Russo opens up to Madani about his past, Sarah shares her concerns about her son with Frank, and a decoy operation takes a turn.
- And I Must Scream: Russo keeps his mother, a meth addict who abandoned him when he was a child, under expensive medical care but strapped to her bed and constantly drugged. Judging by the expression on her face she's clearly terrified of him.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Downplayed. Sam and Dinah are a little stilted during their performance for the bug, but do quite well. The act drops when Sam ad-libs about Dinah's love life, gets a guarded response, and starts probing.
- Bad Boss: Once the shootout begins, Russo leaves his commandos to fend for themselves.
- Early in the shootout, Russo pushes Mike Bashille out of cover to draw fire from Madani and Stein so he can move.
- Thomas Weems takes a shotgun blast to the chest from Madani as he and Russo prepare to flee down a stairwell. He begs for Russo to aid him, only for Russo to pull his gun and shoot him in the head to finish him off, possibly so he can't expose him.
- Batman Gambit: Dinah and Sam stage the operation, pretending they have discovered a meeting between Frank and an arms dealer, to flush whoever has bugged her office. Unfortunately, it goes badly.
- Bait the Dog: The episode opens with Russo visiting his mom on a hospital bed, setting the scene as if to show Even Evil Has Loved Ones. As it turns out however, he's keeping her drugged in an And I Must Scream situation as payback for abandoning him as a child.
- Berserk Button:
- David, drunk, pushes Frank's, calling him a psychopath.
- When Madani jokes about his pretty face, Russo clearly doesn't like it and tells her how a pedophile once broke his arm when he aggressively refused his advances. "When a grown man tells you that you're pretty, you know nothing good is coming." Then while delivering dialogue for the bug, Stein goes off script and makes a snarky comment about Dinah's "pretty" new boyfriend. Later Russo snarls, "Who's pretty now?" while repeatedly stabbing Stein to death.
- Blade Enthusiast: Frank's attitude when he tries to scare Zach, praising the kid's selection of a Ka-Bar combat knife (telling him that in close-quarters combat a knife is a better weapon than a gun) and then showing the best way to cut someone's throat... at least until Zach tearfully tells him to Get It Over With.
- Bluff the Eavesdropper: Dinah and Stein make use of the bug in her office by saying a lie about them knowing a future location where Frank Castle will be, expecting whoever set it up will go there and thus they will trap them.
- The Bro Code: Frank rapidly backs off when Sarah kisses him. David is upset, but he understands the situation from both Frank's and Sarah's perspective and doesn't really blame either of them.
- Call-Back: David wasn't lying about helping his wife cook Thanksgiving dinner. That sandwich looks amazing.
- Continuity Nod: The place where Russo is hiring his operatives for the SWAT team ambush is the same location where Cottonmouth shot Detective Scarfe.
- Concealment Equals Cover: Dinah and Stein spend most of the shootout hunkered down behind a wooden crate. Russo's men empty a ton of bullets into it, but apparently none pass through.
- Did Not Think This Through: Frank brings flowers as an Apology Gift to have a pretext for visiting Sarah. He finds her drinking in the middle of the day with the kids out of the house, and it's no surprise the lonely widow makes a pass at this man who has been repeatedly turning up under various excuses to offer help and sympathy.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Frank finds Sarah doing this, and after she tries to kiss him while drunk he goes back to his hideout to find David doing the same.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: For the ambush on the DHS operation, Russo hires some outside operators because he doesn't want to use any more of his own men after what happened with Gunner. These four, who were contractors contracted by the State Department to protect high-risk diplomats, apparently shot the wrong people in front of the wrong people. Russo tells them, "Listen, there's not much of anything I can do about a YouTube video of you guys opening up
on a bunch of Iraqi civilians." - Dramatic Unmask: Stein gets the drop on Russo, and has him dead to rights. He gets up close to Russo, and rips off his mask. The shock at seeing Russo's face causes Stein to freeze up. Russo swiftly disarms Stein of his gun and stabs him to death with his shoulder-mounted knife.Billy Russo: Who's pretty now?
- Failed a Spot Check: Stein should've really patted down Russo's arms for weapons, because he would've caught Russo's wrist-mounted knife.
- Feed the Mole: Dinah and Stein stage a conversation in her office wherein they provide false information to whoever is listening in on the bug, hoping to draw them into a trap.
- Fire-Forged Friends: With the aid of a little alcohol, Frank and David finally start to really bond. They reminisce about how they met their wives.
