Time Of The Monkey
Charlie suspects her new besties at the retirement home played a role in another senior's death.
This episode contains examples of:
- Absence of Evidence; When confronting the duo, Charlie points out that if Gabriel was really wearing his heart monitor when it said he was, it would have registered the shocks that would have come from the defibrillator trying to revive him, but it didn't.
- Artistic License – Law: The Witness Protection Program is actually run by the US Marshals, not the FBI.
- Artistic License – Medicine: The type of paddle defibrillator shown being used have been replaced by automatic external defibrillators (AED) and they make the usual mistake of shocking a flatline.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Irene Smothers and Joyce Carter were anti-establishment radicals in the 1970s who attempted to bomb a Model UN, an educational simulation in which teenage students perform as ambassadors. Irene and Joyce self-justified this horrific act as "sending a message to the "future war criminals" by killing the children of the elite.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Charlie thought she was connecting to Irene and Joyce as two great gals fighting the good fight. She's more than let down to discover they were planning to murder high school kids and still don't see anything bad about it.
Charlie: I really thought you two guys were these super cool old women, standing up for what you believe in and holding the assholes accountable... Oh, wow... You're the assholes. Yikes.- Irene and Joyce suffer from this as well when they find put Gabriel was the one to sell them out to the raid.
- Cool Old Lady: Subverted, as it turns out.
- Dirty Old Man: Pervy Pete is always ready to make a crude innuendo or sex pun, if the name "Pervy Pete" wasn't enough of an indication.
- Evil Cripple: Irene is unable to walk, and is a cold-blooded murderer.
- Evil Old Folks: Irene and Joyce at first seem to be relatively innocent people who lost their freedom (and Irene her legs) to an unjustified police raid. It turns out they were planning to blow up teenagers at an elite prep school to send a message. In present day, they kill Gabriel, kill Betty when she gets too close to the truth on Gabriel's murder, and try to kill Charlie when she confronts them.
- External Combustion: Joyce and Irene apparently rigged one of the Mossy Oaks golf carts to blow as a contingency to kill Charlie. She narrowly avoids getting flash-fried at the end of the episode.
- Failed a Spot Check: The FBI agent moans on how he never bothered to check why Gabriel insisted on being sent to that specific nursing home and had no idea Irene and Joyce were there.
- Fake Alibi: Before leaving for the zoo trip, Joyce poisons Gabriel and swaps his heart monitor bracelet with her own one that is not activenote . Then, when she and Irene are at the zoo, Irene shocks Joyce with a taser to briefly stop her heart and make it look like Gabriel is going into cardiac arrest miles away.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: Charlie relates to the pair she knows all about what they did and how and is ready to tell the FBI. When Irene asks "so, you haven't told anyone yet?" Charlie gets an Oh, Crap! look just before the pair attack her.
- This is then subverted, as it turns out that she had in fact told someone else and the FBI are waiting for her cue - which is her shocking herself with a taser.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Irene and Joyce have been inseparable since they were young women, and despite having a threesome with Gabriel, there's no indication that their relationship is anything but platonic (whatever Betty might think).
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Irene and Joyce kill Gabriel with a sodium nitrate injection and make it look like he had a heart attack.
- Not What It Looks Like: Unbeknownst to them, Betty sees Joyce taze Irene but assumes it's some sort of "sexual zapping."
- Power Incontinence: Charlie's bullshit detector doesn't go off when the ladies are telling their backstory in a rosy, tragic way. Partly because of their careful wording, and partly because the ladies genuinely don't think their horrible plan to blow up teenagers was in the wrong.
- Rule of Three: Three people are shown being zipped into body bags; an unnamed resident, Gabriel, and Betty.
- Shout-Out:
- Gabriel's alias when he takes up residence at Mossy Oaks is "Ben Holmes".
- The trio of murder mystery obsessed seniors are known as the Fletchers.
- Joyce and Irene keep referring to "Euphorica".
- Stronger Than They Look: Irene is in a wheelchair and yet has the upper body strength to climb up a flower trellis two stories.
- Underestimating Badassery: Charlie lays out what the pair did, assuming they'll give up. Instead, they attack her, with Charlie realizing too late these are two women who survived decades in prison and are more than ready to kill her for their own safety.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: How Irene and Joyce present themselves as they still refuse to admit they were wrong plotting to blow up a conference of teens to "send a message to the next generation of war mongers."
- Witless Protection Program: Played With. Gabriel is kept safe for 50 years, but he decides of his own volition to track down his old accomplices/lovers and confess, his handler doing no research into the facility he asked to move into. The handler is incredibly qualified, but frustrated at his assignment to a job that amounts to little more than an assistant to a senior citizen who testified before he was even born.
- Would Hurt a Child: In the past, Irene and Joyce intended to blow up the children of so called "fascists" at an elite prep school to send a message.
