When Hayley wakes up from a nightmare involving herself being brainwashed at school as a child, she decides to move to France and live a sexually liberated lifestyle. However, this forces Stan to use Hayley's trigger phrase from the secret Project Daycare, brainwashing her into being the obedient daughter he always wanted. However, a defect in the programming causes her to go on a rampage, intent on killing Stan.
Tropes:
- Abstract Scale: Stan is able to control how aroused Hayley smiles down to the percentage.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Stan wanted Hayley to be an obedient daughter who followed his every word, and by activating her programming, he got it. Then it spectacularly backfires.
- Blatant Lies: Stan finds one of Hayley's teddy bears and tries to use it to snap her out of her programming. After she merely blows its head off, Stan claims that the teddy bear was her handler and she's accomplished her mission.
- Brainwashed Bride: Stan activates long-dormant brainwashing in Hayley, in order to get her "on the road to happiness" by marrying a friend's son. Unfortunately for Stan, the brainwashing procedure had been discontinued due to the victims turning on their handlers after a couple of days, and Hayley quickly shifts from mindlessly obedient to relentlessly homicidal immediately after the wedding.
- Buddy Cop Show: This episode marks the beginning of Steve and Roger's "Wheels and the Legman" personas. They get the idea after watching such a show called Tex and Mex.
- Call-Back: The limo driver when Stan is fighting Hayley appeared in the season 2 episode "Roger 'n' Me". He gets his payback for how they kept interrupting him by raising the partition.
- Camp Gay: Dill Sheppard, whose effeminate mannerisms are even based on Truman Capote.Father Donovan: You may now kiss the bride.Dill: Is it mandatory?
- Which makes it all the funnier that despite all but having a sign declaring he's gay, Stan seems to think he's straight. Though Hayley tells Stan that he's gay while explaining that they had their marriage annulled.
- Companion Cube: During his fight with Hayley, Stan takes out his gun, but Hayley disarms him, and throws it into the street, leading him to tell it to call for help.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Hayley completely and utterly thrashes Stan during their fight, with Stan failing to land a single blow.
- Easily Forgiven: Invoked. With neither Hayley nor Francine any wiser about why any of this happened (with Francine being more concerned about the kitchen being trashed), Stan says he can forgive Hayley for shooting him in the head.
- Exact Words: Bullock warns Stan that Hayley won't snap out of the programming until he's dead. He survives getting shot in the head... but was legally dead for six minutes, restoring Hayley's will.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Stan misses the deadline to deactivate Hayley, she replies with "What are your orders, Father?" in an almost sardonic tone, suggesting she hasn't actually lost her free will but isn't back to normal.
- Freeze-Frame Ending: Parodied. After he exposes Roger's sidekick Angel as not a real angel, Steve has his sidekick say the catchphrase "You're on a roll, Wheels," while he laughs and freezes in place. Steve is still keeping the pose as he's wheeled out of the reception hall.
- Freudian Excuse: It's implied that the brainwashing Stan put Hayley through as a child may also explain her rage issues and hypocritical tendencies.
- Graceful Loser: Roger eventually admits defeat and concedes the role of "Wheels" to Steve.
- Laser-Guided Karma: For trying to control Hayley and the path she takes in life, essentially overwriting her free will in the process, Stan gets a brutal dose of karma, as missing the deactivation deadline causes Hayley to attempt to kill him due to Project Daycare's defective mental programming, and she unleashes a vicious beating on Stan that even temporarily kills him.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Stan was only told that Project Daycare was discontinued because the subjects lost their free will permanently after seven days of activation, which Bullock goes with. It isn't until after he activates Hayley and misses the deadline that Bullock informs him that the project was actually discontinued because the subjects turned on their handlers and killed them after seven days.
- Manchurian Agent: As a child, Hayley was placed in Project Daycare, a CIA program that involves brainwashing sons and daughters of CIA agents and training them into professional sleeper agents.
- Mind Screw: Roger's backstory as Braff "Wheels" Zachland is that he was an international race car driver until he swerved into the wall to avoid a baby that had rolled onto the track...and he was the baby in question.Steve: That doesn't even make sense.Roger: I'M BRAFF ZACHLAND!!!
- Oh, Crap!: Stan starts to have one after Hayley disobeys his order, then is in full fear mode once Bullock explains the actual defect, and she won't stop until he's dead.
- Poor Communication Kills: Bullock doesn't tell Stan the truth about Project Daycare's discontinuation (that the subjects turn on their handlers and kill them after seven days of activation), and instead goes with Stan's belief that it was because they lost their free will permanently. He only tells him after finding out that Stan activated Hayley and missed the deadline.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Klaus gives one to Stan when he tries to confide his problems in him, noting that Stan will only speak with him when he has no one else to talk to.Klaus: I think you only talk to me when there's no one else to turn to. I think you really don't care what I think, and you just need to hear yourself talk. I think you're a selfish bastard and I think you can go to hell!
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Following her brief killing of Stan whilst brainwashed, and after the vicious beatdown she gives him, Haley states that she feels like she got her unfulfilled instincts sorted out; this implies that the defective brainwashing which leads to sleeper agents turning on their handlers is in fact repressed and then magnified/honed rage due to the fact they were subjected to Project Daycare in the first place.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Stan says he failed to deactivate Hayley in time, Bullock immediately leaves the reception.
- Shout-Out:
- Stan tells Bullock that he volunteered Hayley for Project Daycare because he thought a father-daughter spy team would be fun. Bullock replies "As we all learned from Alias, the idea gets tired very quickly."
- Roger gives his persona's name as "Braff Zachland."
- Sure, Let's Go with That: When Stan asks why Project Daycare was discontinued, remarking he heard it was because the subjects lost their free will permanently after seven days, to which Bullock responds, "Yes, something like that." It's only when he finds out that Stan activated her and missed the deadline that he tells Stan the real reason (the subjects turning against their handlers and killing them after seven days of activation).
- That Was Not a Dream: It turns out that Hayley's nightmare of being brainwashed as a child was actually a memory of her being put through Project Daycare.
- 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: Zigzagged. Stan survived being shot in the head by Hayley but was dead for roughly six minutes, and the resulting brain damage has cost him any memory of Klaus.
- Title-Only Opening: This is the first of a handful of episodes in which the opening sequence is cut and just features the title.
- Too Dumb to Live: Stan doesn't deactivate Hayley in time, resulting in him being shot in the head and temporarily put in suspended animation.
- Trigger Phrase: The participants of Project Daycare all have one that activated their programming. To prevent accidental activation, the trigger phrase was purposely chosen to be something nobody would ever say normally: "I'm getting fed up with this orgasm!"
- Turned Against Their Masters: The real reason Project Daycare was discontinued; the subjects turned on their handlers and killed them after seven days of activation.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: While Stan is getting thrashed by Hayley in the back of the limousine, the driver simply rolls up the divider for some peace and quiet.
- Wham Line: After Stan notices that Hayley is starting to act hostile towards him, he worriedly asks Bullock about the real reason for Project Daycare's discontinuation. Bullock explains that it was discontinued because the subjects who were not deactivated in seven days turned against their handlers and killed them.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Bullock chews out Stan over the phone as he's leaving the wedding reception for activating Hayley's brainwashing and failing to deactivate her in time, since they now have a dangerous threat on their hands.
- You Are Too Late: Stan idiotically waits until Hayley says "I do" to say the trigger phrase, but by then, is just too late to deactivate her.
