Read 'em and Weep

"Read 'em and Weep" is the first episode of the third season of the Happy Tree Friends internet series.

Starring roles

 * Pop and Cub
 * Lumpy
 * The Demon

Featuring roles

 * Toothy
 * Petunia

Plot
Pop and Cub are walking along when they come upon Toothy, who is selling books. Cub takes a fancy to a book featuring a castle on the cover, but Pop, noticing the dollar sign on the table, disagrees. Upon seeing a box with a cent symbol on it, Pop decides to buy Cub a book that resembles an agonized face. Later that night Pop reads the book to Cub, causing clouds to swirl over their house and birds to fall out of the sky. Pop closes the window and turns out the lights, leaving a terrified Cub alone in the darkness. A strange, ominous glow appears under Cub's bed, and when he looks down to see what it is, he is attacked by an unseen force.

The next morning Pop makes breakfast for Cub, who is now green and in a zombie-like state. After refusing to eat his breakfast, Cub's head rotates 360 degrees and Cub vomits a green fluid all over Pop. The doorbell rings and Pop answers the door to see Petunia, dressed as a girl scout, selling cookies. Suddenly, a tentacle wraps itself around Petunia and pulls her offscreen. We now see that Cub has tenacles and a beak coming out of his head. While Petunia clings for dear life on a cabinet under the sink, the monster in Cub's head tears the skin and tail off of Petunia's lower body. She manages to escape into the area beneath the sink, but the tentacles emerge through the pipes and grab her again. The tentacles attempt to drag Petunia through the drain of the sink, crushing her body in the process. When she gets stuck, the tentacles use the garbage disposal to grind up her body, bringing her cries of pain and fear to an end. While the beak begins eating Petunia's mangled remains, a panic-stricken Pop places a phone call.

The doorbell rings again and Pop answers to find Lumpy, a priest/exorcist. He is immediately vomited upon by Cub, who he then tackles. Lumpy struggles with the monster in Cub's head and eventually succeeds in tearing it out. Cub, now his normal color and minus the monster in his head, looks at his body and smiles happily. Unfortunately, Pop, not realizing that Cub has been cured, continuously hits Cub with a shovel until he is a flat, bloody circle. Later, Pop and Lumpy stand at Cub's grave, mourning his death. Before the episode ends, a tentacle comes out of Lumpy's mouth, which he quickly places a hand over.

Moral
"Don't judge a book by it's cover!"

Deaths

 * 1) Numerous birds die after Pop reads the cursed book to Cub.
 * 2) Petunia is pulled through the drain of a sink and is torn apart by the garbage disposal.
 * 3) Cub is hit and flattened by Pop, using a shovel.

Goofs

 * 1) During Toothy's sale, there are three books standing straight up on the left side of the table. Cub picks one of them up, but right before Pop looks over at the dollar symbol, there are again three books standing upright.
 * 2) The first time Cub sees the scary book, he frowns. The second time he sees it he smiles (however, this might be because it was "story time" and he enjoys that).
 * 3) The positions of the picture frames behind Cub's bed change.
 * 4) Before Lumpy tackles Cub there is no vase on the stand next to Pop, but one appears when we see a close up of Pop panicking.
 * 5) The skin on the lower half of Petunia's body is ripped off before she hides beneath the sink, but the skin is still on one of her legs and there is none on her arm when she is pulled through the drain.
 * 6) When Pop opens the door, Lumpy's antlers are outside the door. After Cub was sick on him, When he looked down at his green body, his antlers passed through the wall.
 * 7) When the Demon grabs Petunia, Pop has vomit on his hat. After the Demon is shown trying to eat Petunia, however, Pop is completely clean.
 * 8) In the shot when Pop is going to read the book, the window is closed, but when the rain of birds start, it is opened inside the house.
 * 9) When Toothy put the books on the desk, he is seen to be floating.
 * 10) When Cub went to pick up the book he wanted, Toothy disappeared (though, he might have moved away).Demon_monster.JPG
 * 11) If you pause immediately when the Demon was exorcised, you can see what the Demon's whole body looks like - a pile of tentacles and a beak.

Trivia

 * 1) Petunia is the first character to die in the third internet season.
 * 2) This episode shows that Pop is a cheapskate, since he refuses to buy the book marked with a dollar sign.
 * 3) The book that Pop reads to Cub is a parody of the Necronomicon, a fictional book created by H.P. Lovecraft.
 * 4) The basic plot and many elements of the episode are a parody of the movie The Exorcist.
 * 5) The events of how Cub was possesed and the appearance of the cursed book seem to draw inspiration from the Evil Dead movies.
 * 6) The demon having tentacles could be a reference to one of H.P. Lovecraft's other creations, Cthulhu. Cthulhu, however, is gigantic, too big to fit inside Cub.
 * 7) Despite numerous instances of Pop causing Cub's death through his lack of attention/competence as a parent, this is the only episode of the series to date where Pop deliberately kills Cub.
 * 8) This is one of the few episodes where Lumpy's antlers don't change directions.
 * 9) In the credits, it says Cro-Marmot appears in this episode, and has a voice actor. However, Cro-Marmot was nowhere to be seen, and has no voice.
 * 10) Starting with this episode onwards, the animation is fit to resemble the animation for the TV Series.
 * 11) This episode marks one of the few instances we see Pop without his hat on.
 * 12) This episode is one of the only four episodes where a character during his/her death cried due to the degree of pain he/she was suffering. The other three characters and episodes are Toothy from Eye Candy, Sniffles from Tongue in Cheek, and Flaky from Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna be Ya!
 * 13) This is one of the few episodes where Lumpy appears, yet does not kill anyone or being killed himself.