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Changed line(s) 23 (click to see context) from:
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of sleeping with Emilio to get the Ball Buster job, as well as at least two other commercials before that, and an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Near the end, Druscilla shamelessly reveals to Helen that she's doing it herself with George, threatening to sue him for sexual harassment to force him to crown her as the winner.
to:
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of sleeping with Emilio to get the Ball Buster job, as well as at least two other commercials before that, and in an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Near the end, Druscilla shamelessly reveals to Helen that she's doing it herself with George, threatening to sue him for sexual harassment to force him to crown her as the winner.
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!! Beauty Rest
Changed line(s) 4,65 (click to see context) from:
->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(wearing a skull headband and doing push-ups)'' Seven. ''(notices the viewers)'' Hello, kiddies. What's ''sinew?'' ''(cackles wheezily)'' I was just in the middle of my ''deadly'' dozen. First, I do a few pull ups, then a few jumping ''hacks'', and then I like to finish with a little ''die'' impact aerobics. ''(lets out another wheezy cackle, then does another push-up)'' Eight. I'm getting in shape for tonight's tale. It's about an ambitious young actress who's looking for her big break. Will she make it? Only her ''scare''-dresser knows for sure. ''(more wheezy laughter and another push-up)'' Ohhhhh. I call this dismal drama: '''Beauty Rest.'''
Helen (Creator/MimiRogers) has spent ten years trying to make her big break into the world of modelling, but has little to show for her efforts. After losing out on a commercial audition to her roommate Joyce Palmer (Creator/KathyIreland), she accuses Joyce of sleeping with the director to get the role. Joyce denies this, but then shows off a note written by a man she has been seeing. The note is intended for George, the MC of an upcoming beauty pageant, and directs him to make her the winner. Despondent over Joyce's easy success, Helen prepares to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but stops just short of swallowing them. Instead, she mixes them into a cup of tea and gives the resulting mixture to Joyce, intending to put her to sleep long enough to take her place in the pageant. The dose turns out to be far too strong, and Joyce dies.
Helen stages a suicide in the apartment, then reports for the pageant in Joyce's place, showing the note to George in order to enter. She is put in a dressing room with fellow contestant Druscilla, who regards her with scorn and sees her as having slept her way in, and later learns from George that the pageant emphasizes "what you are on the inside" as its central theme. Partway through the competition, George reneges on his promise to make Helen the winner, after which she discovers Druscilla has not only slept with him, she has also threatened to sue him for sexual harassment unless she wins. Helen snaps and strangles her to death, then tells George that Druscilla has decided to drop her complaint and withdraw from the pageant. When George asks Helen if she still wants the prize and she accepts, he hustles her into a dimly lit back room, where a makeup artist begins slathering cosmetics onto her face. George injects her with a syringe of glowing blue liquid as she struggles in vain to break free.
During the finale of the pageant, George sings as Helen is revealed as winner of the title - "Miss Autopsy 1992." Or rather, her corpse is, with her torso sliced open and all her internal organs on display for the cheering crowd.
----
!!Tropes:
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious and take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead. This is, er, ''not'' the case with Druscilla's death, however.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: As far as we can tell, there will ''always'' be another woman who one-ups Helen at every audition, from Joyce to Druscilla. The only way she finally wins something is to take them both out of the picture, and even then, she doesn't actually get to enjoy her "victory".
* TheBadGuyWins: George and the pageant staff crown Helen the winner of their pageant. Posthumously. And they're not showing any signs of stopping the pageants anytime soon.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Helen, after struggling to make it as a model, finally wins a beauty pageant by killing off her competitors (one [[AccidentalMurder accidentally]], the other on purpose). Unfortunately for her, this pageant can only be won posthumously.
* BeautyContest: The setting this episode is one of these, and it's simultaneously PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror horror]].
* {{Blackmail}}: Druscilla plots to sue George, who's sleeping with her, on charges of sexual harassment if she isn't made the winner.
* CallBack: The Crypt Keeper's closing segment has him using the same dumbbell that he used in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS2E2TheSwitch The Switch.]]
** The pizza box Helen pulls out of the fridge is that of Zemeckis Pizza, the chain named after executive producer Robert Zemeckis that was previously featured in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E3TheTrap The Trap]] and [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E9UndertakingPalor Undertaking Palor.]]
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of doing this to get the part in the Ball Buster commercial, and at least two other commercials before that. In an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Druscilla shamelessly reveals that she's doing it herself, then threatens to sue George for sexual harassment in order to force him to crown her as the winner instead of Helen.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: If Helen hadn't spiked Joyce's tea and just let Joyce go to that pageant to give George the note saying "Make sure she ''gets it!''", she would've been the one in Helen's position by the end, freeing Helen of her rival and giving her an easier shot at getting her big break.
* DeadGuyOnDisplay: Helen winds up being killed by the pageant staff, who carefully pose her corpse, with the chest cut wide open for everyone to see, as the winner of the "Miss Autopsy 1992" beauty pageant.
* DieLaughing: Joyce overdoses on the sleeping pills Helen drugged her tea with while she's laughing with the latter about the prize for the pageant.
* DiesWideOpen: Joyce's eyes and mouth are stuck in a wide-open face of shock when she overdoses.
* DownerEnding: After all the strife she goes through, including murdering two women, Helen finally gets her shot at fame by winning the pageant. Unfortunately, this ends up with her killed and her corpse split open to be presented for the sociopathic audience at the event. The pageant staff also show no signs at stopping the event every year, even if they have to abduct women right off the streets like they used to do in the old days.
* DrivenToSuicide: Believing that Joyce has slept with someone to get the Ball Buster commercial job, Helen attempts to kill herself with sleeping pills, but then gets another idea of what to do with those pills.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The question George gives Helen during the pageant's interview segment is about the guiltiest thing she ever did and why she did it, hinting that he's aware of how she ''really'' got accepted into the pageant.
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, the default winner, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming. There's also a line about how this pageant is about how "it's what's inside that counts". It turns out this is referring to the winner's ''internal organs.''
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Helen's lines during the Ball Buster commercial, where she talks about how she's not just any woman and how she wants to be taken seriously, basically spells out her entire character arc before the commercial is over. As her agent says, she truly is "the Ball Buster girl".
* ForWantOfANail: As mentioned above, if Helen hadn't given Joyce the spiked tea, Joyce would be the one sliced up and nailed to a board, and Helen would have gotten her big break a lot easier. Also, if she backed out and let Druscilla win the rigged pageant, Druscilla would've faired the same fate and Helen could've gotten away from George and the others, making her big break some other way.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: George, the pageant host, is the evil, bespectacled leader of a sinister group; his glasses ominously reflect a glowing syringe before he gives Helen a lethal injection of the stuff.
* FrivolousLawsuit: Druscilla plans to sue George (who she's sleeping with) for everything he's got on phony charges of sexual harassment if she isn't crowned the winner.
* TheGhost: Tom, the man who sets the plot in motion by making Joyce (and Helen, indirectly) the winner of the ghastly pageant, is never actually seen in the episode itself.
* GilliganCut: The Ball Buster commercial director, Emilio, applauds Helen's performance and assures her that the role is hers. Cut to Helen in her agent's office, unable to believe that she didn't get the part.
* GleefulAndGrumpyPairing: Helen is the grump who wants nothing to do with Joyce, the sweet and gleeful rival of hers who she feels is robbing her of her chances for a career.
* HaHaHaNo: A variation occurs when Helen demands that her agent Archie tell her who got the role in the Ball Buster commercial. Archie humorously jokes that he doesn't understand how the auditioning process works the way it does and unloads a bit of fake laughter, then bluntly tells Helen that Joyce got the part.
* HateSink: Helen may be a grumpy nag after years of failure, but her rival Druscilla is nothing short of a stone cold psychopath, hypocritically accusing Helen of sleeping with the pageant directors to take part in the show and hurling several insults at her in the process, while admitting that she's not only doing the same with George, but is also ''suing him for sexual harassment'' if she isn't made the winner. It's a pretty big relief when Helen breaks the wicked woman's neck in a blind rage.
* HeartbreakAndIceCream: Freshly returning to the apartment after firing Archie as her agent, Helen snacks on a rice cake to ease her pain. As soon as Joyce enters the room, she switches to gorging herself on Joyce's ice cream... and then goes for some cold pizza.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Druscilla accuses Helen of sleeping with pageant employee Tom to get into the pageant and win, after Helen had previously accused Joyce of sleeping with directors to appear in advertisements, even. As it turns out, not only is she doing the same with George, but she is also planning to [[EvilerThanThou sue him for sexual harassment if he doesn't crown her the winner.]]
* IronicEcho: As George reminds Helen, it's what's on the ''inside'' that counts.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Helen has a sharply self-centered mindset, firmly believing that everyone around her is at fault for her faded glory, when its really her horrific attitude and insecurities.
* KarmaHoudini: George and the rest of the pageant staff come out on top, free to keep slicing up unsuspecting pageant contestants at their leisure... or even go back to just straight up abducting them like Rudi wanted to do.
* LingerieScene: Courtesy of Joyce, played by the drop dead gorgeous Creator/KathyIreland.
* LoserProtagonist: Helen is one of the more pathetic protagonists of the series, losing out on desperately needed deals for commercial gigs to her younger and hotter roommate that she's forced to live with, who she insists is sleeping her way in, is derided as a shameless slut just as she previously did to said roommate (by a woman who admits that she's one-upping her by suing the pageant host for sexual harassment), and is ultimately gutted like a fish for a bloodthirsty audience of potential sociopaths.
