Youngmee contacts Blythe excitedly describing the new Fergus and Annabelle vampire romance book she just read and sends Blythe an MP3 of a song to be used in the movie adaptation. Upon hearing it, Blythe jumps for joy all around her room, but this uncovers some bumps on her forehead previously covered by her hair. When Youngmee points these blemishes out to Blythe, Youngmee freaks out, calls Blythe a zompire, and ends the conversation right away. Blythe goes to look up what she may have and finds a disease called jerry-berry, which starts with the three bumps and ultimately leads to death. Zoe and Minka, who have kept Blythe company in the room, learn that jerry-berry is highly contagious and leap back in the dumbwaiter, leaving Blythe to worry in her room by herself.
Back at the Littlest Pet Shop, Russell is playing blindfold tag with Vinnie, Pepper, Sunil, and Penny. The other pets are intentionally giving him a hard time when Zoe and Minka burst into the day camp and warn the other pets that Blythe has jerry-berry. Unfortunately for those two, Zoe must express her nervousness through interpretive dance, and Minka can't seem to remember the disease properly. Nevertheless, the other pets understand how they feel. Russell, who continues to wander about blindfolded, accidentally backs up into Penny and leaves one of his quills on her arm. After Russell apologizes for the mishap, Pepper shows to Russell that he has repeatedly done the same to all of the other regular pets. Realizing the extent of the harm he's done to his friends, he vows to act more carefully from then on, but not before a bunch of his quills fly out from his back when he waves his arm, scaring everyone else in the room.
Roger goes to Blythe's room, concerned about her not going to school. Blythe tells him she's quarantined herself in her room because she believes she has jerry-berry. Blythe suspects the disease to have come from the bubble gum from England Roger gave her, though Roger dismisses it as absurd. Nevertheless, Roger takes caution with Blythe anyway and promises to check up on Blythe again as soon as he can.
The other pets gather and discuss what they can do with Russell. Before any agreement can be reached, however, Russell returns to the room covered in red paint, hoping to make him stand out enough to keep other pets away. This doesn't work with Zoe, who gets up close and gives Russell a sniff. She gets too close, however, and gets a quill on her front left leg. Russell, seeing that this idea is not working, sulks away. The other pets eventually find Russell in the front room of the pet shop, having built a hollow column of boxes that leads up to the ceiling and living inside of it. The tower soon comes crashing down when Sunil removes a box from the bottom in an attempt to get inside and gets a quill stuck in his ear. Russell then tries encasing himself in bubble wrap, and while there are too many bubbles for any of the pets to pop on their own, Russell soon discovers the hard way that, with his arms wrapped inside too, he is unable to get up once he falls over. By the time Russell frees himself from the bubble wrap, the other pets are done eating. Russell concludes that he has to either lose his quills, continue to hurt the other pets, or starve, and to protect his friends, he intends to leave the Littlest Pet Shop for good. The other pets, not knowing what to do, turn to Blythe for help and get in the dumbwaiter leading up to Blythe's room.
Blythe, in the meantime, ponders over the extra time she has in the day and downloads the following Fergus and Annabelle book. She gets absorbed in it until she reads about Annabelle moping over her vampirism, which Blythe is now able to relate to. When the pets reach Blythe's room and need Blythe's help opening the dumbwaiter from her side, Blythe suspects the pets to be impostors deployed by a villain in Fergus and Annabelle and refuses to open the door. The pets' continued insistence on opening the door only causes Blythe to sink deeper into fantasy, and Zoe, believing the dumbwaiter route futile, suggests finding another route to Blythe's room.
Vinnie is chosen to try going down to Blythe's window due to his ability to climb walls, though with a safety harness in case he falls. He reaches the window when Blythe spots him and shuts and locks the windows, causing Vinnie to lose his balance and fall, but the other pets pull him up with enough force to safely bring him back onto the roof. The pets then try the ventilation shafts. Blythe hears chattering from the air vents, then blasts metal music to scare the pets away. The pets finally get to Blythe by cooking up a bowl of ramen and setting it at the front of Blythe's door, invoking her hunger and making her open the door. While initially hostile, Blythe comes to her senses and hears Zoe out. Blythe tells the pets to let Russell know he is still welcome among the pets and that being accident-prone is not necessarily being dangerous.
The pets burst through the pet door as Russell is about to leave. Zoe confronts Russell directly, telling him accidents like the recent quill-based ones could happen to anybody. At that moment, Vinnie's tail goes berserk and snaps off, smacking up against a cage attached to the ceiling. This cage detaches itself and comes falling down over Penny's head, but Russell dashes over and takes her somewhere else before it smashes her. Unfortunately, this is not enough to convince Russell that he's welcome, and he refuses Penny's thanks.
Roger comes back from work and heads into Blythe's room. Upon learning Blythe self-diagnosed using the Internet, Roger asks Blythe what symptoms she actually has. Upon showing Roger the dots on her forehead, Roger identifies it simply as acne and that she has horribly overreacted. Blythe, relieved, starts thinking about Russell.
Russell prepares to leave the Littlest Pet Shop when Blythe comes in. She lets Russell know that she does not have jerry-berry and that Russell's clumsiness is in fact quilling, where a hedgehog's quills come loose for replacement with a new set, and that both acne and quilling are temporary. With everyone relieved, Blythe and the pets spend their day popping the bubble wrap.
This episode contains examples of (YMMV entries go here):
- Artistic License – Biology: Quilling is a real phenomenon among hedgehogs, but it only happens once in a hedgehog's life and is the equivalent of losing one's baby teeth for adult teeth.
