Season 5, Episode 8
Garden Variety Homicide
Penny and Alice deal with an outbreak of sentient spores in Brakebills while Eliot, Margo, Josh, Fen, and Julia put a plan into motion to kill the Dark King.Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Ambiguous Situation: As Margo notes, for someone spawning evil creatures that only he can stop, the Dark King seems oddly emotional (sincerely so, at that) about what those creatures do. The Dark King himself hints at some kind of pact that is requiring him to do this, though to what end is unclear.
- Big Damn Heroes: Julia, previously sidelined because of her pregnancy, stabs Seb in the back when he's got Margo-in-Eliot on the ropes.
- Call-Back: The events of last episode are referenced when Bax expresses annoyance at Alice for moving the Circumstances Control Panel out of the greenhouse and into a lab.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Justified. Explaining the "Freaky Friday" Flip to anyone will make it permanent.
- Death World: Anansia is such a dangerous place that Dean Fogg figured anyone crazy enough to go there belonged on his "Do-Not-Admit" list, since God knows what other worlds they'd gone to and what undetectable infections they may have picked up.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Alice notices that she and Bax have been in the same public place for a while and yet no one around them has been infected and realizes that the spores are deliberately limiting the number of infectees.
- Exact Words: Margo-in-Eliot's-body explains that since Eliot empathized with the Dark King too much to kill him, swapping bodies absolves him of any guilt when she asassinates him. Eliot isn't exactly convinced.
- Express Delivery: Because it's Red Monkey month on Fillory, everything grows faster. This includes Julia's unborn child, which is going to go to full term in less than a month.
- Festering Fungus: The antagonist in Alice and Penny's plot is a cloud of sentient fungal spores that can take over bodies to do their bidding.
- Foreshadowing: Penny wondering what Quentin was doing with the instructions to a World Seed in his desk foreshadows that fact that Q's not the one who put it there.
- Forced Sleep: Fen and Julia put Castle Whitespire under a sleeping spell.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Margo uses a potion to swap her mind with Eliot's, allowing her to get close enough to the Dark King to kill him without Eliot having to kill someone he has feelings for. Immediately lampshaded when Eliot winds up in her body and compares it to Freaky Friday.
- Genius Loci: Turns out the Moon really does have feelings, and the protagonists moving her without being asked first (as the Lunatic they talked to had recommended) seriously pissed her off, leading to her screwing around with Circumstances.
- Hands-On Approach: Margo in Eliot's body tries to get into Seb's good graces by bracing herself around him to demonstrate a spell. She backs off when Charlton tells her she is coming on too strong.
- Hive Mind: The sentient spores are this, but like any other mind, it can't spread itself too far.
- Ignored Expert: Bax wants to call upon a colleague of his for help on the mysterious page, but Penny is reluctant to do so as said colleague is on Dean Fogg's "Do-Not-Admit" list. He's persuaded otherwise, kicking off the plot.
- Immortality Inducer: The Dark King bound himself to a conduit which extends his life indefinitely. It's thought to be a blackwood tree, but there's evidently more to it since cutting that down doesn't make him mortal.
- Internal Reveal: Margo learns about Charlton when she swaps minds with Eliot, since he isn't carried over in the switch.
- In the Back: After Margo botches her attempt to kill the Dark King, Julia salvages the situation by stabbing him through the back with a sword.
- It's All My Fault: Eliot blames himself for the latest kidnapping by the latest batch of Takers, created with gold he gave The Dark King (who blames his own self).
- The Lost Lenore: Bax had a wife named Isabella and keeps her favorite plant alive, so he understands why Alice wants to keep Quentin's page.
- Mad Eye: The tell for someone being infected with the spores is one of their eyes moving unnaturally.
- Made of Plasticine: The first host of the spores rips open like paper when Alice magically tosses him into a wall, which is attributed to the spores having inhabited him long enough to almost completely consume his internal organs to multiply.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Josh is able to find Seb's tree because he aced an elective in Dowsing.
- Non-Indicative Name: Everything grows faster during the month of the Red Monkey, except ironically monkeys.
- Not Himself:
- Eliot-in-Margo's-body is so agreeable, emotional and patient that Josh becomes suspicious that she's been replaced somehow.
- Margo-in-Eliot's-body does a little better with Charlton's coaching, but comes on too strong to the Dark King and is only able to pass once she starts empathizing with him as Eliot does.
- Not Quite Dead: It turns out it's more than a tree that's keeping the Dark King alive, as he revives after being stabbed through the chest.
- Outside-Context Problem: The spores passed through Brakebills's detection spells by being one of these and thus undetectable.
- Rage Breaking Point: Eliot-in-Margo's-body finally gets frustrated with Josh constantly pestering "Margo" to talk about their relationship and how she'd planned on abandoning him in the past, etc. and finally tells him that Margo will probably never apologize and would do the same thing again if she had to. This finally convinces the suspicious Josh that he's dealing the the real Margo...and wrecks their relationship. Whoops.
- The Reveal:
- The page Alice found in Quentin's desk is instructions on how to use a World Seed, which as the name suggests can be manipulated to grow into an entire world. Something called "The Couple" want the page and presumably have the seed already.
- Julia is pregnant, presumably by Penny.
- Sarcasm FailurePenny: Thought a Dean was supposed to have strong instincts.Fogg-17: I will get out of [the Clean Room], and then I will turn you all into lobsters and eat you.Penny: ...O-okay.
- Saying Too Much: Fogg-17 tries to leverage his way out of the Clean Room by talking about anti-fungal research he did with another (now-deceased) professor, and attempts to trade the knowledge for his freedom. Unfortunately, he says the professor's name, and Alice knows that her writings would be posthumously placed in the Brakebills library.
- Start X to Stop X: The fungus is able to jump into another host moments after being forced out of one. Alice later realizes that the fungus is limiting the number of hosts it's controlling, so she captures the free spores and spreads it to dozens of students. Having its mind spread out over so many hosts effectively renders it brain-dead, as its will is spread too thin for it to exert control over any one host.
- These Hands Have Killed: Lampshaded. Margo explains that she's swapped bodies with Eliot so he can keep his hands clean of the Dark King's murder. Eliot points out that she'll still be using his hands.
- Trust Me, I'm an X: As Bax is spraying spores into numerous students' faces, he tells them it's a professor thing and not to worry about it.
- Visual Pun: Julia finds out she's pregnant through a rabbit test
. - What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
- Bax is upset that Alice moved the Circumstances panel out of the greenhouse for study, since it was keeping the exoplants within alive.
- As Alice's plan is unfolding, the spores complain that she's killing them. She corrects them by saying they'll always be alive in their hosts, just...quiet.