* MeaningfulName: Joyce is almost perpetually cheerful and upbeat, even when Helen rebukes her.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: It's brief, but Helen is absolutely mortified when she finds out she accidentally killed Joyce via an overdose of sleeping pills. It quickly disappears when she frames the incident as a suicide.
* NeverMyFault: Helen is actually pretty attractive for a woman her age, but as Archie himself tells her, she has a pretentious and rotten attitude. It's glaringly obvious that this self-centered mindset, her various insecurities, and her staunch refusal of resorting to a CastingCouch are what's are what's actually keeping her from hitting the big time, instead of the younger women she ''insists'' are sleeping their way to the top. Archie also says that she's viewed as "the Ball Buster girl" for a reason.
* NeverSuicide: After Joyce overdoses on the drugged tea she gives her, Helen manages to set up the crime scene to look like she deliberately overdosed on sleeping pills thanks to the shame of her supposedly being a slut.
* NiceGirl: Despite what Helen says about her, Joyce shows herself to be a cheerful and happy young lady who's as friendly as she is attractive. She does get a bit angry at Helen for eating her food and tearing into her for supposedly stealing her opportunities for stardom thanks to her alleged willingness to sleep with directors to get whatever gigs she wants, but she manages to cool herself and insists that she hasn't done anything to Helen personally, even telling her that she understands the stress she goes through trying to make it big.
* NightmareFetishist: The episode seems to be set in a world full of them, given that a popular pageant committee routinely kills women and slices them open like frogs in a biology classroom, and how many more applaud their gutted corpses as if they were pageant queens.
* ParodyCommercial: Helen opens the episode filming a commercial for Ball Buster perfume, ostensibly for those no-nonsense women who want to make it big.
* PostStressOvereating: Helen stuffs her mouth with junk food as Joyce's happy-go-lucky attitude drives her mad with jealousy, rage, envy, and a smorgasbord of negative emotions.
* PunchClockVillain: Implied with George and the rest of the pageant staff. The man himself does his job with a smile, but he privately warns Helen to get out of the pageant while she can. Just before this, there's his question about the guiltiest thing she's ever done and her motives for doing so, hinting that he can sense what exactly Helen did to get into the pageant.
* RecycledPremise: This episode basically has the exact same plot as [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E5TopBilling Top Billing,]] since both of those episodes have desperate protagonists who resort to murder to get a part that was intended for their rivals in order to get their big break, only to be killed for the twisted satisfaction of their "directors". Hell, the protagonists even murder their rivals in the exact same way.
* TheRival: To Helen, her roommate Joyce his a pretty big threat to her chances at stardom. In a partial inversion of the trope, however, Joyce usually playfully humors Helen's burning hatred of her, and isn't even aware that she got the commercial gig she initially wanted.
** Druscilla plays the trope straight, being far more vile about winning the pageant and resorting to shamelessly underhanded means to do so.
* SlaveToPR: Rudi, George's makeup artist, hates the beauty pageant idea that George came up with to disguise their racket, and wants to go back to the old days of "picking them off the streets". That right there is the final red flag that Helen should have heeded.
* TheSociopath: George and his staff are pretty blatant ones for what they do to aspiring pageant queens, but the audience who willingly attend these pageants and applaud the "winners" are a whole other story.
* SuicideByPills: The episode begins with Helen, failing to land another modeling gig after trying for 10 years, preparing to end her life this way. She stops herself and puts the pills in the cup of [[TheRival another model]], intending just to knock her out so she could take her place as MC for an upcoming beauty pageant. The dose is too strong and Helen ends up [[AccidentalMurder accidentally killing her]].
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Joyce, the nicest character in the episode, who understood what Helen was going through and wanted to help her out as best as she could despite her alleged eagerness to sleep with directors for acting gigs, dies after Helen causes her to overdose on drugged tea.
* TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside: This is the often-repeated theme of the pageant. And the end shows that it's meant in a very [[BodyHorror literal]] sense.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: George and the pageant directors are treated as respected celebrities and professionals regarding their abduction and dissection of women. It's justified at the end, which reveals that their audience and fanbase are equally villainous.
* WrapUpSong: George ends the episode by singing a song in tribute to "lucky winner" Helen, whose dead and dissected body is on display to the bloodthirsty pageant audience.
Helen (Creator/MimiRogers) has spent ten years trying to make her big break into the world of modelling, but has little to show for her efforts. After losing out on a commercial audition to her roommate Joyce Palmer (Creator/KathyIreland), she accuses Joyce of sleeping with the director to get the role. Joyce denies this, but then shows off a note written by a man she has been seeing. The note is intended for George, the MC of an upcoming beauty pageant, and directs him to make her the winner. Despondent over Joyce's easy success, Helen prepares to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but stops just short of swallowing them. Instead, she mixes them into a cup of tea and gives the resulting mixture to Joyce, intending to put her to sleep long enough to take her place in the pageant. The dose turns out to be far too strong, and Joyce dies.
Helen stages a suicide in the apartment, then reports for the pageant in Joyce's place, showing the note to George in order to enter. She is put in a dressing room with fellow contestant Druscilla, who regards her with scorn and sees her as having slept her way in, and later learns from George that the pageant emphasizes "what you are on the inside" as its central theme. Partway through the competition, George reneges on his promise to make Helen the winner, after which she discovers Druscilla has not only slept with him, she has also threatened to sue him for sexual harassment unless she wins. Helen snaps and strangles her to death, then tells George that Druscilla has decided to drop her complaint and withdraw from the pageant. When George asks Helen if she still wants the prize and she accepts, he hustles her into a dimly lit back room, where a makeup artist begins slathering cosmetics onto her face. George injects her with a syringe of glowing blue liquid as she struggles in vain to break free.
During the finale of the pageant, George sings as Helen is revealed as winner of the title - "Miss Autopsy 1992." Or rather, her corpse is, with her torso sliced open and all her internal organs on display for the cheering crowd.
----
!!Tropes:
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious and take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead. This is, er, ''not'' the case with Druscilla's death, however.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: As far as we can tell, there will ''always'' be another woman who one-ups Helen at every audition, from Joyce to Druscilla. The only way she finally wins something is to take them both out of the picture, and even then, she doesn't actually get to enjoy her "victory".
* TheBadGuyWins: George and the pageant staff crown Helen the winner of their pageant. Posthumously. And they're not showing any signs of stopping the pageants anytime soon.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Helen, after struggling to make it as a model, finally wins a beauty pageant by killing off her competitors (one [[AccidentalMurder accidentally]], the other on purpose). Unfortunately for her, this pageant can only be won posthumously.
* BeautyContest: The setting this episode is one of these, and it's simultaneously PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror horror]].
* {{Blackmail}}: Druscilla plots to sue George, who's sleeping with her, on charges of sexual harassment if she isn't made the winner.
* CallBack: The Crypt Keeper's closing segment has him using the same dumbbell that he used in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS2E2TheSwitch The Switch.]]
** The pizza box Helen pulls out of the fridge is that of Zemeckis Pizza, the chain named after executive producer Robert Zemeckis that was previously featured in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E3TheTrap The Trap]] and [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E9UndertakingPalor Undertaking Palor.]]
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of doing this to get the part in the Ball Buster commercial, and at least two other commercials before that. In an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Druscilla shamelessly reveals that she's doing it herself, then threatens to sue George for sexual harassment in order to force him to crown her as the winner instead of Helen.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: If Helen hadn't spiked Joyce's tea and just let Joyce go to that pageant to give George the note saying "Make sure she ''gets it!''", she would've been the one in Helen's position by the end, freeing Helen of her rival and giving her an easier shot at getting her big break.
* DeadGuyOnDisplay: Helen winds up being killed by the pageant staff, who carefully pose her corpse, with the chest cut wide open for everyone to see, as the winner of the "Miss Autopsy 1992" beauty pageant.
* DieLaughing: Joyce overdoses on the sleeping pills Helen drugged her tea with while she's laughing with the latter about the prize for the pageant.
* DiesWideOpen: Joyce's eyes and mouth are stuck in a wide-open face of shock when she overdoses.
* DownerEnding: After all the strife she goes through, including murdering two women, Helen finally gets her shot at fame by winning the pageant. Unfortunately, this ends up with her killed and her corpse split open to be presented for the sociopathic audience at the event. The pageant staff also show no signs at stopping the event every year, even if they have to abduct women right off the streets like they used to do in the old days.
* DrivenToSuicide: Believing that Joyce has slept with someone to get the Ball Buster commercial job, Helen attempts to kill herself with sleeping pills, but then gets another idea of what to do with those pills.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The question George gives Helen during the pageant's interview segment is about the guiltiest thing she ever did and why she did it, hinting that he's aware of how she ''really'' got accepted into the pageant.
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, the default winner, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming. There's also a line about how this pageant is about how "it's what's inside that counts". It turns out this is referring to the winner's ''internal organs.''
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Helen's lines during the Ball Buster commercial, where she talks about how she's not just any woman and how she wants to be taken seriously, basically spells out her entire character arc before the commercial is over. As her agent says, she truly is "the Ball Buster girl".
