Bill's barbeque sauce becomes a hit with the neighborhood, and Buck Strickland sees dollar signs in it. But Cousin Gilbert isn't keen on letting Bill sell a family recipe.
Tropes:
- Bathos: Gilbert's unflinching Cajun pride, impeccable dress and flowery manner of speech are at odds with Bill's extremely dumpy lifestyle, as well as with everyone he encounters in Arlen.Gilbert: What would you have done with your streetwalker's gold, eh? Bought more of... these? [Gilbert picks up a box of snacks from Bill's table] Double-stuffed... chocolate sandwich cookies!? J'ACCUSE!
- Bittersweet Ending: Gilbert doesn't relent on letting Bill sell the sauce, and the Dauterive line is seemingly doomed to die out. But Bobby turns out to have a knack for sauce making, which means Bill has something to pass down and be proud of.
- The Dreaded Toilet Duty: When the entire friend group is called together to clean Bill's house ahead of the reunion, Peggy and Nancy are assigned the task of cleaning his bathroom. Both women react with shock and horror and attempt to volunteer for manual labor instead.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Violetta and Aunt Esme are confirmed by Gilbert to have died in the interim since Bill's visit to New Orleans.
- Embarrassing Hobby: Hank sees Bobby's talent for cooking as this. After initially expressing shame and disappointment at Bobby successfully baking a cake — with oven mitts, no less — he immediately pivots to pride when Bobby's talents transfer to barbecue.
- Fair-Weather Friend: After a probably intentional diss from Dale about his loneliness, Bill begins weeping about his lot in life. Dale and Boomhauer run off before Hank can change the subject, leaving him to vent to Hank for upwards of an hour.
- Family Disunion: Inverted. Bill tries to gather the extended members of his surviving family for a last-ditch family reunion. One person, his cousin Gilbert, shows up, then informs him that every other member of his family tree has either died, been institutionalized, been infertile, or been an impostor all along.
- Family Honor: Bill can't bring himself to market his barbecue recipe, or its sauce, without his cousin's permission, crediting its creation to the Dauterive family. His cousin, Gilbert, refuses to allow it on the same grounds, claiming that the family's honor would be tarnished by marketing its legacy.
- Gratuitous French: Bill refers to his uncle's cooking advice in Cajun French. Gilbert also lapses into French when it would be suitably dramatic for him to do so."Shortcuts taste like un chien mart!
- Humiliation Conga: Gilbert humiliates Bill in front of his friends and new investors by crashing a party. When Bill turns to drinking and crying in the face of his humiliation, Gilbert doubles down, screaming at Bill for several hours until Hank steps in to intervene.Hank: You keep talking about the "Dauterive pride," but right now all I see are a crying drunk and an angry sissy. If you've got any real pride, stop kicking a man while he's down.
- Hypocrite: Gilbert objects to Bill marketing the family's traditional barbecue sauce, saying that the Dauterives are proud landowners. Gilbert had just finished selling off the last of the family's estates to be developed into a water park to fund his own pet project.
- Impoverished Patrician: The Dauterive family once boasted a sprawling New Orleans estate and a wide, loving family. By the time of this episode, the only remnants are Bill and Gilbert, two childless bachelors, whose family estate had been sold to an ignoble purpose, either a catfish farm or a water park.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Bobby is denied leftovers after he comes out about not helping Bill build the barbeque. He does at least apologize for it, which Bill accepts.
- Macho Masochism: Hank dismisses Bobby's insistence that cooking and woodworking are similarly crafty and inventive hobbies partly due to the fact that baking seems less inherently dangerous.Hank: You can't cut your finger off with a pastry bag!
- Nice to the Waiter: Gilbert is a cruel and arrogant piece of work, but when approached by an incoherent homeless guy at the bus station, he strikes up a compassionate conversation and offers him a handkerchief.
- Silly Simian: Bill's family tradition is to light fires using pages of good news from the paper. Bobby and Bill both agree that a monkey making it safely to the space station is good enough to use.
- Sissy Villain: Gilbert isn't just at odds with Bill's newfound ambition, he's also a catty, spiteful wretch. He makes open passes at Buck Strickland, to the latter's great discomfort, and hisses like a cornered cat when thrown out of Bill's house.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: In his previous appearance Gilbert was portrayed as an eccentric but basically harmless dandy. Here he's an outright jerk who bullies Bill into taking his barbecue sauce off the market.
- Supreme Chef: Bill's barbecue is fantastic, with the Hills fighting among themselves for the leftovers, both in part to his own skill in the kitchen and to his old family recipe.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: While we do get explanations for the fates of Aunt Esme and Violetta, we never find out what happened to Rose and Lily, Bill's cousins-in-law. It's possible the pair are alive, but Gilbert never mentioned them because they aren't blood kin.
