At The Grey Gull, Duke tries to call Wade on his cellphone. Jennifer walks up, wearing a pretty floral dress. Duke approves, and she says she has a job interview to work for Vince and Dave's newspaper shop, the Haven Herald. Wade walks up and grabs a few spray bottles of cleaner, claiming he had spilled soda in his car. Duke angrily confronts him about stabbing Paul Krebs just to get a rush of Troubled blood. Wade claims it will never happen again and promises to leave town after he's figured out what to do with his life. He walks away, pointing out a barfly named Freddie who has fallen asleep on a stack of newspapers. Annoyed, Duke wakes Freddie up and tells him to go home.
Since Freddie is heavily drunk, Duke calls Nathan and Audrey, who lock him in the police station's drunk tank. Nathan admits that he doesn't like the Lexie DeWitt persona, but Audrey says she has to keep it up for the time being so The Guard doesn't force her to kill him. They check on Freddie to find him dead, his body scratched up and bitten as if by a wild animal.
At the morgue, Gloria and Vickie examine the body while Audrey and Nathan look on. Audrey states some observations, talking like a professional, but Nathan worriedly hushes her up, because Lexie is not supposed to know such things. Gloria says that the wounds don't have any saliva, dirt, or any other residue in them, and Freddie's clothes are undamaged even though most of the wounds are under them. In private, Nathan berates Audrey for almost blowing her cover and leaves.
Dwight is trying to find Jordan, having found her abandoned car earlier. He sees Duke getting some liquor for his bar and tells him about Freddie's death. Both figure that he was killed by a Trouble and Duke comments that Freddie had been obsessed with a nature show about grizzly bears that played on The Grey Gull's TV last night. Dwight says that Wade had been seen with Jordan lately.
Jennifer goes to the Haven Herald and meets its newspaper delivery girl, Carrie Benson. Jennifer asks for advice on her job interview, and Carrie says Dave has a fetish for girls in glasses, but Vince doesn't. Jennifer has her interview, hilariously putting on glasses whenever she faces Dave and taking them off when she faces Vince. While talking about herself, she says she was adopted and had never met her birth parents, and her adoptive parents passed away a few years ago. As a test, Dave asks her to run a background check on herself.
Duke is on his boat cooking when Wade walks in. Duke invites his brother to dinner, but Wade says he is busy. Duke pulls out Simon Crocker's journal and offers it to him, saying he deserves to see it. While leafing through the pages, Duke gets a paper cut. Seeing the blood, Wade gets a gleam in his eye, then knocks him down and absorbs it. His eyes silver, he draws a knife and slashes Duke's arm, then greedily absorbs more blood. Duke begs him to stop, but he raises the knife and plunges it toward his chest...
Duke wakes up from his nightmare, but finds that his paper cut and arm wound are still there. He calls Audrey and says he knows what happened to Freddie.
Wade goes to a party and seduces a tipsy woman with the circular maze tattoo on her arm. They go outside and make out, but he suddenly bites her lip, drawing blood. She asks what he thinks he's doing, and is shocked to find his eyes silver. He stabs her in the chest, saying he's doing her a favor by ending her curse.
Audrey walks through the police station and finds Nathan, naked. She tells him to put some clothes on, but he frantically says he has a test that he didn't study for, confusing her. He turns around to find her gone and himself in an empty classroom. He sits down and looks over the test sheet, but can't understand it. Audrey appears, dressed as a sexy teacher with glasses, and orders him to answer the question on the board. It reads:
- Who do you love?
a) Audrey Parker
b) Sarah Vernon
c) Lexie DeWitt
d) None of the above
e) All of the above
He says he needs time to think, but she says, "Times up!" and slaps his hand with a ruler, making him yell in pain. She says he's a naughty boy and needs to be punished. She orders him to stand up and bend over, then pulls out a paddle. She says this will be a lesson he never forgets, then swings the paddle.
Audrey wakes Nathan up from his dream, and he awkwardly covers up his erection with a pillow. She reports what Duke told her, and says he can't fall asleep. Nathan has a bruise where the ruler hit his hand. They figure that Freddie dreamed about bears and was attacked by them. They and Dwight go to the morgue, where three more dead bodies await. One is a man who looks like he was stung to death by bees, but he doesn't have any stingers or venom in his body. Another is a man whose teeth all fell out of his mouth, causing him to bleed to death. The third is the woman who Wade killed earlier. Gloria points out that the broken tip of a knife was found in her chest, so she was killed the old-fashioned way and not by the dream Trouble. She was dumped in an alley in a hurry, as if the killer panicked. Dwight identifies her was Sonia Weston, a member of The Guard. Dwight tells Nathan and Audrey to work on the dream Trouble while he works on Sonia's murder.
