Carolina, while modelling a pink dress with Francois, tells the audience that the vocabulary is about personal appearance, behaviour, and growing up. Then, T.D., in the Lorraines' backyard, tells Martha and Skits to dig. Helen and Carolina walk up and Carolina asks what the dogs are doing. Martha reveals that she and Skits are trying to dig to the centre of Earth to see what's inside. The girls tell the dogs to stop digging and that the Earth is full of magma. Carolina says that if they don't believe her, they should ask Truman, making the kids realise they haven't hung out with him that day and have only caught glimpses of him.
They go to his house to ask him why he's been behaving oddly, and find his mother, who tells them that Truman is in the garage. They go to the garage, but he tells them to come back in three months. Martha says that that's too long, but Truman says that if he explained, the truth would be too horrible. After failing to get the truth out of him, his friends turn to leave, when Truman's mother appears and is about to turn on the light but he stops her.
When she leaves, his friends decide to keep trying to get Truman's secret out of them, and he still doesn't spill, but reveals that he's too embarrassed to let his friends see his face. After Carolina threatens to walk up to him, he finally decides to reveal the secret.
It began the previous day, when his father told him it was "time to go". However, he backs out and doesn't want to continue. Carolina guesses that his father tried to drive him to a pizzeria but a bat flew into the car and turned Truman into a vampire. Truman says that that isn't it, so T.D. guesses that Truman's father drove him through a green gas cloud, which led to Truman shrinking. Carolina points out that this is clearly not true, so T.D. thinks that maybe only Truman's head shrank.
This didn't happen either, so Truman decides to reveal what happened: he was taken to get his hair cut. This confuses his friends, since having your hair cut is obviously not a big deal. Truman then says that it was a very embarrassing haircut and the next day is school picture day. His friends talk him into showing the haircut, which he does, and it turns out it is bad — it's shaven on one side and the rest of his hair is unkempt.
He considers running away to Antarctica, but Carolina tells him that not everyone looks perfect, she has one elbow that's pointier than the other, and besides he'll get a new school photo next year. Then, we see a future in which Truman is fully grown with two kids, owns a flying vehicle, and his haircut is now fashionable.
This episode provides examples of
- Actually Not a Vampire: Carolina, at one point, wonders if Truman's secret is that he's a vampire now.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Lampshaded by Carolina, who points out that it's odd that Helen doesn't believe in vampires, considering Martha can talk.
- Awful Truth: Initially, Truman thinks that his secret is too horrible to explain to his friends.
- Bat Out of Hell: Discussed when Carolina wonders if the scary thing that happened to Truman was that a bat flew into his parents' car while he and his dad were in it and turned Truman into a vampire.
- Blinded by the Light: At the beginning, Carolina is annoyed by T.D. and Truman's camera flashes.
- Calling Your Nausea: T.D. says, "I think I'm gonna be sick now!" when told bats eat bugs (since he thought he would like to be a vampire if he could turn into a bat). However, he doesn't actually throw up.
- Don't Be Ridiculous: Martha tells Skits that there isn't a giant egg yolk at the centre of the Earth, since that would be silly... it's probably cheese.
- Dramatic Thunder: Parodied. In Truman's flashback, thunder and lightning happens when his father says it's "time to go", even though, as Helen points out, it hadn't rained for a week.
- Embarrassment Plot: The plot of the episode is that Truman is hiding away and is too embarrassed to say why.
- Faint in Shock: Defied. Truman only allows his friends to know his secret if no one faints.
- Fantasy Sequence: We see several sequences of Truman's friends imagining what happened to him.
- Faux Horrific: Truman hides away, worries that the truth might make people faint, and says he'd rather be a vampire of have his head shrunk. It turns out, he's talking about a bad haircut.
- Flashback:
- When Helen explains what "mortified" means, we see her scoring an own goal the previous year.
- When Truman explains what embarrassed him, we see footage of it.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Francois is seen wearing a leather jacket at the beginning.
- "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Carolina covers her eyes when Truman shows his haircut.
- If Jesus, Then Aliens: Carolina thinks that if a talking dog can exist, so can a vampire.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: T.D. wonders if Truman's secret is that he shrank, even though, as Carolina points out, T.D. doesn't look shrunken.
- Innocently Insensitive: T.D. tries to compliment Truman's haircut, but he says it looks cool like a monster.
- I Resemble That Remark!: Truman accuses Carolina of yelling, causing her to yell, "I don't yell!".
- Instantly Proven Wrong: In Carolina's imaginary sequence, Truman's father says, "No harm done, right, Truman?", only for Truman to turn out to be a vampire.
- Mondegreen Gag: When Truman says that the barber "ruined [his] appearance", Martha mishears it as "parents".
- Monochrome Past: Truman's flashbacks to his embarrassing experience (and his friends' guesses about what it is) are in black and white.
- Only One Finds It Fun: T.D. is the only one who likes Truman's haircut, because it reminds him of monsters.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Carolina is correct that Truman isn't looking to stop being friends with Helen, Carolina, and T.D. However, because she's arrogant, she thinks it's because everyone would want to be her friend.
- The Runaway: At one point, Truman considers running away to Antarctica.
- Running Gag: The tan-skinned baby boy in the red shirt and blue overalls keeps crawling off, prompting Truman's mother to scoop him up.
- Same Clothes, Different Year: When we see what Truman will look like when he grows up, we see that he's still wearing a blue sweater vest with the same pattern. Downplayed though, as his T-shirt is replaced with a dress shirt, but it's still powder blue.
- Splash of Color: In T.D.'s imagining, the gas is green, but everything else is in black and white.
- Stating the Simple Solution: When Martha decides to find Truman to ask him why he's acting standoffish, T.D. suggests tracking him down like a detective... then Helen suggests just going to Truman's house.
- Taken for Granite: Discussed when T.D. thinks that "mortified" sounds like a word for being turned to stone.
- Would Rather Suffer: Truman says that he'd prefer being a vampire or having a shrunken head to his bad haircut.
- Unreliable Narrator: Truman claims that there was lightning when his father told him it was "time to go", but it actually hasn't rained for a week and he's just being dramatic.
