Funny / Black Jack Justice

Season One

Justice for Some

• Jack and Trixie are trying to determine which of the three known conpeople at their client's party stole a diamond necklace and determine that there must have been an accomplice to turn out the lights. When it's pointed out that one of the suspects was in a location near the switchboard and could have been the accomplice, he's insulted. Not, however, because he's offended at being accused of a crime. He's offended that they think he would do anything as lowly as a grunt accomplice job. As it turns out, he was casing the paintings for a future crime, anyway, not stealing jewels.

Justice's Holiday

• The hard-boiled Jack and Trixie both spontaneously decide to take a walk in the park on a nice day, run into each other and rather than shoot each other for witnessing OOC, walk together. When they get back to the office to open up late that morning, they find a corpse with an envelope labeled "Jack Justice" containing $1000 of cash. Sabien assumes one of them offed the guy and finds their alibi, walking in a park together, unbelievable. Trixie admits that she herself barely believes her alibi, and she was there.

Justice Be Done

• Trixie gets a letter about a former bad luck client, Mordecai Brasseau, whose first case ended with Jack in traction and whose subsequent cases always went even more downhill from there.
  Jack: Hey there, Trix! What's the good word?
  Trixie: (resigned) Mordecai Brasseau.
  Jack: Okay? Okay. I'm going out and coming in again, and you're going to say any other two words to me. Understand?
  Trixie: Understood.
  Jack: Good. (closes and opens door again) Morning, Trixie!
  Trixie: Mordecai Brasseau...
  Jack: Why do you torment me?
  (Jack and Trixie banter in classic fashion until they get back to the subject at hand)
  Trixie: Mordecai Brasseau...
  Jack: No! No, I don't care! We couldn't walk Mordecai Brasseau's dog without winding up in the hospital. We couldn't mow Mordecai's lawn without getting slapped with contempt for the court. He's a nice enough man but he's a jinx, a jinx I tell you!
  (a few more rounds of Trixie saying "Mordecai Brasseau" and Jack interrupting with protests)
  Trixie: Mordecai Brasseau...
  Jack: Rrrrg!
  Trixe: ...is dead.
  Jack: Oh. I see. Good. Sorry, Mordecai... but if the only way he was going to stop showing up on our doorstep with another tangled web was to shuffle off this mortal coil, then I say, good.

Season Two

How Much Is That Gumshoe In The Window

• A champion beagle has been "kidnapped" (the owners don't like the word "dognapped") from the breeding kennel, and Jack and Trixie are hired to find the dog. Trixie, after finding out that the "kidnapping victim" is a dog, is annoyed at how completely seriously Jack treats the case... but their conversation reveals that Trixie herself usually has a soft spot for "lost pet" cases. We're treated to the following dialogue, with some hilarious imagery of Trixie searching for lost cats:
  Trixie: I can't believe you're taking this seriously.
  Jack: I can't believe you're not. I never used to do "lost cat" cases 'til I partnered up with you.
  Trixie: We solved most of those with a tin of sardines.
  Jack: (mock-calling) "Captain Ahaaaab"!
  Trixie: Will you never let me live that down?!
  Jack: You knocked on doors for four days, wore out a perfectly good pair of boots...
  Trixie: Captain Ahab was old Mrs. McBetty's only companion! These people have dozens of dogs!
  Jack: I'm not even gonna respond to that. I'm just gonna stand here feeling superior while you think about what you just said.
  Trixie: ...I hate you.

Season Three

Payback

• Trixie finds Jack unexpectedly in the office and pulls her gun on him. Jack has more important things on his mind than having a lethal weapon pointed at him.
  Jack: Put the safety back on the beretta, Trix. I died five seconds ago from a tragic lack of coffee.

