- Patty: Okay, fine, I never said he was a great guy. But that's the kind of juvenile crap he does.
Allison: Patty, he got me fired. Right when I felt like I was worth something. He ruined it. And you just watched him and laughed. Can you just think about that for more than one second? He didn't like something that was my own, and so he took it away from me. Like this car. Like my friends. Like any shred of a life that is my own.
Patty: I-It... It seemed... harmless.
Allison: And when he spent all our life savings without telling me? Was that harmless, too?
Kevin, Neil, and Pete open a themed escape room (or as Kevin calls it, an "escape groom", with the theme being husbands escaping their nagging wives) in the McRoberts' basement. The plan goes wrong, with the escape room participants accidentally getting locked in the basement.
Meanwhile, Patty gets questioned by Detective Tammy Ridgeway of Worcester PD about Terrence's oxy operation. Despite a few close calls, Patty is able to avoid suspicion.
Allison and Patty embark on a road trip to Vermont to buy the Oxys from a dealer Patty knows. After receiving the wrong order of cocaine and being made to do errands for the dealer's stepson's friend, they are pointed to a dealer named Red Rooster. Patty meets with the Red Rooster, who instead gives her a gun.
Allison ends up trying to buy the drugs from a truck driver at the gas station, but the plan goes south when Patty hits him over the head with the gun, thinking he's about to assault Allison; they run off, with Allison taking the trucker's pill bottle. While driving home, Allison and Patty get pulled over by the police; Kevin had called the cops on Allison for failing to answer his phone calls. After the cops leave once Allison assures them that everything is fine and she calls Kevin to calm him down, Patty expresses shock at what Kevin just did. Allison points out that Kevin frequently engages in this kind of controlling behavior, recalling an incident from years ago where Kevin got her fired from a previous job because he was convinced she was having an affair with her boss. Realizing to her horror that she failed to consider the negative consequences of his antics because she thought it seemed harmless and funny, Patty apologizes to Allison for the first time. Allison assures Patty it's not her fault and admits that she wanted the drugs to poison Kevin.
Tropes
- Armor-Piercing Question: After Allison calls her out on ignoring the destructive consequences of Kevin's actions, Patty stammers that she thought it was all silly and harmless fun. Allison then asks Patty if she thought blowing their savings was also harmless.
- Book Safe: Patty has a few of these in her home to stash the money she makes selling oxycodone.
- Cerebus Call-Back: Neil's manchild behavior gains some disturbing new context with the revelation that his and Patty's mother died when they were younger and Neil was the one who found her dead body.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Patty and Neil's father was a trucker who was often absent from their lives and is implied to have been abusive. Their mother also died when they were kids, with Neil being the one to find her.
- Internal Reveal: Allison confesses to Patty that she wants the oxy to kill Kevin.
- It's All About Me: Allison summarizes Kevin as such."The world revolves around him. No, it's not that it does, it's that it has to. And if it doesn't, he just blows it to hell."
- Jerkass Realization: Patty goes through this when Allison calls her out on enabling Kevin's antics and ignoring their destructive consequences. Patty is subsequently horrified as it dawns on her that she contributed to the abusive treatment Allison's had to put up with for the past decade.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Some odd years ago, Kevin got Allison fired from a previous job as a paralegal assistant because he thought she was having an affair with her much older and happily married boss. While the sitcom framing would paint it all as an innocent misunderstanding, it's deconstructed here as Kevin's baseless accusations cost Allison a career that she really loved and the fact that Kevin never made amends to her in any substantial way (and clearly used this as a cover for how he doesn't like anything taking her attention away from him) makes the pain of losing that dream job still sting years later.
- The Mole: Kevin tries to act as this in the Escape Groom scenario to throw off the other participants, but everyone can tell he's in on it.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: Invoked with Kevin's "escape groom" idea, which has ridiculously complicated clues that ultimately lead to nowhere. However, the other escape room participants quickly figure the clues out, showing that Kevin's not as crafty as he thinks he is.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Patty is hit with this when she realizes how her treating Kevin's antics as harmless fun led to her ignoring their destructive consequences, as well as her subsequent mistreatment of Allison. It drives her to genuinely apologize to Allison, one she knows is painfully overdue.
- Piss-Take Rap: Alluded to. When told he has to play the emcee in the "escape (g)room", Neil immediately says he can't rap, describing a time he kept rhyming "snake" with "snake" at a contest in a bar until they unplugged the mic.
- Shout-Out: Taken, Memoirs of a Geisha, Friday the 13th, and Freddy Krueger are mentioned.
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Similarly Named Works: This episode shares the same name as the Season 5 premiere episode of fellow AMC crime drama Breaking Bad. It even involves the main character getting involved with drugs (though in this case, she's just trying to buy some, not make some). - Sleeping with the Boss: Kevin believed Allison was doing this when she had a job as a paralegal and was working a lot, never mind the man was 60 years old and already perfectly happily married.
- Vehicular Sabotage: Some years ago, Kevin got Allison fired from a previous job by pouring sugar into the gas tank of her boss' car.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Allison gives Patty an especially angry one for treating Kevin's antics and their destructive consequences as just a big joke. Patty is subsequently horrified with herself for having enabled Kevin for so long.
- You Bastard!: Allison's What the Hell, Hero? speech to Patty, the "you just watched him and laughed" line in particular, also doubles as the show calling out the sitcom audience for sitting back and laughing at the idiotic husbands of other sitcoms past who made their wives' lives miserable.
- Zany Scheme: Kevin, Neil, and Pete try to create their own unique spin on the escape room concept. Whenever Kevin comes up with one, it's called him having "a stroke of genius".
