Directed by Kevin Bray
Written by Erica Shelton
Tropes:
- Continuity Nod: It's difficult to see, but Anna Gunden's case box can be spotted on the shelf where Scotty put Nancy's box in the ending and Carrie Swett's box is seen as a Freeze-Frame Bonus when Stillman arrives to give him the last files about Nancy's case.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Nancy's mother suffered from an unspecified mental illness and was institutionalized after accidentally locking her daughter in a closet when Nancy was seven. Not long after, her mother committed suicide by hanging. Due to her young age, Nancy was unaware of this and initially believed her mother died in childbirth.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Annette was fine with pushing Nancy into insanity to drive her out of the house so she could have Daniel for herself. However, she never harmed Rachel to do so and was genuinely horrified when Nancy ended up dead.
- Foreshadowing: Nancy and Rachel's relationship is practically a Chekhov's Army.
- A suicide note found in the Pattersons' old house refers to the recipient as their butterfly, but not only is it not in Nancy's handwriting, she's never shown referring to Rachel as such in the flashbacks. The note was actually written by Nancy's mother, which Daniel obtained with Annette's help.
- In the prologue, Rachel draws a picture of her family that depicts herself with blonde hair like her mother, to which Nancy assures her daughter that her red hair is pretty too. Later, Nancy is confused when she can't find one of the pages of her poetry and briefly wonders if Rachel took it. In the penultimate flashback, Rachel gives her mother a remade drawing featuring her natural red hair, which is on the back of the missing page. When questioned, Rachel reveals she found the paper in Daniel's possession.
- Rachel loves playing in the attic and tries to hide in a trunk despite Nancy's warnings. After Nancy supposedly forgets she and her daughter were playing hide and seek, she and Annette find Rachel suffocating from being locked in that same trunk. The attic is also where Rachel finds her mother's missing rough draft in Daniel's things.
- Gaslighting: Daniel Patterson tricked Nancy into thinking she was going mad because he was jealous of her writing skills. If that weren’t enough, he let Rachel believe that she would go down the same slippery slope one day.
- Girlish Pigtails: Rachel in 1962.
- Green-Eyed Monster:
- Daniel staged his wife's suicide simply because he couldn't accept that she, a mere secretary and ward of the state, was a better writer than him, a reputed professor.
- Annette the housekeeper was Daniel's accomplice in gaslighting Nancy because she envied Nancy's beauty and seemingly happy family, whereas Annette was a Plain Jane destined to be a literal Old Maid.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: When the detectives are interrogating Annette over forging Nancy's signature for her mother's medical file.Lilly: Oh, you knew about Drummond.
Annette: I don't know that place.
Will: Who said it was a place? - I Reject Your Reality: When confronted over stealing Nancy's work, by her 45 years ago and Scotty and Vera in the present, Daniel angrily insists that he wrote the book and Nancy stole its idea from him because there's no way she could surpass his potential and pedigree.
- It Runs in the Family: Discussed and Exploited with History Repeats. After learning the truth about Nancy's mother, Daniel attempted to make his wife think she was also undergoing a Sanity Slippage and putting Rachel in danger, similar to what happened in her childhood. After killing Nancy, he allowed Rachel to fear this may happen to her as well.
- It's Personal: Scotty refuses to believe that Nancy committed suicide due to the similarities between her suspicious death and that of his fiancée, Elisa. This time, he's right.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Daniel's reputation as an award-winning writer is undone when the rough draft of his book (actually written by the wife he stole credit from and murdered) is presented as evidence, ensuring his arrest and disgrace while Nancy will be posthumously honored as the true author.
- Love Makes You Stupid: Annette helped Daniel in his schemes because she hoped he would marry her once Nancy was out of the picture. She couldn't see that he was just using her until it was too late.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Daniel copied Nancy's rough draft of her book of poems and published it under his name after her death.
- Take That!: The episode has shades of the dysfunctional marriage of authors Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, albeit it grossly exaggerates the elements of their relationship.
- Unperson: A figurative example. Rachel refused to talk about her mother for decades due to the trauma of her death and fear that she may follow in Nancy's footsteps. After the truth is revealed though, she finally opens up about her mother to her own daughter, Liza.
- Wham Line: When Nancy traces her impersonator to Drummond Mental Hospital, she encounters a nurse who knew her late mother, much to her confusion. The nurse proceeds to drop two bombshells about Nancy's mother:You never got the note, did you, Nancy?I found her in the storeroom one morning. [...] She hung herself from the rafters.
- Wicked Stepfather: Even though he never outright abused Rachel herselfnote , he murdered her mother, staged it as suicide and that she had gone mad, and let Rachel believe that she might one day become mad as well.
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Write What You Know: Nancy's poems about frailty, lost hope, and the fringe of society reflected her own unstable life as a struggling orphan, widow, and single mother.
