- Robin's past as a Canadian pop star is revisited when Barney uncovers the lost episode of a music documentary series in which she was featured as Robin Sparkles. Marshall and Lily have some concerns about Ted's latest girlfriend.
- Ted spots who he believes is the next love of his life on the subway, but she gets off before he can approach her. Before he can systematically track her down - which would be against the advice of Marshall and Lily - the mystery woman, whose name is Jeanette, runs into Ted. They both believe it's fate telling them that they were meant to be together. However, Marshall and Lily believe that Jeanette running into Ted was just a little too convenient, and that she may have been stalking him. This belief by Marshall and Lily leads to Robin making an admission that in her younger years, she was obsessed by someone, who she refuses to name. Barney, in turn, becomes obsessed with finding out the object of Robin's obsession. This quest leads to the gang learning another unknown phase in the life and career of Robin Sparkles. And Lily eventually also makes her own admission about her love life past.—Huggo
- Ted tells the gang that he found his destined love on the subway-they were both reading One Hundred Years of Solitude-but lost her at the next stop. Ted hopes to find her again, but Marshall and Lily are unsure of this; especially when he reveals he has written details he remembered about her. However, Ted indeed reunites with the woman, Jeanette (Abby Elliott), after a fire alarm at his Columbia building. He believes that it was destiny, since Jeanette had written down details, she remembered about him (he had a tweed jacket and had chalk marks and hence was a teacher or a professor and she tracked him down to the University); but couldn't figure out which class he was at until the fire alarm rang.
Skeptical of Jeanette's intentions toward Ted, Marshall explains that you can't force destiny, but instead let it happen, and he describes Lily's seemingly random choice of picking his door to knock on in 1996 at Wesleyan University. Marshall gets Ted to realize that it was unlikely Jeanette just happened to be at the fire alarm, so she must have been stalking him at that point and pulled it in order to meet him. Charmed by the sentiment, Ted explains his theory that a romantic advance could be "Dobler or Dahmer"; an act is only charming if the recipient finds it charming, making it "Dobler" (a reference to Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything), but if the recipient is bothered by it, it's "Dahmer". He is charmed by Jeanette, therefore, her pulling the fire alarm is charming. Robin admits to the gang that she was once a stalker. When she refuses to tell Barney with whom she was obsessed (there was even a 50 meters restraining order slapped on Robin) until he admits that anyone can become obsessed, he breaks into her apartment and reads her teenage journals and is puzzled by the cryptic phrase "PS I Love You".
While Barney flies to Robin's hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia to interview her ex-boyfriends, Ted asks Jeanette about her pulling the fire alarm to force them to meet, and she says it was because she "couldn't stand the idea of not meeting you", leaving Ted once again charmed at her. Marshall makes Ted realize that the fire alarm is actually a smoke detector, meaning to set it off, she would have to start a fire; Jeanette admits to this but still, Ted finds it charming. Meanwhile, Robin's co-star on the "Sandcastles in the Sand" video, Simon (James Van Der Beek), reveals to Barney that a MuchMusic documentary show about musicians' lives off the stage, Underneath The Tunes, discussed Robin's career in an episode.
Marshall gets increasingly irritated that Ted has found Jeanette's behavior attractive, and that their "destiny" was forced. Barney returns with a copy of the Underneath the Tunes episode and shows it to Ted, Marshall, and Lily. Using interviews with many Canadian celebrities, the documentary depicts a picture of Robin's musical career different from that she described in Slap Bet. She originally described "Let's Go to the Mall" as a minor hit, and "Sandcastles in the Sand" as her artistic follow-up and a total flop, possibly to stop the group finding out more. However, the documentary reveals both were hits that "went Maple", but her musical career declined in the mid-1990s. Dissatisfied with the bubblegum pop-star persona that made her popular, Robin reinvented herself as a grunge singer named Robin Daggers. She made a music video of a song, "PS I Love You", that her record company refused to release. Robin's career ended after a disastrous 84th Grey Cup halftime show at which she revealed her new persona as soon as she appeared on stage. When the show speculates that Robin's occasional costar Alan Thicke is the subject of the song, Barney visits him and violently demands the truth; Thicke easily defeats Barney and denies that he was the song's subject.
The badly bruised Barney returns to the others, claiming that he fought Thicke to a draw. The situation forces him to admit that it was easy to end up obsessed over romantic interests. Robin comforts him and reveals that the "PS" in the song was Paul Shaffer. Barney admits that his jealousy made him a total "Dahmer", but Robin assures him, saying he is her "Dahmer", making him a "Dobler".
Ted still insists that his and Jeanette's relationship is likewise, frustrating Marshall, but he is angered when Lily admits that her and Marshall's chance encounter was not chance at all; she had seen him during the freshman orientation and, under the pretense of needing someone to fix her radio, knocked on all doors in Marshall's dorm building until she found him. Despite it being creepy, Marshall slowly finds it charming and concedes to Ted. When Ted is with Jeanette and finds her copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, he learns that the book was bought within minutes after he bought his copy. Jeanette admits that she has been stalking him since he appeared on the cover of New York magazine in fall 2011. Even still, Ted finds her confession charming and the two start kissing passionately, as Future Ted tells his kids that Jeanette was the last mistake he made before he met his future wife.
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