Helen is trying to draw the concept of the episode, then we cut to the title card. The episode proper starts with Helen and Martha leaving to play soccer. Helen gets a cap because it's a sunny day, but Martha thinks it's a cap for fish because it has a fish logo on it. Helen explains that it's just the insignia of Danny's favourite soccer team, but then Martha thinks that T.D.'s shirt with a tomato is an insignia of a team called the Tomatoes.
Helen and Martha meet up with Alice, and Helen asks her why T.D. wears the tomato shirt. Truman walks up and Helen asks him why T.D. has a tomato on his shirt, but he doesn't know either, so they go to ask T.D. himself. When they get to the Kennelly house, however, Truman and Alice start to have second thoughts — Truman worries that they won't understand any answer anyway, since T.D. is a Cloudcuckoolander, and Alice worries that T.D. might somehow consider it a sensitive topic.
T.D. leaves his house and accompanies his friends, but they're nervous to ask him about his shirt. Martha is about to ask, but Alice and Truman gesture at her nervously, so she instead asks, "Are tomatoes very important to you?". T.D. then recounts an incident a year or two ago, when he was helping O.G. plant some tomatoes, only for O.G. to eat them in his sleep when they ripened. Helen thinks that this means tomatoes are important to him, but T.D. claims he forgot about the incident until he was asked.
Martha asks if there's another thing that makes tomatoes important to him, and he reveals his favourite condiment is ketchup. We then see another flashback, explaining why T.D. loves ketchup: he put it on a burger, then saw on the bottle an ad for a contest to get the most use out of a single ketchup bottle, with the prize being to climb the world's biggest ketchup bottle. He lost, but he won second prize, which Martha thinks was the shirt, but it was ketchup.
Helen thinks she must ask T.D. about the shirt directly, then T.D. remembers another "tomato thing": at Thanksgiving with C.D. and his parents Aunt CJ and Uncle Jay, plus a little neighbour girl and her parents, everyone argued over the pronunciation of "tomato" and "potato". Martha finally asks T.D. why he wears the shirt, and T.D. reveals that it's just because his parents give the shirts to him. He then jokes that it's his initials.
This episode provides examples of
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: At one point, Helen tries her cap on Martha, but she decides she doesn't want to wear it as it covers her eyes.
- And Your Reward Is Edible: T.D. won ketchup as second prize.
- Argument of Contradictions: When T.D.'s family and neighbours argue over food pronunciations, they just shout their preferred pronunciation.
- A Bloody Mess: Invoked when T.D. makes fake blood out of ketchup for a vampire costume.
- Comically Missing the Point:
- When Truman sees Alice in a bush she fell into, he thinks she's sitting in it on purpose.
- When T.D. says he reminds his friends of ketchup, Alice says, "You remind us of ketchup!? What do you mean!?". T.D. thinks Alice doesn't know what "remind" means.
- Continuity Nod: Helen says that T.D. always talks about "whether bulldozers are better than dinosaurs" (which he brought up in, naturally, "Bulldozer vs. Dinosaur").
- Facepalm: T.D. illustrates himself with a double-facepalm when his family and neighbours argue over the pronunciation of "potato", then facepalms in real life remembering it.
- Flashback:
- At one point, we see a scene set a year or two in the past, in which T.D. is helping O.G. plant tomatoes.
- Another flashback from around the same time shows how T.D. grew to have ketchup as his favourite condiment.
- Fun with Homophones: In the first flashback, T.D. gets "symbol" and "cymbal" confused.
- Non Sequitur: T.D. says, "When you look at me, don't I remind you of ketchup!?".
- Noodle Incident: Apparently, Helen and T.D. once spent an entire week arguing over whether Martian dirt smells like dirt or a light bulb.
- Questioning Title?: The title ends on a question mark.
- Shout-Out: One Thanksgiving, T.D.'s relatives and neighbours argued over the pronunciation of "tomato" and "potato", referencing the song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off", in which a couple almost breaks up over the same thing.
- Sleepwalking: A year or two ago, O.G. sleepwalked and ate tomatoes in his sleep.
- Speak in Unison: When T.D. says, "There was one other tomato thing," the kids say in unison, "Yes?! Yes?!".
- Toilet Humour: Helen gives signs for boys' and girls' toilets as an example of similar-looking drawings.
- Unconventional Food Usage: When T.D. is using ketchup for the contest, he uses it to smear on a pot, paint with, and make fake blood with.
