Harry tries to kill Max.
Tropes
- 555: The Hawthorne family phone number, as seen on Max Hawthorne's "Have you seen this alien?" poster regarding the Harry Vanderspeigle alien, is a 555 number.
- Bait-and-Switch: When the Alien ends up hungry in a stable, it looks like it's gonna have the cow for a meal but the next shot shows the alien sucking the udder instead.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: The episode opens with a man walking up to the edge of a snow-covered cliff for a selfie while Harry's voiceover talks about humans believing the number one cause of death is heart disease. While it seems he is going to talk about acts of stupidity, he starts bashing almond milk while the man struggles to keep from falling, saying not even The Greys would touch it.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: When Harry calls Max pretending to be a stranger who has seen the alien leaving town, he mentions that the alien looked handsome like a young Jerry Orbach.
- Dead Hat Shot: Each Imagine Spot of Max dying horribly ends with one of his sneakers flying into view.
- Didn't Think This Through: When Harry cuts the break line on Max's bike he doesn't consider that he might try to use his breaks before getting to the steep hill. He also doesn't seem to consider standing in the middle of the street after dark on said hill is a bad idea until a car honks at him.
- Don't Be Ridiculous: When Max tests Harry on the phone by asking how much a stamp costs, the latter guesses $100 which exposes him to Max who notes that stamps in fact cost $30 dollars.
- Due to the Dead: Asta cuts off part of her hair to honor Sam's death at Dan's urging, going by their people's traditions, which she stores in a box.
- File Mixup: Harry had prepared for a 12-year-old boy's wart, only to find Judy waiting for a pelvic exam.
- Groin Attack: Harry accidentally smacks the sheriff in the crotch with a bowling bowl, much to D'Arcy's delight.
- Gut Feeling: Asta's dad senses something is off about Harry. When she jokes that "you get a bad feeling about everyone," he tells her that's the problem: "When I look at him...I feel nothing at all."
- Hope Spot: When the hiker slips and starts falling off the cliff at the start of the episode, he struggles to keep hold of a plant, only to eventually fall. Instead of hitting the ground, an unseen force suspends him gently several feet in the air. While it seems that he is safe at first, he soon finds he is unable to move and cries for help. The episode ends with two people finding his still floating body, as well as two floating birds, who had clearly been trapped there for quite a while.
- Indulgent Fantasy Segue: After D'Arcy tells Harry that he should make Max's death look like an accident (see below), the show goes to commerical. When the show comes back, the scene is the Hawthorne family household in which Ben comments that it smells like propane gas and then lights a cigar, causing the place to go kaboom. It is then shown that this is actually in Harry's mind as he sits giving Ben a counseling session. He thinks to himself that an explosion is a good idea because it looks like an accident while doodling ideas for other accidental deaths on a notepad that Ben thinks he's using to take notes about their session.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: When Max is submitted to the hospital after his bicycle accident, Harry mentions the failing brakes which he shouldn't have known of. It makes Max realize that it wasn't an accident but Harry's Vehicular Sabotage.
- Little Known Facts: According to Harry, the leading cause of death on Earth isn't heart disease but Almond Milk.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: When D'Arcy offers Harry more whiskey, he refuses, saying that the last time he drank it, he tried to kill someone. D'Arcy takes it as a joke or at the very least an exaggeration, having no idea that he really did try to murder the boy Max Hawthorne for being able to see through his alien disguise. She quips that if he does kill someone, he should make it look like an accident or else he won't be able to go bowling with her the next evening. This makes him decide to try again with Max. He first considers a gas explosion, and eventually settles on cutting the brakes on Max's bike, based on a comment of D'Arcy's about breaking bones while skiing. However, Max only ends up needing stitches, which Harry himself has to sew.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: When Harry is packing stuff in his bedroom, the mirror shows his Alien self.
- Piano Drop: One of the ways Harry imagines killing Max by is dropping a piano onto him in the street.
- Revealing Cover Up: At first, Harry figures that if anything happens to Max, it'll be suspicious but starts thinking murder might still be the best solution. He realizes it's much better to make it look like Max is merely troubled.
- Skewed Priorities: Harry tells a patient who just turned 80 that if he likes Christmas to celebrate it before June, but he can eat anything he wants. The patient is far more happy at the idea of being able to eat whatever he wants than sad that he has only months to live.
- Super Identikit: Deputy Liz's sketch of Harry is unmistakably accurate, despite it being of an alien as described by an elementary schooler.
- Vehicular Sabotage: Harry tampers with the brakes on Max's bike in hope that it would make him crash and die. Too bad, Max only fell in the driveway and not on the main road.