Duke finds Wade on his boat, washing a bloody knife in the sink. He claims he was gutting some fish he caught and points out a cooler full of fish. He proposes they have one last dinner as brothers before he leaves town. Duke asks about Jordan and he says she left town. Duke notices the tip of the knife is broken off, and Wade claims he was clumsy. Once Wade goes to wash off, Duke checks the cooler and discovers that none of the fish were gutted. He does find a fishing permit that Wade purchased.
Jennifer gives Vince and Dave the results of her background check on herself, which are rather large. She says she wasn't able to find out who her birth parents were. The Teagues brothers say she has the job and to report for work tomorrow. She leaves, and they start looking through the files.
Audrey, Duke, and Nathan go over what they know. The only thing they can think of about how the victims are connected is that they had touched a newspaper before they fell asleep. Nathan remembers that Dwight had touched a newspaper and calls him.
At the police station, Dwight looks over Jordan's phone records and finds several calls between her and Wade. He looks up and sees Wade walk past with a gun on his belt. Dwight calls out to him and tries to follow, but the gun comes back, floating in midair. Dwight backs away in horror, and the gun shoots him in the shoulder.
Dwight wakes up to Nathan's phone call. He has a bullet wound to the shoulder.
Dwight is taken to the hospital. The doctors assure Audrey that he has been given drugs that prevent dreams. As Nathan and Audrey leave to confront Vince and Dave about the newspapers, Duke stays behind and checks Dwight's notes on Sonia's murder. He sees a photo of the knife chip in her chest and finds it matches Wade's knife. He goes to the marina and talks to the boat rental guy, who confirms that Wade has been using a boat several times. After confirming that the boats have GPS, Duke rents the boat Wade used, bribing the man to keep quiet. Duke follows the boat's GPS route to find a small bay filled with dead bodies, including Jordan's.
Vince and Dave swear that they are not the cause of the dream Trouble. Audrey is still pretending to be Lexie, but Vince gets a little suspicious. The brothers say Carrie delivers all the newspapers.
Audrey and Nathan confront Carrie, who says she knows all about her family's Trouble: anything that happens to them in their dreams happens to them in real life. They tell her it is affecting others, and she is shocked as her family's Trouble has never affected others before. Audrey suggests if they can cure her, it will save the others. She agrees, and says there is a way for a Benson to be free of their Trouble, but it is very dangerous.
Audrey and Nathan take Carrie to Audrey's apartment. Carrie will go to sleep and lucid dream. If she can conquer her greatest fear, then she will be rid of her Trouble. Many of her family members attempted it in the past, but only her great-aunt succeeded. The rest failed and were killed in their dreams. She explains that she was mugged a few days ago by two thugs who threatened to kill her if she reported it to the police. She is sure they are her greatest fear. She is willing to risk her life to prevent more people from dying. Audrey assures that she will be right beside her as she dreams.
Wade offers a drunk member of The Guard a ride home, but Duke shows up and tells the man to leave. Duke angrily says he knows what Wade has been doing. Wade insists he is helping his victims by ridding their families of their curses, but Duke calls him out that he really only doing it for the rush of Troubled blood, making him nothing but a serial killer and a junkie. Wade warns that if Duke tries to stop him, he'll tell The Guard that Lexie is really Audrey. Duke pretends to surrender, then pistol-whips Wade when he lets his guard down, knocking him out cold.
Carrie finds herself in a dark forest. Her street clothes and shoes, which she was wearing when she went to sleep, are gone and replaced by a nightgown. She is attacked by the two muggers, who turn out to be the same thugs who threatened Lexie and William inside The Barn (see "Survivors"). She tries to run, but she sinks up to her ankles into the ground, leaving her trapped. She hears Audrey's voice telling her not to give up, but the thugs start to beat her up. In the real world, Audrey sees Carrie's lip split from a punch.
Vince and Dave call Jennifer into their office. They have found something disturbing in her files. They show her a picture of the social worker who arranged her adoption. He's Byron Howard, as in Agent Howard! They explain who he is, and she remembers his name mentioned a few times in the voices from The Barn. They wonder what his connection to Jennifer is.
Carrie is in bad shape, but Audrey continues to give her encouragement. She finally stands up the the muggers and declares she is not afraid of them. The muggers disappear and the dark forest is replaced by a beautiful, sunny meadow. She wakes up and Audrey says she did good. They find Nathan fell asleep, and is peacefully muttering about being spanked by his teacher and needing to stay after school, without suffering any real life injuries.
