Wishy Washy

"Wishy Washy" is episode number 4.2 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.

HTF Episode Description
Petunia’s obsessive-compulsive disorder requires a visit from plumber Lumpy! Can Petunia clean up the mess that Lumpy made?

Petunia has OCD and Lumpy the plumber is called in to fix the pipes. (DVD)

Plot
Petunia has just finished taking a shower and steps out of the bathtub, wrapping a towel around her head. She goes over to the sink to wash her hands. When she's done, she neatly folds her towel and puts it in the hamper along with several other nicely folded towels. She puts her pink flower accessory on her head and puts some lotion on her fur. She puts the bottle away in the cabinet and, to her horror, realizes that one of the lotion bottles is facing the wrong way by only a few inches. Panicking, she quickly breathes in and out until she calms down to avoid having a panic attack. Sighing, she adjusts the lotion bottle to its rightful position. Through this, it becomes fairly obvious that Petunia suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Happy and content she closes the cabinet, only to see a smudge on the mirror. This triggers another fit of hyperventilating, and she cleans the mirror using a large wad of toilet paper wrapped around her rubber-gloved hand (and several layers of cleaning solution on the surface of the mirror). She then flushes the giant wad of toilet paper down her toilet. After she washes her hands again, she hears the sound of moving water even though the sink has been turned off. Confused, she checks the toilet, only to find dirty green water gurgling out of it.

Panicking, Petunia calls Lumpy the plumber to fix her toilet. When Lumpy arrives his boots are muddy, much to Petunia's distress. As he tracks muddy foot prints everywhere, Petunia cleans up the mess with a vacuum cleaner. Lumpy sees that the toilet is a bigger mess than he thought it would be, so he decides to get his toolbox and steps back outside. When he steps back into Petunia's house, however, he realizes that his boots are filthy and wipes them clean on the welcome mat.

He steps into the bathroom and closes the door to block Petunia's view of him working. Pondering over what the problem might be, Lumpy takes out a plunger and sticks it into the toilet. The water flows down and Lumpy smiles at having supposedly fixed the toilet. All of a sudden, however, dirty water erupts from the toilet like a volcano. Panic-stricken, Lumpy closes the toilet seat, but this only ends up spraying the water out in all directions at a high velocity.

Meanwhile, back outside, Petunia waits anxiously by the door. She is shocked to find dirty water flowing out through the gap under the door. She opens the door to the bathroom, only to find the room is a mess while a nervous Lumpy has his arm jammed down the toilet. Upon seeing Petunia, Lumpy removes his arm from the toilet revealing he has removed a clump of fur from the toilet. Seeing this triggers yet another fit of hyperventilating in poor Petunia, so much so that the paper bag she was using pops under the pressure. Desperately needing to vent her frustrations, Petunia grabs one of her cleaning gloves instead. It works to calm her down, but unfortunately gets stuck in her throat when she inhales too deeply.

Lumpy sees Petunia's situation and runs over to help. In an attempt to get the glove out of her mouth he sticks his dirty plunger in her mouth, but this proves to be unsuccessful. Next, he presses down on to her chest to try to get her to breathe, but this doesn't work either, only inflating the glove still stuck in her throat. Seeing no other alternative, Lumpy puts his hand deep inside Petunia's throat in an attempt to get the glove out. After a lot of digging, he finally succeeds and pulls out the dirty glove. Sadly, Petunia's relief is short-lived, as she sees her filthy glove, the filthier plunger, and finally the filthiest thing of all: her dirty water stained bathroom. Seeing these three things makes Petunia scream so loudly, the birds nesting on her house take off in alarm, her scream echoing throughout the forest, as well as making the screen shake and vibrate (indicating how loud the scream was).

Poor Petunia brushes her teeth rapidly through her cries of misery. She ends up brushing so hard her gums begin to bleed, turning her toothpaste red. A while later, she finishes cleaning the whole bathroom while wearing sanitary clothing. She takes another shower to clean herself and, feeling disgusted, gurgles and drinks some mouthwash.

Meanwhile, down in the basement, Lumpy wrenches the pipes to fix the toilet problem. He takes out one of his tools to poke the clog out, but he hits the wrong pipe. It ends up in the drain of Disco Bear's jacuzzi as he relaxes. He along with Lumpy are happy to meet that hard-working skunk named Petunia, which is odd like he's seeing the drill, but it retreats back into the water. He checks on the drain to see if anything shows up, when suddenly, the drill comes back up and pokes him through his left eye. He struggles and begins yelling and screaming in pain as the drill pulls him down.

Back at Petunia's house, Lumpy tugs and pulls the tool out of the pipe. Wrapped around the pipe are Disco Bear's internal organs connected to the arteries of his eye. The pipe begins shaking as Lumpy takes a quick peek and water comes flowing out, pushing Lumpy to the water heater. Lumpy sees his tool has pierced the water heater and quickly yanks it back out. Immediately, hot steam pours from the hole, burning him. He falls and the tank tips over, crushing him. Steam and water continue to flood into the basement from the ruptured tank, and the light bulb hanging above blinks out as the heater quickly burns Lumpy's body.