Sabien's Law

• Sabien taking a sip of coffee from the pot Nelson just cleaned with vinegar on Jack's advice. Nelson...failed to infer a logical step at the end:
  Sabien: (upon tasting the coffee) Hot pickles and tar!
  Trixie: Well that's kind of an original curse. I like it.
  Sabien: That's what this tastes like. Apparently it didn't occur to Nelson to throw the vinegar away after he ran it through!
• Jack cons Sabien into letting Freddy out of custody to help Jack track down a highly-publicized diamond theft. Sabien only finds out when Trixie comes in an hour later wanting his help on the same case so she can beat Jack due to an unfortunate bet she walked into. Sabien is displeased.
  Sabien: (calmly menacing) Dixon, it's pretty clear I'm about to be very, very angry. In the interest of my shooting the right person, could you begin at the beginning?
• Jack, Freddy and Sergeant Nelson are tracking down a diamond thief only to be taken captive and tied up by their quarry. Nelson is threatening the thief with consequences for taking a police officer hostage, Freddy is pretending not to know Nelson and pleading ignorance of anything regarding the situation and Jack is just waiting for everyone to quiet down so he can talk some sense into the thief who is in way over his head.
• Jack finds the diamond first but immediately gets taken captive and tied up by the thief. As a result, when Trixie and Sabien burst in to save his Terrific Trio of Jack, Freddy and Nelson, Jack can only watch while Trixie walks over and smirkingly claims the diamond sitting just a few feet away from him on a table. Meaning Jack loses the bet and has to go out on a date with Trixie's cousin "with the face," (Sabien's words and apparently the nicest way anyone's ever put it).

Much Ado About Norman

• Jack and Trixie's client thinks his wife might be cheating on him and keeps swinging from righteous indignation to weepy self-recrimination in mid-sentence. Jack and Trixie are both at their wit's end, and Jack requests that if the client cannot actually achieve some balance between the two extremes, could he at least fake it for their sanity's sake.
• Jack cons Freddy into letting him use Old Betsy, Freddy's stolen police radio, to put out an alert for a man of their client's description, whom they're trying to find in a hurry, then realizes that he's put ideas into Freddy's head about new uses for his stolen radio.
• Trixie is trying to hunt down their possibly suicidal client and finds an entirely different romantically-suicidal guy preparing to jump off a bridge. She apologizes for interrupting him, correctly diagnoses the cause of his stunt, makes him laugh by flirting and proves to him that he really does want to live...by firing two shots past his head and threatening to shoot him for real unless he gets down from that bridge right now, which he quickly does.

Season Four

The Problem of the Perplexing Pastiche

• The Sherlock Holmes parody is funny enough on its own, with Trixie as a cheerfully smug Holmes, Jack as a wide-eyed Dr Watson and Sabien as a dim-witted but amiable Lestrade, with everyone speaking in hilariously bad English accents. The highlight, however, is in hearing the role given to Mighty King, the agency dog — in this story he's become "our landlady, Mrs King."
• Also a bit of a Fridge Brilliance Brick Joke here: In season two's "How Much Is That Gumshoe In The Window?", Jack gets a big kick out of quoting Sherlock Holmes and Trixie laments in the narration that she does not like being forced into the role of Doctor Watson. So in this episode, she gets her own back in her dream, when she imagines herself as Holmes and sticks Jack in the role as Watson.

Now Who's the Dummy

• The episode opens with a ventriloquist, Simon, asking for Jack and Trixie's help getting back his old dummy, Simple, from his protege, Leo. Throughout the scene, Simon's current dummy, Morty, keeps inserting himself into the conversation as if he's just another person in the room. Jack stays quiet as long as possible because he finds Trixie having to play nice in this irritating scenario funny.
• At the burlesque house Leo works at, Trixie gets so caught up flirting with the doorman she has to make herself remember why she's there in the first place.
• The confrontation between Simon and Leo becomes ridiculous as Leo is even worse about treating the dummies as people than Simon. For starters, when Leo pulls a gun on everyone Simple is the one who talks him down.
  Trixie: The puppet is reasoning with him!
• After that crisis is averted Morty holds everyone up because he doesn't want to be retired. Trixie notes Morty only has a cap gun tied to his hand. Jack notes the nervous man with the real gun is taking this seriously.

