Fitz and Enoch try to hide out in a galactic casino, while Simmons searches for him but complications arise when they encounter a hunter looking for Fitz.
Tropes:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: The casino has an alien variation of Blackjack where players put themselves up as collateral. Losing means being sold into slavery. Getting 14 means you get an arrow to the chest.
- Accidental Aiming Skills: Daisy tries to fire at the three hunters, only for it to bounce off the wall. And hit two of them.
- Alien Blood: Crepitolian blood is 75% sulfur, which translates to it being yellow, smelling really bad, and most importantly being highly flammable, which Fitz uses to their advantage to escape the Blackjack room.
- Breather Episode: Arguably the first episode in the entire series that is played almost entirely for laughs, at least until The Stinger. We have an almost-comical Wretched Hive in Kitson, half of the cast tripping balls throughout the entire episode, and Enoch's ridiculous existential crisis which would almost be a tear jerker if he wasn't being such an over-the-top drama queen.
- Cassandra Truth: Davis asserts that the Hunter Chronicom is "some sort of shape-shifting, contortionist assassin". He's right, but since he's also high as a kite on alien puffs at the time, Piper isn't inclined to take him seriously.
- Casino Episode
- Deadly Game: In the high-stakes blackjack game, getting 14 causes a dart launcher to pop up from the table and kill the unlucky player.
- Drunken Master: Despite being stoned out of her skull, Daisy manages to put up a winning fight against the Hunters.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Even high on the alien shrooms, Daisy and Jemma realize that if they can hear a high-pitched sound and the aliens can't, it probably means Fitz is at the casino.
- The Extremist Was Right: Despite her borderline irrational fixation and the weak evidence she used to reach the conclusion, Jemma turns out to be right about where Fitz was going.
- Fingore: When the dock worker who encountered Fitz and Enoch proves to be uncooperative and hostile, Daisy breaks two of his fingers by quaking them, quickly changing the man's tune.
- Forgot to Mind Their Head: After spending 20 minutes huddled under a gambling table, when Daisy and Jemma finally decides to move out, they both first clonk their heads under the table. Understandable considering they're still tripping.
- Friendship Moment:
- Played for Laughs when a drugged-up Daisy goes on about how she feels very close to Jemma... only to realize that she's talking to an alien gambler, who promptly hits on her. Played straight when Daisy and Jemma, despite being wacked out of their minds, get a moment to tearfully express their affection for each other while huddled under a gaming table.
- Fitz manages to snap Enoch out of his Heroic BSoD by admitting that the Chronicom has grown on him throughout their journey.
- Foreshadowing: Enoch warns Fitz against eating some alien food that's not fit for Terran consumption. Later, Daisy, Jemma, and Davis eat them. Turns out, to humans, they're the extraterrestrial equivalent of psychedelic shrooms. It's later implied they are intended to have this effect on their regular consumers, too, just not so extreme, with one alien thinking Jemma had simply had too many of them.
- Gambler's Fallacy: In order to demonstrate how superdeduper smart his computer brain is, Enoch trips and falls directly in the stupid pile, saying that a game of Space!Roulette had not landed on a certain whatsit for "over thirty rotations".
- Heroic BSoD: Upon learning that he's been decommissioned by his fellow Chronicoms, Enoch quickly spirals into an existential crisis.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Piper and Davis angrily rail against Simmons's recklessness, going so far as to suggest that she be locked up for the voyage back to Earth. They're not wrong that she risked all of their lives on weak evidence. That she turned out to be right was little more than luck.
- Kick the Dog: Jemma calling Piper and Davis cowards was really uncalled for.
- Loophole Abuse: Enoch is able to bypass a ban on androids, synths, etc. because technically he's not one, and his non-organic components are shielded against scans. At least at first.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Jemma loses her shoes in the bar while high on the alien drugs. She remains in her socks for the remainder of the episode.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Jemma's desire to find Fitz is clouding her judgement. Not only is she putting herself and her teammates in danger, but she's also willing to leave S.H.I.E.L.D. and search space herself if that's what it takes to find her husband. Especially so when one considers that this version of Fitz never actually married her.
- Mushroom Samba: The alien treats that Daisy, Jemma and Davis snack on result in, among others things, Jemma hallucinating a tiny Fitz dressed in a monkey costume dancing on the tip of her straw.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: By sending the Controller out of an airlock, Fitz and Enoch are now on the most wanted list... although it's subverted in that it's the mysterious Time Police looking for them.
- "No. Just… No" Reaction: Fitz flatly refuses Enoch's idea to become whores at the local brothels for quick cash. Jemma says she'd rather find him dead than there, which she and Daisy share a laugh about.
- Not So Above It All: Enoch actually seems like he's having fun gambling at the casino, at least until one of the locals suckers him out of his winnings.
- Only Sane Woman: Being the only crew member to not ingest any of the alien hallucinogens, poor Piper is stuck babysitting Davis and contending with his drug-induced antics onboard the Zephyr One.
- Punch-Clock Villain: When the thuggish alien in charge of the Absurdly High-Stakes Game sees Jemma coming out of her high, he sternly but gently tells her that she's too good for a place like Kitson, and to lay off the alien drugs.
- Shout-Out:
- The whole episode is one to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, complete with Daisy, Jemma, and Davis getting high on what are basically alien shrooms.
- An artificial life form having an encyclopedic knowledge of a certain game of chance, but nevertheless being totally blindsided by the concept of bluffing? Sounds familiar.
- Skilled, but Naive: Enoch is an exceptional gambler, except that he's never heard of bluffing, and thus is easily scammed out of his winnings.
- Special Edition Title: The title is set in space.
- Spock Speak: "It would be safe to assume that I am, yes, having fun."
- The Stinger: Sarge casts some sort of energy net over Earth to find targets he and his team can attack.
- Take That!: After hearing the inspector's very unflattering description of Kitson, Piper snarks that it sounds like Florida.
- Time Police: A "hunter" is looking for Fitz for "tampering with the Universe", since he died last year on Earth and thus "shouldn't be here". It turns out that said hunter is a Chronicom like Enoch who's after them for messing with time.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Jemma is annoyed with Piper and Davis's anger at her recklessness, even calling them "cowards" for being unwilling to take the extreme risks that she's prepared to take. They, along with Daisy, are the only ones who have stuck by Jemma up to this point.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Daisy and the others rightfully call Jemma out for endangering herself and her teammates all on a hunch, though she seems Easily Forgiven when said hunch proves to be correct.
- Wretched Hive: Kitson is described as having only two places: a casino and a brothel. If you're not in one, you're in the other. When Fitz is said to be there, the inspector tells Daisy and Jemma that what happens there is like a contagion... and burns.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Jemma and Fitz are reunited... only for the Hunter Chronicom to come and kidnap Fitz before Jemma's very eyes.
