Super Bowl XLIV (yay, Saints!) finds Barney in Miami holding up a sign that reads “Call Barney Stinson” with his real number. Considering no one knew where he was, Lily calls dips on the wings.
Ah yes, the Super Bowl. When he comes back Barney’s in possession of a magic phone that never stops ringing with girls’ numbers. Ted wonders about the quality of women he’s picking up, but when the first girl appears, he’s pleasantly surprised to find she’s normal. He’s got a personal driver (Ranjeet the cabbie from the first season), but within minutes he’s on text overload.
This extends to his dating life. Even when he’s about to get with a girl, his phone’s going off like crazy with phone calls. He’s rushing out on these girls and never actually seals the deal. It’s like last week…in reverse. He throws the phone away, but it still haunts him. Diving into the dumpster to get it back, he knows he’s gone too far.
Don’s back. Robin’s annoying co-worker actually asks her if she has Valentine’s Day plans. Since she was on the air, she said yes. And now she can’t get out of it. But as she describes the plan, Ted, Marshall and Lily realize that he didn’t exactly ask her out. Instead, it’s her wishful thinking talking.
And Robin’s got it bad for Don. She keeps denying it, but thanks to an optical illusion involving a rabbit and a duck (you know the one), they convince her that she might just love the thing she professes to hate. Even though it starts the most intense argument the group has ever known, over which is the new love and which is the hate. (Marshall is on Team Bunny; everyone else is firmly in Duck category).
Ted announces that he’s spending Valentine’s Day scrubbing the toilet at the apartment. Considering that Ranjeet’s done well with an arranged marriage, he thinks that might be a plan. Lily and Marshall, they’re now drafted to find him a woman. He picks the wrong girls, but with Lily and Marshall being the best pickers he knows, this is a fail-proof plan. If he likes her, he’ll marry her.
It would be a fail-proof plan if they actually remembered to find him a woman. Running around the bar, they can’t find anyone.
Ted and Robin head to Don’s party first to find Don alone, naked, and covering himself with a box of chocolates. As you might imagine, Ted leaves immediately, but Robin’s confused. He got the idea for “The Naked Man,” from some guy’s blog. She sees him as a rabbit, and the next thing she knows, she’s back at the apartment cleaning.
When Ted arrives for his date, he thinks about calling the whole thing off. Especially when he learns that she’s one of the girls from Barney’s phone. He meets her, and not only is she gorgeous, she’s a world class violinist who can quote every line from Caddyshack. She wants to get married because of a little work visa problem she’s having. The waiter appears and asks him if he’d prefer Rabbit or Duck for the Valentine’s Day prix fixe. Ted declares “rabbit,” and runs out.
Barney runs in and demands the phone back. Lily had hidden it in Ted’s piano, and when Ted finds it, he’s hooked. He rushes out on his date, meets another girl at McLaren’s, and is macking on her when Barney shows up. They fight over the phone, and Lily ends up drowning it in a pitcher of beer.
Ted and Robin decide being single sucks. The point of dating is that you find someone to sit on the couch and drink beer with at the end of the day. They’ve already got that covered.
Robin arrives for work, and Don apologizes. Not for his behavior the other night, but because he’s been a jerk at the office. That changes now. He stands up, and Robin sees that he’s wearing pants. In her words… “Oh, duck.”