Petunia continues bathing happily when, all of a sudden, the water stops running. Irritated, she goes down the basement, feeling nervous as the room is plunged in darkness. She turns on the light at the bottom of the stairs and sees, to her horror, that she's standing knee-deep in filthy, slimy water. And as if that wasn't scary enough, Lumpy's burnt corpse floats by, then, and upon seeing it Petunia loses her balance and falls into the muck. She comes out covered in gunk and runs upstairs screaming. She tries to get the water running from the shower stall but nothing comes out. She then tries washing her hands, but the sink only runs more dirty water which turns her hands red due to excessive washing. Petunia dashes to the kitchen to use the sink sprayer to wash the filth away, but it only pours out more dirty water, making her panic.

She rummages through her kitchen drawers to find something to clean herself with. First, she grabs a brush and rubs the side of her face, but this isn't nearly sufficient enough to scrub the filth off. Next, she uses some steel wool to scrub herself, but she rubs so hard that it peels her skin away. Petunia, now at her wit's end, finds a potato peeler in the bottom of her drawer. Her expression turns manic, her eyes become bloodshot, and she begins laughing insanely; her OCD has gotten the best of her as she furiously scrapes at her arms and body, peeling chunks of her skin off in a last-ditch effort to clean herself. When she finally stops, large pieces of her flesh are missing and her internal organs and bones are exposed. But the filth is gone, and she smiles and sighs in relief as she falls over dead from extreme blood loss and all the excessive wounds. The potato peeler falls from her hands and lands in the pile of scraped-off flesh in the sink. The iris then closes in on the sink drain, where dirty green bubbles slowly gurgle out of it.

Moral
"Wash behind the ears!"

Deaths

 * 1) Lumpy stabs Disco Bear in the eye with the pointed end of his pipe drill and pulls out Disco Bear's internal organs.
 * 2) Lumpy is brutally crushed and burned by a water heater.
 * 3) Petunia commits suicide by skinning herself alive with a potato peeler and dies from massive bleeding in an attempt to clean herself.

Goofs

 * 1) Lumpy's antlers change directions numerous times, sometimes through continuous shots.
 * 2) Petunia should have died when she chugged the mouthwash, as mouthwash is 25% alcohol, and chugging large amounts of mouthwash could result in blindness, organ failure, and even death.
 * 3) When Petunia cuts her dirty skin off, it's not dirty anymore.
 * 4) In Concrete Solution Lumpy's eyes were shown to be blue (When he looks into the nail-gun). In this episode, however, after Petunia finds his corpse, Lumpy's eyes are green.
 * 5) When Petunia dies and drops the potato peeler it falls as though it's going to land on the floor, but it somehow ends up in the sink.
 * 6) Judging by how little the hole on the water heater punctured by Lumpy's drill was, the water that spilled out shouldn't have been able to pour out that quickly.
 * 7) When Lumpy sees what's wrong with the toilet, he closes the door from in front of the toilet, but he's too far away from the door.
 * 8) Petunia's potato peeler stayed completely clean when she was slicing off her skin.

Trivia

 * The title of this episode is named for the phrase "wishy washy",  which is another way of describing someone who is weak-willed.
 * This episode introduces and first explores Petunia's obsessive compulsive disorder. This is, however, the only episode in which she kills herself as a result of her disorder.
 * This is also the only episode where a character commits suicide. It's debatable as to whether it was deliberate or not, though, since Petunia was mentally unstable at the time.
 * This is one of three TV episodes where Petunia appears but Giggles doesn't (the other two are Take a Hike and A Hole Lotta Love).
 * Nobody dies until almost five minutes into the episode (5:04 to be exact).
 * This is one of the few TV episodes where there are less than five characters.
 * Lumpy is responsible for every death in this episode.
 * Or it could've been Petunia, since she was responsible for clogging the toilet in the first place.
 * When this episode aired along with Easy For You to Sleigh and Who's to Flame? on YouTube, the alternate title for the conglomeration of the segments was named "Four on the Floor."
 * This episode is Petunia's only starring role in the TV Series.
 * The entirety of this episode takes place indoors. It's the only episode with this distinction.
 * Disco Bear's death is similar to Toothy's death in Eye Candy.
 * The dirty plunger and the water heater are later seen in Every Litter Bit Hurts polluting the lake.
 * If one listens closely when Lumpy tries to remove the glove from Petunia's mouth via a dirty plunger you can hear her in a muffled scream "What are you doing?!"
 * The scream Petunia uttered after she saw her dirty bathroom was similar to the scream Giggles made in Doggone It and Swelter Skelter.
 * Nobody survives in this episode.
 * This is a rare TV episode where there are more starring role characters than featuring or appearance role characters.
 * This is one of the three episodes of TV season one where Disco Bear is the first character to die, the other is As You Wish and Double Whammy Part 1.
 * This episode has the same moral as Nuttin' Wrong with Candy.
 * This is the first time Petunia proves to be mentally unstable
 * Just before Petunia finds the steel wool, you can clearly hear her say "Where is it?"
 * The scene where Petunia finds Lumpy's burned corpse has been described as one of the scariest and most disturbing moments in the show.
 * This episode, along with Tongue in Cheek are considered the most graphic episodes in the TV series.
 * The YouTube thumbnail for Part 2 spoils Disco Bear's injury before death.
 * When Petunia was scrubbing her chest with the steel wool, if one notices, she destroys her air freshener in the process.