In the episode of How I Met Your Mother that premiered on this night in 2007, "Moving Day," Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) were planning to move in together, which meant that Ted's old room in the apartment belonging to Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) would be vacant.
Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) wanted to rent the room because it was just above the bar whereas his apartment was a 23–minute drive away. Too many of his pickups had gone awry in that 23–minute drive. Girls had fallen asleep on him, made up with their boyfriends and been arrested for indecent exposure. With a room in Lily and Marshall's apartment, Barney's odds of scoring would be greatly improved.
But Lily and Marshall weren't keen on that idea, especially since it meant Barney would leave the girl for Lily and Marshall to wake up and kick out the next morning. So they nixed the idea. Besides, it turned out that they liked the idea of having the apartment to themselves.
Then Barney did an about–face and was opposed to the idea of Ted moving out. But Ted insisted that he was going to move in with Robin, anyway.
So Barney absconded with the moving van that was filled with Ted's stuff — except for a sword and a box of pot lids.
At first Lily and Marshall were happy about having the apartment to themselves. With Ted gone, they could do things they had thought about but never dared do while there was another person around. For instance, Lily wanted to sit around the apartment naked.
But they soon realized that it gets cold when you're sitting around in the altogether.
Marshall liked the idea of having sex wherever — and as loudly as — he wanted. But they soon agreed that just because they could be loud did not mean they had to be loud.
Meanwhile at Robin's place ...
Ted was trying to settle in, but it was difficult without his things. And, as he spoke about what he had hoped to be doing, some conflicts between Ted and Robin and what they wanted to do with the apartment began to emerge. Then he got a phone call from Barney who gave him Mission: Impossiblelike instructions for getting his things back, starting with putting on a suit that Barney had left on the door to Robin's apartment and meeting him at the bar.
Barney wanted one last night on the town with Ted — a "bro–ing away" party, in Barney's words — and Ted seemed to enjoy it for awhile, but he got worried that Robin would be upset that he spent the evening with Barney instead of with her.
Robin, however, was occupied with other things — like having one last cigarette and canceling her gun magazine subscription before Ted moved in.
And Lily and Marshall had concluded that they really did like having Ted around — and his useful possessions, like towels and the microwave.
Those possessions were still in the moving van that Barney had snatched — only now they were organized into a kind of a modified living space, suitable for bringing his "dates" — which is something he was in the process of doing when the van started to move. Ted had figured everything out.
Back at Robin's apartment, Ted told her the whole story about how he had found his possessions — and then they decided they weren't ready to move in together after all. But they did give the modified living space a whirl.
After that Ted went back to Lily and Marshall's place, where they greeted him with open arms — literally.
"God, this feels so right," Marshall said.
"Never leave us again," Lily told Ted.
Ted tried to protest that Robin was downstairs and there were lots of boxes to move. But Lily just said, "Sssshhh."