Season Five

Requiem for an Elf

• While going over the crime scene of what is believed to be the murder of Freddy the Finger, Sabien says he knows Jack was there because, as many times as he's booked Jack Justice over the years he recognizes Jack's fingerprints on sight. Trixie's opinion of this is that it falls somewhere neatly between "impressive" and "creepy". Trixie then reveals that the corpse they're looking at is not Freddy. How does she know? She has a very bad habit of watching mens' posteriors when they're leaving a room, even when she knows full well she won't like what she sees, and thus knows the body isn't Freddy because the body doesn't have Freddy's rear end. Sabien's opinion of this is that it is much more "creepy" than "impressive".
• Gangsters are shooting Santas, which is not funny, because they've been running numbers, courtesy of one of Frederick Josiah Hawthorne's schemes. What is funny is Freddy running to the Salvation Army for protection, not realizing that this Army doesn't actually have guns. What is hilarious is most of the major characters including Freddy, Sergeant Nelson (who's convinced Freddy is a ghost), Sabien, Alice, Jack and Trixie coming in quick succession to the Salvation Army office, with each new arrival resulting in the previous occupants hiding in various parts of the room. The officer present resigns himself to the madness after the first few rounds, even suggesting available hiding places as additional people show up. By the time the gangsters arrive wanting recompense for the scam, they are far outnumbered by Freddy and company, most of whom do have guns.

Journey's End

• Jack wakes up in a strange woman's home and quickly realizes that he's been shot, has a concussion and that she's called the police, which normally would be a good idea, except in this case the call would have been routed to the corrupt cop who shot him in the first place. And he starts flirting with his rescuer.
  • Additionally hilarious because Jack has frequently noted in the narration when there's a female client he'd like to ask out but doesn't for various reasons. When he finally spits it out, he's under the influence of a concussion.

Season Six

Hush Money

• Button-Down Theo decides that his current approach in wooing Trixie isn't working, so he should try something else. After he and Jack deconstruct Trixie's interest in men to see what's left, Theo observes that Trixie doesn't like Jack but she does respect him...
  Theo: (to Jack) So if I could be more like you, but less, you know, like you...
• Jack agrees to help Theo in his effort to banter more like Jack, not because he thinks it will work but because it will be fun to watch.
  Jack: (to Theo I will aid you in this endeavor as best I can. But only because I think it is a uniquely stupid idea, and I am not a very nice person.
• Jack tries to help Theo with his hard-boiled routine, Theo attempts to banter.
  Jack: Drink, Theo?
  Theo: Oh, no, I...
  Jack: Theo, drink?
  Theo: That is, if you have anything you didn't brew yourself behind the radiator.
  (after Trixie serves up the drink)
  Theo: (choked and strained) What exactly am I drinking? Bearing in mind that if it's cleaning solvents or lead fluid I don't really want to know.
  Trixie: You don't really want to know.

Cops and Robbers

• Sergeant Nelson is being lent out to robbery by Sabien and is assisting in a stakeout. He has the misfortune to be made by Freddy who is very careful not to direct Nelson's attention to a warehouse down the street at which nothing at all is certainly happening.
• Freddy does direct Nelson's attention to a suspicious character who turns out to be Button-Down Theo who's on a job but can't tell them what. Theo's mounting frustration with Freddy and Nelson's insistence that he's the lookout for the robbery gang and their refusal to accept any other explanation is both understandable and hilarious.
• Then Jack stops by, having arranged to go bowling with Freddy and finds Nelson, Freddy and a handcuffed Theo in an unmarked police car.
  Jack: Gentlemen, I'd love to stay and find out what in the name of God you think you're doing, but I really must dash home and wash my eyeballs so I can forget I ever saw any of this.
• And it culminates with Theo hiring Jack to get Trixie to call his client to come and prove that Theo is not a gang lookout. Which leads to the trio being joined in the car by Trixie and Theo's irate client, Alice. Turns out Alice was wondering why Freddy was spending so many evenings out and got suspicious.

