Charlie finds herself caught in a conflict between a veteran race car driver (Tim Blake Nelson) and his younger rival (Charles Melton) that leads to a fiery crash.
Tropes
- Artistic License – Sports: Despite what the announcer says, the cars at Peach Tree Speedway are not late models, they're closer to street stocks, which look nothing like late models
. - Bait-and-Switch: The first act sets up the idea Keith messed with Davis' car to take him out in a race. Then it's revealed Davis discovered the sabotage and tricked Katy into racing the car for him instead.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: It is Keith's wife, not Charlie, that calls "Bullshit" on him when he denies anything's wrong.
- Chekhov's Gun: Earlier in the episode, Davis taught Charlie a driving move in a racing game to show her how tough car racing actually is. Towards the end of the episode, Charlie uses it to escape him when he tries to run her off the road in his tow truck.
- Crack is Cheaper: Davis says you need either sponsors or to already have money to get by in professional racing as the winnings barely cover the costs. It's nearly impossible for anyone without either, like himself, to break into the sport.
- Escalating War: The feud between Keith and Davis, which has been going for quite a while, finally escalates to the point of vehicular sabotage.
- Everyone Lives: For the first time in the series, no-one dies, as Katy survives her car crash and even wakes from her coma by the end, with a full recovery expected.
- Exact Words: Davis is able to trick Charlie into thinking he was simply the intended victim rather than a culprit himself by saying how Keith made a call to the tow truck company so that he could sabotage Davis' car. What Davis left out was how it was only Davis' mom who actually left the house, and that Davis saw the sabotage beforehand. But since he didn't actually lie, Charlie has no suspicions of Davis for the majority of the episode.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Charlie realizes that Davis knew that Keith attached the fishhook with a gear tie, even though it burned up in the crash. She points out that the more reasonable assumption would be fishing line.
- Karma Houdini: Charlie is unable to prove that Davis knowingly sabotaged Katy, and he will likely never face punishment for his crimes. However, see Pyrrhic Victory below.
- Manipulative Bastard: Davis, savvy to Charlie's Living Lie Detector status, is incredibly careful in how he phrases the car's sabotage, letting her follow the clues to Keith's actions before she catches onto his own crimes.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Keith's expression when he realizes he nearly killed his daughter.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Davis is free and clear with Keith admitting to his sabotage and no one suspecting the seatbelt was tampered with. A kid comes up to Davis saying how he's afraid of seatbelts failing after Katy got hurt. Davis reassures him that seatbelts are very safe and what happened to Katy was a freak accident. Charlie was nearby, realized he was lying and started looking into him.
- Opportunistic Bastard: When Davis sees Keith setting up his car to crash, he comes up with the idea to put Katy behind the wheel the next day in a practice run. This will destroy Keith's reputation once the truth comes out, and take her out as competition.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Charlie says for Davis and Randy to wait until she has proof that Keith sabotaged the former's car before they "go Deliverance" on him. Neither one has a clue what she's talking about.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Sure, Davis has gotten himself the championship now that Keith has ruined his career, but Charlie spells out to him that Katy is still alive and going to join in on the racing circuit, and when she does, the nerves he now has mean all he's going to win is the taste of her dust.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Both Keith and Davis talk about what a huge deal this racing circuit is, with Keith mentioned as coming from a "legacy" of great drivers and acting like this is NASCAR. Despite having local sponsors, it's just a small racing group in a podunk town that no one outside this area cares about.
- Spotting the Thread: While she had suspicions already, the confirmation for Charlie that Davis was behind the accident is seeing he didn't have the photo of his father in his car as usual as he knew it was going to crash and didn't want it damaged.
- Vehicular Sabotage: In an episode about racing, what other murder method would you expect?
- First Keith puts a fishing hook on a gear tie and fixes it in Davis' engine, so that it would hook onto the carburetor and prevent him from decelerating.
- Then when Davis notices what Keith has done, he screws with the seatbelt so that when he tricks Katy into the car, the damage of the crash will be much more severe.
- What You Are in the Dark: A double feature from our attempted killers.
- Upon discovering the sabotage to his racecar, Davis had every opportunity to either expose the sabotage or even simply fix the damage and call out Keith on his poor sportsmanship privately. Instead, his decision to take out two birds with one stone permanently marks him as a vicious threat on the track.
- Keith could have easily escaped any repercussions for his actions, with no one wise to his vehicle sabotage. Instead, he willingly sacrifices his career and reputation, accepting his own guilt and proving himself the better man than Davis.