Jennifer goes to Duke's boat and finds Wade pounding on a closet door, claiming he locked himself in. She lets him out, and he instantly pins her down and grabs a knife. He pricks her neck and drinks some of the blood. His eyes turn silver, but he says he wants more. He prepares to kill her, but Duke arrives and knocks him away. Duke picks up the knife and absorbs some of Jennifer's blood. The two sliver-eyed brothers face off and Duke warns Wade that if he cannot control his Trouble, then he will have no choice but to kill him. Wade lunges and Duke stabs him in the chest, killing him. Duke gets covered with Wade's blood, but nothing happens and his eyes go back to normal.
Nathan and Audrey take Carrie to the hospital as she is battered and bruised from her dream ordeal. The doctors confirm that Dwight has made a full recovery. Audrey notices a glowing hand print on Carrie's back, but neither Carrie nor Nathan can see it. Carrie says one of the muggers put his hand there during the original assault, and she felt a weird sensation. Audrey wonders if the mugger's Trouble was what caused Carrie's to become contagious.
Duke sadly wraps up Wade's body and Jennifer says he had no choice. She thanks him for saving her. He reaches for her and she flinches. He puts a finger to her wound and covers it with her blood. Nothing happens, which confirms his suspicions: since he killed his brother, he negated his own Trouble. He warns her not to tell anyone what had happened this night, because he's become a murderer. She says that's not true, but he reminds her that she flinched away from him, because she was scared of a killer.
The next morning, Nathan goes to Audrey's apartment and says he can't handle pretending she is Lexie anymore. She says he didn't have a problem with her when she was Sarah (see "Sarah"). He insists that it has been hard on him, but she retorts that at least he doesn't have an identity crisis with many lifetimes of fake memories. She says from now on, their relationship will have to be strictly professional. He leaves, but comes back and says, "I don't care who you are or what you are. I love you." They kiss and start having sex.
In the distance, the two thugs watch over the apartment.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Carrie is probably the only Troubled of the week to avert the trope. By this point, Audrey and Nathan are quite used to confronting a Troubled person and using very padded language and do so here as well, but Carrie comes right out and admits that she's Troubled, as is her entire female line.
- Armor Is Useless: Dwight's bulletproof vest did nothing to save him from the gunshot he received in his dream, in which he wasn't wearing it.
- Armor-Piercing Question:
- Audrey in Nathan's dream quizzes him on who he loves.
- Duke tries for this after killing Wade. When Jennifer asserts that he is nothing like his brother, Duke asks her, if that's true, why she flinched when he reached for her to check the cut on her neck. It struck a lot of fans as
Informed Wrongness, since Jennifer was just attacked and nearly killed, and her response was most likely involuntary and indiscriminate.
- Blackmail Backfire: When Duke finds out about Wade's murder spree, Wade attempts to blackmail him for his silence by threatening to go to the Guard with The Reveal that Lexie is really Audrey. Wade did not anticipate that his brother would have no problem knocking him out and locking him up.
- Blatant Lies: Audrey's thinly-veiled cover stories whenever she acts a little too much like a seasoned police officer and not enough like a seasoned bartender."Lexie:" Can we make a mold of the bite marks so we can figure out what kind of critter this is?Gloria: Wow, you're really picking up on this police stuff, huh?"Lexie:" ...I watch a lot of CSI: Miami, it's pretty much my favorite show.
- Brought Down to Normal: Duke kills Wade, which ends their family Trouble. When Duke touches the cut Wade left on Jennifer's neck, the blood is not absorbed and nothing happens.
- Call-Back: Audrey wonders to Nathan why he has a problem with the Lexie persona when he didn't have a problem with Sarah.
- Catapult Nightmare: Duke wakes from a nightmare about Wade killing him this way.
- Cement Shoes: Duke finds Wade's dumping ground for his victims, weighed down and submerged underwater in a shallow lagoon.
- Confession Triggers Consummation: Nathan and Audrey in the final scene.
- Continuity Nod: Duke gets him, Audrey, and Nathan coffee, and tells Nathan he made sure to get his served lukewarm.
- Deadpan Snarker: Gloria takes the cake in this episode.Gloria: Animal bites are usually a bitch to clean. They leave behind a lot of bacteria, saliva—Intern, can you bring in the trace evidence?Vicky: But there was no trace evidence.Gloria: Exactly. You can go.
- Death Seeker: Wade is overwhelmed by what he has become, and attacks Duke so Duke will kill him. It works.
- Department of Child Disservices: While Jennifer is Happily Adopted, it's revealed that Agent Howard impersonated a social worker to arrange her adoption and the reason why is unknown, which is definitely suspicious.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Wade's attack on Jennifer is framed uncomfortably more like sexual assault than any of his other victims, including the female Guard member he lured away from a party to make out with and then stab. There is no clear reason given in the narrative for why this scene was shot this way.
- Dream Episode: The Trouble of the week involves being hurt or killed by your nightmares.
