When Chris is looking for Ace he says, "You better be sick or dead." This is a direct quote from Shawshank Redemption (1994) when the guard is looking for Andy Dufresne.
The Mellow Tiger Bar is also a setting in the Stephen King story Needful Things. In this episode, when "Pop" Merrill is inside the bar he makes a comment about "making bad deals with the wrong fella", which is likely also a subtle callback to Needful Things.
Andy Dufresne from "Shawshank Redemption" was played by Tim Robbins, who plays "Pop" Merrill in this series.
The title of season 2's first episode, "Let the River Run," is a reference to the title of and lyrics from the 1988 Carly Simon song. First recorded for the movie Working Girl (1988), the song's lyrics contain the line "come, the New Jerusalem." A subplot in this season concerns the (fictional) Maine town of Jerusalem's Lot, a Stephen King-invented location that has figured in many of his stories and novels (most prominently in the novel "'Salem's Lot"). This episode is titled "New Jerusalem," another reference to the same lyrics.