Jessica’s former writing student, Maggie McCauley has found a job writing a Hard Boiled Detective Show, Beat Cop in Hollywood. When a sleazy studio executive threatening to cancel the show ends up murdered, there are suspects galore, and Maggie must imitate her old mentor to try and solve the case.
Tropes:
- Actor/Role Confusion: Bert does this to himself, believing his role in Beat Cop not only makes him qualified to assist in the investigation, but that he should be above suspicion as a fellow law-enforcement professional.
- All for Nothing: Butler killed Carmody to keep him from cancelling his show for a second time, presumably unaware that he'd already been stopped in his tracks.
- Big Fun: Burnsie the fat, pleasant security guard.
- Bottomless Magazines: When Bert complains a scene feels artificial, Dana points out they're in a show where their characters shoot a gun 24 times before reloading.
- Cacophony Cover Up: The killer uses the gunshots onscreen during the screening of a TV show to drown out the sound of their actual gunshots.
- Casting Gag: Possible Carmody, given that his character is practically the antithesis of actor Gary Sandy's character from WKRP in Cincinnati.
- Cool Old Lady: Harriet DuVall, a studio stockholder and chairwoman of the board, who Brian goes to in order to intimidate Carmody into abandoning his plans to cancel Beat Cop, although Carmody refuses to back down.
- Da Chief: The character Andy plays In-Universe.
- Drunk with Power: Julie seems like a reasonable Nice Girl as Carmody’s Number Two but gets a bit more like him once he’s dead and she has his job.
- False Reassurance: Heavily implied to be the case with Brian's assurances that he'll help Maggie get her other show idea, a romance, produced someday.
- Flat "What": Studio executive Brian Thursden's reaction to hearing Carmody has never even watched the well-reviewed, top-rated show he intends to cancel.
- Friend on the Force: Vincent Palermo to Maggie, although their relationship isn't without problems and is complicated a bit by the romantic sparks between them.Vincent: I love you like a sister, Maggie, but you didn’t do me any favors when you told the world I was the inspiration for Beat Cop.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: Andy, who starred as a college professor in a hit show 15 years ago which was also cancelled by Carmody, with Andy reflecting it would have been his
Star-Making Role if Carmody hadn't pulled the plug. - Improbable Age: Julie wants co-star Dana to star as a neurosurgeon in a medical drama even though she’s not old enough to have graduated medical school.
- Insane Troll Logic: Bert protests a scene where his character asks for a ballistics expert to match some bullets to a crime scene due to feeling that means the ballistics expert solves the case instead of his character.
- No Sympathy: Brian is not very upset to find out Carmody died and instead focuses on trying to get his successor Julie into not cancelling the show.
- Police Are Useless: Completely averted for once. Although Vincent seems to spend far too long suspecting Bert and convinced he's guilty, he solves the case independently of Maggie, at about the same time that she does, by finding a piece of evidence with the killer's fingerprints near the murder scene and arrives to arrest the killer when he might have posed a threat to Maggie's life.
- The Prima Donna: Bert Rodgers is a male version, always obsessing about getting the central focus of the show and chafing at any perceived disrespect. Maggie and her secretary even call him "The Big Ham" behind his back.
- Sex for Services: Dana half-seriously asks Maggie who she has to sleep with to get off the show and get away from Bert's antics.
- Smug Snake: Carmody the executive is fully convinced he knows which shows are good and have the most appeal without ever watching any of them.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Carmody tells Julie, "Don't think, that’s my job" and to just stand around looking pretty and taking dumb meetings.
- Write Who You Know: In-Universe, Maggie based Beat Cop on Vincent, who is not impressed.
