Pictured: a Hypothetical Fight Debate
A Plot: Wanda, Hank, and Lacey attempt to terrorize Brent with a Sasquatch hoax.
B Plot: Davis and Emma's obsession with the fantasy TV series Throne Strife forces Karen and Oscar to spend time together. Karen tries to find something Oscar likes to do, but discovers he likes being a cranky old man who complains. Oscar discovers Karen likes to complain and coaches her to become better at it.
Tropes Referenced:
- Accentuate the Negative: Karen realizes that this basically is Oscar's "hobby", and then Oscar tries to train her to be better at complaining when she shows she has a knack for it.
- Adaptation Displacement: In-universe, Davis gets angry at Emma for only watching the Throne Strife TV show and not reading the original books. Then Emma turns on Davis for giving away a spoiler from the books that the show didn't cover.
- Ambiguous Syntax:Lacey: I saw a Sasquatch as a teen.
Brent: How do you know it was a teen?
Lacey: Because it had acne. It wasn't a teen, you goof. I was! - Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The crux of the A Plot.
- Blame Game: Hank immediately tires of being involved in a web of lies, and threatens to come clean if Wanda won't stop. Wanda reverses this, saying that if Hank tells Brent that Wanda pranked him, then Wanda will tell Brent that Hank was the mastermind. Hank panics at the thought of being implicated and stands down.
- Brand X: Throne Strife as a stand-in for Game of Thrones.
- Coincidental Accidental Disguise: The night after getting Hank and Wanda to fess up, Brent is driving home when he sees a large, furry silhouette and thinks it's a real Sasquatch. After driving off in fear, it turns out to just be Davis in his "Throne Strife" cosplay, haggard after Emma ditched him at the side of the road for talking about the books and spoiling the show for her.
- Gravity Is Only a Theory: Brent tries to use this argument as to why believing in Sasquatch isn't so far-fetched.
- I Know You Know I Know: During the A Plot, after overhearing Brent plotting all the crazy things he wants Wanda and Hank to do to "prove" Sasquatch exists, Lacey decides to confess to Brent that she actually saw a Sasquatch as a child. Brent's apprehensive, as he thinks Lacey is screwing with him and using the timing of Wanda and Hank screwing with him to seem more believable, and later tries quizzing her to confirm how honest she's being. In the second half of The Tag, just as Brent believes Lacey's story, Lacey admits she was indeed just screwing with him.
- Insult Friendly Fire:Wanda: How can anyone be stupid enough to believe in Sasquatch? I mean, what kind of bonehead would- oh yeah, right, I forgot. You believe.
Brent: I wouldn't say I "believe" believe. I'm just open-minded to the possibility of a huge, hairy, primordial primate strolling through the countryside undetected. - Lethal Chef: Karen compares a young girl's lemonade to diaper excrement. In the first half of The Tag, Karen and the girl are back on good terms, with the girl admitting she hadn't known to add sweetener to the lemonade.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Karen realizes in horror, after insulting a young child's lemonade stand, that she's becoming just like Oscar (though Oscar says she's still nowhere close) and immediately resolves to stop complaining so much.
- Pull the Thread: Brent figures out Wanda and Hank's ruse almost immediately and plays dumb in order to get them to do increasingly ridiculous things to "convince" him, like saying he'd only believe there's a Sasquatch if he saw dermal ridges in the footprints or heard mating sounds. They fess up when he starts talking about "fresh scat", neither one of them wanting to make something that gross.
- Shout-Out: Hank mentions (and we see a flashback) that he was in an all-male production of Reservoir Dogs in high school.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Three times during the episode Brent suddenly appears behind Lacey, causing her to jump.Lacey: Honestly, next time you get a knife in the neck.
- The Friends Who Never Hang: The crux of the B-Plot.
