A Plot: Brent keeps having nightmares of Michael J. Fox killing him. Wanda has to help while trying to validate a coupon for a flight to Las Vegas.
B Plot: Oscar threatens to sue Lacey after getting injured on a step at the Ruby, but a lapsed insurance policy causes concern. When the policy is renewed, Oscar and Emma conspire to redo the accident so her insurance company will pay them off.
C Plot: After the police show incompetence at helping with Oscar's injury, Hank tests Karen and Davis' first aid skills.
Tropes referenced:
- Call-Back: Just like in the live-action episode "Grad '68", chicken wings advertised as just "wings" is misinterpreted as some other kind of wings. In this case, it's Wanda thinking a Foo Mart chicken wing coupon is actually for a flight to Vegas.
- The Cameo: Michael J. Fox voices himself in Brent's dream sequences.
- Comically Inept Healing: It turns out that this is all Davis and Karen can provide, offering advice such as "we need some soup" when Hank fakes having a broken leg.
- Dangerous Workplace: Josh's plans for the day were to fix the vent on The Ruby's roof, find a leak in the gas line, and sharpen all of the knives. With her insurance lapsed, Lacey orders him to sit on a pillow instead.
- Department of Redundancy Department: To help sell his fake injury, Hank makes fake blood using maple syrup, cranberry juice and pig's blood.
- Doorstopper: Davis doesn't want to read the whole first aid manual because it's as thick as a phonebook. A big city phone book too, not the Dog River phonebook, which is a single piece of paper pinned to a bulletin board.
- Dreaming the Truth: Brent eventually realizes that he's having nightmares involving Mr. Fox because he was lazy in fixing a chicken coop, and a fox killed the chickens, which he subconsciously feels guilty about. The different scenarios in which Mr. Fox kills him are also connected to the incident, such as stopping him from "fixing" a boxing match, or a cut tightrope wire representing the wire mesh he didn't repair.
- Dream Weaver: Wanda tries to convince Brent to take charge of his own nightmares. He's able to insert Wanda into his next dream for support, but it still ends with Mr. Fox killing him (via sabotaging the breaks of the car they were all in).
- Failed a Spot Check: Karen and Davis get a call that there's been an accident at the bar. When they arrive, Hank is lying on the floor holding his leg in pain, but they step right over him and ask Phil where the emergency is.
- Funny Phone Misunderstanding: Happens to Wanda as she tries to simultaneously help out Brent and complain to the airline's customer service on the phone.Wanda: [to Brent] Dreams are usually highly symbolic. What does a gun mean to you? [to phone] I-I wasn't threatening you! I was talking to a different idiot!
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Lacey tries to trick Oscar into signing a legal waiver so he can't sue her over his injury, but Emma notices something is wrong because Lacey is speaking in a stilted and overly formal manner, which Emma mockingly compares to Shakespeare. Once they realize what she's up to, Oscar reveals that he never even considered suing Lacey, but since she brought it up, he decides that it's a great idea.
- Ignored Epiphany: At the very end, after a whole episode of dealing with nightmares from neglecting to fix something, Lacey asks Brent to fix the step Oscar injured himself on...and Brent says he'll do it later.
- Implausible Deniability: Oscar does a happy dance once he realizes he can sue Lacey over his injury, then remembers that he's supposed to have an injured foot and claims to be in so much pain that he can't dance anymore.
- Insurance Fraud: Once Lacey's insurance is in order, Oscar and Emma plan to redo Oscar's injury so they can get compensation. Lacey warns them that's fraud, but they pretend to mishear her say "frog" and ignore her while having a conversation about Kermit the Frog. Lacey agrees to go along with their plan so she can secretly record them admitting to the fraud, forcing them to give up the idea.
- Kansas City Shuffle: Karen and Davis spy Hank giving Lin a hatchet, a kite, and a bottle of whisky as part of his next fake emergency. Karen thinks the hatchet is a Red Herring and it'll be a drunken kite-flying accident, while Davis thinks the hatchet is a Chekhov's Gun because it's too flashy to not use. When they show up at the post office with plans for those injuries, they discover it was all a diversion from Hank's actual fake injury: a bite from a venomous snake sent to him in the mail. Karen and Davis think the response is to Suck Out the Poison, but Hank "dies" because they didn't know to administer antivenom.
- Laborious Laziness: Instead of just going to a first aid course, Karen and Davis spy on Hank so they can see what he's planning to test them on, then they consult the first aid manual on how to deal with that specific situation.Karen: Then we don't have to learn how to save people's lives! That's genius!
- Must Make Amends: Wanda convinces Brent he has to do something good to stop his guilt-fueled nightmares, so he tells his parents not to sue Lacey...which they no longer planned to do at that point, but it works.
- Nightmare Sequence: Brent's repeated dreams of Michael J. Fox killing him.
- Nocturnal Emission: Wanda asks Brent if his dreams have ever been "lucid," so Brent sheepishly says, "Maybe a couple times in high school." Wanda says that's something else, then gets grossed out.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: It turns out in the end that the "Las Vegas Cheap Wings" coupon that Wanda spent the entire episode trying to redeem is for wings at the Foo Mart, not a flight.Brent: Chicken wings?
Wanda: "No, bat wings." - Shout-Out:
- One of Michael J. Fox's insults is to call Brent "Mary Blobbins."
- Brent thinks the Tommy gun he's killed with in one dream may be a clue, then wonders if they went to school with a guy named Tommy. Wanda sarcastically answers "Yeah, he was a real pinball wizard."
- Brent says that if he had control over his dreams, he and Michael J. Fox would be doing their own version of The Blues Brothers.
- Threat Backfire: Angry about being put on hold again, Wanda mutters to herself that she'll put the operator's heart on hold. She then realizes that sounds romantic, then clarifies that she means in a violent way.
- Unreliable Expositor: Michael J. Fox calls Brent "Tubby" in one of his dreams, but when retelling the dream to Wanda, Brent says that Fox called him "Handsome."Wanda: He called you handsome?
Brent: Yes. Yes, he did. - Urgent Medical Alert: Hank sets a bunch of these up to test Karen and Davis' first aid knowledge. They start off reasonable enough, like a broken leg and a broken nose, but once Karen and Davis start spying on what he's planning so they'll know how to respond, Hank starts making the emergencies more elaborate and farfetched. By the time he's faking an alien invasion, complete with an alien parasite (puppet) erupting from his chest, Karen and Davis decide to just ignore him.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Oscar ends up injuring himself again in the end, but his and Emma's scheming (coupled with Hank's fake emergencies) leads to nobody taking him seriously.
