Only Sin Deep
Sylvia Vane (Lea Thompson) is a prostitute obsessed with two things: getting into the city's wealthy elite, and keeping herself beautiful forever. She robs and kills her fellow hooker Raven's pimp, then takes his jewelry to a pawn shop filled with strange artifacts. The broker, Joe (Britt Leach), turns her away, suspecting the items to be stolen, right as a sobbing old woman barges in and feebly tries to attack him. Hatching a new idea, Joe offers Sylvia $10,000 in exchange for her beauty, giving her four months to pay it back with interest. She accepts the deal, allows him to make a plaster mold of her face, and leaves with the cash in hand. After getting a makeover and a new wardrobe, Sylvia attends a high-class cocktail party and draws the attention of wealthy playboy Ronnie Price (Brett Cullen).
Four months later, Sylvia is living with Ronnie, reveling in the gifts he's been lavishing on her. However, she notices wrinkles appearing on her face, which throws the doctor she sees for a loop. Remembering the deal she made with Joe, she hurries to his shop, throwing out another woman who Joe was fancying. She's ready to pay him off and reclaim her beauty, but Joe tells her that she's one day past her deadline. Holding him at gunpoint, she demands that he name his new price, to which he offers to return her beauty for $100,000. Sylvia rushes back to Ronnie's office and frantically ransacks the place, gathering up all the jewelry he gave her. Ronnie, coming home from a business trip, no longer recognizes Sylvia and tries to call the police, to which Sylvia shoots him dead.
Finding the shop closed, Sylvia breaks into the back room, where she finds an exact duplicate of her original self, dressed in a wedding gown and lying in a coffin. Joe emerges from the back room to reveal that the corpse is that of his long-dead wife, having used the beauty of Sylvia and all his other female customers to restore the body. He offers to return Sylvia's beauty, but shows her a newspaper that declares her the prime suspect in Ronnie's murder. Overhearing a conversation between Joe and a local cop about Ronnie's death, all the evidence she left behind at the scene, and the fact that she's getting sent to the electric chair should she ever show her face again, Sylvia tearfully leaves the jewelry behind and exits with the mold Joe made of her face. On the street, she bumps into Raven (who rebukes her as an old hag) and drops the mold, which shatters on the pavement. Never able to be rich or beautiful again, Sylvia pitifully cries over the pieces of the mold, fruitlessly trying to put it back together as the world goes on around her.
Tropes:
- Anti-Villain: Joe uses voodoo to rob women of their beauty, but only so he can use it to restore the corpse of his long-dead wife.
- Asshole Victim: Sylvia’s life is ruined, but she deserves it for being a thieving murderer.
- Bait-and-Switch: At first, it seems like Joe was so horrified by Sylvia's aged face that he was willing to give her back her beauty for free. It's made clear that he isn't really planning on it:Joe: Sure. Sure! (steps to the left) I could do that! I could give you your beauty back!... if that's what you really want.(the camera pans down to reveal he's holding a newspaper, reporting Sylvia's murder of Ronnie)
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Sylvia sells her beauty so she can be rich, but she ends up regretting it four months later, when her rapid aging finally begins.
- Body Horror: After four months, Sylvia's face starts rapidly aging over the course of days.
- Brainless Beauty: Sylvia is such a case, being drop-dead gorgeous while lacking in intelligence. By the end of the episode, she’s no longer beautiful.
- Brooklyn Rage: Sylvia speaks in a deep, over-the-top Brooklyn accent, notably when she's enraged or being serious.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal example comes from the gun Sylvia swipes from Raven's pimp early in the episode. She uses it to kill Ronnie near the end and stupidly leaves it behind in his penthouse, fingerprints all over it. The cops are able to recognize her prints from her arrest record, so she'll be sent to the chair when she reveals herself again.
- Downer Ending: After losing all her money and clumsily leaving behind evidence tying her to her rich boyfriend's murder, Sylvia can never get her beauty back. She steals the plaster mold Joe made of her beauty, which can change her face back to normal, but if she does so, showing her face anywhere in public will send her to the electric chair. To top it off, she drops the mold and it shatters on the sidewalk, dooming her to be ugly for the rest of her life.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Sylvia and Raven spot Ronnie heading into his building at the beginning of the episode, walking his latest lover inside.
- Femme Fatale: Sylvia, who desires above all else to be rich and beautiful forever, not caring who she has to kill in the process.
- Foreshadowing:
- Raven's pimp tells Sylvia, while threatening her, that a pretty young thing like her could "get ugly real fast" with that attitude of hers.
- After killing Raven's pimp with his own gun, Sylvia takes said gun and just leaves him in the alley. Both of these attributes come into play at the end, when she does the same to Ronnie and is screwed over when she forgets to clean up any evidence of the murder, especially the gun.
- During his and Sylvia's first meeting, an old lady barges into Joe's shop and feebly tries to attack him. When it's revealed that he's been buying women's beauty to preserve his wife's corpse, it becomes apparent that she was one of his customers who missed their deadline.