* ForWantOfANail: As mentioned above, if Helen hadn't given Joyce the spiked tea, Joyce would be the one sliced up and nailed to a board, and Helen would have gotten her big break a lot easier. Also, if she backed out and let Druscilla win the rigged pageant, Druscilla would've faired the same fate and Helen could've gotten away from George and the others, making her big break some other way.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: George, the pageant host, is the evil, bespectacled leader of a sinister group; his glasses ominously reflect a glowing syringe before he gives Helen a lethal injection of the stuff.
* FrivolousLawsuit: Druscilla plans to sue George (who she's sleeping with) for everything he's got on phony charges of sexual harassment if she isn't crowned the winner.
* TheGhost: Tom, the man who sets the plot in motion by making Joyce (and Helen, indirectly) the winner of the ghastly pageant, is never actually seen in the episode itself.
* GilliganCut: The Ball Buster commercial director, Emilio, applauds Helen's performance and assures her that the role is hers. Cut to Helen in her agent's office, unable to believe that she didn't get the part.
* GleefulAndGrumpyPairing: Helen is the grump who wants nothing to do with Joyce, the sweet and gleeful rival of hers who she feels is robbing her of her chances for a career.
* HaHaHaNo: A variation occurs when Helen demands that her agent Archie tell her who got the role in the Ball Buster commercial. Archie humorously jokes that he doesn't understand how the auditioning process works the way it does and unloads a bit of fake laughter, then bluntly tells Helen that Joyce got the part.
* HateSink: Helen may be a grumpy nag after years of failure, but her rival Druscilla is nothing short of a stone cold psychopath, hypocritically accusing Helen of sleeping with the pageant directors to take part in the show and hurling several insults at her in the process, while admitting that she's not only doing the same with George, but is also ''suing him for sexual harassment'' if she isn't made the winner. It's a pretty big relief when Helen breaks the wicked woman's neck in a blind rage.
* HeartbreakAndIceCream: Freshly returning to the apartment after firing Archie as her agent, Helen snacks on a rice cake to ease her pain. As soon as Joyce enters the room, she switches to gorging herself on Joyce's ice cream... and then goes for some cold pizza.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Druscilla accuses Helen of sleeping with pageant employee Tom to get into the pageant and win, after Helen had previously accused Joyce of sleeping with directors to appear in advertisements, even. As it turns out, not only is she doing the same with George, but she is also planning to [[EvilerThanThou sue him for sexual harassment if he doesn't crown her the winner.]]
* IronicEcho: As George reminds Helen, it's what's on the ''inside'' that counts.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Helen has a sharply self-centered mindset, firmly believing that everyone around her is at fault for her faded glory, when its really her horrific attitude and insecurities.
* KarmaHoudini: George and the rest of the pageant staff come out on top, free to keep slicing up unsuspecting pageant contestants at their leisure... or even go back to just straight up abducting them like Rudi wanted to do.
* LingerieScene: Courtesy of Joyce, played by the drop dead gorgeous Creator/KathyIreland.
* LoserProtagonist: Helen is one of the more pathetic protagonists of the series, losing out on desperately needed deals for commercial gigs to her younger and hotter roommate that she's forced to live with, who she insists is sleeping her way in, is derided as a shameless slut just as she previously did to said roommate (by a woman who admits that she's one-upping her by suing the pageant host for sexual harassment), and is ultimately gutted like a fish for a bloodthirsty audience of potential sociopaths.
* MeaningfulName: Joyce is almost perpetually cheerful and upbeat, even when Helen rebukes her.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: It's brief, but Helen is absolutely mortified when she finds out she accidentally killed Joyce via an overdose of sleeping pills. It quickly disappears when she frames the incident as a suicide.
* NeverMyFault: Helen is actually pretty attractive for a woman her age, but as Archie himself tells her, she has a pretentious and rotten attitude. It's glaringly obvious that this self-centered mindset, her various insecurities, and her staunch refusal of resorting to a CastingCouch are what's are what's actually keeping her from hitting the big time, instead of the younger women she ''insists'' are sleeping their way to the top. Archie also says that she's viewed as "the Ball Buster girl" for a reason.
* NeverSuicide: After Joyce overdoses on the drugged tea she gives her, Helen manages to set up the crime scene to look like she deliberately overdosed on sleeping pills thanks to the shame of her supposedly being a slut.
* NiceGirl: Despite what Helen says about her, Joyce shows herself to be a cheerful and happy young lady who's as friendly as she is attractive. She does get a bit angry at Helen for eating her food and tearing into her for supposedly stealing her opportunities for stardom thanks to her alleged willingness to sleep with directors to get whatever gigs she wants, but she manages to cool herself and insists that she hasn't done anything to Helen personally, even telling her that she understands the stress she goes through trying to make it big.
* NightmareFetishist: The episode seems to be set in a world full of them, given that a popular pageant committee routinely kills women and slices them open like frogs in a biology classroom, and how many more applaud their gutted corpses as if they were pageant queens.
* ParodyCommercial: Helen opens the episode filming a commercial for Ball Buster perfume, ostensibly for those no-nonsense women who want to make it big.
* PostStressOvereating: Helen stuffs her mouth with junk food as Joyce's happy-go-lucky attitude drives her mad with jealousy, rage, envy, and a smorgasbord of negative emotions.
* PunchClockVillain: Implied with George and the rest of the pageant staff. The man himself does his job with a smile, but he privately warns Helen to get out of the pageant while she can. Just before this, there's his question about the guiltiest thing she's ever done and her motives for doing so, hinting that he can sense what exactly Helen did to get into the pageant.
* RecycledPremise: This episode basically has the exact same plot as [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E5TopBilling Top Billing,]] since both of those episodes have desperate protagonists who resort to murder to get a part that was intended for their rivals in order to get their big break, only to be killed for the twisted satisfaction of their "directors". Hell, the protagonists even murder their rivals in the exact same way.
* TheRival: To Helen, her roommate Joyce his a pretty big threat to her chances at stardom. In a partial inversion of the trope, however, Joyce usually playfully humors Helen's burning hatred of her, and isn't even aware that she got the commercial gig she initially wanted.
** Druscilla plays the trope straight, being far more vile about winning the pageant and resorting to shamelessly underhanded means to do so.
* SlaveToPR: Rudi, George's makeup artist, hates the beauty pageant idea that George came up with to disguise their racket, and wants to go back to the old days of "picking them off the streets". That right there is the final red flag that Helen should have heeded.
* TheSociopath: George and his staff are pretty blatant ones for what they do to aspiring pageant queens, but the audience who willingly attend these pageants and applaud the "winners" are a whole other story.
* SuicideByPills: The episode begins with Helen, failing to land another modeling gig after trying for 10 years, preparing to end her life this way. She stops herself and puts the pills in the cup of [[TheRival another model]], intending just to knock her out so she could take her place as MC for an upcoming beauty pageant. The dose is too strong and Helen ends up [[AccidentalMurder accidentally killing her]].
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Joyce, the nicest character in the episode, who understood what Helen was going through and wanted to help her out as best as she could despite her alleged eagerness to sleep with directors for acting gigs, dies after Helen causes her to overdose on drugged tea.
* TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside: This is the often-repeated theme of the pageant. And the end shows that it's meant in a very [[BodyHorror literal]] sense.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: George and the pageant directors are treated as respected celebrities and professionals regarding their abduction and dissection of women. It's justified at the end, which reveals that their audience and fanbase are equally villainous.
* WrapUpSong: George ends the episode by singing a song in tribute to "lucky winner" Helen, whose dead and dissected body is on display to the bloodthirsty pageant audience.
to:
->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(wearing (''wearing a skull headband and doing push-ups)'' push-ups'') Seven. ''(notices (''notices the viewers)'' viewers'') Hello, kiddies. What's ''sinew?'' ''(cackles wheezily)'' (''cackles wheezily'') I was just in the middle of my ''deadly'' dozen. First, I do a few pull ups, then a few jumping ''hacks'', and then I like to finish with a little ''die'' impact aerobics. ''(lets (''lets out another wheezy cackle, then does another push-up)'' push-up'') Eight. I'm getting in shape for tonight's tale. It's about an ambitious young actress who's looking for her big break. Will she make it? Only her ''scare''-dresser knows for sure. ''(more (''more wheezy laughter and another push-up)'' push-up'') Ohhhhh. I call this dismal drama: '''Beauty Rest.'''
Helen (Creator/MimiRogers) has spent the last ten years trying to make her big break into the world ofmodelling, modeling, but she has little to show for her efforts.efforts, thanks in large part to her rotten attitude. After losing out on a commercial audition to her roommate Joyce Palmer (Creator/KathyIreland), she accuses Joyce of sleeping with the director to get the role. Joyce denies doing this, but then shows she does show off a note written by a man she has she's been seeing. The note is intended for George, George (Creator/BuckHenry), the MC of an upcoming beauty pageant, and it directs him to make her the winner. Despondent over Joyce's beauty and easy success, Helen prepares to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but she stops just short of swallowing them. Instead, she mixes them and instead decides to mix them into a cup of tea and she gives the resulting mixture to Joyce, intending to put her to sleep long enough for Helen to take her place in the pageant. The dose turns out to be far too strong, and Joyce dies.
dies in seconds.
