Idol Curiosity

TV Season: 1 Episode: 9.1 Writers: Warren Graff Ken Pontac David Winn Jeff Biancalana Kenn Navarro Director: Kenn Navarro Episode list: TV Season 1 Previous Episode: See What Develops Next Episode: Home Is Where the Hurt Is "Idol Curiosity" is episode number 9.1 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.

Starring Roles

 * Sniffles

Featuring Roles

 * Giggles
 * Flaky
 * The Mole
 * Russell
 * Lumpy
 * Toothy

Appearance Roles
The Cursed Idol

Plot
Deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle, the Great Explorer Sniffles and his teammates, Giggles and Flaky search for artifacts. As they make their way through the vines, Flaky stops to smell a pretty flower. The flower turns out to be carnivorous, scaring Flaky who warns the others. They see a butterfly land on that flower, and cringe when the flower eats it. As they continue on their journey, they find an ancient temple just like the image in Sniffles' map and they stare at it in awe. The threesome climb the stairs all the way to the top and they see the Cursed Idol sitting on a small throne. When Sniffles removes it to show everyone, a monkey falls from they sky and lands on the temple, crushed to death.

A storm comes in and dead monkeys rain all over this place. Suddenly, an earthquake starts to crack the temple in half and Sniffles, Giggles, and Flaky have to get out of here as fast as they can. On their way down the stairs, Giggles' foot gets stuck in a broken step, breaking her leg. She tries to pull it out of the hole and as she does it, she falls down the stairs until she gets her broken ankle caught up in a crack in one of the steps. She kicks at the bone, trying to break it to free herself, but no avail. This time, she can't escape as the bigger crack crunches her after she falls in it.

Sniffles and Flaky continue running, but they come to a halt when they see hundreds of carnivorous plants standing in their way. Realizing they have no other choice, Sniffles grabs Flaky's hand and leads her through the flowers. As Sniffles makes it through, he discovers all the flowers have eaten Flaky. The big crack continues following him, so Sniffles sprints and hides behind a tree. The crack doesn't know which way Sniffles went, so he tosses a pebble to make a noise. This distracts the crack which hurries away and ends up falling off a cliff. Safe for the moment, Sniffles flees.

At the harbor pier, as a boat leaves, Sniffles sees that the crack is back for its revenge. He runs to the ship, grabs on to a rope hanging off the ship, and the crack falls off the pier and into the water where it sputters around. Sniffles, glad that it's over, takes the Cursed Idol out of his backpack and admires it. Later, Sniffles puts the Cursed Idol on a shelf and he decides to take a nap. As the ship rocks back and forth, the Idol slips out the window, and as it slides underneath Russell's tail while he swabs the deck, he gets his peg leg stuck in the hole of the floor. He pulls out the wooden plank and he gets his other peg caught in another hole. This is a tough situation for Russell. As the Idol slides the other side, a hook attached to a pulley hits and stabs Russell in his stomach, making him fly overboard. His intestines are pulled out connecting him to the ship and the planks on his pegs act as water skis.

Back on the ship, navigator Lumpy keeps an eye out for icebergs with a telescope. He sees what he thinks is an iceberg and urgently rings the warning bell, prompting the helmsman of the ship, The Mole, to turn the wheel hard starboard. Lumpy continues staring at the alleged iceberg, only to see a stick get stuck down on the ice. Confused, Lumpy puts down his telescope to see that he was actually staring at a piece of ice and the small stick of a cocktail umbrella in Toothy's drink. The two laugh over the incident, until The Mole's change in direction actually causes the ship to hit an iceberg. Lumpy falls and imaples his head on his telescope, while a falling Toothy accidentally stabs his eye on his cocktail umbrella. He tries removing the umbrella, but this removes his eye from its socket and leaves part of the umbrella in tact, causing him to run around the deck screaming in pain. The ship quickly sinks, dragging Russell down with it.

The cabin that Sniffles sleeps in somehow manages to survive the wreck, washing Sniffles on shore. He wakes up from his nap, confused about what's gone on, and picks up the Idol which washes up in the tide. Sniffles arrives at a museum with a picture of the Idol on a banner out front and climbs up the steps to enter. At the door he turns around to see a cab pull up to the curb. The door to the cab opens and suddenly the crack comes out and moves up the stairs towards Sniffles. Panicking, Sniffles runs inside and locks the door.

Before moving on, he runs all over the museum and pushes a chair, a bench, a soda machine, and numerous pieces of art to barracade the door. When he's done, the crack simply slides under the door and resumes its chase of Sniffles. The crack begins widening, showing boiling lava beneath the earth, slowly closing in on Sniffles. He finds himself on a small island of linoleum in the middle of the lava and sees the crack moving toward him vertically. He jumps up and grabs onto a chandelier as the crack gets beneath him and he laughs in relief. His glasses break in half, however, and then his entire body is split down the middle, as the crack apparently had caught up with him. The Idol falls out of his backpack and lands on a small replica of the temple the Idol sat on in the jungle.

Moral
"Step on a crack, break your mother's back."

Deaths

 * 1) A butterfly is eaten by a carnivorous flower.
 * 2) Numerous monkeys are slammed to the ground.
 * 3) Giggles falls into a hole created by the Idol's curse and gets crushed when the ground closes on her.
 * 4) Flaky is eaten alive by carnivorous flowers, leaving only one of her arms behind.
 * 5) Lumpy is impaled through the head by a telescope.
 * 6) Russell is pulled down into the ocean by his intestines, where he drowns. The Mole and Toothy may also drown, though it's possible they were able to float to safety.
 * 7) Sniffles is cut in half vertically when the Idol's curse catches him.

Goofs

 * 1) It would be impossible for Russell to go through the ring of fire because his intestines were attached to the ship. For him to go through the ring, the ship must also have gone through the ring.
 * 2) Lumpy's antlers change directions several times, sometimes during continuous shots.
 * 3) Russell's eye patch and hook start off on his right, but when he sinks into the water, they are on his left.

Trivia

 * 1) If one looks closely, the cursed crack pays the cab driver before resuming its chase of Sniffles.
 * 2) Sniffles moving objects, like a bench and a soda machine, to block the door of the museum is a reference to The Blues Brothers.
 * 3) One of the items Sniffles moves is a statue of a Roman bear's head that resembles Cub's head.
 * 4) Sniffles' retrieving the Idol and taking it to a museum could be a reference to Indiana Jones.
 * 5) In this episode Giggles had a more deeper voice making her sound more adult like.
 * 6) This is one of few episodes where there is a cast of more than 3 characters and everyone dies or is presumed dead.
 * 7) The group of explorers is the same group of characters that went on the Haunted House ride in Boo Do You Think You Are?.