When a grieving father storms into a television studio known for airing controversial theories and takes hostages, SWAT are called in to defuse the situation. When two other gunmen escape, the race is on to find them before they strike again.
Tropes
- Call-Back: Hicks mentions Hondo having previously threatened to Resign in Protest to save Hicks' job after Erika's death, and makes it clear promoting Hondo back to 20 Squad leader is him returning the favour.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Hondo gets promoted back to 20 Squad leader.
- Heel Realisation: The ringleader of the shooters, Arnold Boseman, was originally a conspiracy theorist who denounced a school shooting as fake news, until he visited the site, saw the graves, spoke to the victims' families, and began angrily denouncing the pundits who called it a hoax.
- Hostage Situation: What starts the episode.
- My God, What Have I Done?: It's clear the news reporter is horrified about what his report had done, though his producer only cares about the money.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Two of the gunmen are fathers whose kids died in a school shooting. Now they wanted revenge on a conspiracy theorist television pundit who insisted the shooting was a hoax.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Hicks promotes Hondo back to 20 Squad leader, insisting he doesn't give a damn what grief it will cause him with the brass.
- Shame If Something Happened: Luca and Deacon twist Sanchez's arm into leaving S.W.A.T. after indicating they have evidence he took someone else's credit for preventing an assassination attempt on the mayor, which if released to the press, combined with his failure to drive Hondo out of S.W.A.T., would put an end to Sanchez's career ambitions permenantly.
