is good for him. that it keeps him out of the bars. that it gives him a purpose. and while it’s a long journey between this realization and his admission in the season 2 finale, “my name is n/ate for/d, and i am a thief,” this opening scene is a critical step in the journey to get there. he might not know who the new him is, but he does know that old him is dead and that he can never return to who he was before.
i think it’s beautiful that they decided to let the audience be privy to such a moment. and it’s honestly a little slept on by the fandom, including me until i was completing this particular rewatch.