- Beeping Computers: Happens any time anyone does anything on a computer in this episode, which is a lot.
- Between My Legs: Vinnie is between Blythe's legs in her Imagine Spot.
- Collector of the Strange: Minka collects Russell's quills that have lodged themselves into his friends.
- Color Blind Confusion: Zoe mentions how dogs aren't able to see the color red as a Furry Reminder.
- Continuity Nod: Part of Zoe's interpretive dance to demonstrate is her doing the robot. Sunil previously performed the robot in "Humanarian," the musical sequence in "What Did You Say?" and "Topped With Buttercream".
- The pets get stuck in the dumbwaiter again, only this time, it's all of them but Russell.
- Sunil says to himself that he thought Vinnie's middle name is Alfonso, which was established late last season.
- Vinnie loses his tail for the third time. Unlike in "Frenemies," he takes it in stride.
- Depending on the Artist: This episode depicts Russell's quills as shaped differently from in "The Treasure of Henrietta Twombly." The thick conical shape from that episode would have looked a bit too painful if used in this episode.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending
- Flechette Storm: Russell unintentionally launches a tiny one when he tells the other pets he'll try to be more careful.
- Furry Reminder: Zoe whimpers and scampers off when poked by one of Russell's quills. She soon points out that she cannot see red, referring to the popular belief of dogs being color-blind.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: Russell is unable to get up when wearing bubble wrap.
- I Am Big Boned: Penny Ling refers to herself as such when going through the air ventilation system.
- Idiosyncratic Wipes: A sheet of bubble wrap floats down in Act 2, complete with popping noises.
- Idiot Ball: Blythe seems to have lost much of her rational thought the moment Youngmee freaks out in the Cold Open. She would not regain it for most of the episode.
- Considering Russell kept poking holes in his friends with his quills by backing up into them, it was probably not the smartest idea to have him play a game where he wanders aimlessly.
- Instant Bandages: Inverted. Bandages are shown on the pets' backs, which are hinted to have been there for some time, but on the following scene, the bandages are gone.
- Ironic Echo Cut: When Blythe says she misses the pets and that she's pretty sure they're having a blast. Cut to Sunil freaking out, "This is a terrible situation, simply terrible!"
- Large Ham: Inserting herself into Annabelle's role, Blythe plunges headfirst into over-the-top diction and annunciation.
- Malaproper: Subverted with Vinnie this time—he uses the word "Demetrius" in place of "delirious," but he's really referring to a friend of his who exhibits strange behavior when sick, and it's a term used by his circles. Minka, however, plays it straight, unable to recite "jerry-berry" properly.
- Messy Hair: Apparently what happens to Blythe after she puts on her sweater.
- Must Make Amends: Russell spends most of the episode trying to find ways to prevent himself from hurting his friends, usually at the cost of his well-being. His last resort is to leave and never return.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Russell gets this thought process when he sees the bandages on the other pets caused by his accidents.
- Never Say "Die": The description Blythe finds and reads out loud for her disease simply depicts a skull and crossbones at the end, which causes Blythe to go quiet upon seeing. Of course, this could just mean jerry-berry causes people to become pirates.
- Never Trust a Title: Only in one scene does Russell wrap himself in a plastic bubble wrap. Rather, the episode's title is a reference to The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Further confusing matters is that a later episode would actually have Russell in a plastic bubble for most of it.
- Noodle Incident: When the pets show off their bandages caused by Russell's quills, showing it's happened a lot sometime before the events of the episode. One of Zoe's bandages is right under her tail… ouch…
- Offscreen Teleportation: When blindfolded, Russell walks offscreen to the left, then impossibly quickly reappears from underneath the camera.
- Portmanteau: Trendy "zompires."
- Running Gag: Minka cannot seem to remember the name of Blythe's disease properly. Neither can Roger.
- Zoe has adopted dancing as a means to express intense emotion.
- Sanity Slippage: Blythe loses her ability to distinguish reality from Fergus and Annabelle the more she reads it.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Russell, while blindfolded, talks about finding Penny and Sunil via triangulation and vectors.note
- Sunil then speaks this way about trying to get inside Russell's tower. See the image quote.
- Shapeshifter: Count Skeezius's Gloombots, whose modus operandi is to disguise themselves as friends of the target.
- Shout-Out: Minka sings a line resembling "Bananarama" when calling out Blythe from the dumbwaiter.
- Show Within a Show: We see pieces of Fergus and Annabelle within this episode.
- Sick Episode: Not exactly. Blythe's case of "jerry-berry" is mostly mental.
- Smelly Skunk: As per usual, Pepper releases her musk when Blythe forces them back to the Pet Shop from the air vent to her room, right behind an unfortunate Vinnie.
- Stylistic Self-Parody: In the cold open, Blythe struggles to put on her sweater because her head is too big to go through the collar.
- Squee: When Blythe hears the song Youngmee sends. Blythe squees so much, even Minka is unnerved.
- Take That!: Fergus and Annabelle, a parody of The Twilight Saga with zombies and robots added, seems to invoke, as Blythe puts it, "silent brooding" in its readers. Zoe also has a look of bewilderment on her face as Blythe and Youngmee describe the plot of the book.
- Tempting Fate: Russell dares the other pets to break through his bubble wrap, though he's actually right—the bubble wrap does protect the others from Russell's quills.
- Unmoving Plaid: The bubble wrap pattern is stationary in some shots.
- Viewer-Friendly Interface: Blythe's computer works like this. Downloading a book seems to be depicted purely visually too, with beeping and whirring noises.
- Walking Disaster Area: Russell think's he's one when quilling.