Helen stagesa suicide in the apartment, incident as a suicide, then reports for the pageant in Joyce's place, showing the note to George in order to enter. She is put in a dressing room with fellow another contestant Druscilla, named Druscilla (Creator/JenniferRubin), who regards her with scorn and sees demeans her as having slept her way in, and later just as Helen did to Joyce. During a Question & Answer segment with George, Helen learns from George that the pageant emphasizes "what "What you are on the inside" as its central theme. Partway through the competition, George suddenly reneges on his promise to make Helen the winner, after which she discovers Druscilla has not only slept with him, she but has also threatened to sue him for sexual harassment unless she wins. Helen snaps and strangles her Druscilla to death, then tells George that Druscilla has she decided to drop her complaint and withdraw from the pageant. When George asks Helen if she still wants the prize and prize, she accepts, he hustles her upon which she's hustled into a dimly lit dimly-lit back room, where a makeup artist begins slathering cosmetics onto her face. George injects her with a syringe of glowing blue liquid as she struggles in vain to break free.
free. During the finale of the pageant, George sings as Helen is revealed as winner of the title - "Miss Autopsy 1992." Or rather, her corpse is, with Helen's corpse, her torso sliced open and all her internal organs on display for the cheering crowd.
----
!!Tropes:
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious and take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead. This is, er, ''not'' the case with Druscilla's death, however.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: As farcrowd, is revealed as we can tell, there will ''always'' be another woman who one-ups Helen at every audition, from Joyce to Druscilla. The only way she finally wins something is to take them both out of the picture, and even then, she doesn't actually get to enjoy her "victory".
* TheBadGuyWins: George and the pageant staff crown Helen the winner of their pageant. Posthumously. And they're not showing any signs of stopping the pageants anytime soon.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Helen, after struggling to make it as a model, finally wins a beauty pageant by killing off her competitors (one [[AccidentalMurder accidentally]], the other on purpose). Unfortunately for her, this pageant can only be won posthumously.
* BeautyContest: The setting this episode is one of these, and it's simultaneously PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror horror]].
* {{Blackmail}}: Druscilla plots to sue George, who's sleeping with her, on charges of sexual harassment if she isn't made the winner.
* CallBack: The Crypt Keeper's closing segment has him using the same dumbbell that he used in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS2E2TheSwitch The Switch.]]
** The pizza box Helen pulls out of the fridge is that of Zemeckis Pizza, the chain named after executive producer Robert Zemeckis that was previously featured in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E3TheTrap The Trap]] and [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E9UndertakingPalor Undertaking Palor.]]
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of doing this to get the part in the Ball Buster commercial, and at least two other commercials before that. In an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Druscilla shamelessly reveals that she's doing it herself, then threatens to sue George for sexual harassment in order to force him to crown her as the winner instead of Helen.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: If Helen hadn't spiked Joyce's tea and just let Joyce go to that pageant to give George the note saying "Make sure she ''gets it!''", she would've been the one in Helen's position by the end, freeing Helen of her rival and giving her an easier shot at getting her big break.
* DeadGuyOnDisplay: Helen winds up being killed by the pageant staff, who carefully pose her corpse, with the chest cut wide open for everyone to see, as thewinner of the title: "Miss Autopsy 1992" beauty pageant.
* DieLaughing: Joyce overdoses on the sleeping pills Helen drugged her tea with while she's laughing with the latter about the prize for the pageant.
* DiesWideOpen: Joyce's eyes and mouth are stuck in a wide-open face of shock when she overdoses.
* DownerEnding: After all the strife she goes through, including murdering two women, Helen finally gets her shot at fame by winning the pageant. Unfortunately, this ends up with her killed and her corpse split open to be presented for the sociopathic audience at the event. The pageant staff also show no signs at stopping the event every year, even if they have to abduct women right off the streets like they used to do in the old days.
* DrivenToSuicide: Believing that Joyce has slept with someone to get the Ball Buster commercial job, Helen attempts to kill herself with sleeping pills, but then gets another idea of what to do with those pills.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The question George gives Helen during the pageant's interview segment is about the guiltiest thing she ever did and why she did it, hinting that he's aware of how she ''really'' got accepted into the pageant.
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, the default winner, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming. There's also a line about how this pageant is about how "it's what's inside that counts". It turns out this is referring to the winner's ''internal organs.''
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Helen's lines during the Ball Buster commercial, where she talks about how she's not just any woman and how she wants to be taken seriously, basically spells out her entire character arc before the commercial is over. As her agent says, she truly is "the Ball Buster girl".
* ForWantOfANail: As mentioned above, if Helen hadn't given Joyce the spiked tea, Joyce would be the one sliced up and nailed to a board, and Helen would have gotten her big break a lot easier. Also, if she backed out and let Druscilla win the rigged pageant, Druscilla would've faired the same fate and Helen could've gotten away from George and the others, making her big break some other way.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: George, the pageant host, is the evil, bespectacled leader of a sinister group; his glasses ominously reflect a glowing syringe before he gives Helen a lethal injection of the stuff.
* FrivolousLawsuit: Druscilla plans to sue George (who she's sleeping with) for everything he's got on phony charges of sexual harassment if she isn't crowned the winner.
* TheGhost: Tom, the man who sets the plot in motion by making Joyce (and Helen, indirectly) the winner of the ghastly pageant, is never actually seen in the episode itself.
* GilliganCut: The Ball Buster commercial director, Emilio, applauds Helen's performance and assures her that the role is hers. Cut to Helen in her agent's office, unable to believe that she didn't get the part.
* GleefulAndGrumpyPairing: Helen is the grump who wants nothing to do with Joyce, the sweet and gleeful rival of hers who she feels is robbing her of her chances for a career.
* HaHaHaNo: A variation occurs when Helen demands that her agent Archie tell her who got the role in the Ball Buster commercial. Archie humorously jokes that he doesn't understand how the auditioning process works the way it does and unloads a bit of fake laughter, then bluntly tells Helen that Joyce got the part.
* HateSink: Helen may be a grumpy nag after years of failure, but her rival Druscilla is nothing short of a stone cold psychopath, hypocritically accusing Helen of sleeping with the pageant directors to take part in the show and hurling several insults at her in the process, while admitting that she's not only doing the same with George, but is also ''suing him for sexual harassment'' if she isn't made the winner. It's a pretty big relief when Helen breaks the wicked woman's neck in a blind rage.
* HeartbreakAndIceCream: Freshly returning to the apartment after firing Archie as her agent, Helen snacks on a rice cake to ease her pain. As soon as Joyce enters the room, she switches to gorging herself on Joyce's ice cream... and then goes for some cold pizza.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Druscilla accuses Helen of sleeping with pageant employee Tom to get into the pageant and win, after Helen had previously accused Joyce of sleeping with directors to appear in advertisements, even. As it turns out, not only is she doing the same with George, but she is also planning to [[EvilerThanThou sue him for sexual harassment if he doesn't crown her the winner.]]
* IronicEcho: As George reminds Helen, it's what's on the ''inside'' that counts.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Helen has a sharply self-centered mindset, firmly believing that everyone around her is at fault for her faded glory, when its really her horrific attitude and insecurities.
* KarmaHoudini: George and the rest of the pageant staff come out on top, free to keep slicing up unsuspecting pageant contestants at their leisure... or even go back to just straight up abducting them like Rudi wanted to do.
* LingerieScene: Courtesy of Joyce, played by the drop dead gorgeous Creator/KathyIreland.
* LoserProtagonist: Helen is one of the more pathetic protagonists of the series, losing out on desperately needed deals for commercial gigs to her younger and hotter roommate that she's forced to live with, who she insists is sleeping her way in, is derided as a shameless slut just as she previously did to said roommate (by a woman who admits that she's one-upping her by suing the pageant host for sexual harassment), and is ultimately gutted like a fish for a bloodthirsty audience of potential sociopaths.
* MeaningfulName: Joyce is almost perpetually cheerful and upbeat, even when Helen rebukes her.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: It's brief, but Helen is absolutely mortified when she finds out she accidentally killed Joyce via an overdose of sleeping pills. It quickly disappears when she frames the incident as a suicide.
* NeverMyFault: Helen is actually pretty attractive for a woman her age, but as Archie himself tells her, she has a pretentious and rotten attitude. It's glaringly obvious that this self-centered mindset, her various insecurities, and her staunch refusal of resorting to a CastingCouch are what's are what's actually keeping her from hitting the big time, instead of the younger women she ''insists'' are sleeping their way to the top. Archie also says that she's viewed as "the Ball Buster girl" for a reason.
* NeverSuicide: After Joyce overdoses on the drugged tea she gives her, Helen manages to set up the crime scene to look like she deliberately overdosed on sleeping pills thanks to the shame of her supposedly being a slut.
* NiceGirl: Despite what Helen says about her, Joyce shows herself to be a cheerful and happy young lady who's as friendly as she is attractive. She does get a bit angry at Helen for eating her food and tearing into her for supposedly stealing her opportunities for stardom thanks to her alleged willingness to sleep with directors to get whatever gigs she wants, but she manages to cool herself and insists that she hasn't done anything to Helen personally, even telling her that she understands the stress she goes through trying to make it big.
* NightmareFetishist: The episode seems to be set in a world full of them, given that a popular pageant committee routinely kills women and slices them open like frogs in a biology classroom, and how many more applaud their gutted corpses as if they were pageant queens.
* ParodyCommercial: Helen opens the episode filming a commercial for Ball Buster perfume, ostensibly for those no-nonsense women who want to make it big.
* PostStressOvereating: Helen stuffs her mouth with junk food as Joyce's happy-go-lucky attitude drives her mad with jealousy, rage, envy, and a smorgasbord of negative emotions.
