Sportsmaster and Tigress break out of prison and blackmail Pat and Barbara into letting them see their daughter try out for the football team. Meanwhile, Courtney and the others try to research Eclipso in order to find a way to stop it, with Beth trying to repair her goggles and Courtney eventually deciding to meet with The Shade. As all that is going on, Cindy starts to recruit for her new Injustice Society.
Tropes:
- Blackmail: Sportsmaster and Tigress convince Pat to help them lay low, otherwise they'd blow the whistle on S.T.R.I.P.E.
- Asshole Victim: The Shade implies that everyone he ever killed was this.
- Bonding over Missing Parents: Cindy endears herself to Isaac right away by telling him she lost her parents too.
- Break the Haughty: Artemis's mild skirmish with the coach and Courtney on the field gets her rejected by any recruiters, costing her a scholarship, compounded by her parents confessing to her that they are criminals and were justly arrested. Unfortunately, before she seemingly has a chance to have a Heel Realization, Cindy approaches her with an offer to join the new ISU.
- Call-Back: Crusher offers to tell Pat what Dragon King did with the Wizard's body. He's giddy about the fact that it was something so gruesome that Pat would find Crusher's own villainy to be tame by comparison.
- Commonality Connection: Barbara and Paula bond over raising a willful teenage daughter.
- Continuity Nod:
- The Whitmore-Dugans' kitchen is still wrecked from Jennie and Courtney's fight a few episodes ago. Paula takes note of it while she and Barbara hang out there awkwardly.
- The Whitmore-Dugans and the Crocks reference their various fights from last season.
- Cindy is reminded of how she killed both her father and stepmother, as well as how her birth mother died.
- Courtney reiterates how the Shade easily defeated the heroes last episode.
- Larry still considers the Gambler a putz.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Downplayed, but Artemis definitely shows signs of being her parents' child. She behaves like a Spoiled Brat complaining about how nobody gives her extremely nutritional food like wheatgrass, is cruel to Courtney and Yolanda, fervently professes the innocence of her psychopathic supervillain parents, and has a Hair-Trigger Temper. The ending seems to knock some of this out of her, though Cindy is likely to undo any progress.
- Dramatic Irony: The vehement words Artemis gave to Courtney and Yolanda at the cafeteria, right before crushing for emphasis the apple the latter two gave her and stomping off (hitting Courtney in the arm with her own as she did), outlined that the Crocks were not famed for their forgiving attitude if it even exists, with Artemis herself unaware that her parents broke out of jail and are in town - seeking to take refuge and then later behaving civilly in the household of the people who have a hand at their imprisonment in the first place.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Sportsmaster and Tigress's motivation for breaking out of prison: they want to cheer on their daughter at her football tryouts.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The Shade claims that he doesn't want the black diamond so he can release and team up with Eclipso. Even he's not deranged enough to knowingly allow an entity that purely evil to be let loose and is insulted when Courtney suggests it. Moreover, the Shade tells her that he never wronged anyone who didn't have it coming, whereas Eclipso delights in corrupting and killing the innocent. He wants the diamond so that he can personally dispose of it to ensure that Eclipso remains imprisoned permanently. Downplayed in that he further claims to Courtney that his motives are simply out of boredom and he has nothing better to do with his longevity.The Shade: Don't you know there's a difference between "bad" and "evil?" I've been called wicked more than once. A law broken here, rule bent there, the odd life taken. But nobody that didn't deserve it. Eclipso, on the other hand?...When I find the Black Diamond, I intend to throw it in the deepest, darkest part of the ocean so Eclipso will never hurt anyone again.
- Extremely Protective Child: Exploited; Cindy uses the black diamond to make Artemis see SWAT officers preparing to shoot her parents so she will unknowingly attack random people. This outburst costs her a football scholarship, leaving her open to Cindy's invitation into the new ISA.
- Faux Affably Evil: Sportsmaster acts all buddy-buddy and smarmy towards Pat, but the audience knows he's a sadistic psychopath. When Pat attributes Larry's failed attempt to kill him last year as to why their friendship soured, the latter simply remarks the former making "a fair point".
- Felony Misdemeanor: Artemis gripes about how she has to eat mac and cheese and go without sports channels in her foster home. Larry shares her sentiments, calling them animals.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Mike sees the newspaper headline that the Crocks broke out of prison. Immediately afterwards, he's accosted by them.
- Foreshadowing:
- Early on in the episode, Barbara tells Paula that if she were to deny her kids junk food, they would just go out and get it somewhere else. By the end of the episode, because she and Pat are hiding information on Eclipso from Courtney, she decides to get it from the Shade.
