As Mark is mailing in some tax forms to the IRS, he sees a man get blown up while getting into a nearby truck. As he is hospitalized, an undercover LAPD officer by the name of Amy takes interest in the case. As she learns, the victims was a member of the Scorpions, a terrorist organization that is due to lay out an attack. The victim was about to turn on his team, but apparently they got to him first. Amy takes it upon herself to use her skills undercover and take the sting out of the Scorpions' tails.
"An Explosive Murder" displays symptoms of the following tropes:
- Arms Dealer: Amy gives vibes of this in her story to the Scorpions, having "taken" some of the Vipers' guns when they were raided and planning to sell them off to the Scorpions.
- Backdoor Pilot: Yet another episode meant to act as the pilot to a spinoff show. In this case, it would have been Tracey Gold as an undercover cop.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The Scorpions seem to operate under this mindset.
- Dirty Cop: Detective Joe Carter is shown to be a member of the Scorpions, acting as their mole. Downplayed, however, as he joined them as a protest group, and isn't down with the terrorism and murder.
- Driven to Suicide: Boyd's father, the one scapegoated for the selling of Army morphine in Vietnam, never turned on his bosses, and killed himself after his sentence.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Boyd Merrick may be running a terrorist organization and had two of his people killed when they tried to leave the organization, but despite wanting to get into Amy's pants, he does not force himself on her when he finds per passed out drunk (or at least he thinks she is), but just puts her in a bed to sleep it off.
- External Combustion: John Hastings was killed in this manner in that bread truck.
- He Knows Too Much:
- John Hastings was killed because he was going to tell the feds where the group's bomb factory was.
- Nick kills Joe when it appears he's about to bail on the Scorpions too.
- Nick plans on killing Mark once he identifies him as the guy who got out of the truck before Hastings got blown up. He doesn't thanks to Amy's intervention.
- Karma Houdini: The senior officers selling off Army medicine/drugs never faced consequences for their crimes, as Boyd's father never revealed that they were the ones responsible for the racket. It kinda makes you think Boyd really has a point in how corrupt the government is.
- The Mole: Detective Carter was this for the Scorpions.
