Peter and Lois trade places with Chris and Meg to see who really has it easier: children or adults.
This episode contains examples of:
- Brutal Honesty: After hearing Chris' anger meltdown, Stewie has this to say:Stewie: I just heard all of that, and I just wanna say this family is fucking disintegrating.
- Comically Missing the Point: After Chris destroys Peter's new hard-earned bike won in a contest, Peter thinks the appropriate punishment for him is to get him hooked on smoking cigarettes.
- Compressed Vice: Meg implies that Lois is lazy when it comes to doing the housework. As shown before, Lois basically does all the housework without any help.
- Disproportionate Retribution: When Meg suggests borrowing money from Quagmire after Chris gets fed up of the bills, Chris instead drags Meg around the neighborhood and forces her to tell everyone he's a failure.
- Foreshadowing: Before Chris collapses from a heart attack, in a previous scene he had a pain in his stomach. In real life, severe stomach pain is actually a precursor to a heart attack.
- Grass is Greener: Both Peter & Lois and Chris & Meg felt their lives could use reversal between work and school as well as power or no power in the house, but finds out it's not so different.
- Hidden Depths: After the swap, Chris excels at Peter's job, while Meg proves to be a great cook.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Lois predicts the dinner that Meg makes will be a disaster. Meg immediately produces a lavish meal, saying she had all day to do this since she finished the chores at a faster rate than Lois ever does.
- "Lesson of the Day" Speech: As Chris stated, difficulty comes for both children in school and adults at work, don't assume one life is better than the other.
- Let's See YOU Do Better!: Lois is the one who imposes the "switch lives" experiment. Chris exceeds Peter so well that he gets Peter's job while Meg cooks better and cleans house faster than Lois ever does.
- Money Is Not Power: Chris learns the hard way that earning a decent income for a living doesn't bring you happiness if you toil in grueling working conditions.
- Moose and Maple Syrup: A cutaway depicts bullying in a Canadian high school.Student: Hey, guys, I'm sorry.
Bully: Well, you're gonna be sorry when we put you in the hospital for free, eh? - Overly Long Gag: The "Carter destroys bench" scene.
- Pet the Dog: After Peter and Lois joke about how Meg's cooking might be bad, Stewie says to them, "Hey guys...give her a fucking chance, all right?"
- Player Elimination: In-universe. Peter enters a contest where the person who keeps their hand on a bike the longest wins it.
- Radish Cure: Parodied; Peter tries to punish Chris for wrecking his bike by… forcing him to smoke a whole carton of cigarettes, even though that has nothing to do with what he did. Peter himself doesn't treat it like much of a punishment, even giving Chris pointers on how to smoke more enjoyably, like right after sex.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Peter claims that the breadwinning patriarch gets to make all the rules in the house. When Chris and Peter switch roles, Chris upstages his father so much at work that Peter is effectively replaced by his own son at work and so Chris has to take up white-collar work instead of finishing high school. Chris seems eager at this despite Lois's objection due to using Peter's own words, "I'm the breadwinner and I like being a grown-up!"
- Swapped Roles: The main plot of the episode.
- Teens Are Monsters: Chris considers high school a social nightmare akin to Lord of the Flies.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Chris, as the pressures of his new job catch up with him.
- Weaponized Animal: A bully at high school shoots a whole living cow at Peter as a new form of Spitball.
- Wham Shot: Chris collapsing from a heart attack near the end of the episode.
