History Recap / PennyAndAggieTheNewRealityPartTwo

* ADateWithRosiePalms: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]]. Rich suggests that Sara deal with her perpetual horniness and temptation by masturbating in the shower. Sara points out that she's BeingWatched.

* ManipulativeEditing: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]. Despite the build-up with Sara's friends in Part One coaching her on how to stymie this practice, Sara's ogling of Sara and Hilary being explictly shown as captured on camera, and her anxious realization at one point that she forgot to change her hair from the previous day...there's no indication at all that the show as broadcast portrayed her in an especially negative light. The subversion is arguably [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that showing much of the series as viewers saw it would have detracted from Sara's role as the viewpoint character trying to figure out what's going on. Furthermore, if the program had been shown portraying her at any point in an embarassing or negative light, it would've undercut her final victory.

* GenreSavvy: Sara starts out as somewhat [[TheIngenue naïve]] as to the workings of RealityTV, but eventually learns how to play the game.

The ''NoExit'' performance finally arrives, broadcast live unlike the previous ''Hot Lights'' episodes. They reach the conclusion, in which Estelle (Lucy) tries to stop the mocking stare of Inez (Sara) by stabbing her, so that she can make love to Joseph (J'Cru), only for Inez to remind her they're all already dead. Meanwhile, Sara contemplates how Meighan and her two plants have all along tried to wear her, and the other participants, down, with various ploys and stunts, and how she realized the only way out was to pull her own stunt. As Martin (the valet, present only in the opening portion of the play), acting on Sara's instructions, opens the backstage exit, the players speak their lines in which the characters realize they're all trapped in Hell with each other forever, leading to the final line, spoken by Joseph: "Well, let's get on with it."

* AlternateSelf: A version of ''{{Fans}}'' character Shanna Cochran's schizophrenic mother appears as a, well, schizophrenic homeless person.

--> There is a way out of Hell. That way is trust, freely given. Kindness, and the willingness to accept kindness from others.

* AlternateSelf - A version of ''{{Fans}}'' character Shanna Cochran's schizophrenic mother appears as a, well, schizophrenic homeless person.
* AllThereInTheManual - Campbell revealed in the forum that Lucy is from a small town in Idaho and that her parents, while loving and supportive, believe her intellectual shortcomings are something she could overcome if she tried. She is also bisexual (which she mentions in the comic later, in "The Last Summer of Youth"); Sara was her first time actually kissing a girl.
* AnachronicOrder - While the strips within the arc itself are in chronological order, the last two strips take place a week after the conclusion of the following major arc, "Missing Person."

* BeingWatched - Among the factors contributing to Sara's breakdown is the awareness that cameras may be filming her at any time of day in her room or on the set, but also that she never knows exactly when or where.
* TheBusCameBack - Rich.
* ClingyJealousGirl - Sara fears that Daphne may be this.
* ADateWithRosiePalms - [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]]. Rich suggests that Sara deal with her perpetual horniness and temptation by masturbating in the shower. Sara points out that she's BeingWatched.
* DistractedByTheSexy - Sara, constantly, due to her separation from Daphne and her inability, given the omnipresent cameras, to find relief through masturbation. Also [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] by Hilary when she tries to get Sara, whom she perceives as a threat to her authority, on her side.
* TheDitz - [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]] with Lucy. Throughout Part One, and until roughly halfway through Part Two, she comes across to Sara, and the reader through her, as genuinely dimwitted. However, when she starts to show a marked improvement in remembering her lines, Sara begins to wonder. She becomes further suspicious of Lucy upon hearing her ask what self-esteem means ("I used to think I knew, but Hilary says I have too much of it"), and having just discovered that J'Cru is a plant. Immediately after the play, Lucy appears, to Hilary and the reader at first, to have been engaging all along in ObfuscatingStupidity while in reality being a shrewd, tech-savvy manipulator. The next strip, however, reveals that too was just an act, as she utters a [[{{Malaproper}} malapropism]] and admits that she's slow, getting "words" and "ideas" wrong. However, despite her genuinely low ''cognitive'' intelligence, Lucy shows in her final appearance of the arc, when she stops Sara from cheating on Daphne with her, that she has considerable emotional and moral intelligence.
* FashionDissonance - [[JustifiedTrope Justified]]. In the last two strips, the normally fashionable-to-a-fault Penny wears a [[http://www.pennyandaggie.com/index.php?p=1066 top]] with a big black "Y"-shaped stripe across the shoulders and down the middle, making her look, in some readers' eyes, like someone out of a ''[[Film/FlashGordonSerial Flash Gordon]]'' serial. Campbell assured readers that there was an in-story reason for this. As it later turns out, this is {{Foreshadowing}} for Penny's attempt to dress like Aggie (specifically, Aggie's signature top), in order to [[spoiler:signal her interest]].
* GambitPileup - Meighan's, J'Cru's and Martin's; Hilary's; and finally Sara's and Lucy's.
* GenreSavvy - Sara starts out as somewhat [[TheIngenue naïve]] as to the workings of RealityTV, but eventually learns how to play the game.

