Veteran newsman Haskell Drake suffers a heart attack while vigorously protesting the skeevy and spurious slant given to his interview with J.B. Fletcher. The news brings Jessica rushing to her friend's bedside, but Drake has lost his spirit and only wishes for the death of the offending editor, Levarr Bennett — a request which is unexpectedly granted when Bennett drops dead at a celebration mid-toast. Suddenly roused, Drake asks Jessica to act as his proxy in investigating the particulars that he can't inquire into from his hospital bed. Wanting to bring her friend back from the brink, Jessica plays newshound while sniffing out the truth about Bennett's demise.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Absence of Evidence: Billy Simms was in charge of giving Bennett his sinus medicine on demand. He used this to slip him spiked pills. When he tells Jessica there's no evidence he did that, she points out that Bennett had no sinus medication in his system.
- Avenging the Villain: Clyde Thorson, an employee who was very loyal to Bennett, follows Jessica, knowing that sooner or later she'll discover who murdered him. He almost shoots Simms after he confesses, but Jessica manages to talk him into letting the legal system mete out the punishment instead.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Jessica is able to get a staff member to show her the list of blood donors from the Sentinel by posing as a worker and saying her job will be on the line if she can't get it.
- Busman's Vocabulary: Lassiter's a sports writer and a number of his comments tend to be related to his bailiwick.
- Close to Home: Kay Garrett has a passion for writing stories on children in bad living conditions, which is implied to result from her spending the first four years of her life in an orphanage.
- Deadpan Snarker: Stan Lassiter, the sportswriter, is quick with a quip or wry comment.
- Death by Despair: Haskell Drake starts the episode by nearly dying from a heart attack, but the greater danger once the doctors stabilize him becomes his lack of motivation to recover after being fired. Jessica agrees to do the legwork on the story partially because the investigation gives him a reason to live.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Seeing Haskell fool the nurse into thinking he had taken his medicine by hiding it in his hand lets Jessica figure out the murderer's identity and how Bennett was poisoned.
- Good Is Old-Fashioned: Levarr Bennett consistently mocks the individuals who cling to the more ethical and less sensational model that the Sentinel used to follow before he bought it out. In the opening scene, he calls Haskell a has-been. Later, during his "toast" when he decides to fire the former owner Mr. Revere for protesting and hitting him, he continues at length about how the Sentinel as it was will disappear with him.
- Hollywood Heart Attack: Haskell gets so infuriated at Bennett that he begins stammering and clutching his chest before falling to the floor.
- I Am Who?: Apparently Kay took a while to come to terms with her father being Levarr Bennett.
- I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Inverted; Mr. Billy Simms describes Kay's mother as the only person who dared to withstand Bennett. She rejected his offer of marriage, and Mr. Simms suspects he hated her for it and that's why he ordered Simms to ruin Kay after finding out who she was.
- Immoral Journalist: Levarr Bennett is known for buying respectable papers and turning them into skeezy tabloids. When Haskell Drake suffers a heart attack while confronting Bennett about what he did to Haskell's interview with Jessica, Bennett summons some photographers to get a good shot of him on the floor.
- Implied Death Threat: When Jessica probes for information, Clyde tells her that the police had better locate Bennett's murderer before him. Later, it turns out he meant it.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Jessica confronts Mr. Simms with the fact that his article said that Bennett died of a cerebral hemorrhage. However, that wasn't confirmed until hours after the paper had gone to press.
- Like a Daughter to Me: Although he doesn't say the phrase out loud, Billy Simms knew about Kay Garrett's illegitimate birth and kept an eye on her for her entire life, speaking proudly to Jessica about how Kay grew into a fine, wonderful woman any father would be proud of—any father except Levarr Bennett, who (when Billy finally got up the nerve to tell him about Kay's parentage) decided to punish Kay's mother for leaving him vicariously by demanding Billy fire Kay and ruin her reputation. Billy's disgust with Bennett finally boiled over and he decided to kill him.
- Long-Lost Relative: Unbeknownst to either of them, Kay was Bennett's illegitimate daughter. Once Bennet knownst it, he hatched a plan to take his anger out on Kay's mother Olivia by ruining Kay's life.
- Only in It for the Money:
- When Jessica points out how Lassiter keeps working for Bennett in spite of expressing disapproval of his methods, he says sportswriting is the only job he knows and integrity doesn't pay.
- Eleanor Revere's only concern with The Sentinel is the high amount of dividends her shares of the paper have been giving her since her family sold it to Bennett.
- Parental Substitute: Clyde Thorson claims Levarr Bennett was the closest thing to a father he ever had.
- Pet the Dog: According to Carl, Bennett always treated him well, unlike basically everyone else.
- Rage Breaking Point: Simms didn't have as positive an experience working for Bennett as he implied. However, he put up with everything until Bennett told him to fire and smear Kay Garrett after Simms told him she was his daughter. Outraged, Simms slipped him a chemical that reacts badly with alcohol the afternoon of the party.
- Recruited from the Gutter: Downplayed; Bennett recruited two of his staff from lower positions, Clyde Thorson from the oil fields and Billy Simms from ad writing. Clyde maintains his loyalty to Bennett even after hearing why he was murdered, but Billy's allegiance could only take so much before it snapped.
- Reverse Psychology: Haskell Drake manipulates Jessica into doing the footwork on the story by saying that he doesn't need her and she didn't do a good job back when they worked together briefly in younger days. Jessica realizes partway through what he's trying to do, but she ends up agreeing to the job anyway.
- Saying Too Much: Jessica speculating out loud that Bennett's death may have been due to a cerebral hemorrhage due to poison and that being exactly the case raises the suspicions of the police.
- Worth Living For: Downplayed. During his fight with Bennett, Haskell suffers a heart attack and is nearly at death's door at the beginning of the episode. Getting caught up in the case quickly restores him to hale and hearty.
