Season 1 Episode 03:
Champion
A journalist approaches the family with an offer. At Hap's, a bond is forged with Homer and the others as they hatch a desperate plan.Tropes present in this episode include:
- Angsty Surviving Twin: Betty has a deceased twin brother named Theo. She's still torn up about his death.
- Beneath Suspicion: Hap assumes the OA is harmless because of her disability. She takes advantage of this by drugging him.
- Break the Cutie: Happens to the OA after finding a woman's dead body in Hap's bathroom. Then again when she loses the letter.
- Foreshadowing: Homer helps a devastated OA cheer up by getting her to do jumping jacks. The power of movement is going to be very important to the story.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Being imprisoned in Hap's lab gradually takes its toll on the OA, despite the presence of others.
- Great Escape: The OA, Rachel, Homer, and Scott attempt this several times, but each attempt fails.
- Hope Spot: The NDE club almost manages to get a letter to the outside, but it slips through the OA's fingers and gets lost down the stream.
- Idiot Ball: It is somehow a surprise to Hap that the dish the OA makes him has tomato in it even though, since the OA is blind, he had to personally order all the ingredients for her.
- Lampshade Hanging: After hearing about how the letter for help was lost, everyone is quick to point out the inherent Fridge Logic in the fact they tried to mail Homer's ring.Jesse: Those football rings are clunky, um, wouldn't Hap have, like, noticed it in the envelope anyway?
OA: Maybe.
Buck: Well, you were going to put it in the middle of the mail pile, right? Hap wouldn't notice that?
Steve: Oh, shut up guys, seriously you ask the dumbest questions. - Maid: Hap allows the OA to work upstairs as his housekeeper because she's blind and presumably harmless.
- Manipulative Bastard: Hap tricked several people who had NDEs in order to capture and experiment on them.
- Pet the Dog:
- Hap lets the OA make sandwiches for the other prisoners after feeding them nothing but pellets.
- Betty saves Steve from getting sent to Ashville by convincing his parents to place him in special education.
- Plot Allergy: Hap has an allergic reaction to the soup the OA made him, rather than pass out because of the sleeping pills.
- Shout-Out: The drawing of Betty on the classroom whiteboard with her in Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" pose.
