A high blood pressure diagnosis leads to Dennis deciding to take a mental health day away from the Gang.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- All Just a Dream: The entire episode, apart from the opening and closing scenes, takes place in Dennis's head as a way for him to release stress and lower his blood pressure.
- And Show It to You: Dennis does this to the head of Tsuma in his imagination.
- Arc Words: "System". Dennis repeatedly wants to blame whoever created the system, believes himself also to be a victim of a system, and only gets his blood pressure down by taking the heart of the Obviously Evil guy who is head of the entire thing.
- Bland-Name Product: Tsuma instead of Tesla. This is actually the name of the doctor treating Dennis.
- But You Were There, and You, and You: The Doctor's office inspires the people who populate Dennis's fantasy.
- Continuity Nod:
- When he comes in from a rainstorm, Dennis looks like a less pathetic variation of how he did with no make-up.
- A whole lot of talk of systems, and breakdown in having to spell out his name over and over.
- Dennis remains in poor physical health, and still is in denial of getting older.
- Dennis claims he can control his blood pressure by commanding it to lower, which is reminiscent of the time he told Dee he can simply command an illness to be gone.
- When Dennis is in sensory overload again and nobody will help him, he curls up on the road.
- Dennis pulls out the heart of the CEO (the one to blame for the Obviously Evil system) like Day Man rips out the heart of Night Man.
- Dennis uses various phonetic alphabets to effectively call himself a "nancy boy" twice, an insult Frank uses.
- Dennis is still afraid that nobody will help him or save him when he needs it.
- Continuity Porn: Unlike Mac and Charlie's Sincerity Mode episodes, this one takes a different approach, with continuity nods showing Dennis's mental state along sixteen seasons.
- Double-Meaning Title: The story follows Dennis taking a mental health day, but it is also a day spent entirely in his mind to improve his health.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Dennis ripping the executive's heart out, crushing it into a diamond, and swallowing it foreshadows the reveal moments later that this entire episode has taken place in the mind of Dennis.
- Foreshadowing:
- The Gang getting the idea that they can make diamonds by putting coal in a pressure cooker seems too stupid, even for them, until The Reveal: Since Dennis is imagining the events of this episode, this reflects how stupid Dennis thinks they are.
- Dennis listens to the song 'Listen to Your Heart' because it's a fantasy to reduce his blood pressure.
- Hidden Depths: As it's a Dennis fantasy episode, there's plenty with him: the Gang being a family without him, Dee showing Big Sister Instinct, really trying to be good and kind to service workers, the fear that he can't actually control anything and nobody will help him, repeated reassurances of systems and victims with an unseen head abuser, Frank not picking up his phone, even allowing himself to like sugar.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Dennis deems the Gang morons who think they can turn coal into diamonds, but also has the fear that they're "family style" without him, he'd have to fantasise about Dee asking to spend time with him, and they wouldn't answer when he needs them.
- Irony: Dennis becomes increasingly frustrated and mentally unwell over the course of his "mental health day."
- Karmic Jackpot: Rather than being his usual Jerkass self, Dennis actually tries to solve his problems with a thought exercise and when he does, is kind to the imagined customer service reps. The episode is one of the few in the series to end with a character doing what they set out to do, because he handled it in a mature way that didn't hurt anybody.
- Master of Your Domain: Dennis is able to lower his blood pressure with nothing more than a thought exercise, to the doctor's amazement.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Dennis's bedroom door is open when it's usually locked down, he's Nice to the Waiter when none of the Gang is, and he can admit he's a victim when that's unthinkable in reality.
- Out of Focus: The rest of the Gang only appear briefly in a couple of scenes so the episode can focus on Dennis. As most of this episode is a fantasy Dennis concocted to lower his blood pressure, it makes sense that he would focus very little on the Gang.
- Rule of Symbolism: Dennis Reynolds, the man that created two abusive systems for attracting women and men, says repeatedly to fantasy people that it's not their fault, it's the system, they're both victims and the originator of the system is someone else.
- Dennis made both systems an anagram of his own name. In his fantasy, he's forced to repeatedly spell out his own name in a vain attempt to make progress in the systems.
- Running Gag: Cashiers doing Rapid-Fire Typing when looking up someone's name.
- Take That!: The episode mocks the idea of company apps, Dennis arguing that while on-paper they are meant to make things more convenient, all they do is add extra-steps to what should be simple transactions.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Dennis creates a fantasy to express rage instead of taking it out on anyone like he would usually, and so gets his blood pressure down with a cool exit.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The Tsuma scene is an exaggeration of an incident Glenn Howerton mentioned on the show's podcast where he got locked out of his Tesla in a parking garage that had poor Wi-Fi.
- Dennis using a 22-minute fantasy to cope with his problem is an allegory for Glenn Howerton writing the episode itself.