* PunchClockVillain: Implied with George and the rest of the pageant staff. The man himself does his job with a smile, but he privately warns Helen to get out of the pageant while she can. Just before this, there's his question about the guiltiest thing she's ever done and her motives for doing so, hinting that he can sense what exactly Helen did to get into the pageant.
* RecycledPremise: This episode basically has the exact same plot as [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E5TopBilling Top Billing,]] since both of those episodes have desperate protagonists who resort to murder to get a part that was intended for their rivals in order to get their big break, only to be killed for the twisted satisfaction of their "directors". Hell, the protagonists even murder their rivals in the exact same way.
* TheRival: To Helen, her roommate Joyce his a pretty big threat to her chances at stardom. In a partial inversion of the trope, however, Joyce usually playfully humors Helen's burning hatred of her, and isn't even aware that she got the commercial gig she initially wanted.
** Druscilla plays the trope straight, being far more vile about winning the pageant and resorting to shamelessly underhanded means to do so.
* SlaveToPR: Rudi, George's makeup artist, hates the beauty pageant idea that George came up with to disguise their racket, and wants to go back to the old days of "picking them off the streets". That right there is the final red flag that Helen should have heeded.
* TheSociopath: George and his staff are pretty blatant ones for what they do to aspiring pageant queens, but the audience who willingly attend these pageants and applaud the "winners" are a whole other story.
* SuicideByPills: The episode begins with Helen, failing to land another modeling gig after trying for 10 years, preparing to end her life this way. She stops herself and puts the pills in the cup of [[TheRival another model]], intending just to knock her out so she could take her place as MC for an upcoming beauty pageant. The dose is too strong and Helen ends up [[AccidentalMurder accidentally killing her]].
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Joyce, the nicest character in the episode, who understood what Helen was going through and wanted to help her out as best as she could despite her alleged eagerness to sleep with directors for acting gigs, dies after Helen causes her to overdose on drugged tea.
* TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside: This is the often-repeated theme of the pageant. And the end shows that it's meant in a very [[BodyHorror literal]] sense.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: George and the pageant directors are treated as respected celebrities and professionals regarding their abduction and dissection of women. It's justified at the end, which reveals that their audience and fanbase are equally villainous.
* WrapUpSong: George ends the episode by singing a song in tribute to "lucky winner" Helen, whose dead and dissected body is on display to the bloodthirsty pageant audience.1992."
Helen (Creator/MimiRogers) has spent the last ten years trying to make her big break into the world of
Helen stages
----
!!Tropes:
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious and take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead. This is, er, ''not'' the case with Druscilla's death, however.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: As far
* TheBadGuyWins: George and the pageant staff crown Helen the winner of their pageant. Posthumously. And they're not showing any signs of stopping the pageants anytime soon.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Helen, after struggling to make it as a model, finally wins a beauty pageant by killing off her competitors (one [[AccidentalMurder accidentally]], the other on purpose). Unfortunately for her, this pageant can only be won posthumously.
* BeautyContest: The setting this episode is one of these, and it's simultaneously PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror horror]].
* {{Blackmail}}: Druscilla plots to sue George, who's sleeping with her, on charges of sexual harassment if she isn't made the winner.
* CallBack: The Crypt Keeper's closing segment has him using the same dumbbell that he used in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS2E2TheSwitch The Switch.]]
** The pizza box Helen pulls out of the fridge is that of Zemeckis Pizza, the chain named after executive producer Robert Zemeckis that was previously featured in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E3TheTrap The Trap]] and [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E9UndertakingPalor Undertaking Palor.]]
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of doing this to get the part in the Ball Buster commercial, and at least two other commercials before that. In an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Druscilla shamelessly reveals that she's doing it herself, then threatens to sue George for sexual harassment in order to force him to crown her as the winner instead of Helen.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: If Helen hadn't spiked Joyce's tea and just let Joyce go to that pageant to give George the note saying "Make sure she ''gets it!''", she would've been the one in Helen's position by the end, freeing Helen of her rival and giving her an easier shot at getting her big break.
* DeadGuyOnDisplay: Helen winds up being killed by the pageant staff, who carefully pose her corpse, with the chest cut wide open for everyone to see, as the
* DieLaughing: Joyce overdoses on the sleeping pills Helen drugged her tea with while she's laughing with the latter about the prize for the pageant.
* DiesWideOpen: Joyce's eyes and mouth are stuck in a wide-open face of shock when she overdoses.
* DownerEnding: After all the strife she goes through, including murdering two women, Helen finally gets her shot at fame by winning the pageant. Unfortunately, this ends up with her killed and her corpse split open to be presented for the sociopathic audience at the event. The pageant staff also show no signs at stopping the event every year, even if they have to abduct women right off the streets like they used to do in the old days.
* DrivenToSuicide: Believing that Joyce has slept with someone to get the Ball Buster commercial job, Helen attempts to kill herself with sleeping pills, but then gets another idea of what to do with those pills.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The question George gives Helen during the pageant's interview segment is about the guiltiest thing she ever did and why she did it, hinting that he's aware of how she ''really'' got accepted into the pageant.
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, the default winner, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming. There's also a line about how this pageant is about how "it's what's inside that counts". It turns out this is referring to the winner's ''internal organs.''
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Helen's lines during the Ball Buster commercial, where she talks about how she's not just any woman and how she wants to be taken seriously, basically spells out her entire character arc before the commercial is over. As her agent says, she truly is "the Ball Buster girl".
* ForWantOfANail: As mentioned above, if Helen hadn't given Joyce the spiked tea, Joyce would be the one sliced up and nailed to a board, and Helen would have gotten her big break a lot easier. Also, if she backed out and let Druscilla win the rigged pageant, Druscilla would've faired the same fate and Helen could've gotten away from George and the others, making her big break some other way.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: George, the pageant host, is the evil, bespectacled leader of a sinister group; his glasses ominously reflect a glowing syringe before he gives Helen a lethal injection of the stuff.
* FrivolousLawsuit: Druscilla plans to sue George (who she's sleeping with) for everything he's got on phony charges of sexual harassment if she isn't crowned the winner.
* TheGhost: Tom, the man who sets the plot in motion by making Joyce (and Helen, indirectly) the winner of the ghastly pageant, is never actually seen in the episode itself.
* GilliganCut: The Ball Buster commercial director, Emilio, applauds Helen's performance and assures her that the role is hers. Cut to Helen in her agent's office, unable to believe that she didn't get the part.
* GleefulAndGrumpyPairing: Helen is the grump who wants nothing to do with Joyce, the sweet and gleeful rival of hers who she feels is robbing her of her chances for a career.
* HaHaHaNo: A variation occurs when Helen demands that her agent Archie tell her who got the role in the Ball Buster commercial. Archie humorously jokes that he doesn't understand how the auditioning process works the way it does and unloads a bit of fake laughter, then bluntly tells Helen that Joyce got the part.
* HateSink: Helen may be a grumpy nag after years of failure, but her rival Druscilla is nothing short of a stone cold psychopath, hypocritically accusing Helen of sleeping with the pageant directors to take part in the show and hurling several insults at her in the process, while admitting that she's not only doing the same with George, but is also ''suing him for sexual harassment'' if she isn't made the winner. It's a pretty big relief when Helen breaks the wicked woman's neck in a blind rage.
* HeartbreakAndIceCream: Freshly returning to the apartment after firing Archie as her agent, Helen snacks on a rice cake to ease her pain. As soon as Joyce enters the room, she switches to gorging herself on Joyce's ice cream... and then goes for some cold pizza.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Druscilla accuses Helen of sleeping with pageant employee Tom to get into the pageant and win, after Helen had previously accused Joyce of sleeping with directors to appear in advertisements, even. As it turns out, not only is she doing the same with George, but she is also planning to [[EvilerThanThou sue him for sexual harassment if he doesn't crown her the winner.]]
* IronicEcho: As George reminds Helen, it's what's on the ''inside'' that counts.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Helen has a sharply self-centered mindset, firmly believing that everyone around her is at fault for her faded glory, when its really her horrific attitude and insecurities.
* KarmaHoudini: George and the rest of the pageant staff come out on top, free to keep slicing up unsuspecting pageant contestants at their leisure... or even go back to just straight up abducting them like Rudi wanted to do.
* LingerieScene: Courtesy of Joyce, played by the drop dead gorgeous Creator/KathyIreland.
* LoserProtagonist: Helen is one of the more pathetic protagonists of the series, losing out on desperately needed deals for commercial gigs to her younger and hotter roommate that she's forced to live with, who she insists is sleeping her way in, is derided as a shameless slut just as she previously did to said roommate (by a woman who admits that she's one-upping her by suing the pageant host for sexual harassment), and is ultimately gutted like a fish for a bloodthirsty audience of potential sociopaths.
* MeaningfulName: Joyce is almost perpetually cheerful and upbeat, even when Helen rebukes her.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: It's brief, but Helen is absolutely mortified when she finds out she accidentally killed Joyce via an overdose of sleeping pills. It quickly disappears when she frames the incident as a suicide.
* NeverMyFault: Helen is actually pretty attractive for a woman her age, but as Archie himself tells her, she has a pretentious and rotten attitude. It's glaringly obvious that this self-centered mindset, her various insecurities, and her staunch refusal of resorting to a CastingCouch are what's are what's actually keeping her from hitting the big time, instead of the younger women she ''insists'' are sleeping their way to the top. Archie also says that she's viewed as "the Ball Buster girl" for a reason.
* NeverSuicide: After Joyce overdoses on the drugged tea she gives her, Helen manages to set up the crime scene to look like she deliberately overdosed on sleeping pills thanks to the shame of her supposedly being a slut.
