Eddie gets annoyed when he catches Nicole changing her opinions to impress her new crush, Jackie. Louis is eager to expand his social circle, but Jessica fears he is overextending himself. Emery and Evan take Honey shopping for a new wardrobe.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Matthew first invites Louis to join his bowling team friends, Louis says he'll have to ask "the ol' ball-and-chain" first...which turns out to be Marvin, rather than his wife.
- Be Yourself: Eddie tells this to Nicole after she lies in order to avoid upsetting Jackie. Nicole immediately points out how Eddie once let her try piercing his ear to impress her, which makes him back off until the Liar Revealed moment.
- Big Red Button: When Jessica tracks Louis down to a Hooters (to make sure he was actually bonding with friends rather than just being an Extreme Doormat), it turns out the serving staff have a red "Wife Alert" button.
- Book Ends: The episode begins with Matthew explaining how one of his new friends got the nickname "Buckets" through a series of tangentially-related words, and The Tag has Louis getting the nickname "Dogwood" in a similar manner (slipped disc injury from helping one of the friends move > disc > Frisbee > catch > fetch > dog > tree with "dog" in its name).
- Changing Yourself for Love: Nicole does this to avoid upsetting Jackie, the girl from Greenie's Coffee she was crushing on in a previous episode.
- Comically Missing the Point: The reason Emery and Evan convince Honey to buy some maternity clothes is because, since she's struggling to fit into her regular outfits while pregnant, she's constantly late to pick them up for appointments that Jessica's too busy to deal with. After finally convincing her to buy some, she realizes how horrible she looks in them, and arrives the next day having gone at them with a sewing machine to make them more fashionable at the cost of convenience. The boys deal with the fact that she'll never be on-time and decide it's easier to just stop asking her to take them places.
- Dark and Troubled Past: There's a subversion when Jessica asks Louis why he has a compulsive need to ingratiate himself to others, as he starts by telling a story about how he had to petsit a friend's ill bird as a child before admitting that he's making the whole story up because he wants to help Jessica gain some kind of closure, and that he just really, really likes being there for other people.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Many beats on the Jessica/Louis plot are identical to an infidelity story, but are played as the complete opposite, with Jessica encouraging Louis to go to Hooters to hang with friends instead of hurting himself doing their labor, and getting upset when she finds glitter on his clothes because it's from a school project of one of his new friends' kids rather than from a sleazy waitress.
- Extreme Doormat: Louis has a compulsion to get others to like him, and does everything he can to endear himself to his new friends, including auto repair, visiting one of their ailing parents, giving one of their kids "the talk", and helping one of them move.
- Liar Revealed: Nicole's lies about her interests end up unraveling when she agrees with Jackie about not liking a band, but Jackie remembers her saying she did like the band in passing earlier. When Nicole plays it off as having said that ironically, she claims to also like French ironically, but it's a language that Jackie does like, and the subsequent stumbling over her own words leads to a break-up.
- Minor Flaw, Major Breakup: When Nicole finally admits all of her lies to Jackie in order to start fresh, including not knowing French and loving Jim Carrey movies, Jackie can't take her back...because Nicole only speaks one language.
- Shout-Out: In addition to Eddie and Nicole mentioning various Jim Carrey films, at one point Eddie spaces out while acting as the Third Wheel on Nicole and Jackie's second date and imagines himself as Maverick in Top Gun.
- Something We Forgot: Narrowly averted near the end of the episode, as while Jessica's giving Louis An Aesop that a true friend will accept him even if he doesn't ingratiate himself and do them favors, Louis suddenly remembers that his best friend Marvin, who he had driven to the airport at the start of the episode, is currently waiting for a return pick-up.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: At the start of the episode, Matthew is in the middle of explaining how one of his new friends got the nickname "Buckets" through a nonsensical series of tangentially related words (his actual last name is similar to a brand of olive oil > Olive Oyl > Popeye > muscles > Van Damme), but Louis interrupts midway through and manages to finish the chain all on his own (Van Damme > actor > Kirsten Dunst > pale skin > pail > bucket).
- Third Wheel: Eddie offers to intentionally be one when Nicole has anxiety about a date, sticking around just long enough to help her feel more comfortable. However, when he leaves by announcing plans to watch Ace Ventura, it turns out Jackie doesn't like it, forcing Nicole (who was bonding with Eddie over the film earlier) to choose a side.
