- After Barney and Robin hit a rough patch in their relationship, Lily devises the perfect plan to break them up, calling in help from Robin's famous friend, Alan Thicke.
- Although Robin and Barney are outwardly happy about their relationship, Ted believes that they in fact are miserable. He believes an old message from Barney via an old porn videotape and the fact of both Robin and Barney letting their appearances go (Barney who is overeating and Robin who is looking like an old woman) are cries for help in wanting and needing to break-up. Marshall and Lily however believe that as with any couple, they are just going through a rough patch, one that they can weather. But when Marshall sees what Ted sees, they go into cahoots with each other to break them up. When their plan goes horrible awry, Lily, the master of orchestrating break-ups without the couple knowing what hit them, feels she has to come and fix the mess Ted and Marshall created. Lily's masterpiece as she considers it involves Robin's old friend Alan Thicke, one of Barney's old girlfriends, a stormtrooper and a bunch of dirty dishes. Will Lily's old magic do the trick?—Huggo
- Future Ted explains the gang's apprehension as Barney and Robin entered the later months of their relationship. Barney gives Ted all of his porn. Marshall can tell Barney is serious about Robin since he has developed "relationship gut" - weight put on when in a stable relationship from eating so much food. Marshall and Lily steal videos from the collection when Ted is not looking and head home. Ted puts in a movie called "Archisexture" (Telling his kids that he was going to throw away the porn, but after slipping and hitting the box on one of his chairs, the video flew out of the box, bounced around his apartment, with the tape going into the player, and the box hitting the button to turn on the TV), but the movie is suddenly overlapped by a message from Barney. The message assumes Barney is either dead or in a committed relationship, which he tells Ted to save him from. After showing the tape to Lily and Marshall, Ted starts to agree with the past Barney. Barney and Robin now have a declining attitude towards each other (Robin is always Annoyed at Barney and Barney is getting fatter) and their relationship. Lily and Marshall just think the couple is going through a rough patch, and convince Ted not to interfere.
At MacLaren's, Marshall watches Barney eat an entire plate of ribs and asks him directly if he is happy. Not giving a proper answer, Barney describes his relationship in a depressing manner (They fight all the time and every moment is a battle. The sex is mostly over), convincing Marshall that he is unhappy. He and Ted ask Lily to help break up Barney and Robin, given her experience in plotting breakups. Since Lily has reformed her ways, Ted plans a repeat of what broke up his relationship with Robin, involving champagne and a wedding ring. Much to their surprise, the plan results in the couple mutually surrendering to the idea of matrimony, and after they announce it in the bar, Lily agrees to break them up properly.
Lily has a plan to remind the couple of their four biggest arguments: dirty dishes, the presence of Barney's ex-girlfriends, whether Stormtroopers are cool, and a Canadian-American war (Robin loves Neil Young and Barney makes fun of him). She contacts Robin's friend, Alan Thicke (An Ontario native), to meet the couple at their usual diner, along with one of Barney's insane one-night stands, Meg (April Bowlby), a passing actor dressed as a Stormtrooper, and a busboy carrying dirty dishes. The gang stakes out the location in a rented station wagon. Marshall is annoyed at Ted for being too cheap to rent a proper stake-out van. Thicke and Meg arrive and apparently know each other. Lily was unable to find a Stormtrooper and instead finds a man dressed as the robot from Lost in Space, as she thinks Stormtroopers are also robots. As they argue over the station wagon and a pizza delivery, Barney and Robin look right in their direction. Ted and Marshall think their cover is blown, but Lily executes the plan anyway.
As the plan unfolds, they notice that neither Barney nor Robin is angry or arguing, and they kiss each other before leaving the diner. In MacLaren's they share a beer with Thicke and the pizza delivery boy, and Robin stops by and explains that they have broken up. What the gang thought was Robin and Barney looking at them was really the couple aghast at their reflections. The realization makes them examine their relationship and they agree that "two awesome people cancel each other out", making them less than they want to be, so they break up. They quickly avoid all of Lily's traps and kiss each other goodbye. Barney laments that they will not be able to go back to being friends, but Robin tells him not to think of it as a break-up but as getting back together as friends. Although Robin says it might take Barney a while to recover from the breakup, he appears as his old self, catching enticing glances from most of the women in the bar and declaring "Daddy's home".
Before he leaves, Thicke reveals that he and Robin starred in a short-lived Canadian variety show. Barney runs off to find the footage.
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