Man's Best Friend

• The episode Man's Best Friend, largely narrated by King the dog, has a hilarious scene in which King tries to narrate/reconstruct a scene he wasn't present for:
  King: (narrating) From as near as I have been able to reconstruct the encounter within the shop, it must have happened something like this:
  *Ringing bell signals that Jack has entered the shop*
  Jack: Hello. Would some or all of you gentlemen like to hit me in the face?
  Stereotypical pirate: Arr, get him, me hearties!!
  *Pirates begin beating up Jack*

The Sky's the Limit

• The final episode of Season 6 is pretty much a Crowning Episode Of Funny, as it includes Jack, Trixie and Freddy all applying quite a bit of Self-Serving Memory to the case they're narrating. Jack and Trixie both indulge in a bit of Character Exaggeration (In Jack's narrative, Freddy is even whinier and more cowardly than usual; in Trixie's narrative, Sabien is only capable of talking in growls and screams) and Freddy turns himself into a brilliant, sophisticated Sherlock Holmes style genius with Jack as his dimwitted and wide-eyed assistant.
• It all culminates towards the end, when Jack and Freddy, having located the lost will they've spent the episode chasing, find themselves at gunpoint by the villain, Pete "The Pirate," with no hope of escape or rescue — and then they suddenly and mysteriously suffer from a weird memory loss as to how they did escape. After first running through scenes where they are rescued by Trixie and Alice (neither of whom were actually present), and Sabien recalls that the same building they were trapped in burned down around that time, Jack and Freddy agree on this version of events:
  Pete: (stilted, wooden acting) I am overcome with remorse for the way that I have treated you gentlemen.
  Jack: Think nothing of it, Pete, old chum.
  Pete: Also, my handling of this matter of the will... *theatrical sigh* I have been a first-class heel.
  Freddy: You mustn't blame yourself.
  Pete: No, no, please — take the will. Now, if you will excuse me, I will ease my pain by being careless with matches. Good day.

Season Seven

Mad Dogs and Ambulance Chasers

• Trixie, Jack and Sabien arrange for the take-down at the nicest restaurant in town, strictly so the client can treat Sabien to steak afterward as compensation for the trouble Sabien's going to get from upstairs after the day's work.

Some Kinda Lucky

• Freddy shows up at Dot's door looking for Jack. Dot tries to politely evade letting him in, saying that Jack isn't here, he hasn't arrived yet, actually he was here but already left, that the voice inside that Freddy hears and sounds a lot like Jack is her neighbor even though she lives in a bungalow that doesn't have a second occupant. Naturally it doesn't work, and Freddy ends up inside anyway.
• Trixie gets taken hostage in lieu of Freddy's capture and begins, in apparent seriousness, to flirt with one of her attractive captors by promising to kill him in sultry tones.
• After Jack and Trixie shoot all the gangsters in the immediate room, they begin arguing about how to escape the building filled with gangster mooks, only to be interrupted by Sabien entering the room, who points out dryly that if he was anyone else, they'd be dead now.
• When they ask how he and his officers knew to come here and clean out the gangsters, he explains that after dropping off Jack, Dot called the police "on account that she is not an idiot!"

Season Eleven

Date Night

• Trixie and Dot's relationship. Trixie is perfectly cordial to Dot (something we rarely see in any of Trixie's interactions), even as Trixie insults Jack and makes remarks about how he married out of his league. Dot, in turn, seems to like Trixie just fine and is neither offended nor in assent with Trixie's criticism of Jack. Somehow they appear to have reached an amicable accord since Dot is devoted to the one man Trixie does not want, which means Dot can safely leave Trixie with Jack and have no worries about his fidelity.
  • On the same note, Dot walks in right after Trixie has finished yelling at Jack about how stupid he is. Dot notes that her coworkers ask how she can stand to leave her husband alone all day with a beautiful woman, to which Dot replies that she's heard how they talk to each other when no one is listening.
• Jack tries to kill two birds with one stone by setting up a double date for Sabien, thereby getting him together with the woman he's interested in, at the restaurant of his client, thereby convincing the client that the police are looking into his concerns about a protection racket. It nearly ends in disaster, at least partly because Trixie tried to solve the same problem, without consulting Jack, by inviting the local mob to check out the place and make sure no unauthorized rackets are being run. Which is, as Sabien rightly calls her out, stupid.