A fatter-than-usual Martha is at the vet, apparently suffering from stomach pain. She explains that her stomach hurts when she climbs stairs or uses the dog door, and that she has trouble jumping onto things. The vet asks Martha if she's been eating anything weird and Martha explains what she eats, revealing that she eats many snacks a day. The vet says that Martha is too heavy, and since Helen ruled out the possibility of lack of exercise, it's probably because she's been eating too much. The vet tells Helen to ban Martha from snacking and decrease her portion sizes until she loses the extra weight.
The next morning, Martha is served less soup than usual. She's still hungry, so she tries pretending she can't talk properly, but gets caught when she gloats to Skits. The dogs then go to the garbage cans of Carl the butcher, but they're empty. Martha asks Carl for some meat samples, but he reveals that Helen called and told her about her attempts to make Martha lose weight.
Then, Martha tries to steal food from Jake, but even he isn't letting her eat snacks. Throughout the day, she tries to steal snacks from the Lorraines, but they all disallow her. Then, that night, she has a nightmare where Helen is only feeding her a drop of alphabet soup for breakfast, even though Martha's not only lost the weight but gotten thin as paper, and then she flies her like a kite.
When she wakes up, it's still night time, and she orders a pizza, but Helen smells it and catches her before she can eat it. The Lorraines tell her that eating whatever she wants is bad for her, then Martha plays her a DVD with a song about nutrition. This convinces Martha to accept being fed less, and she goes back to normal size.
This episode provides examples of
- Anthropomorphic Food: Parodied. The DVD features a bunch of characters who are meant to be sentient foodstuffs, appearing in a fruit bowl, fridge, etc, but they're clearly people in costume.
- Big Eater: In addition to Martha being a big eater as usual, the boy in the DVD scoffs whole bowls of chips and candy.
- Continuity Nod: Martha mentions that she still sometimes runs her obstacle course that she got in "Martha Fails the Course".
- Compressed Vice: Downplayed. Martha has indeed always been a Big Eater. It's just never gotten to the point where it interferes with her weight before this episode.
- Death Glare: Skits glares at Martha for trying to mooch off Carl.
- Diet Episode: Played with in that instead of choosing to go on a diet, Martha is being made to eat less against her will because the Lorraines are trying to get her to lose some extra weight she's gained.
- Educational Song: The song on the DVD Helen plays is meant to teach about good nutrition.
- Everyone Has Standards: Skits may love to eat, but he still disapproves of Martha's gluttony in this episode.
- The Fat Episode: The episode focuses on Martha developing a chubby face and belly after becoming even more of a Big Eater than usual, and the Lorraines feeding her less so she'll get thinner.
- Flashback: At the beginning, we see scenes of Martha's big tummy bothering her, and of her eating, in the past.
- Fun with Homophones: When the vet says that she and Martha need to talk about the latter's weight, Martha thinks she's telling her to wait.
- "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Skits covers his eyes in one of the flashbacks when Martha licks crumbs off Jake's face.
- I Don't Think That's Such a Good Idea: Throughout the episode, Skits disapproves of Martha's excessive eating.
- Irritation Nightmare: Subverted for Martha's nightmare. It starts off as just a nightmare about the annoyance of being given less food, but then becomes scarier when she's revealed to be literally paper-thin and gets flown like a kite.
- Is It Something You Eat?:
- When Helen reminds Martha that she and her parents are limiting Martha's portions, Martha says, "I don't want any portions, you can keep those; I just want more soup."
- When Carl says that he heard Martha's snacks were restricted, she thinks that 'restricted' means 'delicious'.
- Less Embarrassing Term: When Martha licks off the Lorraines' dinner plates before they go in the dishwasher, she claims she's not "stuffing [her] face", but doing the "pre-wash".
- Let's Meet the Meat: The singing food in the DVD tell the boy to eat them so he'll be healthy.
- Midnight Snack: Subverted. Martha orders a pizza at night, but it gets taken away before she can eat any.
- Mirthless Laughter: Martha chuckles awkwardly when Helen catches her faking an inability to talk.
- Nightmare Sequence: As a response to the dieting, Martha dreams that she's become thin as a sheet of paper and flown like a kite by Helen, who still insists she needs to lose weight.
- Obfuscating Disability: Martha tries pretending she can't speak right to get more soup.
- Ode to Food: The nutrition song teaches about the different foods one can eat to stay healthy.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Martha refers to herself metaphorically as a "whale" in one of the flashbacks, then later uses the expression "bad taste in my mouth", even though she's usually Literal-Minded.
- Slapstick: Martha's fat tummy makes her get stuck, fall off things, have trouble jumping up, get her belly comically hurt on things, etc.
- Speak in Unison: When Martha tries to lick the dish plates again, Danny, Mariella, and even Jake say, "No!" in unison.
- Temporarily Exaggerated Trait: While Martha has always been a Big Eater, it's never gotten to the point where she gains weight (barring her getting a Balloon Belly occasionally, but that's more cartoon logic) up until now.
- Temporary Bulk Change: Martha spends most of the episode all chubby, but she goes back to normal by the end.
- Tempting Fate: Martha says she's so hungry she doesn't know how she'll ever get to sleep, but then falls asleep instantly.
- A Weighty Aesop: In-Universe — Helen has Martha watch a video with a song about nutrition in her attempts to get her to lose weight.
- You Are Fat: Downplayed when the vet says, "I think I know what's wrong with your belly: there's too much of it. Martha, we need to talk about your weight."
