Written By John P Roche and Warren Leight
Directed By Rosemary Rodriguez
A teenage girl disappears and her abductor seems to be targeting young, vulnerable women with a similar personal connection.
Tropes
- Bittersweet Ending: Taylor Barnes is found alive, but Albers has already seduced her and brainwashed her into thinking that he's her father. She's last seen whining for her "real" dad. The damage Albers has done might be irreparable.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: The girls conceived via sperm donation are naturally distraught at learning the truth. Sean exploits this to worsen their attitude towards their family and become their “real” father. Taylor, the one daughter conceived by Colin and his wife, takes it the worst and the episode ends with her refusal to believe Sean lied and manipulated her.
- Daddy DNA Test: The detectives realize that Barnes is telling the truth about having not contacted his donor children when testing proves that even though he's their biological father, he isn't the father/grandfather of one girl's son, who was fathered by the man that she met.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Sean Albers turns out to have been framing Colin Barnes, who exposed him for cheating on an exam and later stole his girlfriend Anne (who Colin married). Apparently, this warrants trying to destroy Colin's life 20-something years later by trying to frame him for rape and kidnapping and seducing his teenage daughter Taylor.
- Ephebophile: Albers has a preference for older teenage girls.
- Everyone Has Standards: Dr. Barnes has a large ego, but he's no rapist, and in fact the times he made enemies are actually cases where he did what he was supposed to do — firing a fellow surgeon for having a physical impairment (both because it's risking patients' lives and because the hospital could have been sued), and blowing the whistle on Sean Albers for cheating on the MCAT.
- Additionally, despite his arrogance, it's abundantly clear that he loves his wife and children very much.
- Forced to Watch: Albers invokes this on Barnes when he demands that Anne dance with him before he tells her where their daughter is —"I want him to endure what I've had to all these years —watching you with another man. " Indeed, we see Barnes looking very distraught at what he's seeing.
- Gaslighting: Albers not only convinces Barnes' donor daughters and his legitimate one that he's their real father, he makes them think that's okay for them to engage in incest. All of them are left with such an unhealthy attachment to him that they might actually be disappointed instead of relieved that it isn't true.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Sean states Barnes stole his girlfriend whom he would later marry and threatens to hurt their daugther if Barnes' wife doesn't have a romantic dance with him in front of her husband.
- Idiot Ball:
- The detectives figure out that someone is impersonating Barnes to seduce his teenage donor daughters. When they go to Barnes's home to talk to him about it, they let his teenage daughter (the one he actually raised) just walk right past them without trying to stop her or question her to determine if she had been targeted.
- Albers goes to incredible lengths to frame his nemesis Barnes - a frame job that will necessarily fail as soon as the police start investigating because Barnes doesn't look like Albers and has different dna (and likely has alibis for the nights in question).
- It's All About Me: Sean’s envy and jealousy over Barnes' success drives him to impersonate him and seduce his biological daughters. He takes pleasure in replacing him as their real father and justifies his actions as helping the girls fill the gapping hole caused by the truth of their conception. The way the girls describe Sean, however, paint him as an even bigger narcissist than Barnes as the girls are brainwashed to think the world about him, all for a petty grudge.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Ashley gets knocked up by being raped once by the fake sperm donor.
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Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Played with. This episode featured two well-known guest stars, but Eric Close's character isn't the guilty party (which is actually hinted at by how early he shows up), James Van Der Beek's is. - Parental Incest: Albers seduces both Barnes' donor daughters and his legitimate one under the pretense that they're engaging in this.
- Red Herring: The detectives take note of how physically affectionate Barnes is with his daughter, clearly wondering if he's the kind of man who would seduce his own flesh and blood.
- Barnes in general. All evidence points to him and he's rather obnoxious and arrogant. But none of his daughters can identify him in a lineup, and he has an alibi for when one of them was impregnated.
- Something Only They Would Say: The detectives zero in on Barnes after hearing him say something identical to what one of his donor daughters say. (This turns out to be something else Albers memorized about him).
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Albers uses the romantic jazz song "My One And Only Love" to seduce Barnes' teenage daughters and force his wife to dance with him.
- Stalker without a Crush: Albers has obsessively tracked Barnes for 20-something years and knows so much about him that he's able to impersonate him completely. He also stalked Barnes' donor daughters online so as to claim that they had common traits+-running, music, etc—based on their supposed genetic connection.
- Undercover as Lovers: Olivia and Amanda briefly pose as a couple ready to "take the next step and build a family" to obtain information about a sperm donor at a cryogenic clinic.
