Jessica arrives at the Waverly plantation to help celebrate the coming-of-age of son Adam. However, tension brewing beneath the surface erupts when Adam introduces his bride Selina, to the displeasure of both their families. Almost immediately, a curse seems to strike the household. Can Jessica thwart the twisted scheme?
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Jean-Pierre's father lost half of his plantation to the Waverly grandfather in a card game.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Mark is in love with their neighbor's daughter Michelle, who only has eyes for Adam (albeit not necessarily out of love as much as to combine' their families land).
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Mark mentions a rat poison the plantation uses, which later ends up nearly killing his brother.
- Gordon, the local reporter, tells Jessica he spent a long time in Hollywood doing work on shlock horror films after failing to make it as a director. His talent for makeup comes in handy when Jessica plans to disguise Adam as a zombie to scare the killer into making a fatal mistake.
- Continuity Nod: Jessica's cousin Emma from "Sing a Song of Murder" and "It Runs In the Family" gets mentioned.
- Fourth-Date Marriage: Adam and Selina apparently only knew each other for three weeks before marrying.
- Gold Digger: Michelle has long believed she'd get to marry Adam as part of an agreement between her dad and Harry to combine their family's plantations again. She's livid when Adam returns home with Selina, and is especially pissed when Harry suggests she marry Mark instead (since she's not gonna settle for being the wife of the #2 guy in charge).
- Good Parents: Olivia Waverly's got absolutely no issue with Adam's marriage and quickly considers Selina part of the family. It's pretty clear she has nothing to do with the inheritance nonsense her brother in-law and Jean-Pierre are so upset about.
- Honor Before Reason:
- It's noted that Selina's marriage to Adam derails the plans to have the Waverly plantation reunited with Jean-Pierre's, but Michelle adamantly refuses to settle for marrying Mark because he'd be second-in-command.
- Harry's got no love for Selina and would be eager to see her gone, but not if it means being ordered around in his own house and potentially having to pay Calder Williams for her divorce.
- Improbable Antidote: Adam doesn't die from the rat poison because his new wife had earlier served him an herbal tea to help with a migraine, and the tea just happened to contain the natural antidote to the poison, so his body started fighting the toxin immediately.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Harry Waverly considers neither Adam nor Mark an effective lord of the manor, Adam because he's not hard-working enough and Mark because he's not smart enough.
- Lifesaving Misfortune: Adam suffering from a killer migraine led Selina to make him herbal tea, which happened to contain the antidote to the rat poison he got dosed with later.
- Locked Room Mystery: Harry's room was locked from the inside. It turns out there was a Secret Passage.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Harry Waverly disdains black people and Calder Williams hates white people, so neither approves in the slightest when Adam and Selina get married.
- Red Herring: There is a very pointed close-up on the fact Mark didn't drink any wine, and a more casual reference to him looking at the house plans.
- Paper Key-Retrieval Trick: Jessica does this to get into Harry's room, claiming to have seen it in either Return of The Thin Man or Charlie Chan in Hong Kong (neither of which actually exist).
- Parental Substitute: Harry sees himself as one to his nephews, although their feelings towards him are a bit more complex.
- Pet the Dog: A self-serving, downplayed example. Harry makes it clear he'd love to have Selina out of his house, but won't stand for Calder Williams ordering him around and pulls out a gun telling him to let Selina go.
- Scarecrow Solution: Jessica fakes Adam rising as a zombie in order to spook to the killer into revealing that he knew the location of a secret passage: something only the killer could have known.
- Secretly Selfish: As noted above, Harry Waverly only scares off Selina's father because of his pride and because he doesn't feel like paying the man any money if Selina divorces Adam.
- This Bear Was Framed: The murderer strangles the victim of the week and tries to make it look like the work of a boa constrictor, which was sent to him as part of a voodoo curse.
