Ted vows that he will score a date with his dermatologist, Stella Zinman, by the end of the ten sessions he needs to remove his tramp stamp, while Stella's receptionist falls head over heels for him.
This episode provides examples of:
- Arc Words: "No" and "Yes".
- Call-Back: This episode happens because of the Butterfly tattoo Ted got at the season premiere.
- Celebrity Paradox: Marshall mentioned Britney Spears near the end of Season 2. Spears played Stella's assistant, Abby.
- Continuity Nod:
- Robin mentions her saying yes to Ted eventually after months of courtship.
- Ranjit is driving a taxi just like in the series premiere. He's becoming a staple of Ted's big romantic moments.
- Event Title: The title refers to Ted's ten session therapy to remove his Butterfly tattoo.
- Exact Words: Stella didn't say no to Ted when he asked her for a date after the tenth session. She just said she doesn't do dates because she doesn't have the time. Ted promptly made it happen with a two-minute date.
- Falling-in-Love Montage:
- The different sessions are given different layers of priority, Ted describes three in a row where they hit it off only for her to reject him.
- Ted's Grand Romantic Gesture is a two-minute date that looks like a lovely Falling-in-Love Montage that actually happens in real life in real time. He takes Stella to a cute little Italian restaurant, to a movie that's their inside joke (just the important bits), they have coffee and dessert, then he offers her some flowers and they stroll back home hand in hand and they even manage a sweet goodnight kiss.
- The Glasses Got To Go: Abby ditched her specs.
- Hospital Hottie: Stella Zinnman is a very attractive dermatologist who runs her own office.
- The Ingenue: Abby, Stella's assistant.
- It Amused Me: Barney screws up Ted's second-to-last chance with Stella to win a minor bet he made a year ago. What he would not do for the lulz.
- Keep It Foreign: Ted and Stella spend the third session speaking French. In the French dub, the spoken language is changed to Italian.
- Love at First Sight: Ted falls for the beautiful Stella immediately. Abby falls for Ted in a similar way.
- Operation: Jealousy: Ted tries to get Stella's attention by hitting on her secretary Abby. It backfires when Abby becomes obsessed with him and Stella tries to hook them up on a date.
- Once More, with Clarity: Early on, Abby is being screamed at by a customer over the phone, and Stella encourages her to hang up. Later, a flashback reveals that Barney was screaming at her because he wanted to see what Stella looked like.
- The Oner: Ted's two-minute date with Stella is shot on one take with no cuts.
- People Fall Off Chairs: During Ted's fourth session with Stella, he makes her laugh so hard that she falls off her chair.
- Shout-Out:
- Ted refers to himself as complex and requiring multiple listens like the song "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, to which Robin replies "Roger Daltrey just rolled over in his grave" who was not in Led Zeppelin, but the lead singer of the band The Who and who isn't even dead.
- Ted and Stella watch Manos: The Hands of Fate during their date.
- Take That!: When talking to Stella at the clinic during his first session, Ted says he has a high threshold for pain, saying that he sat through the worst movie ever made the previous night. Stella asks if its Plan 9 from Outer Space, but Ted replies that it's Manos: The Hands of Fate.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Everyone including Wendy the waitress gets mad at Barney for trying his magic tricks at the bar, especially since the trick involved fire and there was alcohol at the table.
- Workaholic: Stella repeatedly talks about only having two minutes for lunch, indicating she has very little free time because of her clinic. It's only at the end she reveals that she has a daughter, which recontextualizes her lack of free time.
