Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow is episode number 13.1 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.
HTF Episode Description
Lumpy loses his hearing, rendering him both deaf and dumb. (DVD)
Plot
Lumpy and Cuddles play telephone by attaching two tin cans together with strings. Lumpy tries talking to Cuddles several times, but Cuddles keeps telling him to move back. Eventually, Lumpy reaches the end of the string and, upon pulling on it, snaps the line. He next attempts playing telephone by connecting two drinking cups. Unfortunately, Lumpy filled the cups with coffee and Cuddles, not knowing this, scalds himself when he brings the cup up to his ear. Finally, Lumpy hands Cuddles a pepper grinder while taking a barrel for himself. Lumpy yells into the barrel, which sends a sound wave down the line and causes pepper to fly in Cuddles' nose. The ground pepper causes him to sneeze and the force of the sneeze through the barrel knocks Lumpy down. Lumpy sits up in a daze, blood coming out of his ears. Concerned, Cuddles runs over and panickingly shouts at Lumpy to see if he's okay, but from Lumpy's point of view, we can't hear a single thing, indicating that he's now deaf.
Lumpy goes to Sniffles, the doctor, for help. Sniffles looks into one of Lumpy's ears, seeing right through to the other side. Sniffles prescribes an ear horn for Lumpy, which helps him hear again. While walking on the street, he comes across The Mole who is playing a trombone for money. Lumpy listens through his ear horn and tries to place a coin in a hat by The Mole, but it rolls out of his hands and into the road.
He runs to retrieve it just as Russell, who is driving a seafood truck, approaches. He honks his horn, but his warning falls on deaf ears. While screeching to a halt, Russell hits a pothole, flips his truck, hits and kills The Mole, and crashes in a mangled flaming wreck. Lumpy gets his coin and puts it in the hat before noticing the wreck. His ear horn was destroyed and he can't hear Russell's screams for help, so he takes the coin he gave The Mole (as well as the hat) and uses it to call the hospital in a phone booth. Giggles answers the phone, but because Lumpy can't hear, he doesn't respond to her. After trying again, she hangs up the phone and Lumpy tries dialing again as Russell's truck explodes, sending pieces of him flying at the phone booth, yet Lumpy pays little heed.
Lumpy returns home and doesn't realize his security alarm has gone off. He mixes batter in a mixer, oblivious to the numerous appliances in his home that are making noise. He sees the scene of the crash on the evening news and turns up the volume, but he still can't hear the report. He gets an idea and attaches large speakers to his TV, which are so loud they shake the walls of Flippy's home next door. Meanwhile, Flippy is fast asleep, dreaming about riding a unicorn through a beautiful meadow.
On the TV, Handy appears above the wreck in his helicopter to assess the situation. The noise of the alarms carries itself over to Flippy's house. He dreams that the evil version of himself chases down the good version of himself. Flippy and the unicorn eventually came across a cliff, As Fliqpy was getting closer to them, the unicorn jumps off the cliff and grew wings. Flippy thought he has been saved, cheering, until his evil self sliced them up in the blades of his helicopter. Flippy then wakes up shrieking in sheer terror, turning into Fliqpy. He carries an axe and rings Lumpy's doorbell, Lumpy can't hear it though all the alarms. Irritated, Fliqpy throws his axe down and starts to throw rocks at Lumpy's window, trying to draw his attention. He then swings a spiked log through the wall of Lumpy's trailer, narrowly missing Lumpy as he bends down to pick up a carrot slice he dropped. Exhausted, Fliqpy doesn't notice the back-swing of the spiked log and gets hit.
Lumpy leaves his trailer, wearing a party hat and carrying a birthday cake in the basket of his bicycle. Fliqpy follows Lumpy in his helicopter, trying to slice Lumpy in the blades the same way he did to himself in his dream. As he draws closer, however, he imagines Lumpy turning into the good version of himself laughing and waving hello.