- Foreshadowing: After Russo shows off his scars, Madani quips how his handsome features have been left unmarked.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Having risen up from the gutter after being abandoned into the social welfare system by his junkie mother, Billy Russo is determined that no-one will take his hard-earned wealth and respectability, so much so that he's willing to kill a Homeland Security agent and even his Fire-Forged Friend Frank Castle.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Madani's plan with providing misinformation through the bug was to draw someone into a trap and thus get a lead on the Kandahar case. The resulting shootout provides her with nothing (at least for a while) but a bunch of dead agents (most importantly Stein) and a lot of egg on her face.
- He Knows Too Much: Russo shoots Weems in the head after he's wounded in the shootout. He also kills Sam to keep his identity secret after Dinah's trap.
- Heroic BSoD: Dinah goes into this when Stein is killed during the trap.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: David's response the morning after regarding his drunken Ho Yay moment with Frank.
- Mood Whiplash: Frank and David have a touching bonding scene that does a quick 180 when David has the bright idea to go to Madani and work with her to take Rawlins down. Frank says Rawlins has to die, David calls him a psychopath and goes to call Madani anyway. Frank clocks him.
- Morning Routine: We get to see Russo go through this in the beginning, in a scene very much akin to Patrick Bateman's morning routine.
- Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight:
- Discussed early on by Frank to Zach. Frank comments that at close range he'd prefer a knife. Even if Zach had a gun loaded and ready to go, Frank would be confident he could kill Zach before he could fire a shot.
- Frank's description then plays out in practice at the end of the shootout. Russo takes advantage of Sam's momentary shock over unmasking him to tear the gun out of his hand, and then stab him to death repeatedly with the retractable blade concealed in his right wrist that he previously used to kill Colonel Bennett.
- Offscreen Villain Dark Matter:
- Averted, when Russo tells Rawlins the logistical difficulties of using his own men to attack Frank again.Billy Russo: If we go after him again, I can't use anybody on my payroll. I lost nine of my guys going after Henderson in those woods. I'm gonna need outsider operators and they will not be cheap.
William Rawlins: So everything comes down to money, doesn't it?
Billy Russo: Easy enough to say for a guy who never had to worry about money a day in his life. - Earlier Lieberman starts to freak out on discovering that Agent Orange is the Director of Covert Operations and so can marshal all the resources of the CIA against them. Frank however points out that the conspirators haven't released anything about Gunner's death or Frank's attack on Bennett's army base. The only thing that's been publicly reported in the news is Bennett's murder. This means that Rawlins and his co-conspirators are limited in what official resources they can use to hunt Frank without arousing suspicions.
- Averted, when Russo tells Rawlins the logistical difficulties of using his own men to attack Frank again.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Stein freezes up upon ripping Russo's ski mask off. Russo takes advantage of this to disarm him and stab him to death.
- Frank's horrified when he realizes Zach's not a bully, he's a little kid who lost his dad and has been nothing but terrified since.
- Scar Survey: The post-coitus version with Russo. One is a bruise from one of the times Frank shot him (with a vest on) at Barrett's (Russo claims it's a bruise from a paintball round during training), the other is a genuine war wound. Dinah expects a suitably badass and somewhat exaggerated war story about an injury to his shoulder, but Russo reveals that's from when his arm was broken by a pedophile while he was in a group home.
- Shower of Angst: Dinah takes a bath to wash Stein's blood off her, but she's still in shock, so she barely pays attention. So Russo, the man who killed Stein, takes the job of washing the blood off her. It's a very creepy scene that wouldn't be out of place in Hannibal, another Steve Lightfoot project.
- Stating the Simple Solution: David points out the obvious solution is just to approach Madani with everything they have—he has the video, while Frank is a living witness to back it up. Frank refuses to compromise his Gotta Kill 'Em All approach until he sees firsthand how David's absence has screwed up his family.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A group of highly trained spec-ops soldiers trained in urban combat walk into a trap set by specialized law enforcement trained at taking down dangerous targets. Most of the cops survive. Russo is the only one of the soldiers who gets away.
- Tough Love: Frank's version of this when talking with Zach about the knife. He tries a scared straight approach by getting him up close and personal with said knife. When Zach says that he wants Frank to do it, as he just wants the pain to stop, Frank realizes he went too far and puts the knife away, then pulls Zach into a Cooldown Hug and takes him out to toss a football in the street.
