Al Pacino's character Meyer Offerman tells the parable of the drowning man in this episode - an anecdote about a person who dies in a flood after refusing to be rescued by a car, a boat & a helicopter saying God will save him - once in heaven he asks God why he was allowed to die - God tells him he sent the car, boat & helicopter - what more did he want. This anecdote was also used in an episode of The West Wing - S1 E14 - Take This Sabbath Day (2000).
When Meyer opens the suspicious letter dropped off anonymously, he is shown with the same simultaneous zoom and dolly technique that Alfred Hitchcock invented for Vertigo.