Jack finds himself in an awkward spot as one of LA's most eligible bachelors as a part of a promotion for Community General with Empire magazine. The most benefit he seems to be getting out of it is time with the magazine's gorgeous editor, Moriah Thomas.
Soon after, one of the other eligible bachelors is found dead. Bizarrely enough, despite the massive blows to his head, there isn't a drop of blood in his wounds. With this lining up with a similar unusual death of a John Doe, and Mark later discovering small puncture wounds in the victim's necks, it almost appears as a vampire, or at the least someone with the belief that they are a vampire, and they have a focus on LA's most eligible bachelors...
"The Bela Lugosi Blues" displays symptoms of the following tropes:
- Frequently Full Moon: Over the course of at least a couple days, the moon hangs over Los Angeles in full.
- How Unscientific!: At heart, Diagnosis: Murder was a light-hearted murder mystery program which involved a lot of Contrived Coincidences but nothing actually unbelievable. Except this episode where the murderer was an honest-to-gods vampire. Who died when she telekinetically flew herself into a painting rod. And was never spoken of again.
- Inertial Impalement: Moriah ultimately snuffs it when floating towards Jack, landing on a piece of painting rod she broke just seconds ago.
- Insurance-Motivated Murder: The whole string of murders (aside from Professor Manners) was all done to bump off Terry Broadhurst and allow Ivan Brock to collect his $20,000,000 insurance policy.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: At the end of the episode, Mark and Jack privately agree to keep the truth about Moriah and the existence of vampires a secret from their friends.
- Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: The bodies of the victims are all found with blows to the head indicating they were Bludgeoned to Death. However, Mark doubts this as the wounds were quite severe and yet had no blood on them.
- Paranormal Episode: The episode focuses on killings that appear to have been done by a vampire or at least someone operating under the delusion of being a vampire. As it turns, delusion nothing.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: In order to further hide his Inheritance Murder of Terry, Ivan has Moriah kill the other bachelors to make it look like they all are targets.
- Shout-Out:
- Amanda mentions to Mark she is a closeted Bela Lugosi fan.
- The man killed at the beginning of the episode is named Professor Manners, after the actor David Manners who played John Harker in Dracula (1931).
- Wham Line: "One true thing about us; we're very strong." Said by Moriah before throwing Mark clear across the room, and floating in the air towards him.
- Wham Shot: Moriah throwing Mark clear across a room like it was nothing, then floating in the air towards him. Moriah is no lunatic pretending to be a vampire: she's the genuine article.
