A festering darkness lies beneath Prestige TV City and the detectives try to uncover the city's shocking truth.
"The Beach Episode" provides examples of:
- Almost Kiss: Parodied. Since "The Beach Episode" is set in Prestige TV City, an almost kiss happens during a tense scene, but it is obviously forced melodrama.
- Animation Age Ghetto: Nancy In-Universe thinks of anime as "childish" and that Joe is becoming an adult by moving to prestige TV City.
- Beach Episode: As the title implies, the episode is a play on the typical anime Beach Episode, the various tropes slowly shifting from anime to live-action drama cliches over the course of the episode.
- Evil All Along: Joe and Diesel discover that Chief Brody and Nancy were members of TOXIC the whole time.
- Extremely Short Intro Sequence: The episode forgoes its usual Title Sequence in-favor of a Title-Only Opening, an off-screen viewer pressing "Skip Intro" not unlike a Netflix original.
- Fisher Kingdom: The longer Joe and Diesel stay in Prestige TV City, the more they start to adhere to American live-action drama rules, most notably their Belligerent Sexual Tension.
- Hallway Fight: Joe ends up having one against TOXIC troops when he and Diesel are found out.
- Interface Screw: After the cold open of "The Beach Episode", the show's regular intro is overlaid with a "Skip Intro" button, reminiscent of the one used on Netflix. After the show's title is shown, the button is automatically clicked, and the video cuts ahead to the end of the intro.
- Kick the Dog: Nancy asks Joe about his opinion on Dragonball Evolution, remarking how she thinks it's better than the anime that it is based on. Considering that movie was universally panned (by both fans of the anime and casual movie-goers) and she knows exactly who Joe is, she was clearly just trying to rub salt in his wounds.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: This Call-Back to "The Case Promised in Our Early Days".Diesel: What if we don't get a third season?
Joe: ...fall? - The Oner: Discussed as a prestige TV hallmark in the fight scene in "The Beach Episode". Naturally, the fight scene features Joe taking out dozens of armed cultists in close quarters while attempting to escape a building.Villain: We don't do any of your adorable little quick-cut fights around here. We do everything in a single take. The only cuts are gonna be from our knives...
- Rule of Symbolism: While the setting is a play on the Beach Episode trope, beaches are considered a medium between worlds, this being the first place Joe and Diesel encounter in Prestige TV City and the tropes shift from anime to live-action drama over the course of the episode. This can also be seen in Diesel's Digimon crest necklace, the symbol shifting between "Friendship" and "Love" between shots as a sign of their Will They or Won't They? status.
- Speak of the Devil: When Joe mentions his interview with the housing board, incomes Nancy Prestige to lampshade it.Nancy Prestige: Now that sounds like a setup for a new character to enter the scene. We love that around here.
- Take That!:
- Nancy compares Diesel to Lost; so promising, then "she got up in her head and forgot everything that made her interesting."
- Joe pretends to like Game of Thrones, trying to convince Nancy that he doesn't find its protracted storylines "tiresome."
- Joe summarizes the genre Mad Men and Breaking Bad belong to as "shows about grown men getting away with terrible behavior." Nancy (who's a bad guy) says that it's her favorite genre.
- When Joe vomits when keeping his opinion of Dragonball Evolution to himself, a waiter remarks that he must have seen the latest season of American Horror Story.
- "Give it a chance! It gets really good after the first two seasons!" is a motto in Prestige TV City.
- Joe summarizes TOXIC's Evil Plan as anyone that TOXIC considers a "fake anime-fan" will have nothing left but Family Guy.
- Joe found The Wire boring.
- Troperiffic: The entire episode involves the establishment of "prestige television" tropes and cliches, including one-shot Hallway Fights, introduction character setups and Belligerent Sexual Tension. Since self-aware American media does a lot more Lampshade Hanging than Japanese media, this happens a lot.
- Wham Episode: Diesel's mother is Nancy Prestige, leader of Prestige TV City's housing board and leader of TOXIC.
- Will They or Won't They?: A lot of Joe and Diesel's interactions come off as Belligerent Sexual Tension. When Nancy asks what he intends with Diesel, the both of them trip over themselves trying to convince her that they're only friends, leading to Nancy checking his Relationship Status as "Will They/Won't They".
