A man patrols a neighborhood he's been watching as a target for theft. He knows he can sneak in through the unlatched gate of a particular house, but he's disappointed to find that the interior of the house is messier—and probably less wealthy—than he thought, and the dog inside is aggressive. Meanwhile, another man sits in a writers' meeting and debates how to execute his first network pilot. He writes for a sci-fi show about bringing time-traveling murderers to justice in the present day. He's writing about Emmett Diggs, an innocent Black man from the 1940s. The team of writers debates a storyline where Diggs goes on a killing spree; the man doesn't want to criminalize Diggs for no reason, but his boss insists. Elsewhere, the writer's wife drives home, where she is supposed to meet an exterminator. She muses on her financial meticulousness, which has allowed her and her husband to break into the upper-middle class. By the time the burglar has evaded the dog and entered the upstairs office and master bedroom, the woman enters the front door. The burglar pretends he's part of the cleaning team, while the actual exterminator company calls the woman to let her know her appointment needs to be rescheduled. In the confusion, the burglar tries to leave the house with a bag of the woman's jewelry. The woman, who has not been suspicious until now, tries to wrench the bag away, but the burglar punches her in the face and slips out as Emmett Diggs enters the house through the back door, sees the conflict, and tries to wave to the burglar in solidarity.