* NiceGirl: Despite what Helen says about her, Joyce shows herself to be a cheerful and happy young lady who's as friendly as she is attractive. She does get a bit angry at Helen for eating her food and tearing into her for supposedly stealing her opportunities for stardom thanks to her alleged willingness to sleep with directors to get whatever gigs she wants, but she manages to cool herself and insists that she hasn't done anything to Helen personally, even telling her that she understands the stress she goes through trying to make it big.
* NightmareFetishist: The episode seems to be set in a world full of them, given that a popular pageant committee routinely kills women and slices them open like frogs in a biology classroom, and how many more applaud their gutted corpses as if they were pageant queens.
* ParodyCommercial: Helen opens the episode filming a commercial for Ball Buster perfume, ostensibly for those no-nonsense women who want to make it big.
* PostStressOvereating: Helen stuffs her mouth with junk food as Joyce's happy-go-lucky attitude drives her mad with jealousy, rage, envy, and a smorgasbord of negative emotions.
* PunchClockVillain: Implied with George and the rest of the pageant staff. The man himself does his job with a smile, but he privately warns Helen to get out of the pageant while she can. Just before this, there's his question about the guiltiest thing she's ever done and her motives for doing so, hinting that he can sense what exactly Helen did to get into the pageant.
* RecycledPremise: This episode basically has the exact same plot as [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E5TopBilling Top Billing,]] since both of those episodes have desperate protagonists who resort to murder to get a part that was intended for their rivals in order to get their big break, only to be killed for the twisted satisfaction of their "directors". Hell, the protagonists even murder their rivals in the exact same way.
* TheRival: To Helen, her roommate Joyce his a pretty big threat to her chances at stardom. In a partial inversion of the trope, however, Joyce usually playfully humors Helen's burning hatred of her, and isn't even aware that she got the commercial gig she initially wanted.
** Druscilla plays the trope straight, being far more vile about winning the pageant and resorting to shamelessly underhanded means to do so.
* SlaveToPR: Rudi, George's makeup artist, hates the beauty pageant idea that George came up with to disguise their racket, and wants to go back to the old days of "picking them off the streets". That right there is the final red flag that Helen should have heeded.
* TheSociopath: George and his staff are pretty blatant ones for what they do to aspiring pageant queens, but the audience who willingly attend these pageants and applaud the "winners" are a whole other story.
* SuicideByPills: The episode begins with Helen, failing to land another modeling gig after trying for 10 years, preparing to end her life this way. She stops herself and puts the pills in the cup of [[TheRival another model]], intending just to knock her out so she could take her place as MC for an upcoming beauty pageant. The dose is too strong and Helen ends up [[AccidentalMurder accidentally killing her]].
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Joyce, the nicest character in the episode, who understood what Helen was going through and wanted to help her out as best as she could despite her alleged eagerness to sleep with directors for acting gigs, dies after Helen causes her to overdose on drugged tea.
* TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside: This is the often-repeated theme of the pageant. And the end shows that it's meant in a very [[BodyHorror literal]] sense.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: George and the pageant directors are treated as respected celebrities and professionals regarding their abduction and dissection of women. It's justified at the end, which reveals that their audience and fanbase are equally villainous.
* WrapUpSong: George ends the episode by singing a song in tribute to "lucky winner" Helen, whose dead and dissected body is on display to the bloodthirsty pageant audience.
Changed line(s) 67 (click to see context) from:
->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(holding a dumbbell made of bones with two skulls on the end)'' Good old Helen. Talk about an ''opening'' night! Now, that's what I call a ''horrid'' body. Well, I got to get back to my workout, kiddies. ''(lifts the dumbbell once)'' Ooh, I love that burn! ''(cackles)''
to:
!! Tropes:
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts a boatload of sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious so she can take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: As far as can be told, there will ''always'' be another woman who one-ups Helen at everything, from Joyce to Druscilla. The only way she finally wins something is to murder both of them, and even then, she doesn't actually get to enjoy her "victory".
* TheBadGuyWins: George and the pageant staff crown Helen the winner... posthumously. They're not showing any signs of stopping the pageants anytime soon, either.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: After struggling for years to make it as a model, Helen finally wins a beauty pageant by killing her competitors (one [[AccidentalMurder accidentally]], the other on purpose). Unfortunately for her, this pageant can only be won posthumously.
* BeautyContest: The main setting of the episode is one of these, and it's simultaneously PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror horror]].
* {{Blackmail}}: Druscilla plots to sue pageant MC George, who's sleeping with her, on charges of sexual harassment if she isn't made the winner.
* CallBack:
** The Crypt Keeper's closing segment has him using the same dumbbell that he used in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS2E2TheSwitch The Switch.]]
** The pizza box Helen pulls out of Joyce's fridge is that of Zemeckis Pizza, the chain named after executive producer Robert Zemeckis that was previously featured in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E3TheTrap The Trap]] and [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E9UndertakingPalor Undertaking Palor.]]
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of sleeping with Emilio to get the Ball Buster job, as well as at least two other commercials before that, and an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Near the end, Druscilla shamelessly reveals to Helen that she's doing it herself with George, threatening to sue him for sexual harassment to force him to crown her as the winner.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: It soon comes to light that if Helen hadn't spiked Joyce's tea and just let her go to that pageant and give George the note saying "Make sure she ''gets it!''", she would've been the one in Helen's position, freeing Helen of her rival and giving her an easier shot at getting her big break.
* DeadGuyOnDisplay: Helen winds up being killed by the pageant staff, who slice her chest open for all to see and carefully pose the corpse as the winner of "Miss Autopsy 1992".
* DieLaughing: Joyce overdoses on the sleeping pills Helen drugs her tea with while she's laughing about the prize for the pageant.
* DiesWideOpen: Joyce's eyes and mouth are left stuck in a wide-open face of shock when she overdoses.
* DownerEnding: After all the strife she goes through, including murdering two women, Helen finally gets her shot at fame by winning the pageant. Unfortunately, this comes about because she's killed and has her corpse split open to be presented for the sociopathic audience at the event. The pageant staff also show no signs of stopping the event every year, even if they have to abduct women right off the streets like they used to do in the old days.
* DrivenToSuicide: Believing that Joyce slept with Emilio to get the Ball Buster job, Helen attempts to kill herself by gulping down sleeping pills, but then gets ''another'' idea of what to do with those pills.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The question that George gives Helen during the interview segment is about the guiltiest thing she ever did, as well as why she did it, hinting that he's aware of how she ''really'' got accepted into the pageant.
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, becoming the winner by default, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming.
** There's also a line about how the pageant is about how "It's what's inside that counts". It turns out that this is referring to the winner's ''internal organs.''
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Helen's lines during the Ball Buster commercial, where she talks about how she's not just ''any'' woman and how she wants to be taken seriously, spells out her entire character arc and her atrocious attitude before the commercial is over. As her agent Archie says, she truly is "the Ball Buster Girl".
* ForWantOfANail: As noted above, if Helen didn't give Joyce the spiked tea, Joyce would have been the one to be killed, sliced up, and nailed to a board, and Helen would have gotten her big break a lot easier.
** Additionally, if she backed out and let Druscilla win the rigged pageant, Druscilla would have fared the same fate and Helen could've gotten away from George and the others.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: George is the evil, bespectacled leader of the sinister group that organizes the pageants. His glasses also ominously reflect the glowing syringe he gives Helen a lethal injection of.
* FrivolousLawsuit: Druscilla plans to sue George (who she slept with) for everything he's got on phony charges of sexual harassment if she isn't crowned the winner of the pageant.
* TheGhost: Tom, the man who sets the plot in motion by making Joyce (and Helen, indirectly) the rigged winner of the ghastly pageant, is never seen in the episode itself.
* GilliganCut: Emilio, the Ball Buster commercial director, applauds Helen's performance and assures that the role is hers. Cut to Helen in Archie's office, unable to believe that she didn't get the part.
* GleefulAndGrumpyPairing: Helen is the grump who wants nothing to do with Joyce, the sweet and gleeful rival who she feels is ruining her chances for a modeling career.
* HaHaHaNo: A variation occurs when Helen demands that Archie tell her who got the role in the Ball Buster commercial. Archie humorously jokes that he doesn't understand why the auditioning process works the way it does and unloads a bit of fake laughter, then bluntly tells her that Joyce got the part.
* HateSink: Helen may be a grumpy nag after years of failure, but her rival Druscilla is a malevolent manipulator who's a great deal more evil than her, as she hypocritically accuses Helen of sleeping with the pageant directors to take part in the show, hurls several insults at her in the process, and admits near the end that she's not only doing the same with George, but is also ''suing him for sexual harassment'' if she isn't made the winner. It's nothing short of a relief when Helen breaks the wicked woman's neck in a blind rage.
* HeartbreakAndIceCream: Freshly returning to Joyce's apartment after firing Archie, Helen snacks on a rice cake to ease her pain. As soon as Joyce enters the room, she switches to spitefully gorging herself on Joyce's ice cream. And after that, she goes for some cold pizza.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Druscilla accuses Helen of sleeping with Tom to get into the pageant and win it, and after Helen had previously accused Joyce of sleeping with directors to appear in commercials. As it turns out, not only is she doing the same with George, but she's also planning to [[EvilerThanThou sue him for sexual harassment if he doesn't crown her the winner.]]
