Marshall and Lily try to go on double dates with Robin and Barney, much to their chagrin. Ted becomes, as Barney describes, a guy who allows girls to stay at his apartment overnight without sleeping with them.
This episode provides examples of:
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Referenced and Played for Laughs. When Barney and Robin try to "win back" Lily and Marshall from their new couple friends, Lily asks, "Why is there something so attractive about a bad boy...and girl?"
- Blatant Lies: Barney's excuse for why he and Robin can't hang out with Lily and Marshall when they suggest a second time. Humorously, Marshall seems to consider that it may be true.
- Dirty Old Man: A perfect example of a Double Subversion. Robin talks about her tenth grade math teacher who she thought was attractive until he went to jail... for tax evasion. She laughs off the fact that everyone assumed something worse, but then she mumbles under her breath that he was also arrested for... other reasons...
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The double dating issues between Lily and Marshall and Barney and Robin are presented as though they're a couple going through a break-up, complete with them "getting back together" after a conversation in Romantic Rain.
- Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Parodied. Lily cries and downs ice cream when Barney and Robin don't want to hang out with her and Marshall anymore.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Ted brags about how awesome being single is, what was Barney's response? "What have I done?!"
- Retraux: Barney's "Sexless Innkeeper" poem is presented as though the events take place in the 19th century. When Ted questions why there's horse drawn carriages instead of cars, Barney tells him he's doing it to match the poem's prose style. Ted later does the same thing with his poem about hooking up with a girl, claiming to have been grading papers with parchment and a quill.
- Parlor Games: One of the lame activities Marshall and Lily put Barney and Robin through is a planned game of charades.
- The Parody Before Christmas: Both incarnations of the "Sexless Innkeeper" poem follow similar poetic beats as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, starting with "'Twas the night before [x]..."
