The Honor Dogs suspect a traitor in their midst; TK and Gabriel team up to look for Carlos and find the serial killer who took Iris.
Tropes:
- Abusive Offspring: Darryl frequently belittles Trudy and is overall uncaring about her health and feelings.
- Affably Evil: Trudy, unlike her son, is much more moral, even sweet, about keeping Carlos imprisoned but relatively comfortable (though it’s obviously cold comfort).
- Badass in Distress: Carlos for most of the episode.
- Bound and Gagged: He’s mainly tied to a pipe under a kitchen sink, but Carlos briefly gets a piece of duct tape over his mouth when Trudy goes to answer TK at the front door.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Trudy asks Carlos about if TK loves his mother, Carlos answers in past tense, alluding to Gwyn’s sudden death in “In the Unlikely Event of an Emergency.”
- TK visiting the Reyes’ home to ask about Carlos’ whereabouts, resulting in him gaining Gabriel’s assistance, parallels Carlos visiting Owen’s house to ask if he and Gwyn know where TK went in “Bad Call”.
- TK finding and doing CPR on a drugged Carlos dying on the floor at the Keyes’ is framed similarly to Owen finding and resuscitating an unconscious TK in the pilot episode, right down to them using Narcan on their thigh.
- Cool Old Lady: After seeing TK off, Trudy voices genuinely happy support for his and Carlos’ relationship, much to Carlos’ surprise; she’s also very sympathetic to the loss of his own mother.
- Dissonant Serenity: Trudy, but it doesn’t take long for her to admit her own discomfort at the situation and her son’s cruelty when Carlos appeals to her humanity.
- Failed a Spot Check: Detective Grier insists that she and the police did search the house Iris was held in, but while sticking to her theory of a psychotic break, they neglected to look for signs of other victims— like, for instance, any of their dropped belongings. This enables TK to find a wallet in the fireplace belonging to Donna, which proves credence to Iris’ testimony.
- The '50s: Darryl’s home and Trudy’s choice of dress convey the idea that Darryl grew up in a conservative American lifestyle.
- Hourglass Plot: To “Bad Call”, where TK was kidnapped and considered missing, then was found and saved by Owen and Carlos injured but alive. Here, Carlos is kidnapped and considered missing, and is later found by TK and Gabriel when he’s dying in his attempt to get free.
- Mama Bear: The main thing keeping Trudy from giving up on Darryl, even while she has to endure his emotional abuse and presumably assist him in his past murders of the missing women. It wavers when Carlos convinces her to cut him free, but after seeing Carlos attack Darryl she grabs one of her son’s stolen morphine vials and injects him with it.
- Missed Him by That Much: When TK stops by the Keyes’ home the first time, he almost notices something wrong (which was Carlos knocking over the shovel in the kitchen and struggling to free himself) before Trudy passes off the noises coming from an unruly cat.
- When TK and Gabriel learn Darryl Keyes’ identity and head to the pharmacy he’s employed at, they learn that he’d just left after taking out vials of morphine. They’re quick to deduce that Darryl’s going back to his house from before, and make it there just as Carlos has subdued him and is losing consciousness.
- Near-Death Experience: After Trudy injects Carlos with a full vial of morphine, he blacks out and loses his pulse just as TK and Gabriel bust into the house, with Gabriel desperately requesting police backup and TK needing to perform CPR until he’s able to receive and administer Narcan to save Carlos’ life.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: A freed and enraged Carlos delivers one to Darryl just as the latter re-enters the kitchen.
- Papa Wolf: Gabriel, after happily greeting TK, turns serious after the latter informs him of Carlos’ disappearance and the circumstances behind it, and decides to offer his assistance in looking for Carlos. He holds himself together well as he and TK debrief with Detective Grier about the serial abductions, but he does admit feeling as worried and upset to TK, and his terrified reaction to seeing Carlos dying proves that.
- Parental Abandonment: According to Trudy, Mr. Keyes left her when Darryl was still a child. The younger Keyes took this loss extremely badly, wanting to go and live with him enough that he burned himself with pool cleaner and tried to frame Trudy as an abuser.
- Suddenly Shouting: As soon as Trudy takes the duct tape off Carlos’ mouth on TK leaving the house, Carlos desperately screams out for help to little avail (save for one police officer who ends up not hearing his calls over Trudy’s vinyl record). When Trudy reluctantly threatens to slit his throat, he stops.
- Tap on the Head: Despite getting whacked from behind with a shovel, Carlos is able to sit up and speak with little issue, save for experiencing occasional dizziness and major pain when he finally stands up. That’s not even getting into any lingering effects from being injected with morphine twice (a partial dose once, and a full vial the second time).