* IronicEcho: As George reminds Helen, it's what's on the ''inside'' that counts, and the pageant takes this theme quite literally.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Helen has a sharply self-centered mindset, firmly believing that everyone around her is at fault for her failing career when its really her horrific attitude and insecurities.
* KarmaHoudini: George and the rest of the pageant staff come out on top, free to keep slicing up unsuspecting women at their leisure... and may even go back to straight up abducting them like Rudi wanted to do.
* LingerieScene: Courtesy of Joyce, played by the drop dead gorgeous Creator/KathyIreland.
* LoserProtagonist: Helen is one of the more pathetic protagonists of the series, losing out on desperately needed deals for commercial gigs and modeling opportunities to the younger and hotter roommate who she ''insists'' is sleeping her way in, is derided as a shameless slut just as she previously did to said roommate (by a woman who admits that she's one-upping her by suing the pageant host for sexual harassment), and is ultimately gutted like a fish for a bloodthirsty audience of sociopaths.
* MeaningfulName: Joyce is perpetually cheerful and upbeat, even as Helen rebukes her.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Helen is absolutely mortified when she finds out the drugged tea she gives Joyce causes her to overdose, but it quickly disappears when she frames the incident as a suicide and moves ahead with taking her place at the pageant.
* NeverMyFault: Helen is actually pretty attractive for a woman her age, but as Archie tells her, she has a pretentious and rotten attitude. It's glaringly obvious that this attitude, along with her self-centered mindset and various insecurities, is what's actually keeping her from hitting the big time, instead of the younger women she ''insists'' are sleeping their way to the top. Archie even says that she's viewed as "the Ball Buster Girl" for a reason.
* NeverSuicide: After Joyce overdoses on the drugged tea she gives her, Helen manages to set up the scene to look like she deliberately overdosed on the sleeping pills, thanks to the shame of her supposedly being a slut.
* NiceGirl: Despite what Helen may say about her, Joyce is a cheerful and happy young lady who's as friendly as she is beautiful. She does get a bit angry at Helen for eating her food and accusing her of stealing her opportunities for stardom thanks to her alleged willingness to sleep with directors, but she manages to cool herself and insists that she hasn't done anything to Helen personally, even telling her that she understands the stress she's going through trying to make it big.
* NightmareFetishist: The episode seems to be set in a world full of them, given that a popular pageant committee routinely abducts and kills women, then slices them open like frogs in a biology classroom for an audience that applaud the gutted corpses as if they were pageant queens.
* ParodyCommercial: Helen opens the episode filming a commercial for Ball Buster Perfume, ostensibly for no-nonsense women who want to make it big.
* PostStressOvereating: Helen stuffs her face with junk food as Joyce's happy-go-lucky attitude drives her mad with jealousy, rage, envy, and a smorgasbord of negative emotions.
* PunchClockVillain: It's implied with George and the rest of the pageant staff. The man himself does his job with a smile, but he privately warns Helen to get out while she can. Just before this, there's also his question about the guiltiest thing Helen's ever done and her motives for doing so, hinting that he can tell what exactly Helen did to get into the pageant.
* RecycledPremise: This episode basically has the exact same plot as [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E5TopBilling Top Billing,]] since both episodes have desperate protagonists who resort to murder to get a part intended for their rivals in order to get their big break, only to be killed for the twisted satisfaction of their "directors". The protagonists even murder their rivals in the exact same way.
* TheRival: Helen has to put up with two of them over the course of the episode.
** Her roommate Joyce is a pretty big threat to her chances at stardom, but in a partial inversion of the trope, Joyce playfully humors Helen's burning hatred of her and isn't even aware that she got the commercial gig she initially wanted.
** Druscilla plays the trope far straighter, being a lot more vile about winning the pageant and resorting to shamelessly underhanded means to do so.
* SlaveToPR: George's makeup artist, Rudi, hates the beauty pageant idea that George came up with to disguise their racket, and wants to go back to the old days of "picking them off the streets". That right there is the final red flag that Helen should have heeded, which she tragically does not.
* TheSociopath: George and his staff are pretty blatant ones for what they do to aspiring pageant queens, and the audiences who willingly attend these pageants and applaud the "winners" are a whole other story.
* SuicideByPills: The episode begins with Helen, failing to land another modeling gig after trying for 10 years and hearing that her loathed roommate got the gig she was promised, preparing to end her life by downing sleeping pills. She stops herself and puts the pills in the cup of tea she brings to [[TheRival Joyce]], intending to knock her out so she can take her place in an upcoming beauty pageant. The dose is too strong and Helen ends up [[AccidentalMurder accidentally killing her]].
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Joyce, the nicest character in the episode, who understood what Helen was going through and wanted to help as best as she could despite her alleged eagerness to sleep with directors for acting gigs, dies after Helen causes her to overdose on sleeping pill-spiked tea.
* TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside: This is the often-repeated theme of the pageant, and the ending shows that it's meant in a very [[BodyHorror literal]] sense.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: George and the pageant directors are treated as respected professionals regarding their abduction and dissection of women. It's justified at the end, which reveals that their audience and fanbase are equally sadistic.
* WrapUpSong: George ends the episode by singing a tribute song to "lucky winner" Helen, whose dissected corpse is on display to the bloodthirsty pageant audience.
-----
->'''Crypt Keeper:'''''(holding (''holding a dumbbell made of bones with two skulls on the end)'' end'') Good old Helen. Talk about an ''opening'' night! Now, that's what I call a ''horrid'' body. Well, I got to get back to my workout, kiddies. ''(lifts (''lifts the dumbbell once)'' once'') Ooh, I love that burn! ''(cackles)''(''cackles'')
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts a boatload of sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious so she can take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead.
* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: As far as can be told, there will ''always'' be another woman who one-ups Helen at everything, from Joyce to Druscilla. The only way she finally wins something is to murder both of them, and even then, she doesn't actually get to enjoy her "victory".
* TheBadGuyWins: George and the pageant staff crown Helen the winner... posthumously. They're not showing any signs of stopping the pageants anytime soon, either.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: After struggling for years to make it as a model, Helen finally wins a beauty pageant by killing her competitors (one [[AccidentalMurder accidentally]], the other on purpose). Unfortunately for her, this pageant can only be won posthumously.
* BeautyContest: The main setting of the episode is one of these, and it's simultaneously PlayedForDrama and [[PlayedForHorror horror]].
* {{Blackmail}}: Druscilla plots to sue pageant MC George, who's sleeping with her, on charges of sexual harassment if she isn't made the winner.
* CallBack:
** The Crypt Keeper's closing segment has him using the same dumbbell that he used in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS2E2TheSwitch The Switch.]]
** The pizza box Helen pulls out of Joyce's fridge is that of Zemeckis Pizza, the chain named after executive producer Robert Zemeckis that was previously featured in [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E3TheTrap The Trap]] and [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E9UndertakingPalor Undertaking Palor.]]
* CastingCouch: Helen accuses Joyce of sleeping with Emilio to get the Ball Buster job, as well as at least two other commercials before that, and an ironic dose of karma, her rival Druscilla later accuses her of doing the same thing to get into the pageant. Near the end, Druscilla shamelessly reveals to Helen that she's doing it herself with George, threatening to sue him for sexual harassment to force him to crown her as the winner.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: It soon comes to light that if Helen hadn't spiked Joyce's tea and just let her go to that pageant and give George the note saying "Make sure she ''gets it!''", she would've been the one in Helen's position, freeing Helen of her rival and giving her an easier shot at getting her big break.
* DeadGuyOnDisplay: Helen winds up being killed by the pageant staff, who slice her chest open for all to see and carefully pose the corpse as the winner of "Miss Autopsy 1992".
* DieLaughing: Joyce overdoses on the sleeping pills Helen drugs her tea with while she's laughing about the prize for the pageant.
* DiesWideOpen: Joyce's eyes and mouth are left stuck in a wide-open face of shock when she overdoses.
* DownerEnding: After all the strife she goes through, including murdering two women, Helen finally gets her shot at fame by winning the pageant. Unfortunately, this comes about because she's killed and has her corpse split open to be presented for the sociopathic audience at the event. The pageant staff also show no signs of stopping the event every year, even if they have to abduct women right off the streets like they used to do in the old days.
* DrivenToSuicide: Believing that Joyce slept with Emilio to get the Ball Buster job, Helen attempts to kill herself by gulping down sleeping pills, but then gets ''another'' idea of what to do with those pills.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: The question that George gives Helen during the interview segment is about the guiltiest thing she ever did, as well as why she did it, hinting that he's aware of how she ''really'' got accepted into the pageant.
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, becoming the winner by default, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming.
** There's also a line about how the pageant is about how "It's what's inside that counts". It turns out that this is referring to the winner's ''internal organs.''
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Helen's lines during the Ball Buster commercial, where she talks about how she's not just ''any'' woman and how she wants to be taken seriously, spells out her entire character arc and her atrocious attitude before the commercial is over. As her agent Archie says, she truly is "the Ball Buster Girl".
* ForWantOfANail: As noted above, if Helen didn't give Joyce the spiked tea, Joyce would have been the one to be killed, sliced up, and nailed to a board, and Helen would have gotten her big break a lot easier.
** Additionally, if she backed out and let Druscilla win the rigged pageant, Druscilla would have fared the same fate and Helen could've gotten away from George and the others.
* FourEyesZeroSoul: George is the evil, bespectacled leader of the sinister group that organizes the pageants. His glasses also ominously reflect the glowing syringe he gives Helen a lethal injection of.
