| “ | Every grift is an exchange. The trick is to give them enough to hold them up, but not so much that you get pulled over with it. | ” |
— Sophie | ||
A young industrialist seems bent on destroying the company his grandfather built, and the town it supports. To find out why, the team attempts the rarely-if-ever achieved "White Rabbit" con, which puts the mark through a series of simulated dreams.
The Client
Alex Liddel
Locations
Dodgson Energetics, Oxford OR
The Con
The White Rabbit - Considered an "Un-grift-able Grift". The con requires the team to "get inside" a person's mind, and slowly change their personality.
Nate tells everyone that Sophie managed to pull off The White Rabbit con previously. However, she later admits it was just a rumor and she was never able to pull it off because something always went wrong.
Guest Cast: Andrew Bowen
Episode Notes
This episode contains references to a number of science fiction and fantasy media sources, including:
- The main character is named Charles Dodgson, the real name of "Alice in Wonderland" author Lewis Carroll. In addition, Dodgson's lawyer is "Mr. Carroll." Dodgson encounters Parker as Alice (Walker) during the story. The client's name is "Alex Liddell," a play on Alice Liddell, the young girl upon whom Lewis Carroll based the character of Alice. The episode takes place in the fictional Oxford, OR, a reference to Oxford, England.
- Sophie introduces herself to the semi-awake Dodgson as "Sally Sparrow" (along with Hardison's Mr. Steed), a character from the 2007 Doctor Who episode "Blink" written by Steven Moffat.
- Two of the other aliases are Tennant and Smith, names of the tenth and eleventh doctor's actors.
- Dodgson's costume in the final scene is drawn from Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs' traditional black turtle neck and jeans.
- we get a peek into what went on with Parker after her brother died
- Mr. Dodgson's Grandfather's motto was "Keep moving forward", drawn from Meet the Robinsons, which was also a quote from Walt Disney.
- Hardison refers to his digital projector/prop set-up as "the Dreamnasium." Writer Geoffrey Thorne is the author of a sci-fi short story collection by the same name ("Geoffrey Thorne's Dreamnasium.")
- The episode alludes to the movie Inception, bringing many concepts of how the dreamworld works from the movie into the episode. Borrowed ideas include tokens, subconscious people, alerting the target of dreaming, and "the dream within a dream". It also alludes to the movie in the final scene when Charles threatens to jump off a building.
- Sophie's playing with the silver ball in the second 'dream' attempt could be a reference to David Bowie playing with a silver ball in the movie Labyrinth.
- The name of the grift itself is a reference to the movie The Matrix, in which the protagonist Neo is instructed to "follow the white rabbit" in order to discover that he lives in a simulation rather than reality.
- The film also draws from one of the greatest Christmas films of all time It's a Wonderful Life along with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, including thematic elements of casting off old failures and rediscovering oneself anew.
Trivia
During the meeting in which Mr. Carroll is updating Dodgson and others on the companies interested in buying Dodgson Energetics, you can see that those companies include the United States Department of Defense, Wakefield Agriculture Corporation, and Beckworx, all former targets of Leverage Inc., as well as Braddock Aeronautics and Annandale Communications. The United States Department of Defense featured in the episode The Big Bang Job, Wakefield Agriculture was targeted in The Inside Job, and Beckworx was shown in The Ten Li'l Grifters Job. Braddock Aeronautics was the company interested in buying the hybrid jet engine design in The First Contact Job, while Annandale Communications is the company Nate pretends to work for when Kanack is looking to buy a satellite in the same episode.