Jake, Boyle and Terry take a trip to Boyles' home while Rosa and Amy help Captain Holt with a unique challenge.
Tropes
- Analogy Backfire: Jake's metaphor fails to make Charles feel any better.Jake: Being a Boyle is about more than blood. It's what's in your heart!
Charles: Blood is what's in your heart. You're making it worse, Jake. - Bastard Angst: Charles becomes distraught when he learns he's not a Boyle by birth.
- Big Damn Kiss: Holt and Kevin reconcile with a big kiss in the rain.
- Call-Back: The Boyle Mother Dough sourdough starter is brought up again and the Grandmother Dough is introduced.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The nutrias. Jake realizes that they had been poisoned by rat traps, and Grand Uncle Pappy was drinking the milk when he died.
- Charles mentions how Boyles get jealous of their cousins figures in the mystery of who killed Pappy (though not in how he died in the first place).
- Competition Freak: Holt treats couples therapy as a game of chess that he must win. Later he realizes that attitude is part of what is causing the rift between him and Kevin.
- Confidence Building Scheme: To break Charles's Heroic BSoD, Jake reassembles the cousins and says that he believes that Charles can open Grandma Boyle's sourdough starter. He asked for Terry to loosen the jar before giving Charles a Rousing Speech. It turns out that the jar was too slippery for Terry to do it however, but Jake's pep talk motivates Charles to open it with his pure brute strength and stubbornness.
- Continuity Nod:
- Jake mentions he's 87 days into his five-month suspension.
- Once again, a conventionally attractive member of the Boyle family is treated like a Black Sheep.
- Deceptive Legacy: Boyle discovers he's the product of an affair his mother had and is thus not a real Boyle.
- Graceful Loser: The cousins mob Boyle in a Group Hug after he successfully gets the sourdough jar open. Some are even crying Tears of Joy.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Kevin spends most of Season 8 very subtly wishing to repair his relationship with Holt. He leaves in “The Lake House” instead of telling Holt he still has feelings for him, and though he’s clearly disappointed Holt is in his house looking for a book in “Balancing,” he doesn’t tell Holt as much. However, when he learns Holt has made a dating profile, Kevin runs through the city in the rain to the precinct to ask Holt if it’s too late for Kevin to tell him he wants to stay together. Holt welcomes him back with open arms.
- Only the Chosen May Wield: Charles proves he's a true Boyle by opening the jar of the family sourdough starter, which has been stuck closed for ages.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jake knew something was up with Lyndon Boyle because when he left for his room, he didn't say "I love you" to the other Boyles. He knows very well that, since it's written all over the house, "A Boyle always says 'I love you'."
- Orbital Kiss: Kevin and Holt's Big Damn Kiss, for extra romance.
- Parting-Words Regret: Lyndon's tears end up being real when he reveals that he and Grand Uncle Pappy got into a fight before the latter died.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Holt catches Rosa and Amy's scheme to sour his experience of the dating scene, but realizes how lonely he is without someone to share his victory.
- Race for Your Love: Amy suggests Holt do this near the end, but Holt shoots her down. Fortunately, Kevin does it for them.
- Red Herring: Jake at first suspects Lyndon Boyle killed Grand Uncle Pappy because he was taken out of the will. A hair is found on a box of rat poison and Jake has it taken to be analyzed, along with a hair from every Boyle in attendance. The DNA not only proves inconclusive, it also proves Charles is not a Boyle by blood, which throws the whole investigation into chaos. Then as they stalk Lyndon, Terry and Jake discover a dead nutria and realize it must have eaten the poison (one of the hairs was confirmed to be nutria), which was passed to Pappy through its milk. Lyndon's disagreement with Pappy was for something else entirely, and it was Sam who engineered Lyndon getting blamed because of jealousy.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: The Boyles raise nutrias for their milk. When Jake and Terry first see one, they think the farm has a mutant rat infestation.
- Romantic Rain: Holt sees Kevin calling him outside in the rain. They reconcile and have a big kiss while getting soaking wet.
- Shout-Out:
- The title is one to Game of Thrones.
- The interrogations scenes spoof Knives Out, which Jake explicitly notes after his impression of Benoit Blanc.
- Rosa's continued love of Nancy Meyers is invoked constantly in the B-plot.
- When Holt mentions chess, his prospective date Todd mentions The Queen's Gambit, which doesn't help endear him to Holt.
- Jake references an episode of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series in which Leonardo is in a coma, “Tales of Leo”.
- "Shut Up" Kiss: Holt is in the middle of telling Kevin what he will sacrifice to make their relationship work when Kevin initiates their Big Damn Kiss.
- This Is Reality: Holt chastises Amy and Rosa for thinking that things work out like the romantic comedies they watch. Then he and Kevin reunite in a scene straight out of said romantic comedies.
- Time Skip: This episode takes nearly 2 and a half months after Jake's suspension.
