When the children of a wealthy airline executive are found murdered, suspicions soon falls on the stepmother, although another pair of suspects soon emerges from a rather unlikely source.
Related Tropes:
- Disproportionate Retribution: Aside from trying to take the place of the Davenports' children, the implied motive is how the son and his friend laughed at them for their obsession with a soap opera and their plan surrounding it.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Hannah and Sarah. Whereas the former is a mentally ill woman with a short temper and a criminal past, the latter is the soft-spoken and seemingly kindly woman who was loved by both her foster parents and her clients. It's subverted since she's just as guilty of the murders as her sister.
- Frame-Up:
- Hannah framed a former nanny for theft to get her fired so Sarah can work for the Davenports.
- She also swiped her boss' anti-anxiety pills to plant in the Davenports' home for their youngest daughter to take to blame their son Rick, who used to have a drug problem, and get him banished from the home. Both sisters also tried to frane him for the murders of his sister and his friend.
- Good Parents: Bill Davenport. Although it initially seems that he has all the earmarkings to be a bad or otherwise distant one (wealthy, remarried to a much younger woman, has a young daughter he dotes one, etc.), he genuinely loved all three of his children, still welcomed his son into his home over his wife's protests, and was deeply upset by his older children's murders.
- Happily Adopted: Zig-zagged: Whereas the Eldons took on both girls after their mother died and they adored Sarah (to the point of receiving their last name), Hannah was described as a handful who did not want to be adopted (believing that their real father, who left years earlier, would come back for her), and was sent to a group home.
- Honey Trap: Hannah was revealed to be one, seducing and having sex with both Rick and Josh before killing them with Sarah's help.
- Missing Mom: The girls' biological mother died of AIDS while in prison when they were children.
- Show Within a Show: The two nanny sisters are fans of a soap opera, In The Shadow of Tomorrow. Several plotlines are reenacted by the girls, including poisoning one of their young clients and manipulating another's employer in a father-daughter bond.
- Villainous Breakdown: Hannah has an epic one at the end of the episode, bellowing out to Sarah while in jail after Goren managed to fool her into thinking that she had sold her out and was about to abandon her.
- Wham Line: Hannah's confession at the end reveals that Sarah was just as involved in the murders as she was:Hannah: She killed Amanda! She had her number; I didn't!
- Also, a bit earlier when discussing the close bond between Mr. Davenport and Sarah, Goren mocked how Hannah had been obsessed with him herself and even used a line verbatim from the soap opera she liked to describe her dreams of him "adopting" her:
Goren: Did he resemble the man that you saw in your dreams when you dreamed of your father?
Hannah: What did you say to me?! - Wicked Stepmother: Downplayed with Tina Davenport. She didn't like it when Bill gave his older children money and was vocal about it, but she was just as shocked by their murders as he is and called the nannies monsters who she was disgusted that they allowed into their home.
