The Wrong Side of the Tracks is the first episode of the first season of the Happy Tree Friends television series.
HTF Episode Description
Keep your hands and feet in the car at all times! (Part 1)
It’s going to be a Lumpy ride, hold on! (Part 2)
Lumpy repairs a roller coaster, need we say more? (DVD)
Plot
Giggles and Nutty enter Lumpy's carnival, followed by Sniffles, who is looking for money with a metal detector. Cuddles, wearing a blue hat with antlers on the side, drags Flaky onto a roller coaster, much against her wishes. They, along with Disco Bear and Russell, enjoy the ride (with the exception of Flaky) until they come to a sudden stop. Lumpy walks by on the opposite side of the track and Flaky vomits upwards, leading everyone to realize that they are upside down. Despite Lumpy dislodging part of the cart (and a wheel) from the track, all four make it off the ride safely, leaving everybody with disappointed expressions. When Cuddles and Flaky get off the walkway, Cuddles spots Flaky's vomit nearby, and stares at Flaky in confusion, to which Flaky responds by shrugging her arms nervously. Lumpy places a "broken" sign by the entrance to the roller coaster and slips on Flaky's vomit.
Sniffles continues his search for money, becoming disappointed when his metal detector leads him to the detached wheel from Flaky and Cuddles' cart. Lumpy gets to work on his roller coaster, laying down a piece of missing track. He cannot find a hairpin that goes in to hold the tracks together, as it has fallen to the ground where Sniffles discovers it. Lumpy decides to jam his pencil in the hole, figuring it will work just as well. He next begins hammering a part of the track while Nutty sits nearby, eating cotton candy. The hammering causes the stopper on a cart, which is on a small hill in the track, to come dislodged. The cart rolls down and flies off a part of the track that has fallen off, knocking Nutty away. He flies into, and is impaled on, a ring toss peg, forced to watch his heart slowly stop beating. Handy manages to land a ring around the peg Nutty is on and celebrates, showing no concern for Nutty's well-being. Lumpy notices Nutty's cotton candy and, seeing nobody around, takes it and starts eating it.
As Sniffles continues searching, a balloon-carrying Mime walks up to Lumpy, who is holding a wooden board with nails sticking out of it. Sniffles finds a nail with his detector and tosses it away in frustration, popping Mime's balloon. Lumpy, startled by the noise, turns around and hits Mime in the head with the nails in the board. Oblivious to what happened, Lumpy walks away with Mime still stuck to the board. Later, Lumpy looks at the blueprints for what the roller coaster is supposed to look like and then looks at his own roller coaster. The tracks are twisted and incomplete, but Lumpy decides that the roller coaster is ready for riding.
Lumpy removes the "broken" sign and sends a three-cart coaster on its way. Handy and Cuddles sit in the first cart, Giggles and Petunia sit in the second cart, and Lifty and Shifty sit in the third cart. Everything goes well until the pencil Lumpy jammed into the track breaks, causing the portion of the track to fall off. When the six riders reach it, the carts break up. Cuddles and Handy keep moving forward, unaware of any problem, while the others fall down onto another section of the track. They land on a hill in the track and balance perfectly, but the carts become disconnected, sending Giggles and Petunia forward and Lifty and Shifty backwards.
Meanwhile, Cuddles and Handy come upon a small tunnel in the track. The two enter the tunnel with no problem whatsoever. When they exit, Cuddles discovers that his hands are missing and screams in shock. It turns out that the tunnel was so small, it chopped off Cuddles' arms, which were raised in the air at the time. Handy had no problem, as he ducked the moment they entered. Handy looks at his nubs and laughs mockingly at Cuddles, since he is no longer the only one without arms. Cuddles then falls out of the cart where he passes out (or possibly dies) from blood loss (evidenced by his face, which has a dazed expression). Handy suddenly realizes that he is heading straight towards a wall of glass, and can do nothing but scream in pain as the cart continues moving forward. He crashes through the wall and emerges, cut in half vertically by a large piece of glass.
Lumpy is awoken from a nap as Lifty and Shifty ride by, screaming. Lumpy gets on a pushcart and begins following them around the twisted and confusing track, soon finding himself being followed by Lifty and Shifty. When he comes upon a string with flags hanging above the track, he grabs on, flips around, lands in Lifty and Shifty's cart, and holds onto the string as they slow to a stop. He gets out of the car, but unfortunately, he jumps onto the edge of the tracks, where he falls off. He lets go of the string, which hooks on the cart and launches the brothers away. Shifty flies into the turnstile that sits at the entrance to the park, shredding him to death. Lifty lands just short of the turnstile and laughs at his brother's fate. The cart, however, flies down and knocks him into the turnstile, where he suffers the same fate as his brother.
