"Hugs and Kisses to go around!"
The group go after Wendy Stanton, head of a struggling modelling agency who conned Eddie's niece out of £900, and the gang offer their hustling services as payback.
Tropes
- Buffy Speak: Eddie calls the group's cons a Grifty-stitchy-up-con-thingy, when requesting help to con someone who stole money from his niece.
- Camp Gay: Mickey chooses this personality when posing as a fashion designer, and has similar mannerisms to that of Gok Wan.
- Chekhov's Gag:
- Sean at the beginning of the episode is sleeping with a young woman who thinks he only has a few months to live. Later on, Sean is called out by Emma by hating people who take advantage of young women.
- Sean tells Ash of the "Sean Special", where a guy sobbing with a handkerchief will attract a lady to help them with whatever they want. Ash does this to Betty Greenacre to tell her about his dead dog and, more importantly, his job in Industrial Espionage, which lets Ash sign Casey up to Greenacre modelling instead, pissing off Wendy even more.
- Hated by All: Jeremy Viscount, by the show's own admission. He is not Nice to the Waiter at all, insults the lower classes at every chance he gets, and according to Albert, is not a nice guy to be around.
- Manipulative Bitch: Wendy Stanton, the primary mark for the episode, takes on young women, promising them photoshoots, but takes their cash they give her for the various fee's to be in the catalogue, and the recouping of the £900 that requires it never comes on their first shoot. It's this aspect of her that got the crew to con her, as Eddie's niece fell to her scam, and Eddie requests that the crew bring her down.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Emma, who uses a Liverpudlian accent to pose as Eddie's niece.
- Money Fetish: As noted by the crew, Wendy has an absolute obsession with money, and takes great pains to part with it, even if it's for her own benefit.
- Painting the Medium: When Mickey and Ash are conversing with one another in front of Wendy about Ash's (fake) brother stuck in jail in Bangkok, tennis sounds start to play, as if the negotiation is a rally, which culminates in cheering when Wendy puts up the cash herself.
- Person as Verb: The "Sean Special" involves fake crying and pulling a handkerchief out, on the assumption that it brings out their maternal instincts.
- Polyglot: Judging by the expression on Mickey's face, he understood the foreign investors' requests for Emma when they sell them the landmarks of London.
- The Reveal: All of the marks shown at the beginning are a part of the same con; helping a stranded brother in Bangkok, and Mickey had opted to con them all in the same scam. Casey was signed on to Betty Greenacre modelling after Ash plays an industrial espionage agent, which explains the voice recorder Sean placed on the table from Mickey and Wendy's chat earlier in the episode.
- Rule of Three: In the opening montage of potential marks, the first two have decent subtitles based on puns that fit their profession, the third however, does not:
Jeremy Garrett MP
Running the country
Judge Stanley Mead
Court in the act
Viscount Manley
Complete arse
- Running Gag: Mickey and Wendy greeting each other by saying "Hugs" and "Kisses" to one another.
- Title Drop: "As good as it gets" is said by Mickey after the cash from their con is unveiled and they explain all the loose ends.
- Twitchy Eye: Wendy does this every time money is mentioned, and later on, when her life coach starts predicting things that the crew say and do. The shot of her after the con when she realises that money's gone has the twitch going worse than ever, making her look like she's having a mental breakdown (which probably isn't far off the mark given how tight with money she is).
