Jemma (Kate Mara) is starting her new job as Employee Experience Manager in the HR department of Peace of Ship, a nautical tech company. On her first day, she gets swept up into the company's annual All Hands retreat at a resort in the middle of the Mojave Desert, which comes to an abrupt end when one of the company's higher-ups, travel coordinator Larry, is fatally electrocuted on stage in front of the other employees. Stuck at the resort with the Star Board, the company's inner circle, Jemma discovers that the death wasn't an accident. Using her HR position as a cover to investigate, she is forced to partner up with her HR superior, Chief People Officer Nicholas (Brett Gelman), to find the killer.
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Tropes
- Alliterative Name: Jan the Janitor.
- Closed Circle: The Echo Chamber resort is surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert as well as poisonous rattlesnakes, making it impossible to leave without a motor vehicle.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Characters keep mentioning some incident in Berlin that's causing friction between the Star Board members. Episode 6, "Berlin", reveals that it was Poppy swooping in and poaching a hit that Dallas and Francois had spent months preparing for thanks to Larry aiding her.
- Enforced Plug: The podcast's sponsor, Gympass, is brought up a lot throughout the podcast to the point of feeling unnatural:
- In the first episode, Jemma talks about how the service and the benefits that come with it was a factor in her taking the job at Peace of Ship.
- In Episode 4, an HR manager at a different company talks about introducing Gympass to his company and how well it was received by the employees.
- First-Episode Spoiler: Well, second episode: while Peace of Ship is a legitimate company, the Star Board is actually an assassin business and the tech operation is mostly intended as a cover.
- Internal Reveal: In Episode 6, Jan the Janitor finds out that Jemma is aware of the assassin business.
- Murder, Inc.: The Star Board, while officially employed in various legitimate positions for Peace of Ship, is actually a business of assassins said to target criminals and other "bad guys".
- Neat Freak: Jan the Janitor is obsessively cleanly, having a "no crumbs" rule and enforcing a "clean hands" rule. This is justified in that part of her job is cleaning up after hits carried out by the company.
- Office Romance: Larry turns out to have been dating Poppy, and the preferential treatment pissed off the other Star Board members.
- Police Are Useless: When Larry dies, Jemma does the logical thing and calls the police about it. Because Peace of Ship apparently has some deal with the local police, Nicholas steps in and makes the arriving officer go away.
- Race Against the Clock: Jemma has until the next Friday to find the killer. On that day, the company's Lifeboat system is reactivated and the killer will be able to use it to disappear.
- Robot Buddy: Blackbeard, named after the pirate, a collaborative robot (or "cobot") created by Peace of Ship as a boat management assistance tool. A prototype is unveiled at the retreat and hangs around during the investigation.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Poppy has a particular fondness for boba tea. A finished cup accidentally left behind exposed her relationship with Larry.