- The woman wears a veil to cover her aged face, much like Sylvia does later in the episode.
- Genre Savvy: Joe spends the whole episode one step ahead of Sylvia:
- He can tell that the jewelry she tries to pawn off on him, which she robbed from Raven's pimp before she shot him dead, is "hot" and refuses to take it from her.
- Then, when she misses her deadline, he offers to give back her beauty for $100,000, leading her to rob Ronnie's place of its valuables and shoot him dead in the process.
- Finally, when she begs Joe to give her back her beauty, he reveals a newspaper headlining her murder of Ronnie, ultimately screwing her over.
- Gold Digger: Besides maintaining her beauty, Sylvia's lifelong goal is to get off the streets and marry a wealthy playboy to live off his riches.
- If I Had a Nickel...: From Raven to Sylvia:Raven: You know somethin', honey, if I had a dollar for every time you stood in the mirror admirin' your face, I could get off these streets and retire to the Bahamas.
- I Love the Dead: Joe uses the beauty he gets from his female customers to preserve the corpse of his dead wife. He's even seen sweet-talking the corpse, still in the wedding gown and clutching a bouquet, telling her that he can't wait for her to be beautiful again.
- Just a Kid: At one point, Sylvia tells the doctor she visits that she's only 21 years old, yet she's spent most of that time as a freelance hooker on the street,
- Karma Houdini: Even though he claims it to be for a noble cause, Joe gets away with swindling Sylvia and countless other women out of their beauty, and is free to continue doing so by the episode's end.
- Large Ham: Sylvia, with her thick Brooklyn accent.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After murdering Raven's pimp and Ronnie in the name of greed and vanity, Sylvia is forced to live with being broke and ugly to avoid being arrested and sent to the chair for Ronnie's murder. For someone as greedy and vain as her, this is considered a Fate Worse than Death.
- Makeover Montage: Sylvia has one when she uses the money she gets from Joe to doll herself up and slip into Ronnie's party.
- Meaningful Name: Sylvia’s last name, Vane, easily foreshadows her incredible vanity.
- Mirror-Cracking Ugly: In the prologue, the Crypt Keeper looks into a mirror and asks it, "Who's the fearest of them all?" The mirror promptly shatters.
- Morton's Fork: By the end of the episode, Sylvia can either get her beauty back and get sent to the electric chair for killing Ronnie, or she stays ugly and alone the rest of her life to evade the police. Either way, it's unbearably horrific for a woman like her. The episode makes the choice for her by making her bump into Raven and dropping the mold of her beauty Joe made, leaving her stuck with the latter option.
- Rapid Aging: After pawning her beauty, this happens to Sylvia's face days after the four-month deadline lapses. By the time she kills Ronnie, she looks so old that he doesn't even recognize her anymore.
- Sadistic Choice: The episode ends with one for Sylvia: she either lives without her beauty for a better chance of eluding the police, or she gets her beauty back and risks getting tracked down and sentenced to death for Ronnie's murder, either choice being highly undesirable for her. To twist the knife further, she drops the mold that can change her face back to normal and it shatters to pieces, taking the choice out of her hands and forcing her to remain ugly.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Raven's pimp, who Sylvia kills for his jewelry, which she tries to pawn off to Joe, leading her to discover his "beauty bargain". She also swipes his gun to kill him, and later Ronnie, leaving it covered in her fingerprints for the police to find.
- Time Skip: When Ronnie and Sylvia meet for the first time, the episode skips ahead four months later, where Sylvia has been living with him... and notices wrinkles appearing on her face.
- Too Dumb to Live: After looting Ronnie's penthouse for its valuables, Sylvia makes no effort to clean up the scene, get rid of her gun, or wipe her fingerprints off it. The cops are instantly able to piece everything together, and since Sylvia already has an arrest record for solicitation, she'll be charged with murder and get sent to the electric chair whenever she shows her face again. Joe's police officer friend Mac, who investigated the scene, even lampshades that their culprit is no rocket scientist, but he can certainly understand why that wouldn't normally be a problem for someone like her:Mac: With a face like that, who needs brains?
- Uncle Pennybags: Ronnie uses his wealth to shower Sylvia with jewels, furs, and other luxuries, and the two meet when he's hosting a lavish party, even ditching his latest lover to talk to her, which she brings up. Raven even comments in the opening scene that every night is a party night for him.
- Vanity Is Feminine: Raven, one of Sylvia's fellow hookers, sarcastically comments on the amount of time she spends preening herself in front of mirrors. Sylvia shrugs it off and assumes that this is the natural state of affairs for someone as beautiful as herself.
- Villain Protagonist: Sylvia is a shallow, greedy, selfish, vain, egotistical, gold-digging prostitute who robs and murders two people.
- We Used to Be Friends: By the end of the episode, neither Ronnie nor Raven recognize Sylvia, the latter calling her an "old, ugly, triflin' bitch."
