Robin forces Ted to get rid of all the things he's kept from his past girlfriends, but tensions rise when he finds out Robin has been keeping stuff of her own. Barney criticizes a play Lily performed in and when Lily claims she would never do the same to him, he sets out to prove her wrong.
This episode provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Marshall gets a standing ovation after slapping Barney to the ground.
- Audience Participation: Both Lily and Barney's plays have bizarre forms of this.Marshall: I never get picked for audience participation.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Lily's play has this. With deadbeat actors, three hours, and possibly seven excruciating acts.Actor 1: [In a calm tone] I AM RAGE.Actor 2: [In monotone and doing robotic hand gestures] I AM GREED.Lily: I AM RAGE... ENVY.Barney: I am outta here.
- Brick Joke: Marshall uses the second of his five slaps.
- Brutal Honesty: Barney was the first and most direct one to criticize Lily's play.
- Hypocrite: Ted is livid when he finds out that Robin's dogs were all gifts from old boyfriends after she makes him clean out his apartment. Even worse, the rest of the gang sides with Robin when he wants her to get rid of them.
- Cargo Ship: Barney's play involves a robot falling in love...with a toaster oven.
- Chekhov's Gun: Lily hates the word 'moist', so Barney took advantage of this in his play.
- Everyone Has Standards: When Ted brings up the idea of Robin getting rid of her dogs to the rest of the group, Barney tells Ted that even he would never force a partner to do that.
- Imagine Spot: Robin's and Ted's interpretations about their mementos morph into their respective exes.
- Memento Macguffin: Ted's mementos from his girlfriends were trinkets, and Robin's were dogs.
- The Mermaid Problem: Discussed by Barney and Marshall.Marshall: Okay, so you have to have sex with one: Either classic mermaid, bottom half fish, top half human, or inverted mermaid, top half fish, bottom half human. Go!Barney: I don't know. Is she fat?Marshall: Yeah, but it's a fish, so it's the good kind of fat.
- The Misophonic: Lily and her dislike of "moist".
- Noodle Incident: Future!Ted skips a lot of details of how Ted and Robin's fight went, because they started arguing about Ted's things back into the apartment and one minute later they both decided to live together.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: The Stinger sees Barney's play come to an abrupt end via Marshall cashing in his second slap.
- Stylistic Suck: Both Lily's and Barney's plays. The difference is Lily's was supposed to be a serious artistic piece while Barney deliberately made his as bad as possible so Lily won't be able to say anything nice about it.Barney: Moist. Moist. Moist. Moist. Moist....