Holding back tears, Fliqpy snaps out of his trance and pulls up on the controls, losing control of the helicopter and flying towards Cuddles' house. Cuddles, hearing the helicopter, goes outside and recoils when he sees Flippy's approaching helicopter. It crashes into the side of Cuddles' house, but only one of the blades gets stuck, leaving Cuddles and Flippy unharmed. Flippy jumps down and they laugh nervously about the incident, when the helicopter begins moving. Before they can get out of the way, Cuddles and Flippy are killed by the tail blades of the helicopter, causing them to get sliced to pieces. Lumpy arrives at this moment and, seeing what has happened, begins calling for help on a tin can attached to a string. Before the episode ends, he gets a busy signal.
Moral
"Actions speak louder than words"
Deaths
- The Mole is killed by Russell's truck.
- Russell dies in a truck explosion.
- Flippy and his unicorn are sliced up by Fliqpy's helicopter blades (In a dream).
- Flippy and Cuddles are sliced by the tail rotor blade of Flippy's helicopter (In reality).
Injuries
- Cuddles accidentally splashes hot coffee on the right side of his face, receiving severe second degree burns.
- Lumpy's eardrums are ruined when Cuddles sneezes through a string with a barrel at the end.
- Russell is pinned under a truck.
- Fliqpy is hit by a large log.
Survival Rate
- Amount of surviving main characters: 4
- Amount of dead main characters: 4
- Total: 50%
Destruction
- Lumpy sits on a can.
- One end of a barrel is blown away from Cuddles' sneeze.
- Russell's truck hits a ditch, flips over, sets on fire, and explodes.
- Lumpy's ear horn is crushed by Russell's truck.
- A fork is jammed into a garbage disposal.
- Rubble from Flippy's house falls from the ceiling.
- The propeller on Flippy's helicopter leaves markings in the street.
- The propeller on Flippy's helicopter gets stuck in Cuddles' house.
- The helicopter falls from Cuddles' house.
Goofs
- Lumpy's antlers change numerous times throughout the episode, sometimes in continuous shots.
- Cuddles only splashed coffee on the right side of his face, but he also bandaged up his right ear, which didn't receive any damage.
- Cuddles' hair should be half covered since he had bandages on the side of his face.
- The Mole's chair is seen on the ground after he dies, but when Lumpy gets his coin back, it is gone.
- When The Mole dies, his blood is brownish color, but when Lumpy gets his coin its red.
- The symbol on Flippy’s beret changes places several times.
- At the beginning of the episode, the moves are seen to move highly irregularly.
- Cuddles suffered second degree burns when he splashed coffee on his face, requiring him to bandage his injured head. Later that same night, however, his bandages are gone and his face has completely healed. It should not be possible for a second-degree burn to heal that quickly.
- Russell's truck exploded while Lumpy used the pay phone, but reappeared on Lumpy's TV.
- It's likely that it was broadcasting another truck, or possibly from a movie.
- It should have been impossible for The Mole to play his trombone, since his turtleneck is covering his entire mouth.
- After Lumpy finds out his ear horn doesn't work he throws it behind him but after he goes back to get the coin it's still next to the burning truck.
- When it shows a shot of Flippy's bunker you can't see the helicopter he uses to chase Lumpy.
- Russell was in the left side of the fallen truck, yet his remains managed to fly in the other direction.
- Why didn't Fliqpy just chop down the door instead of waiting for Lumpy to answer it?
- The rotor of the helicopter would break when colliding with the ground and yet it doesn't break when it hits the ground.
- The rotor of the helicopter was vertical and yet managed to cut down Flippy and Cuddles' bodies leaving their heads unharmed.
- Cuddles should have felt the heat coming from the coffee cup he was holding, but he didn't feel anything.
- Russell's truck flew in straight line and landed in the middle of the road, but it still managed to hit The Mole on the sidewalk.
- If Lumpy's head was hollow after the incident with the telephone, he shouldn't have been able to hear anymore.
- The speed of Flippy's helicopter in this episode is inconsistent: it managed to stay behind Lumpy's bike when Fliqpy was chasing him, and after Flippy snapped out of his trance, he managed to get to Cuddles' house before Lumpy did. And judging by the speed Lumpy at which was traveling, he should have arrived at Cuddles' house before the helicopter killed Cuddles and Flippy.
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