This Promised End
Kent
Is this the promised end?
- King Lear, Act IV, Scene 7
Written by: Lol Fletcher
Directed by: Carolina Giammetta
Original Air Date: February 28, 2018
An undertaker approaches Shakespeare & Hathaway for protection, saying two men have promised to kill him in twenty-four hours.
This episode provides examples of:
- All Abusers Are Male: Played Straight.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Peter Quintus, who claims he has no enemies and cannot imagine anyone wanting to harm, much less kill him. He turns out to be a serial abuser of his wives.
- Car Fu: Quintus runs over a neighborhood warden who is about to report him for attacking his wife.
- Gaslighting: Peter Quintus's wife explains that the sole object of her death threat against her husband was to give him a taste of the fear she lived with every day of their marriage, before she finally divorced him.
- I Have Your Wife: Mr. "R" and Mr. "G" use threats against Peter Quintus's wife to prevent him from going to the police. It is actually an elaborate scheme engineered by the wife.
- Moral Myopia: Peter Quintus can't imagine that he has an enemy in the world. At one point he angrily demands that his killers explain to him who wants him dead, and why. One of them says if he honestly doesn't know, then there's no hope for him. Quintus never considered that his current and ex-wife both hate him equally for being a domestic abuser.
- Paper Tiger: When Frank and Lu identify Mr. "R" and Mr. "G", they turn out to be instructors at a local drama academy. When Frank and Lu first find them, they are conducting an interpretive dance class.
- Race Against the Clock: Peter Quintus says he has been given only twenty-four hours to live, unless Frank and Lu protect him.
- Scary Black Man: Subverted by Mr. "G", who is actually just a mild-mannered actor hired by an abused wife, to scare her husband.
