After finding out his "car guy" has been duping him for decades, Hank decides to strike back. And winds up implicated in an act of vandalism that could send him to prison.
Tropes:
- The Cassandra: Hank is cleared of all vandalism charges, but Tom Hammond doesn't believe his denial. He decides to catch Hank a break because he paid sticker price for his vehicles. And Hank would fight him all the way to court about it, which would hurt his reputation.
- Easily Condemned: Not even Peggy believes Hank is innocent, and should be the first person to know Hank Hill would not go as far as to blow up a couple of hundred cars to get back at someone who scams him.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Scrupulously honest salesman that he himself is, Hank genuinely didn't pick up on the fact that Hammond had been ripping him off for years, and seems to find the idea of a salesman being dishonest unthinkable.
- Honest John's Dealership: Tom Hammond's car dealership runs a swindle of upping the vehicles' price by half and putting it on the sticker. The whole plot happens because everybody else and their dog would see the sticker price and see about getting a deal to reduce the price (and as long as it's even a hairsbreadth over the actual price Hammond would get a bonus), but Hank Hill is the specific kind of idiot who assumes Hammond is 100% honest.
- Karma Houdini:
- Alex, "Sparrow," and "Falcon" get away with the car lot torching, courtesy of everyone thinking it was Hank.
- Downplayed for Hammond, as he is free to continue to swindle other people, but by his own admittance there are very few suckers as easily fooled as Hank (with Peggy of all people as proof) and he still lost a significant chunk of his cars to the terrorist attack.
- Mistaken for Terrorist: Hank is arrested on the charge of blowing up the car lot when he didn't. No one believes his innocence, even Peggy is doubtful of him having no involvement in the bombing. Hank is ultimately let go by Tom, who drops the charges in fear of Hank ousting his fleecing.
- Money Dumb:
- Bobby at the beginning, while nowhere near as uninformed as he was in "Rich Hank, Poor Hank", is called out on his plan to buy a games console off of eBay by Hank, as the boy could easily be ripped off.
- Hank himself is openly mocked over this by both family and friends alike for paying the sticker price on everything. Upon realizing he's been doing this all the time, he attempts to make people aware of it, to less than successful results.
- Noodle Incident: Peggy blackmails Nancy and Minh into keeping quiet about Hank paying sticker price on every car he's ever purchased. In Nancy's case, Peggy mentions her affair with John Redcorn. In Minh's case, Peggy says something in Laotian that's enough to startle Minh.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Even if he gets away to continue to swindle other people, Hammond still lost about a hundred cars to Sparrow and Falcon's terrorism (and they would not have had the opportunity had Hank not recruited them). He also tells his mechanic (who reminds him that they have an Open-and-Shut Case against Hank) that they could win, but Hank would raise such a stink over Hammond's dishonest (and illegal) practices that he would be screwed, so he is going to let Hank go free.
- Poke the Poodle: Hank's idea of a subversive attack on a dishonest car dealership is to place copies of the message "Tom Hammond's World Of Lies" on the windshield of every car in the lot. He gets in trouble because he unknowingly recruits two true-blue vandals to help him.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Tom Hammond drops all charges against Hank and takes the loss on the damages, not because he believes Hank is innocent, but because he knows that Hank is stubborn enough to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court if it came down to it. At that point, the eyes of a federal court would be on Tom and his dubious manner of salesmanship, which could cost him much more in the long run. Cutting Hank loose as an easy mark becomes the better choice.
- Special Guest: Ted Danson as Tom Hammond and Fred Willard as Officer Brown.
- Suspect Is Hatless: Hank's description of Alex, Sparrow, and Falcon, scraggly college-age guys with chin beards, isn't super helpful. As he finds out when he returns with the police to the copy shop where they met, and they're all over the place. For some reason, he doesn't mention Alex used his real name.Clerk: Sir, we got a liberal arts college and a halfway house down the street. You've gotta be more specific.