- The Shade continues to imply that there's more to what happened to Dr. Mid-Nite than what Pat saw, along with saying he only killed people who deserved it. Sure enough, the end of the episode reveals that he actually trapped Mid-Nite in a shadowly realm.
- Funny Background Event: How Larry and Paula interact with the various doohickeys at the Dugan-Whitemore living room while Pat and Barbara contemplate on what to do with their presence in their very house.
- Humble Goal: All the Crocks want is to be there for their daughter during tryouts, and once that's done, they willingly return to prison. True enough, besides lightly manhandling Mike when they find him and bringing him over to the Pit Stop, where they waited for Pat, their interactions with the Dugan-Whitmore family are relatively harmless.
- Humble Pie: Rick's teacher, Ms. Woods, who planned to fail him for supposedly cheating on his exam, sincerely apologizes for her misjudgement when he retakes the test with flying colors.
- Internal Reveal:
- Isaac and Artemis learn about the ISA as part of Cindy's recruiting efforts.
- Courtney learns about how Eclipso killed McNider's daughter.
- Kids Play Matchmaker: Beth tries to sell her mother on going with her father to a mini golf course they used to love, but Dr. Chapel says they're both too busy.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Courtney is attacked by Artemis, a few weeks after doing the same to her.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Swift proclaims himself as such when Courtney accuses him of seeking the Black Diamond for its power. He may be a rogue without a care for laws or morals, but he's a saint compared to Eclipso, a monster in every sense of the word.
- Motive Misidentification:
- Courtney assumes the Shade wants to ally himself with Eclipso. Instead, the Shade wants to dump the gem to the bottom of the ocean to keep that monster away.
- Initially Pat thought Sportsmaster and Tigress broke out of prison to get revenge on the JSA. Turns out they just wanted to see Artemis's football tryout.
- Mythology Gag:
- Bruce Gordon, the 19th century explorer whom Courtney and the others read about, is the original Silver Age identity of Eclipso in the comics.
- The bookstore that Courtney meets the Shade in is called the House of Secrets, which was the name of the DC anthology series that Eclipso debuted in.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Black Diamond is from a place called Diablo Island. Lampshaded by Yolanda, who of course knows that "diablo" means "devil".
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Crusher has never seen The Shawshank Redemption; he was rather confused when Pat brought it up, comparing the former's incarceration and experience in prison to the one seen in the movie.
- Rejected Apology: Courtney attempts to make peace with Artemis after the mishap from a few episodes ago. Unfortunately, she accidentally presses Artemis's Berserk Button by asking about her parents, with the latter hearing Yolanda making a small scoffing sound behind Courtney probably not helping, so Artemis tells her that she's not forgiven.
- The Reveal:
- The Shade claims to want to dump Eclipso somewhere it can never be found, considering it an evil too great for the world. This also hints that the Black Diamond that Eclipso is held in cannot be destroyed.
- Charles McNider isn't dead, but trapped in a dimension of shadows. Also, he's the one who's been talking to Beth through the goggles during the last several episodes, not the Chuck AI.
- Yolanda is now waitressing for the summer at Richie's Diner.
- Ship Tease: Rick and Beth seem to be in the early stages of bonding during the diner scene.
- Shout-Out:
- Crusher calls Pat and the others the Scooby Gang.
- Pat references The Shawshank Redemption when asking how Crusher fared in prison.
- Sympathy for the Devil: While she's a Jerkass, it's hard to not feel bad for Artemis, with her being stuck with a neglectful and uncaring foster family, followed by her chances of a football scholarship being ruined by Cindy and Eclipso.
- Tastes Like Friendship: Attempted by Courtney when she gives Artemis her apple. Unfortunately, she hits a nerve by accident and Artemis crushes the peace offering in a rage.
- Trail Of Breadcrumbs: Sportsmaster and Tigress left a false one to lead the police away from Blue Valley. Tigress figures they're halfway to Miami.
- Trailers Always Lie: The promo for this episode implied that Artemis crushing the apple in front of Courtney was because she found out Courtney was Stargirl, thus responsible for putting her parents in jail.
- Understatement: Artemis attacks the coach and Courtney during her tryouts for seemingly no reason and how does her father react?Larry: Well, that really got away from her, didn't it?
- Unholy Matrimony: Sportsmaster and Tigress do seem to genuinely love each other, and their daughter.
- Un-person: Non-person example with Diablo Island. It was removed from maps so that people would stop going there.
- The Un-Reveal: Crusher never gets to tell Pat what Dragon King did to The Wizard's body.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Two infamous escaped felons show up at a football tryout and nobody but Artemis and Courtney seems to notice, thanks to some Clark Kenting.
- Wham Shot: Charles McNider, alive and no worse for wear, is shown wandering a strange world of darkness. It's implied the Shade is responsible for putting him there.
