Reeling from the showdown on the bridge, Luke teams up with Misty to find Piranha. Comanche's situation gets more and more dire as the hunt for the snitch heats up. Bushmaster reveals his endgame.
Tropes in this episode include:
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Bushmaster and the Stylers take over Harlem's Paradise.
- The Atoner: Reverend Lucas finally acknowledges that what he did to Luke and Willis was wrong.
- Bad Liar: Comanche really sucks at trying to cover up his meetings with Ridenhour, enough that Shades ends up finding out.
- Bling-Bling-BANG!: Mariah keeps Mama Mabel's old pearl handled revolver in a box at her house.
- Blofeld Ploy: Mariah ends up passing over Comanche, the real mole, and stabs a different underling in the hand when emphasizing the need to find the snitch.
- Cop Killer: Comanche kills Ridenhour when Shades catches them in the act, and tries to play it off as Ridenhour being dirty. But Shades is furious over the fact that Comanche has snitched. So he proceeds to kill Comanche with Ridenhour's gun, and makes it look like the two men killed each other.
- Damsel out of Distress: Luke stops twice to watch Misty kick-ass while they are fighting off gang members in the chop-shop, clearly impressed.
- Decapitation Presentation: Luke and Misty find Piranha's head, well, left in a fish tank of piranhas.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Shades towards Comanche after confirming he's Ridenhour's mole.
- Foreshadowing: Ridenhour makes clear that he knows Tilda's real parentage, and that Jackson Dillard isn't her father. Mariah also gets noticeably angry when Ridenhour brings it up.
- Heroic Fire Rescue: Luke performs one in the episode's climax, rescuing Mariah and her daughter.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Mariah knows Ridenhour has a snitch because there's no way he'd know the exact details of Tone's death. Shades realizes that Comanche is the snitch because he confided the truth to him while they were shacked up in the barbershop.
- Kill the Ones You Love: Shades is clearly shaken up after killing Comanche.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Misty asks him why he should not be considered her sidekick instead of the other way around, he responds that this is his show.
- Let Me Tell You a Story: Bushmaster regales Mariah and Tilda about how his parents were killed by the Stokeses, and, as a response to how his mother was killed in a fire, proceeds to try to give Mariah such a poetic demise.
- Little Useless Gun: Frantic, Mariah grabs her pearl handled .38 revolver from a lockbox as she and Tilda are preparing to flee the brownstone. Tilda questions whether it'll do any persuading against Bushmaster:Tilda Johnson: Mom, you have the money! What do you need a gun for?
Mariah Dillard: A woman always needs a gun.
Tilda Johnson: The man leaves heads on pikes! Do you really think he's gonna be swayed by this gun?!
[On cue, Bushmaster kicks down the front door. Mariah shoots Bushmaster twice, but he doesn't even budge an inch. He laughs and advances on Mariah anyway]
Bushmaster: Your pickney's rightnote , that little gun won't persuade me. [slaps the gun out of Mariah's hands] - Love Is a Weakness: Shades realize that his friendship with Comanche blinded him from realizing he was a mole.
- Mercy Kill: Shades intends to let Comanche bleed to death after shooting him once with Ridenhour's gun. However, it's too much to see Comanche in such pain, so he decides to shoot Comanche again at close range to bring his misery to a swift end.
- Mob-Boss Suit Fitting: Bushmaster gets a suit tailored for him by Dapper Dan, all while his uncle chastises him for letting his vengeance against the Stokes family consume him.
- Pet the Dog: Bushmaster cuts Tilda free after setting the house on fire.
- Sadistic Choice: After freeing Tilda, Bushmaster tells her she’s free to run for her life, but she would be leaving her mother to burn to death if she did, so she can also risk burning herself if she chooses to stay and try to save Mariah.
- Save the Villain: Luke saves Mariah and Tilda from being burned to death by Bushmaster.
- Soft Water: Luke's bulletproof skin is probably the only reason the 140 foot fall he took from the High Bridge didn't kill him.
- Too Dumb to Live: Piranha leaves Reverend Lucas's church trying to get to his private plane and, of course, is promptly captured by the Stylers.
- The Unreveal: Ridenhour asks Mariah if Tilda knows her real age. She angrily throws him out instead of giving the audience any answer.
- Wham Episode: Piranha, Comanche, and Ridenhour are all killed in this episode, while Bushmaster takes all control of Mariah's money, before burning down her brownstone and seizing her club, forcing Mariah to seek Luke's help.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Misty calls Ridenhour out on trying to broker a deal with Mariah, despite knowing what a monster she is. She tells him that in her mind, he is just another dirty cop, which ends up being her last words to him.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: According to Bushmaster's story, his father and Buggy Stokes were contemporaries, and died around the same time. The only problem with this is that Buggy was Mariah's grandfather, who was already dead when she was a teenager. Even assuming a May–December Romance, and that his son wasn't born until after Buggy's grandchildren, Bushmaster should still be around the same age as Mariah or Cornell but he looks younger.
