Rob gets jury duty and joins to keep from having to work on the tough assignment he and the other writers have the same week. However, he gets himself into trouble in the courtroom thanks to attraction to the defendant.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Brick Joke:
- Early on, Miss Hendricks mentions an act she was part of in the past, Buster and the Harem Girls. At the end of the episode, Rob tells Buddy, Sally, and Laura that she's planning on going back to them.
- During the jury scenes, a female juror says that she's a mother and her intuition is more reliable than a tall, skinny comedy writer's. After Marla has been vindicated, Rob smugly notes that the intuition of a tall, skinny comedy writer was in this kind of case better than a mother's.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Laura is unhappy about Rob looking at and showing unusual courtesy to the attractive female defendant. It doesn't help when Marla calls him at home to thank him.
- Courtroom Episode: Rob has jury duty and is sitting in on a case involving an exotic dancer accused of having attempted to smuggle a diamond necklace into the United States.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: When Rob comes home, Laura confronts him about Miss Hendricks, asking why he had to stare at her as he was doing. Rob asks what was wrong with the way he was doing it.
- Dumb Blonde: Marla Hendricks, the defendant, is a blonde Brainless Beauty.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: The episode ends with Laura chasing Rob, calling him "Robert Simpson Petrie."
- Jury Duty: Rob receives a notice calling him for jury duty at the beginning of the episode. Laura initially suspects he wants to do it more as an escape from work and a desire to be a lawyer than out of duty. However, she doesn't mind until she finds out that the defendant is an attractive woman. She tells Rob that he's biased and should quit.
- Literal Metaphor: When asked about Mr. Clark, Marla says she picked him up on the ship. Concerned about the effect this will have on her case, her lawyer asks her to clarify. It turns out she meant she literally picked him up; she knocked him over during a game of shuffleboard.
- Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title references the play/film 12 Angry Men.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Although Rob insists he's not attracted to Marla, his behavior says otherwise. Laura and the other jurors heavily suspect that that's why he voted her innocent. Luckily, it turns out that she actually was innocent; when she remembered that she'd reversed some of the parts of her testimony, the police checked her story out and found the man she claimed gave her the diamond necklace.
- Rogue Juror: Rob is the only juror who thinks Marla is innocent. He deadlocks the entire jury for a whole day and ultimately gets the case thrown out. Luckily, it turns out he was right.
- Shout-Out: In a reversal from Perry Mason, the prosecutor is named Mason while Burger is the defense attorney.
- That Came Out Wrong: Trying to convince Laura that he wasn't ogling Miss Hendricks, Rob says that he was only looking at her the way he looks at hundreds of other women. He realizes almost immediately that this was the wrong thing to say to his already-jealous wife and tries to rephrase it.
