Read 'em and Weep



"Read 'em and Weep" is the first episode of the third season of the Happy Tree Friends internet series, and fifty-fifth overall.

Plot
The episode begins with Pop and Cub walking along in the forest, then they come upon Toothy, who is selling books. Cub seems to take fancy to a fairy tale book with a castle on it. However, the first thing Pop notices is the little piece of paper on the table where Cub got the book, which shows a dollar sign ($). Pop assumes that the book might be expensive, so he refuses to buy it, revealing that Pop is a cheapskate. Pop then notices some books in a box with a piece of paper, this time, with a cent symbol (¢) on it. Assuming the books inside the box are cheaper, Pop digs his hand through the box, and pulls out an unusual book that resembles an agonizing face. Though Pop is satisfied, Cub isn't, and Pop proceeds to buy the book.

Later that night at Pop and Cub's house, Pop reads the book to Cub while in bed. As Pop reads the story, Cub seems to be getting more and more worried as Pop goes on. To make things worse, clouds begin to swirl over their house and hundreds of birds to fall out of the sky and drop to the ground. Seeing the "storm" outside, Pop closes the bedroom window, and turns off Cub's bedroom light, and leaves. However, the story was so frightening, Cub sits in his bed, scared stiff and eyes wide open. After a few seconds of inactivity, a strange, green, ominous glow appears under Cub's bed. As the frightened infant peeks under his bed to see what it is, an unseen force advances towards Cub, abruptly cutting the screen to black.

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.

We now see that Cub has tentacles and a beak coming out of his head. While Petunia clings for dear life on a cabinet under the sink, shrieking, Pop, horrified, looks at the monster. The monster in Cub's head tears the skin and tail off of Petunia's lower body, causing her to scream in extreme pain. To protect herself, Petunia dashes into the cabinet beneath the sink.

She starts crying from the possible pain she's enduring or from fear or possibly for both reasons, but the tentacles emerge through the sink pipes and grab her again, causing her to shriek. With Petunia screaming, the tentacles attempt to drag her through the drain of the sink, brutally crushing her body in the process. When the demon struggles to pull out the horrified skunk, the demon notices the garbage disposal's switch, and activates it, which begins to grind up Petunia's body until her flesh finally slips out, ending her cries of pain. As the demon eats what remains of Petunia, Pop quickly grabs his phone and makes a frantic 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. Pop picks up a lamp and attempt to throw it at Cub, but hesitates and then runs to grab something off screen. 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!"

Blurb
A Blurb video was released on April 28 2015 on the official Mondo site, containing these annotations:
 * BlurB!
 * You know this one is going to be scary because of the font
 * Fun Fact: Toothy is a novelist in real life. He used the pen name Edger Allen Poe
 * He sells more books in the woods than he does online
 * Cub never learned to read but is good at faking it
 * I don't want to call Pop cheap
 * But there isn't a better word, so I have to
 * Booketarian: (n) I person who doesn't read anything with a face
 * Pop keeps a dead scarecrow on the lawn to keep dead birds away
 * Reading to kids is beneficial to their learning later in life
 * seriously, that's actually true
 * Unless you read them the book of the dead.
 * That will actually do more harm than good
 * Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning
 * There are some happy sailors out there
 * Dead birds fall at night, sailors delight. Dead birds at morning, sailors take warning
 * Tomorrow is shaping up to GREAT day to sail
 * For the record, I didn't realize how many birds fly around at night
 * Seriously, that's a lot of birds just in that one area
 * Glowing lights under your bed are best ignored
 * Told you
 * Pop is famous for his breakfast
 * Animal Fact 1: Bear cubs don't react well with portals to Hell
 * Animal Fact 2: They don't like eggs
 * Animal Fact 3: They REALLY don't like eggs
 * Animal Fact 4: You get the point
 * Inter Dimensional Demon Fact: They love Girl Scout Cookies
 * and Girl Scouts
 * Safety Tip: Under the kitchen sink is the most dangerous place in the house
 * more so if a demon finds you there.
 * In another episode, Cub was pulled through the kitchen sink
 * now he's doing the pulling
 * Circle of life
 * Demons need to eat 800lbs of flesh to maintain their ideal body weight
 * This is a rotary phone. Ask your Grandparents what they were like
 * Lumpy was ordained via the Internet using ePreacher
 * Lumpy bought the hat and collar with his own money so this kind of ticks him off
 * Pop loves these flowers more than Cub
 * the flowers still die every week though
 * Lumpy is actually doing well because this was JUST like his ePreacher final exam
 * Lumpy actually comes through!
 * I think Cub will be just
 * Fun Fact: Pop isn't a good father
 * Still a red sky! Get the boat ready!
 * Epilogue: With this new found experience, Lumpy moved to Japan and became a huge movie star!
 * Pop went on to kill the flowers

Deaths

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

Injuries

 * 1) The Demon possesses Cub's body.
 * 2) Petunia (before death) has the skin and tail on her lower body torn off by the demon.
 * 3) The Demon is exorcised from Cub's body by Lumpy (debatable since the effects of exorcism on a demon are as yet unknown and so this may or may not have actually injured it).