* JadeColoredGlasses - Hollywood loses its idealized sheen for Sara in short order.
* {{Malaproper}} - Lucy, who admits in the same strip to "get[ting] words wrong," praises Sara's plan to teach Hilary a lesson as "malificent," apparently meaning "magnificent." Although unintentional on Lucy's part, the malapropism also works as a {{Portmanteau}} of "malicious" and "magnificent."
* ManipulativeEditing - [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]. Despite the build-up with Sara's friends in Part One coaching her on how to stymie this practice, Sara's ogling of Sara and Hilary being explictly shown as captured on camera, and her anxious realization at one point that she forgot to change her hair from the previous day...there's no indication at all that the show as broadcast portrayed her in an especially negative light. The subversion is arguably [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that showing much of the series as viewers saw it would have detracted from Sara's role as the viewpoint character trying to figure out what's going on. Furthermore, if the program had been shown portraying her at any point in an embarassing or negative light, it would've undercut her final victory.
* TheMole - J'Cru and Martin.
* TheOnlyOneITrust - Rich, for Sara. Subsequently, Lucy as well for her.
* PrimaDonnaDirector - Hilary, given her bullying, {{Jerkass}} personality, shows elements of this.

* RousingSpeech - Rich gives Sara one:

* ShowDontTell - More than perhaps any other arc in a comic already known for its tendency to minimize exposition and show only snippets of conversations, this chapter, as originally presented, created considerable reader confusion. Among the questions that readers had were: How did Sara go from having a [[HeroicBSOD nervous breakdown]] in one strip to being confidently GenreSavvy, with her own gambit, in the next one? Did Sara and Lucy really frame, or try to frame, Hilary as a national security risk, or were they merely bluffing? What is ''No Exit'' about, and how does it relate to the themes of this arc? Campbell admitted that he'd rushed the second part of the story, out of concern that the comic would spend too much time [[LowerDeckEpisode away from the main cast]]. Rather than simply clarifying these major plot points [[AllThereInTheManual in the forum]] and leaving it at that, he and Waltrip later added three strips of "Leted Scenes," with indications as to where they fell within the arc.
* TookALevelInBadass - Sara is a non-violent example.
* UnspokenPlanGuarantee - Sara's and Rich's, as well as Sara's and Lucy's.

* FashionDissonance - [[JustifiedTrope Justified]]. In the last two strips, the normally fashionable-to-a-fault Penny wears a [[http://www.pennyandaggie.com/index.php?p=1066 top]] with a big black "Y"-shaped stripe across the shoulders and down the middle, making her look, in some readers' eyes, like someone out of a ''FlashGordon'' serial. Campbell assured readers that there was an in-story reason for this. As it later turns out, this is {{Foreshadowing}} for Penny's attempt to dress like Aggie (specifically, Aggie's signature top), in order to [[spoiler: signal her interest]].