Louis considers early retirement, but Jessica has conflicting plans. Eddie wants to win back Tina, and tries to understand her better by watching her favorite show, Sex and the City. Emery learns that Evan has a "dream journal", and tries to find it.
- Bait-and-Switch: The episode opens with Jessica and Louis at a dimly-lit restaurant table, celebrating an anniversary and how far their dream has come, mentioning how it all began at a strip club. It's then revealed they're not celebrating a marriage anniversary, but the anniversary of Cattleman's Ranch, which was converted into a restaurant from a strip club.
- Bros Before Hoes: Eddie spending so much time either telling his friends about his relationship woes or ditching them entirely to try and improve his image ends up nearly breaking the bros apart, so Eddie ultimately decides to put his friends first and make amends by bribing the local arcade's staff to get them first dibs on the new DanceDanceRevolution machine.
- Forged Message: When Emery thinks he's found Evan's journal, he's aghast to read that Evan's dreamt of killing him. He then confronts Evan about it, upset that either he's secretly wanted to kill him or set up a threatening decoy to mess with his mind, only for Evan to admit that he got Grandma to write the decoy entry for him.
- Imagine Spot: While describing his retirement plan to Jessica, Louis envisions a future where they're both old and enjoying mundane activities like fishing and reading the paper.
- My New Gift Is Lame: After forgiving Jessica for ruining his retirement plans and spending her half of their savings on classes when she explains why, Louis tries to show support by using his own half of the savings to help her afford even more classes, and also by gifting her a monogrammed backpack. Jessica appreciates the sentiment but dislikes the backpack because it'll be easier for a potential mugger to identify her.
- Reluctant Retiree: Instead of agreeing with Louis' plan to spend their twilight years relaxing in peace, Jessica ends up withdrawing most of the money Louis had saved for retirement in order to attend university classes and become a school administrator. She later admits that it's because she's a workaholic that genuinely can't be happy if she ever stops trying to improve herself.
- Shout-Out: In addition to Eddie spending the entire episode watching and then reenacting various bits from Sex and the City, his friends express eagerness at trying out a DanceDanceRevolution machine that's been added to the local arcade.
- Time-Passes Montage: Eddie starts relating his relationship woes to his friends at the start of their lunch break. There's repeated cuts to the cafeteria getting emptier, until their table is the last one occupied, and Eddie says they were just getting started when the bell for class rings.
- Title Drop: "Rancho Contento" is the name of the retirement community that Louis has been planning to eventually move into.
- Voiceover Letter: Played for laughs at the start of an episode, when we hear Eddie's voice as he writes in a journal and hopes that it'll help show Tina his sentimental side, only for Evan to comment on it and the whole family to point out Eddie was actually speaking as he wrote. Eddie narrates various other events in the episode after that, but it's all internal monologue.
