How I Met Your Mother S05E08 – The Playbook

Barney dusts off his playbook filled with strategies on how to pick up women and Lily seeks to put a stop to it. Ted and Marshall insist Robin is about to fall in love.



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Future Ted explains that the key to dating was self-confidence, which Barney had in spades, but usually that confidence was in a character. We turn to see Barney sitting in MacLaren's in a full scuba suit drinking scotch. Lily pulls aside a woman at the bar, warning her of Barney's villainy. The woman (Claire) sits down with the rest of the gang as they explain the events that led up to that night.

After their breakup, Barney and Robin were taking different approaches to coping. Robin said she wanted to throw herself into her career, but Marshall and Ted are convinced she will find the love of her life, citing several friends who gave up on dating to focus on their work, only to be married (or in a civil union) months later. Barney, on the other hand, decided to re-enter the dating scene with a vengeance, using his sacred "Playbook." The book describes a set of con-artist scenarios designed to seduce a woman.

Meanwhile, Lily tries to set up Ted with a fellow teacher, Shelly. She had originally tried to get them to meet, but she found Ted and Marshall in the middle of a chicken-finger mouth-stuffing attempt, so she convinced her coworker Ted wasn't there. But Ted is stood up, and after confronting Shelly, Lily finds out that she was seduced by an exotic man at MacLaren's Pub. Lily realizes it was Barney, and is understandably perturbed.

Barney describes the play he used, the "Lorenzo Von Matterhorn", using fake websites, a smartphone, and an exotic name. As revenge, Lily has an actress friend pretend to fall for the "He's Not Coming" to distract Barney, steals the Playbook and threatens to publish it on the Internet if Barney does not stop tricking women into sleeping with him (though Barney initially blames Al-Qaeda, which he mispronounces by saying the "Qae" as a K). He later shows up at the apartment in the aforementioned scuba suit, saying he will be at the bar performing the "Scuba Diver", a play he ripped out of the Playbook, so the gang goes downstairs to find out what it is. Claire, the girl Lily had approached at the beginning of the episode, is also curious to find out what the scuba suit is for, so the gang sits with Barney.

He begins to act cocky, but Barney eventually breaks down, admitting that his breakup with Robin was hurting him, and this was how he coped. Touched, the gang strongly advises Claire to go out with Barney for a cup of coffee. After they leave, the gang gets a text from Barney and finds the description of the "Scuba Diver" under their table at MacLaren's. It was actually an elaborate and long con, involving Lily's disgust at the Playbook, revealing Barney's tricks to his prey (Claire), Barney's fake breakdown over his breakup, and his friends encouraging the prey to go with Barney. The gang had been elaborately fooled. Lily says "You son of a bitch!"

Finally, a new co-host, Don, arrives at Robin's pre-morning show. Future Ted then says, "That was the day she met Don". Robin says "Damn it, Marshall" quietly to herself, as if she was suddenly realizing that Ted and Marshall's taunting may have had some truth.

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