"Tying the Not" is an episode of Bless the Harts that first aired on January 12, 2020. Episode Code Number 1BPJ10. Directed by Michael Baylis. Written by Lauren Mc Guire.
After a full lint trap almost causes a fire at the Hart home, Betty, Jenny and Violet go live with Wayne for a few days. Jenny feels marriage anxiety and picks fights with Wayne.
Meanwhile, Betty's convinced that Crystalynn could not have possibly survived an encounter with a notorious strangler. Betty believes Crystalynn made the whole thing up to get up on Unsolved Mysteries and get a memento from that show's host, Robert Stack.
Tropes
- Altar the Speed: Jenny almost goes through with a Shotgun Wedding when she's newly pregnant with Violet, then again with Wayne to try and prove that neither of them have hang ups about marriage.
- Analogy Backfire: Betty thinks Crystalynn was lying about surviving the Grits Box Strangler because her eyebrow was "twitching like a caterpillar on Sanka." Crystalynn then breaks into Betty's house just to point out that Sanka is decaffeinated. Followed by Betty breaking into Crystalynn's for a rebuttal.
- Anxiety Dreams: Jenny dreams that she and Wayne are dressed in wedding finery while they, plus other similarly dressed couples jump off a cliff.
- Dance Party Ending: Wayne, Jenny, Betty, Violet, plus a room full of strangers dance to "Love Shack" by the B-52's after they have their non-wedding.
- Engineered Heroics: Betty suspects Crystalynn faked being attacked by the Grits Box Strangler just to get on Unsolved Mysteries and meet Robert Stack. She's right.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Betty goes to prison to talk to the Grits Box Strangler to see if he really did attack Crystalynn. He can't corroborate the story one way or the other, but as he gets up, he's revealed to be a little person. That's when Betty realizes the tall man attacking Crystalynn on surveillance video couldn't have been the real Grits Box Strangler.
- Freudian Excuse: Jesus speculates that Jenny has hang ups on marriage after she narrowly escaped an unhappy marriage to Violet's dad.
- Game of Chicken: Jenny and Wayne almost go through with marrying each other, even though neither of them want to, just to show they have no fear of commitment.
- The Ghost: Violet's birth dad, Don Reynolds, doesn't show his face or speak when Jenny recollects when she almost married him. Likewise Wayne's neighbor is acknowledged and has lines, but she doesn't appear onscreen.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Wayne uses some Spanish when Jenny, Violet, and Betty stay at his place for the week.
- "Jump Off a Bridge" Rebuttal: Referenced. In Jenny's dream, marriage means jumping off a cliff, with Wayne saying that "everybody's doing it."
- Malevolent Masked Men: The Grits Box Strangler, so called because he wore a mask made from a box of grits.
- Nutritional Nightmare: The Harts have four double-sided pizzas with cheese-stuffed pretzel-and-churro crust and miniature pizzas as a topping. Comes with a seven-layer dipping sauce in a bowl made of Cheetos.
- Oh, Crap!: Jenny has this reaction when she finds an engagement ring in Wayne’s junk drawer.Jenny: Oh, horse crap.
- Racing the Train: Betty when she is racing Crystalynn during their Trespassing to Talk duel.
- Runaway Bride: Jenny narrowly left her bridegroom at the altar when she was pregnant with Violet, even escaping on horseback, overlapping with Pregnant Badass.
- Sassy Black Woman: Wayne and Jenny’s wedding officiant is this.
- String Theory: Parodied. Betty puts up the photo of Crystalynn being attacked to a bulletin board and ties what turns out to be one string to a piece of paper that just reads "Guilty!"
- The Tell: Betty notices that when Crystalynn was talking about the Grits Box Strangler her eyebrow was twitching.
- Trespassing to Talk: Exaggerated with Betty and Crystalynn taking turns breaking into each other's homes to argue at each other, even getting in a car chase at one point.
