After leaving a class that Ted lectures, he runs into a group of students with beer and conficates it. But within the group is a girl called Cindy who is a PhD student who Ted immediately finds attractive. Ted asks her out on a date, and picks her up later that night, although when he drops by her apartment, she complains about her roommate, who future Ted mentions is the future mother, but doesn’t actually see her. While on the date, Cindy keeps complaining about her roommate, and Ted agrees she is annoying, but secretly thinks she is awesome.
After the date, Cindy tells Ted she can’t see him, because the University has a policy stopping students and lecturers becoming friendly. Ted shows up at Cindy’s apartment and tries to rationalize with Cindy by saying how perfect they are for each other. But as Ted picks out stuff in Cindy’s room saying they are a match, Cindy explains it is all her roommates, and maybe they aren’t right for each other. Ted agrees, and as Ted is leaving the apartment, he accidently leave the yellow umbrella, a symbol of the future mother, at the apartment.
While this has all been happening, a hot new bar tender starts at MacLaren’s and Barney is obsessed with adding her to his list. Robin explains she isn’t actually that hot, it’s just the bar that makes her hot, but Barney doesn’t care. Barney goes to speak to her but finds out she doesn’t date wall street types, and Barney has to ditch the suit and wear casual clothes. Barney starts getting a little crazy not wearing his suits, but has stashed a secret suit in the bathroom, which he accidently rips. He runs to his tailor (Tim Gunn!) and tries to get him to fix it, but he can’t, but he does donate the buttons to another suit. Barney gets the suit cremated and takes it to the bar and finally gets the hot bartender’s attention and she says she will come back to his place to “comfort” him. But at his house, she finds his suit collection and makes him pick between her and the suits.
In the next scene we see her storming out of his apartment, and he breaks into song and dance about how his suits are the most important thing to him. But it cuts back to her asking him to choose and he picks the girl, just as they fall into bed, he whispers to his suits, “you guys are fine”.
