Jessica arrives in Denver, both to appear on a talk show and to visit an old friend, Dr. Jayne Honig. However, she quickly finds herself more absorbed in action than in talk or visiting when local tv star Kenneth Chambers, a consumer advocate of questionable honesty, meets his end by bullet and Mr. Honig becomes the primary suspect.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – Medicine: Jessica tells Robert he needs help, the kind only Jayne can give. The woman he's obsessed with is the last person who should be treating him for this obsession.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Lynette Bryant brings in the information on a story and gets shut down. The tape of the episode later turns up in Mr. Chambers' safe, along with bribery money to kill the story before it reached its audience.
- One of the workers, trying to fix Chambers' broken VCR, accidentally spills coffee on him and the chair. This gives Jessica proof when she notices something odd about the way the body was facing when discovered and the fact that the coffee stain wasn't on the chair where Chambers was found. It implies he was killed elsewhere.
- Lt. Flannigan dumps out a cigar ash when he comes into Chambers' office to investigate. The cigar ash turns out to have been left by the murderer, after the accused had already left and the janitor had cleaned the ashtray.
- Collector of the Strange: Bert Tanaka, the cleaning man, keeps a decades-spanning collection of trash thrown away by celebrities who have visited the studio (thankfully, all bronzed or encased in lucite). He excitedly shows it off to Jessica.
- Does Not Like Men: Lynette, with there being a hint of
Les Yay in her interactions with Claire. - Exact Words: Jessica gets the fame-hungry Flannigan to let her get involved by saying she's a writer, "crime is my beat, and murder my speciality" and letting him assume she means a journalist. When he calls her on it later she says "I didn't lie ... exactly" and he chuckles and replies "You didn't tell the truth exactly, either."
- Glory Seeker: Lt. Flannigan wants to get famous, even it means stealing credit for Jessica's deduction.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Robert tried to kill Steve, and failing that, frame him for Chambers' death because he was in love with Jayne and resented that Steve had married her instead.
- Implied Death Threat: Mr. Rinaldi, a toy seller, pays Mr. Chambers a visit about the episode he's planning to run on his teddy bears. He rips the head off one and says that will be Chambers if he runs the story.
- The Man Behind the Man: or rather the woman behind the woman. While Clare becomes the new host of the show, Lynette is clearly the power behind her.
- "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: A third-person variation; Lt. Flannigan says that honesty was Chambers' middle name. Jessica begs to differ. However, even after he turns up evidence of bribery, he still insists on Chambers' innocence.
- Murder by Mistake: Robert, the killer, turns out to have shot Chambers by mistake; the person he was really trying to kill was Steve, the husband of the woman with whom he was obsessively in love, in whose office he killed Chambers.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: This is what Robert planned to do, but when he found out he'd killed Chambers, he decided getting his love rival put in jail for murder was the next best thing.
- Quote Mine: At one point, The Bottom Line intends to run a show on a bulletproof vest, claiming it's unsafe. They cut a clip of Lt. Flannigan saying it's bulky but effective down into something that says it doesn't do its job.Flannigan's actual quote: The Acme Vest? Well, it's cumbersome. I mean, I wouldn't put it on my dog if I expected him to, uh, fetch the paper. But, er, in a dangerous situation, it's the most effective product I've ever seen.
Chambers' doctored version: The Acme Vest?- In a dangerous situation- I wouldn't put it on my dog. - Redeeming Replacement: Chambers is a corrupt Jerkass who slanders good products and takes bribes to ignore genuinely dangerous ones, but after being promoted to take over for him, Clare seems more genuinely interested in exposing products that are actually dangerous, while being nicer to the people around her and a little unsure about the whole business of being promoted and stunned to find out Kenneth's bribery.
- Unknown Rival: All the times Robert expresses his jealousy that Steve had married Jayne, and all the times he asked her to run away with him were sincere, but framed as jokes, which is what Jayne and Steve took them to be.