- Dream Sequence: Duke, Nathan, and Carrie get one.
- Drunk on the Dark Side: Wade has truly Jumped Off The Slippery Slope, and is now killing random Troubled people for the Power High.
- Fantastic Racism: Wade sounds an awful lot like the Rev in this episode when he justifies killing a Troubled woman because she is "cursed." However, it's unclear whether or not he actually believes this, or he's just saying it to have a better motive than Addictive Magic, since he never voices this opinion to anyone else.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- The fishing permit that Wade buys is full of erroneous information, which may account for Duke's reaction to it. It puts his address as Boston and his birthdate as 1985, which contradicts previous episodes that states he lives in New York and that Duke (age seven in 1983) is the younger brother.
- Duke writes down his schedule for Audrey for investigative purposes. He is very specific. He's also adopted Lexie's nickname of "Cheekbones" for Nathan in it.
- Go Through Me: Wade's fate probably would have been different if he hadn't chosen to attack Jennifer. Duke throws him across the room and steps between them, telling Wade he won't let him hurt her and killing him when he lunges toward her again.
- Happily Adopted: Jennifer, which is why she's "never been arrested or had a credit score under 650."
- Hates My Secret Identity: Nathan makes no secret he's not fond of the Lexie persona, which causes tension between him and Audrey.
- If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Duke struggles with this, though after he's killed Wade. His guilt spiral is exacerbated by Jennifer flinching when he reaches for her, though it lasts only for a moment and has nothing to do with him personally.
- I'm Not Afraid of You: How to stop the dream Trouble.
- I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: Several characters comment on the fact that Carrie's dream Trouble, which was once confined to her and her family, is now affecting others.
- Love Confession: Nathan makes a heated one when Audrey tries to push the Reset Button on their relationship.Nathan: I don't care who you are. Or what you are. I love you. (cue Big Damn Kiss)
- Moral Myopia: Nathan, per usual, to the point that he accuses Audrey of being unsympathetic to how hard this situation has been on him. She's spent the series dealing with an amnesiac identity crisis, got taken into a magical barn, and then spit back out only to be told she has to kill the man she loves, but Nathan's had a rough time. Audrey calls him out on it.
- Murder Makes You Crazy: Wade is slowly losing his grip on his sanity, though this is just as much from the Addictive Magic as it is from the actual murders.
- Never Sleep Again: People are dying in their dreams, so the logical solution is to not let anyone sleep. In the entire town of Haven. Nathan mentions that HPD is driving around town with sirens and air horns to make sure no one can sleep.
- "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Nathan's, in which he is naked in the police precinct, apparently late for a test he forgot to study for.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Audrey and Nathan have a heated conversation about their relationship after being at odds the entire episode about continuing with the Lexie persona. Nathan wants to know what their status is as a couple now that he knows she's back, and Audrey claims "too much has happened" and they should just be professional. Nathan angrily stomps out of the room, before coming back, confessing his love, and kissing her.
- Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Jennifer can't decide whether she should wear glasses or not to her interview at The Herald. She's later told to wear them when she's look at Dave, but not wear them when she's looking at Vince...and that's exactly what she does.Jennifer: Which look says "I no longer hear voices and am ready for steady employment"?
- Percussive Prevention: When Wade attempts to blackmail Duke into hiding his murders, Duke knocks him out and locks him in a room on the Cape Rouge. Unfortunately, Jennifer didn't know that and accidentally lets him out.
- Relationship Upgrade: Nathan and Audrey
- Ship Tease: For Duke and Jennifer
- Shout-Out:
- "Lexie" claims that CSI: Miami is her favorite show and is why she's picking up on so much investigative know-how.
- Sibling Murder: Duke kills Wade after he attacks Jennifer.
- Smart Cop, Dumb Cop: Dwight's phone conversation with Stan; he's trying to figure out why Jordan would leave her car behind if she's leaving town, and by his annoyed response, Stan's suggestion was "have you tried calling her?"
- Turn Out Like His Father: Despite Simon Crocker choosing Duke as the one to carry on the family legacy of killing Troubled people, it's Wade who is now explicitly doing so. When killing a Troubled woman with a guard tattoo, he reassures her that he is doing her a favor, because she is "cursed."
- Wham Shot:
- Carrie's muggers are the two guys with William from the Barn.
- After the Trouble is resolved, it's revealed Carrie has a hand print on her back that only Audrey can see.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Audrey verbally smacks Nathan down when he insists she doesn't know "how hard this has been" on him with the reminder that at least he is one person and he knows who that one person is, unlike her multiple reincarnations that come with memory loss.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: The victims of this week's dream Trouble are injured in the real world the same way they are in their dreams. For some, this is fatal.
