Jessica arrives at a fancy hotel for an apparent conference with her editor, and decides to stay a while to cover for the editor's assistant, who called her there under false pretenses with an idea for a book. While at dinner, Jessica observes the great hypnotist Cagliostro, who has earned himself love and hate in equal measure. Then, during a private hypnosis demonstration for the press, someone kills Cagliostro inside his locked room. With no usable witnesses and no apparent way the killer could have gotten at the hypnotist, Jessica has her work cut out for her.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- The Alcoholic: After Cagliostro ruined his booming career as a reporter, Bud Michaels ended up crawling into a bottle and pushing tabloid articles out of the neck.
- Asshole Victim: Cagliostro. Turns out a lot of people hate his guts.
- Blackmail: Mrs. Kellijian tried to break off her affair with Cagliostro, but the hypnotist threatened to make trouble, so she hired a guy to kill him. Unfortunately, the hit man recorded one of their meetings and has been bleeding her ever since.
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The Cast Showoff: For the first time in the series, we get a chance to hear Angela Lansbury’s excellent Playing Drunk skills when she’s hypnotized by Dr. Lambert. - Chekhov's Gun:
- During dinner, newsman Bud Michaels confronts Cagliostro about something in the past. That event winds up being the motive for the hypnotist's murder.
- When Jessica is approached by a hotel patron who mistook her for a different celebrity, she calls out to a passing Andy Townsend so she can be rescued from the overzealous fan. However, Andy couldn't hear her and just kept on walking. This turns out to be an important clue later.
- Death by Woman Scorned: Gender flipped. One of the suspects is a hotel manager whose wife was cheating with Cagliostro.
- Disability Immunity: Jessica eventually realizes that the killer must have plugged his ears with something, meaning he wasn't hypnotized because he couldn't hear Cagliostro's voice.
- Driven to Suicide: Andrew's father was Bud Michael's editor, who okayed the article which Cagliostro used to sue for libel. His career was ruined along with Michaels's, but he couldn't face starting over and killed himself.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When the local lawman laments that all the hypnotized journalists who were at the scene might as well have been unable to see or hear for all the good their presence was, Jessica realizes the murder must have been committed by one of the journalists, who had plugged his ears to render himself temporarily deaf.
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Genius Bonus: In a surprisingly understated example of Shown Their Work, there’s a good reason story-wise for the young newsman’s (also-American) father to have been a journalist working in the UK. UK defamation law (especially before 2013) puts the burden of proof on the defendant (the father) to prove his (actually Cagliostro’s planted) story was true, in contrast to the U.S., where it would fall on Cagliostro to prove the father had intended to lie. - Hypno Fool:
- Kellejian's wife claims that Cagliostro mesmerized her into having an affair with him, but he knows you can't be hypnotized against your will. Later she tells Jess he charmed her even without his abilities.
- In Cagliostro's show, he hypnotizes all his volunteers to behave like their favorite animals.
- Cagliostro offers to tell his life story to a group of reporters while implanting a suggesting that would wipe their memory of the conversation. When he's killed before their eyes and they're brought out of the trance, they have no idea what happened.
- Dr. Lambert, who Jessica visits for information, hypnotizes her into acting drunk and acting upper-class.
- Ignored Enamored Underling: Sheri Valentine was evidently interested in being more than just a lovely assistant to Cagliostro, but he didn't notice.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: When assistant editor Joan realizes that Jessica isn't crazy for the idea of using Cagliostro's act for a book—an idea Joan used her boss's name to trick Jessica into coming to see—she takes a huge gulp of her wine. Jessica tells her that won't help.
- Magic A Is Magic A: When the psychiatrist the police called doesn't know how to get the reporters Cagliostro summoned out of their trance safely, Jessica mentions that her assistant editor friend got Caggy-O's previous performance on audiotape and that they try playing back the part where he snaps his volunteers out of it. That works.
- Meaningful Name: The alcoholic reporter is named "Bud Michaels", presumably after the beer brands Budweiser and Michelob.
- Mysterious Past: Cagliostro actively cultivates this, refusing to divulge his past unless he hypnotizes the listener into forgetting it first. The viewer doesn't hear much, either.
- Playing Drunk: Bud Michaels pretends to be three sheets to the wind so he doesn't have to attend Cagliostro's performance/press conference, feeling it below him. Normally, when he's drunk he doesn't show it.
- Real After All: Jessica is skeptical about the psychiatrist she's consulting being able to hypnotize her, but he does.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Bud Michaels sending Andy to go to the press conference with Cagliostro gave the kid the perfect opportunity to kill the hypnotist who had driven his father to suicide.
- You Killed My Father: Cagliostro was killed by the young newsman. Cagliostro set up his father to run a fake story and then sued him for libel, costing him his career. His father couldn't take it and committed suicide.
