Community General kicks things into gear when a car accident involving a bus brings in over a dozen patients. However, a closer look at one of the deceased shows the man may just have been murdered.
"Murder by the Busload" displays symptoms of the following tropes:
- As Himself: Then-Los Angeles Lakers coach Del Harris as himself. Mark has Lakers tickets he was going to use with Steve before the bus emergency, and they go to the game at the end of the episode.
- Asshole Victim:
- Fred Talisker, a serial rapist who assaulted multiple women.
- The drunken idiot who crashed into the bus. The guy was apparently holding a beer in his hand when he did so.
- Averted for Lou Kupfer, a mentally ill homeless man whose only crime was witnessing the murder.
- Bludgeoned to Death: Fred Talisker was killed by being smashed in the head with a brick.
- Cassandra Truth: At the end of the episode, Del Harris, then coach of the LA Lakers, drops by Community General to grant Mark and Steve floor seat tickets as a sort of compensation for Mark sacrificing his own floor seat tickets to help with the bus crash. However, with Melora having pulled her bullshit earlier (including claiming she worked with the Lakers), Amanda figures he's a scam too and tears the tickets in half. It's only as he's leaving and Mark and Steve recognize him does she realize her mistake.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Earlier in the episode, Jesse quizzes Tanya on medical issues, saying she got one wrong, but not telling her which one. She makes said mistake when murdering Lou, which is part of how Mark realizes it was her.
- Con Woman: Melora Jackson, one of the people brought in was not part of the crash, but rather someone who snuck on the bus after the crash to collect money from a lawsuit.
- Crazy Homeless People: Lou Kupfer has been said to be put in various mental institutions after serving in the Vietnam War.
- Did Not Die That Way: Fred Talisker is originally thought to have died as a result of the traffic accident. Turns out he was murdered.
- Disappointed in You: Mark's lack of an answer to Tanya begging him to say she didn't really kill Lou Kupfer shows he's incredibly saddened that this bright woman who was studying to go to med school could really kill someone and swear it wasn't her fault.
- Disposable Vagrant: Lou Kupfer ends up murdered, although it's more due to him being a witness to the murder rather than anything else.
- Drunk Driver: The episode starts when a drunk driver crashes his car into a bus.
- Everyone Has Standards: Dustin Woods hates doctors and especially hates people who work in the insurance industry for leading to the death of his wife, but he tells Jesse that if he murdered Fred Talisker, he'd be no better than them.Dustin: ...and unlike doctors or insurance companies, I have a conscience.
- Improvised Weapon: One of the paramedics used a brick to break the glass and get into the bus. When she recognized her rapist on the bus, she used that brick to cave in his skull.
- Laser-Guided Karma: When Fred is part of the bus crash, a paramedic on the scene turns out to be one of the multiple women he has raped. She gladly gives him a treatment to send him straight to Hell.
- Leave No Witnesses: The killer injects phenytoin sodium into Lou Kupfer's IV tube to keep him from identifying them.
- Moment of Weakness: One could easily see Tanya's murder of Fred Talisker as one of these, as she clearly had trauma from his rape of her, and the murder was a Crime of Passion. However, the same can't be said of her murder of Lou Kupfer in order to shut him up.
- Never My Fault: Downplayed. Tanya does kind of take responsibility for murdering Fred, but when the team confronts her on murdering Lou, a man who had done nothing to her but witness her committing the murder, she just says that Lou was going to die from his injuries anyway, so what she did didn't actually change much of anything.
- Never Trust a Title: There is no busload of people murdered. Not even an attempt to have them murdered. Only two people are murdered in this episode, only one of them did it happen on the bus
- Rape and Revenge: Talisker was a rapist, murdered by one of his many victims.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Fred Talisker was a serial rapist.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Tanya Wells could hardly be blamed for caving in the head of the man who raped her. However, she loses that status when she kills Lou Kupfer to keep him from identifying her as the killer.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: When Talisker and the rest of the bus crash victims (and Melora) arrive at Community General, Mark declares Fred DOA, but Tanya Wells, the paramedic performing compressions on him, begs for Mark to let her keep going, figuring he'll pull through. She's the one who killed him.
