Recap / Diagnosis Murder S 2 E 9 The Last Laugh

Mark is to present the "Surgeon of the Year" award to plastic surgeon Dr. Elliott Valin.

Meanwhile, Amanda starts running into money troubles, most of which have to do with her business manager stealing every cent she has and fleeing the country.

"The Last Laugh" displays symptoms of the following tropes:

• Alliterative Name: Dave McDonnell.
• Asshole Victim: Dr. Valin was a a real nasty piece of work.
• Bluffing the Murderer: Mark tells Bonnie that Dave survived her trying to poison him, and is soon to sing his lungs out against her. She rushes back to her beach house and digs up the sand by the planned patio to check if Dave's corpse is still where she left it. Oh, it is, and Mark and Steve are there waiting for her.
• Broke Episode: Amanda gets her money stolen by her creep of a business manager and is forced to live in the doctor's lounge.
• Call-Back: Once Steve is taken off the Valin case, he states that it was taken by Detective Van Sickle from "Many Happy Returns".
• Chekhov's Gunman: Kelso, the surfer dude that keeps getting checked into Community General after wiping out, ends up giving Mark the idea he needs to realize Bonnie's alibi was fake from the start.
• Constructive Body Disposal: Once she poisoned Dave, she buried him on the beach along where a new patio was to be added, thus hiding the corpse once the cement was poured in.
• Death by Irony: Bonnie says that she chose laughing gas as the murder weapon because Elliott was such a humorless bore.
• Embezzlement: Wallace Sterling steals all of Amanda's money (and presumably the money of other clients of his) and heads for the Bahamas.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Dave tries to kill Mark using laughing gas, Mark tries to call first Delores, then Norman, but due to him being hysterical due to the gas, both assume he's playing a prank on them. When Norman goes to Mark's office to complain about the "prank call" only for Delores to mention getting the same prank call, they both realise it was real.

Norman: I am a busy man, Miss Mitchell. And I don't have time for Dr. Sloan's childish and asinine jokes.
Delores: I'm not busy, and Lord knows I'm not a man, but I don't have time for them either.
Norman: He called you, too?
Delores: Laughing like a fool.
Norman: God help us.

• Fake Alibi: Bonnie tells Mark she was on the beach at the time Elliott was murdered, with only her word and a picture that was apparently taken of her by a tourist. With some deduction based on the jersey the man was wearing, Jack finds the witness in Seattle and brings him to Mark in time for Bonnie to be acquitted. However, Mark soon discovers the photo was actually doctored, and Bonnie was the killer after all.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Bonnie and Dave used a doctored photo of them on a beach as her alibi in Elliott's murder. Mark uses a doctored photo of Dave being in a convenience store to scare her into revealing herself as Dave's killer.
• Implausible Deniability: Bonnie actually tries to get Mark to proves her innocence in Dave's murder when he and Steve actually just saw her dig up Dave's body.
• Karma Houdini: Bonnie, thanks to Mark's unwitting help, gets off scot free for murdering Elliott.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: However, she does not stay free for much longer, as she ends up arrested for Dave's murder.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Amanda gets this going when she storms into Wallace's office and finds it stripped.
  • She then gives him a taste when she storms into the hotel room as he tries to buy the final soup can painting and sees her come in.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Bonnie manages to get off in criminal court for killing Elliott. However, once Mark informs Elliott's insurance company on this little stunt, they serve her a waiver to relinquish the money from the policy or risk getting sued. Just because the law may see you not guilty of an Inheritance Murder doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get a cent of it.
• Shout-Out: The soup can paintings Sterling collects are reference to Andy Warhol's famous painting of Campbell's Tomato soup.
• The Teaser: Neither parts of the episode have one.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After Dave tries to kill Mark with laughing gas, Bonnie does him in. It's his murder that she ends up going down for.