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 positions of the picture frames behind Cub's bed change.
 * 3) When Petunia's skin is ripped off her body, she lacks her tail muscle and nerves. It is possible that they may have been ripped off as well.
 * 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 Petunia's body is being pulled from the kitchen sink, she still emits cries of agony even though the remains of her body are completely mangled up. However, after the grinder is activated, she stops screaming which may suggest that her mouth, heart, or brain was somehow still functional before then.
 * 7) When Pop opens the door, Lumpy's antlers are outside the door. After Cub vomited on him, When he looked down at his green body, his antlers passed through the wall.
 * 8) 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.
 * 9) In the shot when Pop is going to read the book, the window is closed, but when the rain of birds start, it is clearly open.
 * 10) Also, the window was round, and Pop pushes it closed like a square window. Usually, round windows are two separate pieces the open and close like a door.
 * 11) When Toothy put the books on the desk, his arms are extremely long. Also, in the next shot his legs cannot be seen.
 * 12) When Cub went to pick up the book he wanted, Toothy disappeared (though, he might have moved away).
 * 13) When Pop is reading the book to Cub, he opens it up to the middle and starts with "once upon a time".(although it could be a multiple story book)
 * 14) When Pop opens the door, Petunia stands outside. In the next shot, she's already inside.
 * 15) When Petunia was hiding under the sink, there were two tentacles that emerge from the pipes, but when she was getting pulled from the drain, there was only one tentacle shown.

Quick Shot Moment
In the scene where the demon-possessed Cub vomits on Lumpy, there's a brief shot of Pop in the process of crushing Cub with a shovel.

Trivia

 * The title of this episode is a common saying by people who play poker. It's usually said by a player who has a good hand, shows it the other players, thus making the others upset, hence the "weep" part.
 * Petunia is the first character to die in the third internet season.
 * This episode introduces the fact that Pop is a cheapskate, as he refused to buy Cub a book just because it came from a table that had a dollar sign ($) on it (because he thought that it was expensive), he hesitated to throw a vase at the demon when it possessed Cub, and didn't hire someone to bury Cub six feet under.
 * The book that Pop reads to Cub is a parody of the Necronomicon, a fictional book created by H.P. Lovecraft.
 * The basic plot and many elements of the episode are a parody of the movie The Exorcist.
 * The events of how Cub was possessed and the appearance of the cursed book seem to draw inspiration from the Evil Dead movies.
 * The demon having tentacles could be a reference to one of H.P. Lovecraft's other creations, Cthulhu. Cthulhu, however, is gigantic, thus making it too big to fit inside Cub.
 * This is one of the few episodes where Lumpy's antlers don't change directions.
 * 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. This may have been an error or perhaps Cro-Marmot was actually planned to be featured in this episode.
 * From this episode onward, the animation resembles the animation from the TV Series.
 * This episode marks one of the few instances we see Pop without his hat on.
 * This episode is one of six instances where a character cried during his/her death due to the degree of pain. The other five instances are Toothy from Eye Candy and Brake the Cycle, Sniffles from Tongue in Cheek, Flaky from Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna be Ya!,  and Lumpy from The Chokes On You.  Also, these characters tend to have more slower and torturous deaths and injuries than the other characters. 
 * This is one of the few episodes where Lumpy appears, yet does not kill anyone or gets killed himself (although he is possessed but this may not count as a death).
 * This is the first episode that Pop & Cub star in since Stealing the Spotlight.
 * This episode makes the first episode of Season 3 a Halloween special.
 * This is the first internet episode where the characters have curved buckteeth.
 * 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.
 * Petunia's injury is similar to Giggles' injury in Doggone It and Lumpy's injury in By the Seat of Your Pants.
 * It is quite strange for possessed Cub to not attack and eat Pop. However, it may be likely that some of Cub's traits have influenced the creature (that was overtaking Cub) to not attack his beloved father. Furthermore, at the end of the episode, Lumpy is shown to be possessed by the creature and has still not yet attacked Pop (although Pop could have been attacked after the scene ended).
 * When Pop feeds Cub, he looks like he is holding a paintbrush.
 * This is the episode that features Petunia's most gruesome and goriest death in the series (Internet series likewise).