The show starts with Ted, Marshall, Lily and Robin hanging out at Ted’s apartment to watch the Super Bowl. On TV, they see Barney holding up a sign in the crowd asking women to call him. Later, at the McLaren’s Barney says that he won the Super Bowl, because his phone never stops ringing and there’s usually a hot girl at the other end. The phone is ringing as he speaks. He vows to sleep with all the women that call him. Because of this, he has Ranjit as his personal driver.

Robin was drinking scotch from a pint glass because of her troubles with Don, her co-anchor, had reached a breaking point. In addition to not wearing pants at the anchor desk, Don had asked Robin out for Valentine’s Day on the air, obliging her to also accept on the air and preventing her from cancelling.

Barney is getting very excited because there is potentially always a hotter girl out there. Ted says that this is the problem with today. There are too much choices. That is when Ranjit mentions that he didn’t have such problems because he had an arranged marriage at the age of 18.

Robin was still worried about her date with Don. When she recounted that Don had actually asked her to come to his place along with a “few friends”, the others advise that it wasn’t actually a date invitation. Robin probably knew that, and she didn’t believe it was a date proposal. She says, accepting her feelings for Don, that she wanted to “attack him and rip his stupid clothes off.”

Since it worked for Ranjit, who had declared that he is more in love with his wife every day, and resigned to the notion that while he is good at getting picked by women, he’s terrible at picking then, Ted proposes that Marshall and Lily select a bride for him, and “arranged-marriage me”. He decides that if he likes the woman Marshall and Lily pick, he’ll marry her.

Marshall returns to teasing Robin about being in love with Don. He explains the thin line between love and hate in the human brain. Ted illustrated the premise with a picture that could be either a rabbit or a duck. Later, they have a very big discussion over which is better, a rabbit or a duck. Marshall thinks the rabbit is better, but the rest of the gang (Lily, Robin and Ted) believe ducks are better than rabbits. This leads to “one of the most intense argument our group has ever had.” They went on for hours, until Marshall finally conceded, “Ducks are good. Rabbits are bad.”

Then the whole group turned on Robin again, saying that Don was a duck, like Donald Duck, who never wore pants. Ted asked Marshall for permission to say “lawyered,” which was granted. So he said it.

Barney was hooking up with a girl in his apartment when his phone rang. It was a hot lady bullfighter on the phone, so he kicked out the woman he was with and invited the bullfighter over. The same happened a couple of women — including a gold medal-winning Japanese figure skater, and a hot chick who could wrap her legs around her neck and open a beer bottle between her toes. Barney then realized his phone was a rabbit, so he threw it in the trash and settle on the flexible hot chick. As he was about to seal the deal, he could hear the phone ringing in the distance and chased it down in the dumpster behind McClaren’s.

Valentine’s Day had come and Marshall and Lily realized they forgot to find Ted his arranged marriage woman, so they scrambled around the bar, asking every seemingly available woman if she was interested in getting married. This ended with Marshall getting pepper sprayed.

Before Ted about to set off for his blind double-date with Marshall and Lily, he agreed to go to Don’s party with Robin. When they got to Don’s place, he was sitting naked on the couch. Ted left.

Don admitted he was trying “something called ‘The Naked Man’” and he “read about it on some guy’s blog.” Robin decided Don was a rabbit and went home.

Ted met up with Marshall, who said that he and Lily found Ted’s woman. He explained that they were sitting at the bar discussion options when Barney came in and was losing his mind over continually getting calls on his phone. It rang again and even though Barney wanted to answer it, Marshall took it away and Ranjit told Barney to let it go to voicemail. The phone kept ringing as Barney left, and Marshall told Lily that it didn’t really matter who they found for Ted. They both looked at the still-ringing phone.

“It’s a phone girl?” Ted asked.

He agreed to go to dinner, but even though Natalia was nice and pretty and was about to be deported for an expired visa, he opted for the rabbit and left the restaurant. Just then, Barney came running into the restaurant asking for his phone. Marshall told him Lily hid it. But where?

We had to back up to find out. Cut to Ted in his apartment, where he heard the phone ringing. He found it, answered it and had a seemingly pleasant conversation with the woman on the other end of the call. He went to meet Marshall and Lily, though, and that’s when we caught up to his encounter with Natalia.

We soon found Ted sitting at McClaren’s, wearing aviator sunglasses and sitting across from a faceless blond woman. The phone rang again and Ted went to answer it, just as Barney came running into the bar. Ted tossed it to Marshall, who gave it to Lily, who got rid of the phone by dropping it into a pitcher of beer, ending the incoming calls for good.

Back at the apartment, Ted told Robin that being single sucks. They commiserated over how much it sucked to chase other single people around just to have someone to get drunk and clean the bathroom with — which was what they ended up doing together that night.

Back at work, Robin sat next to Don, who tried to apologize. He said he was embarrassed after she left on Valentine’s Day. He said he was embarrassed about his behavior at work, and told Robin she was a tremendous news anchor and she deserved a co-anchor who was better. He set out to prove it by going to get Robin some coffee. She realized he was wearing pants (which he never does), and the next time she looked up she imagined a duck bill on his face.

“Ahh, duck,” she said.

“Rabbit or Duck” is the fifteenth episode of the fifth season of the CBS situation comedy How I Met Your Mother and 103rd episode overall. It originally aired on February 8, 2010.

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