3 Stars
- Written by Rockne S. O'Bannon
Directed by Gloria Muzio
Airdate: October 10, 2019
The team assesses whether theatre producer Byron Duke's (John Glover) change in behavior is a sign of demonic possession. Kristen fights against Leland Townsend's attempt to have a 15 year old subject of hers tried as an adult.
Tropes
- Blood from Every Orifice: Duke sweating blood from the back of his neck is one of the many things that leads his assistant Patti to believe that he is possessed, though it turns out that the sweat
is merely a symptom of his infected hair plugs. - Deal with the Devil: The team suspects that Broadway producer, Byron Duke, sold his soul in exchange for winning a Tony Award. It turns out that his PA system was hacked by an IT contractor that was pissed off that he wasn't paid for his work, but the system's targeted harassment of both David and Ben's sister Karima once they are left alone with it despite its disconnection and Duke's suicide after he receives an anonymous email telling him that hell is half-full heavily implies that Duke did in fact actually sell his soul, and that quite a bit of the episode's events were a legitimate supernatural attack on both Duke and the team.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: It's implied that Ben's sister Karima had an abortion and didn't tell their traditional Muslim father. Hence the voice on the virtual assistant getting in her head by saying "Iblis has your baby" and repeatedly playing baby cries, when Ben doesn't know about any baby.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
- The "demon-possessed" smart speaker that somehow metastasizes to Ben and Karima's own. They initially are pretty sure it's a malicious hack, but the hacker claims to have stopped several days before the team got involved. After it starts ranting at Karima in Urdu that "Iblis has your baby", Ben unplugs it and tosses it in the back of a garbage truck without trying to investigate further.
- Although Ben writes off the distortion of Leland's side of the conversation in Kristen's recording of their conversation as nothing more than the use of a jammer, the fact that he is left unable to reveal the voice underneath and they are forced to use a deepfake of it instead implies something more sinister at play.
- Meaningful Background Event: Duke's flesh-and-blood assistant Patti calls to thank the team for resolving his case. Meanwhile in the background Duke himself steps out of the office and jumps numerous stories to his death.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: The part of Leland's conversation with Kristen about his attempts to overturn her opinion about the fifteen-year-old boy being sent to an adult prison instead of a juvenile one that clearly upsets her the most, (and that acts as the tipping point for the court also refusing to overturn Kristen's opinion on the matter) is the same part where he almost gleefully gloats to her that he can't wait to see what the boy becomes by his second prison rape.
- Pragmatic Hero: As Leland has scrambled his own voice on a recorded conversation where he tells Kristen his real reasons for wanting a juvenile offender tried as an adult, Ben offers to deep fake his voice and Kristen agrees.
- Prima Donna Director: Byron Duke is pretty much stated to have always been a bit of one, but in the aftermath of his Tony loss (and the deal with the devil that by the end of the episode is heavily implied to have been actually legitimate) has escalated this behavior drastically, harassing and screaming at his staff almost constantly.
- Prison Rape: Leland gloats about how the juvenile Kristen defended won't be a kid anymore after his second rape.
- We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future: Part of a bit of Xanatos Speed Chess by Kristen. She secretly records Leland admitting he wants her defendant tried as an adult because he wants to see what evil the kid will commit after prison. Kristen discovers afterwards that Leland jammed the incriminating part of recording somehow, so Ben makes a deep-fake of the recording which Kristen successfully passes off to the court as genuine. Played with in that the recording itself is fake, but he did genuinely say all the same words she reproduced.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Although it was the only way that she could provide at least some form of proof that Leland's claims about her juvenile defendant shouldn't be taken into account, Leland referring to her deepfake of his side of their earlier conversation as "one of [his] tools" clearly strikes a bit of a chord with Kristen when he confronts her in the aftermath.