Lumpy sits up on the track he has fallen on and jumps to his feet when he sees Giggles' and Petunia's cart heading for him. He braces himself and pushes back on the cart, trying to get it to stop. As he keeps moving backwards, however, he is slowly filed down by the friction. When the cart reaches the edge, there is nothing left of Lumpy but his antlers, and the cart teeters treacherously on the edge, leaving Petunia and Giggles screaming in terror. Below, Sniffles finally finds a coin and picks it up, pointing his metal detector skyward as he does. The metal detector begins beeping rapidly as the cart Giggles and Petunia are in crushes him. Petunia and Giggles land with so much force that their spines are forced out of their bodies (Petunia's through her back, and Giggles' through her neck) and Lumpy's scalp and antlers land on Giggles' head, resembling the hat that Cuddles wore earlier.
The episode ends with someone taking a photo of the dead Giggles, Sniffles, and Petunia, which ends up in a frame from the park's gift shop.
Moral
"If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right!"
Deaths
- Nutty is impaled on a peg in a ring toss game, removing his heart.
- Mime is hit in the head by a plank with nails. (Caused by Lumpy)
- Cuddles either dies from blood loss, or falls off the ride to his death.
- Handy is cut vertically in half by a large piece of glass.
- Lifty and Shifty are shredded by the turnstile leading into the park. Shifty flies into it first, then Lifty gets shoved into it.
- Lumpy's body is filed down by friction as he tries to stop a moving cart.
- Sniffles is crushed by a roller coaster cart.
- Giggles and Petunia die from the force of the impact of their cart hitting the ground, causing their spines to break out. (Giggles' through her neck, Petunia's through her back)
Injuries
- Cuddles' hands are cut off by a low tunnel.
- Lumpy and Lifty fall from large heights, probably bruising them.
Survival Rate
- Amount of surviving main characters: 3
- Amount of dead main characters: 10
- Total rate: 23.08%
Destruction
- The roller coaster malfunctions and one of its wheels are dislodged by Lumpy.
- One of the carts is dislodged from it's position and it rolls off an unfinished track.
- Mime's balloon is popped by a nail.
- The pencil Lumpy jammed into the roller coaster breaks and a portion of tracks falls off.
- The cart Handy and Cuddles ride in is cut in half by glass.
- A roller coaster cart gets mangled when it hits the ground.
Goofs
- Sniffles is more of a featuring character than a starring character.
- Handy has more of a featuring role.
- At the beginning of the episode, Sniffles' eyes briefly disappear when he looks at the camera.
- The directions of the antlers on Cuddles' Lumpy-hat change several times.
- Broken law of physics: When the characters are upside down, the hats of Russell, Handy, Cuddles, and Shifty never fall off when they logically should have.
Did they glue their hats to their heads, so their hats wouldn't fall of?
- When Cuddles, Flaky, Russell, and Disco Bear are stuck upside down, Cuddles is shown to have a seat behind Flaky, not next to her, like Russell and Disco Bear.
- The directions of Lumpy's antlers change numerous times, sometimes during continuous shots.
- The distance between Nutty and the cart that falls off the tracks is too far for it to still be in the air when it reaches him. It should be also noted that the cart did not have enough declining track pieces to gain enough momentum to reach him while still in the air.
- When Mime dies, blood splatters to the ground. When his corpse is shown, his blood disappears.
- A yellow hard hat (like Handy's hard hat) appears on the broken coaster sign when Lumpy picks it up, even though the hardhat was not there when he set the sign up.
- Mime is impaled on the right side of the plank. But when that plank of wood is seen boarded up, Mime is on the left side. If the board was hammered in correctly, Mime would have been on the right side, or his corpse would be upside down on the left side.
- Lifty and Shifty periodically have the regular Pac-Man pupils (Which they aren't suppose to have in the TV series, though this may have been unofficial since this is the first episode of the TV series.)
- Judging how high up they are, the top of Cuddles' head should have been torn off like his hands or at least damaged.
- Handy crashes into the glass wall head on. It should be impossible for him to be cut in half vertically.
- After going through the glass, Handy is able the control the direction of his pupils, despite his eyes being vertically sliced in half.
- Lifty and Shifty change positions in their cart numerous times.
- The flags on the string of flags that Lumpy uses to slow down Lifty and Shifty's cart change color between shots.
- If one looks closely at Lumpy when he lands in Lifty and Shifty's cart, he lands in the back. But when we see a closeup of them, Lumpy is in the front.
- When Shifty gets shredded by the turnstile, one of his organs bounces off nothing, even though there was no object there at the beginning of the episode (however, this could simply be considered a "breaking the fourth wall" moment).
- When Shifty is shredded by the turnstile, a few of his organs and a lot of blood land on the ground by it, but when Lifty lands in front of it, there is barely any blood and no organs.
- When Lumpy tries to stop Giggles and Petunia's cart, he is in a kneeling position. But in the next scene, he is standing completely straight. It is possible, however, that he may have straightened himself.
- When Lumpy tries to stop Giggles and Petunia's cart, his feet begin to file down, but in the next scene, his feet detach from his body with no signs of damage.
- When Giggles' and Petunia's cart crushes Sniffles, there is no impact sound for Petunia.
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