The Major Crimes team is forced to turn against Jesse when he becomes the prime suspect in a bank robbery.
Tropes:
- Armed Blag: The episode revolves around an armored truck being robbed with the culprit getting away with a hundred thousand dollars. The twist however is that the culprit is apparently Jesse.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: The Jesse impersonator is Yazmin’s ex-boyfriend, Casey Ridley. She broke up with him because he had been getting too possessive and controlling of her (to the point where he secretly installed a tracker app on her phone), leading to Casey wanting to get revenge on Jesse and teamed up with Chelsea Laidlaw to do so. He’s also been spying on Jesse and Yazmin through the webcam on Yazmin’s laptop, with Chelsea using his recorded videos of them to create the deep fakes to frame Jesse for the robbery.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Chelsea Laidlaw's response to Jesse beating her multiple times in online poker and losing all her crypto savings in the process is to frame him for armed robbery and various other crimes. She had help from Casey Ridley, who was also seeking revenge because his ex-girlfriend Yazmin dumped him and went on to hook up with Jesse.
- Evil Is Petty: Chelsea Laidlaw, holy shit. Her entire grudge against Jesse is because she lost twenty-five grand in cryptocurrency in a single weekend playing poker against him. Afterwards, with help from Casey Ridley, she became dedicated to ruining his life however she could, from framing him for armed robbery to tricking a SWAT team into believing he was taking his girlfriend Yazmin hostage to get him arrested or killed. Apparently, while she could’ve just taken the same amount of money she lost in the poker games in the robbery, she instead decided to steal a hundred thousand out of the belief that she was "owed interest". Charlie, Sarah, and Donovan even comment on how ridiculously petty the culprit's motive was after the case is solved.
- Foreshadowing: One of the suspects is a man named Casey Ridley, a travel vlogger who is scouting out the best places in St. John’s and was reported to be loitering near the bank a few times before the robbery. His alibi was that he was doing a live video recording around the time of the crime, yet in the video, the sky is seen as still being daytime only with the contrast being toned down. It was a prerecorded video, with Casey being the one who robbed the truck.
- Frame-Up: The plot revolves around Jesse apparently being framed for the robbery of an armored truck, with him being forced to step back from the investigation while temporary replacement Imari Johnson takes over for him. His coworkers dismiss the idea of him actually doing something like this, until they start discovering evidence linking him directly to the crime. It eventually gets to the point where Internal Affairs forces Donovan to arrest Jesse because the evidence is that incriminating. Fortunately, the team manages to find evidence proving his innocence.
- Hidden Depths: Jesse is revealed to play online poker where the prize money is paid in cryptocurrency, being pretty skilled at it too.
- Manipulative Editing: The video evidence turns out to have been modified using deep fakes, disguising the real culprit as Jesse to frame him for the robbery. The materials came from the secret videos Casey had of Jesse and Yazmin hanging out together in Jesse's apartment.
- Never My Fault: Chelsea’s motive for her crimes is because she blames Jesse for making her lose all of her crypto savings in matches against him in online poker. Jesse fires back at her that if she has such a lousy hand, she shouldn’t be wagering more than she’s willing to lose.
- Secret Relationship: Jesse reveals that he has been secretly dating a girl from Halifax named Yazmin, having hooked up some time ago and wanted to keep it under wraps until he got to know her better, as his coworkers are all too familiar with his dating history.
- Sore Loser: Chelsea Laidlaw, aka the poker player WildAce89, lost over twenty-five grand in cryptocurrency in her poker matches against Jesse. She took her losses so badly that she decided to frame him for armed robbery with help from Yazmin’s ex-boyfriend Casey, who also had beef with Jesse for "stealing" his girlfriend from him.
- SWAT Team: When Jesse and Yazmin get close to figuring out the identity of the mastermind behind the robbery, a SWAT team shows up at Jesse’s apartment, having been tricked into believing that he has taken Yazmin as a hostage and are willing to gun him down if necessary. The soldiers refuse to listen to Donovan and Charlie until they manage to give them proof that Jesse is not their real target.
- Villain Team-Up: After Yazmin broke up with him and he started spying on Jesse playing online poker, Casey decided to team up with Chelsea out of their mutual hatred for Jesse to get revenge on him. While Casey had the idea to just use his webcam feed to cheat against Jesse in poker, Chelsea convinced him that they could go bigger and have more fun by instead framing him for armed robbery and several other crimes.
- Voice Changeling: Jesse mentions than in addition to being able to disguise a person as someone else in video footage, there are some deep fakes that allow the user to mimic someone else’s voice. The culprit eventually uses the latter function to disguise themselves as both Jesse and Yazmin to trick a SWAT team into believing he had taken her hostage when the two get close to the truth.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Jesse gives this to Charlie and Sarah at his apartment after overhearing them talk about how the evidence doesn’t look good for him and then trying to secretly search his home for more clues, hurt about the lack of trust that his friends are giving him and tells them to leave. After the real culprit is arrested, Charlie apologizes to Jesse for not having believed him from the start, with Jesse being understanding about it and forgiving him.