* FrivolousLawsuit: Druscilla plans to sue George (who she slept with) for everything he's got on phony charges of sexual harassment if she isn't crowned the winner of the pageant.
* TheGhost: Tom, the man who sets the plot in motion by making Joyce (and Helen, indirectly) the rigged winner of the ghastly pageant, is never seen in the episode itself.
* GilliganCut: Emilio, the Ball Buster commercial director, applauds Helen's performance and assures that the role is hers. Cut to Helen in Archie's office, unable to believe that she didn't get the part.
* GleefulAndGrumpyPairing: Helen is the grump who wants nothing to do with Joyce, the sweet and gleeful rival who she feels is ruining her chances for a modeling career.
* HaHaHaNo: A variation occurs when Helen demands that Archie tell her who got the role in the Ball Buster commercial. Archie humorously jokes that he doesn't understand why the auditioning process works the way it does and unloads a bit of fake laughter, then bluntly tells her that Joyce got the part.
* HateSink: Helen may be a grumpy nag after years of failure, but her rival Druscilla is a malevolent manipulator who's a great deal more evil than her, as she hypocritically accuses Helen of sleeping with the pageant directors to take part in the show, hurls several insults at her in the process, and admits near the end that she's not only doing the same with George, but is also ''suing him for sexual harassment'' if she isn't made the winner. It's nothing short of a relief when Helen breaks the wicked woman's neck in a blind rage.
* HeartbreakAndIceCream: Freshly returning to Joyce's apartment after firing Archie, Helen snacks on a rice cake to ease her pain. As soon as Joyce enters the room, she switches to spitefully gorging herself on Joyce's ice cream. And after that, she goes for some cold pizza.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Druscilla accuses Helen of sleeping with Tom to get into the pageant and win it, and after Helen had previously accused Joyce of sleeping with directors to appear in commercials. As it turns out, not only is she doing the same with George, but she's also planning to [[EvilerThanThou sue him for sexual harassment if he doesn't crown her the winner.]]
* IronicEcho: As George reminds Helen, it's what's on the ''inside'' that counts, and the pageant takes this theme quite literally.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Helen has a sharply self-centered mindset, firmly believing that everyone around her is at fault for her failing career when its really her horrific attitude and insecurities.
* KarmaHoudini: George and the rest of the pageant staff come out on top, free to keep slicing up unsuspecting women at their leisure... and may even go back to straight up abducting them like Rudi wanted to do.
* LingerieScene: Courtesy of Joyce, played by the drop dead gorgeous Creator/KathyIreland.
* LoserProtagonist: Helen is one of the more pathetic protagonists of the series, losing out on desperately needed deals for commercial gigs and modeling opportunities to the younger and hotter roommate who she ''insists'' is sleeping her way in, is derided as a shameless slut just as she previously did to said roommate (by a woman who admits that she's one-upping her by suing the pageant host for sexual harassment), and is ultimately gutted like a fish for a bloodthirsty audience of sociopaths.
* MeaningfulName: Joyce is perpetually cheerful and upbeat, even as Helen rebukes her.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Helen is absolutely mortified when she finds out the drugged tea she gives Joyce causes her to overdose, but it quickly disappears when she frames the incident as a suicide and moves ahead with taking her place at the pageant.
* NeverMyFault: Helen is actually pretty attractive for a woman her age, but as Archie tells her, she has a pretentious and rotten attitude. It's glaringly obvious that this attitude, along with her self-centered mindset and various insecurities, is what's actually keeping her from hitting the big time, instead of the younger women she ''insists'' are sleeping their way to the top. Archie even says that she's viewed as "the Ball Buster Girl" for a reason.
* NeverSuicide: After Joyce overdoses on the drugged tea she gives her, Helen manages to set up the scene to look like she deliberately overdosed on the sleeping pills, thanks to the shame of her supposedly being a slut.
* NiceGirl: Despite what Helen may say about her, Joyce is a cheerful and happy young lady who's as friendly as she is beautiful. She does get a bit angry at Helen for eating her food and accusing her of stealing her opportunities for stardom thanks to her alleged willingness to sleep with directors, but she manages to cool herself and insists that she hasn't done anything to Helen personally, even telling her that she understands the stress she's going through trying to make it big.
* NightmareFetishist: The episode seems to be set in a world full of them, given that a popular pageant committee routinely abducts and kills women, then slices them open like frogs in a biology classroom for an audience that applaud the gutted corpses as if they were pageant queens.
* ParodyCommercial: Helen opens the episode filming a commercial for Ball Buster Perfume, ostensibly for no-nonsense women who want to make it big.
* PostStressOvereating: Helen stuffs her face with junk food as Joyce's happy-go-lucky attitude drives her mad with jealousy, rage, envy, and a smorgasbord of negative emotions.
* PunchClockVillain: It's implied with George and the rest of the pageant staff. The man himself does his job with a smile, but he privately warns Helen to get out while she can. Just before this, there's also his question about the guiltiest thing Helen's ever done and her motives for doing so, hinting that he can tell what exactly Helen did to get into the pageant.
* RecycledPremise: This episode basically has the exact same plot as [[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS3E5TopBilling Top Billing,]] since both episodes have desperate protagonists who resort to murder to get a part intended for their rivals in order to get their big break, only to be killed for the twisted satisfaction of their "directors". The protagonists even murder their rivals in the exact same way.
* TheRival: Helen has to put up with two of them over the course of the episode.
** Her roommate Joyce is a pretty big threat to her chances at stardom, but in a partial inversion of the trope, Joyce playfully humors Helen's burning hatred of her and isn't even aware that she got the commercial gig she initially wanted.
** Druscilla plays the trope far straighter, being a lot more vile about winning the pageant and resorting to shamelessly underhanded means to do so.
* SlaveToPR: George's makeup artist, Rudi, hates the beauty pageant idea that George came up with to disguise their racket, and wants to go back to the old days of "picking them off the streets". That right there is the final red flag that Helen should have heeded, which she tragically does not.
* TheSociopath: George and his staff are pretty blatant ones for what they do to aspiring pageant queens, and the audiences who willingly attend these pageants and applaud the "winners" are a whole other story.
* SuicideByPills: The episode begins with Helen, failing to land another modeling gig after trying for 10 years and hearing that her loathed roommate got the gig she was promised, preparing to end her life by downing sleeping pills. She stops herself and puts the pills in the cup of tea she brings to [[TheRival Joyce]], intending to knock her out so she can take her place in an upcoming beauty pageant. The dose is too strong and Helen ends up [[AccidentalMurder accidentally killing her]].
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Joyce, the nicest character in the episode, who understood what Helen was going through and wanted to help as best as she could despite her alleged eagerness to sleep with directors for acting gigs, dies after Helen causes her to overdose on sleeping pill-spiked tea.
* TrueBeautyIsOnTheInside: This is the often-repeated theme of the pageant, and the ending shows that it's meant in a very [[BodyHorror literal]] sense.
* VillainWithGoodPublicity: George and the pageant directors are treated as respected professionals regarding their abduction and dissection of women. It's justified at the end, which reveals that their audience and fanbase are equally sadistic.
* WrapUpSong: George ends the episode by singing a tribute song to "lucky winner" Helen, whose dissected corpse is on display to the bloodthirsty pageant audience.
-----
->'''Crypt Keeper:'''
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 30 (click to see context) from:
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, the default winner, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming.
to:
* ExactWords: George's note from Tom has the message "Make sure she "gets it"!" regarding the winner of the pageant. The end of the episode has Helen, the default winner, "getting it" in a way that she never sees coming. There's also a line about how this pageant is about how "it's what's inside that counts". It turns out this is referring to the winner's ''internal organs.''
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 14 (click to see context) from:
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious and take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead.
to:
* AccidentalMurder: Helen puts sleeping pills in Joyce's tea in an attempt to knock her unconscious and take her place in the pageant. She ends up putting one too many pills in and Joyce winds up dead. This is, er, ''not'' the case with Druscilla's death, however.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 6,7 (click to see context) from:
Helen (Creator/MimiRogers) has spent ten years trying to make her big break into the world of modelling, but has little to show for her efforts. After losing out on a commercial audition to her roommate Joyce Palmer (Creator/KathyIreland), she accuses Joyce of sleeping with the director to get the role. Joyce denies this, but then shows off a note written by a man she has been seeing. The note is intended for George, the MC of an upcoming beauty pageant, and directs him to make her the winner. Despondent over Joyce's easy success, Helen prepares to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but stops just short of swallowing them. Instead, she mixes them into a cup of tea and gives the resulting mixture to Joyce, intending to put her to sleep long enough to take her place in the pageant. The dose is turns out to be far too strong, and Joyce dies.
to:
Helen (Creator/MimiRogers) has spent ten years trying to make her big break into the world of modelling, but has little to show for her efforts. After losing out on a commercial audition to her roommate Joyce Palmer (Creator/KathyIreland), she accuses Joyce of sleeping with the director to get the role. Joyce denies this, but then shows off a note written by a man she has been seeing. The note is intended for George, the MC of an upcoming beauty pageant, and directs him to make her the winner. Despondent over Joyce's easy success, Helen prepares to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but stops just short of swallowing them. Instead, she mixes them into a cup of tea and gives the resulting mixture to Joyce, intending to put her to sleep long enough to take her place in the pageant. The dose is turns out to be far too strong, and Joyce dies.
