After Brett becomes a hit on Cognito Inc.'s Right-Wing News station, Rand thinks he would be the perfect puppet candidate.
Tropes:
- Accidental Truth: One of Brett's Backhanders correctly guess that the person who "killed" Brett was also behind the deaths of Jeff Bezos and the Head of the Flat-Earthers from "My Big Flat Earth Wedding".
- "Anger Is Healthy" Aesop: After being berated one too many times by his family, Brett finally loses his temper and shouts at everyone, resulting in him standing up to his family and telling them to "get stuffed!"
- Artificial Stupidity: Invoked, when Brett takes over as an anchor for Patriot News, he ends up reading off nonsensical talking points Alphabeta generates for him. Reagan even lampshades this by calling it "artificial unintelligence."
- Blonde Republican Sex Kitten: Patriot News' blonde, skinny, and air-headed anchorwoman who doesn't realize her first co-host is a robot even after he starts sparking and smoking.
- Brick Joke: One of the Backhanders accuse Brett's family for "murdering" him and starts up a GoFundMe campaign for a guillotine. He and the other Backhanders soon arrive with said guillotine.
- Call-Back: Jeff Bezos and the Head of the Flat Earthers dying is mentioned.
- When Reagan plans to fake Brett's death the fact that every other member of team used the strategy is brought up.
- Embarrassing Hobby: Brett's secret dream is to make puppets. Naturally, his family forbade him from doing so for their reputation. Even his insane Alt-Right base thinks it's too much, but it prevents them from tearing the Hand family apart.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: On their way to warn his family about his followers' attack, Brett shows Reagan and Alpha Beta his pimped-out treehouse. Alpha Beta wonders why it's built outside the manor's property. Brett explains how it has a zip line that he can use to get across for emergencies. He then realizes how asinine it actually sounds now.
- Expy Coexistence: Patriot News is obviously meant to be a parody of the Fox News Channel, yet Fox News also exists here.
- Faking the Dead: When numerous attempts to be disqualified from the Senator running fail, Reagan suggests this. It works, but his family cares more about Jagg running unopposed and the loyal "Backhanders" believe they killed him.
- Hate Sink: Brett's entire family are stuck up, greedy, fame obsessed, and only care about each other in terms of how good they make the family look. Of particular loathsome note are Brett's brother Jagg, who recasts Brett in his family campaign ad and only acknowledges Brett when he becomes popular on the news, and Brett's father who is the one who pits his children against each other in the first place and only promotes Brett to son number one due to Jagg's weakness.
- Kent Brockman News: Patriot News and MSCNNBCNBBC are Right-Wing and Left-Wing News channels controlled by Gigi in order to keep the audience stupid and easily manipulated.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Reagan tries recycling ideas from previous episodes — like Brett faking his own death — Alpha Beta calls her redundant.
- Ridiculously Average Guy: Apparently Brett is so milquetoast, DupliKate can't clone him.
- Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Brett's follows the Backhanders all immediately assume that Brett's family had him assassinated and storm the gates of their mansion to tear them limb from limb.Reagan: Why are conspiracy theorists always wrong?
- Shout-Out: To They Live!, when the news anchors begin droning "consume" with the word all over the screen.
- Silent Credits: Played for Laughs. No music is heard, but Brett's hand puppet, Lil' Brett is heard ranting up a storm and attacking everyone after learning Brian/Wheelchair Brett won the Senator chair instead of Jagg. Everyone seems to take this seriously after Reagan learned the puppet is Brett's coping mechanism. Because of the scene's Smash to Black, the question remains if Lil' Brett ran off on his own or if he forced Brett to run for him.
- Skewed Priorities: Rand tries having Brett run for Senator so that he could pass a law to make his ex-wife date him. When Brett is "presumed dead", he has Gigi find a replacement to get the seat and announces that Tamiko agrees to the date.
- Springtime for Hitler: All of Brett and Reagan's attempts at sabotaging his campaign only make him more popular, both because he's too nice to hate and because political scandals are ineffective in this day and age. He solicits a prostitute, only to end up legalizing and unionizing sex work. He tries hitting it off with a Canadian drug lord, only to accidentally kill him and broker a deal for Canadian water-reserves. He tries insulting veterans, only to end up saving Glenn's life in front of everyone. He even gets the youth vote thanks to Andre.
- Take That!:
- Mainstream News is portrayed as nothing but extremist talking points being spouted mindlessly to a pandered audience, only to encourage their audience to mindlessly consume. Gigi runs both a right-wing and left-wing news network then has them strum up pointless controversies to help cover up their many conspiracies.
- Far-Right media viewers are portrayed as unbalanced and incredibly gullible, Alpha Beta turning Brett into a media darling by writing his lines using an algorithm of talking points.Glenn: Guns should vote! Finally, someone brave enough to say it.
- Andre manages to get college kids to vote for Brett by pointing out that by voting Libertarian, they are giving their parents what they want while also voting against their best interests.
- An exasperated Brett asks why political scandals don't destroy careers like they used to, Alpha Beta says that people have grown numb to it and don't care as long as he's "their guy."
- Even Alpha Beta can't make sense of the Libertarian political philosophy.
- Treated Worse than the Pet: Brett is considered The Un-Favorite by his family to the point that during their annual "family ranking", his mother's dog is ranked higher than him in terms of who his parents love the most. It doesn't help that he is forbidden from talking about his job at Cognito Inc., so he can't impress his parents with anything related to his career.
- Unperson: Whatever happened to the fourth Hand brother, Jad. Brett didn’t even know he existed, and his brother tells him he will be as dead to them as the aforementioned brother, before saying he said too much.
- Upper-Class Twit: Brett's entire family is made up of rich entitled assholes who use Brett as an easy punching bag. Even when Brett starts to accomplish things on his own — like being a more popular political candidate than his brother — they become irate over it.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: All Brett ever wanted was to be loved and appreciated by his own family. It gets Zig-Zagged alot this episode: He is praised for being part of a news media, threatened to be disowned for accidentally being dragged into running against his brother Jagg, and then finally ranked number one in the family for taking a bullet for Jagg.
- Wham Episode: Two minor instances, but Brett is finally accepted by his family and Rand gets a date with Tamiko.
