Gems the Breaks

Gems the Breaks is episode number 6.3 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.

HTF Episode Description
Lifty and Shifty discover Splendid’s only weakness and attempt to destroy the super-squirrel! (Part 1)

Splendid discovers that justice is a dish best served warmed over with heat-vision! (Part 2)

Lifty and Shifty weaken Splendid with a stolen "Krypton-Nut". (DVD)

Plot
Lifty and Shifty walk out of a museum, arms full of loot from a robbery. They are shocked, however, to find Splendid hovering above the exit, grinning down at them. They throw up their hands in fright, tossing their loot everywhere. A jewel-encrusted chest, one of the items they took, opens and a green glowing acorn called Kryptonut falls out. The rays given off by the kryptonut make Splendid nauseous, causing him to vomit. As the brothers begin collecting their stolen goods and put the kryptonut away, Splendid begins to feel better. Shifty opens the box again and Splendid vomits once more. Lifty and Shifty then realize that the kryptonut serves as Splendid's weakness and before leaving, they open the box several more times to make Splendid throw up.

Later, a sick Splendid lies in bed with a thermometer in his mouth and a hot water bag on his head. He hears an alarm go off and flies out of bed to investigate, putting his duty before his health. Lifty and Shifty have just robbed a jewelry store, but before they can get far, they see Splendid wearing a radiation suit for protection. The brothers present the kryptonut, but Splendid is unaffected. This changes, however, when Shifty pulls down Splendid's pants, causing his knees to buckle. He falls down in the road and is hit by a school bus. The crash destroys the bus and causes Cuddles, Toothy, and Sniffles to fly through the windshield and into a wood chipper operated by Lumpy. Splendid removes himself, uninjured, from the grill of the wrecked bus and takes off once more to stop the dastardly duo.

Lifty and Shifty have taken over Giggles and Petunia's lemonade stand, taking the money and tying up the helpless girls. Splendid tries to fly down at them, only to be forced away by the kryptonut. He flies so fast that he hits the moon, where he tries to think of a way to attack at a distance. Getting an idea, he uses his laser vision on Lifty and Shifty. Due to the extreme distance, this only increases the temperature slightly, which Shifty solves by drinking some lemonade. Splendid then takes out a thick pair of glasses and fires the laser through the lens, magnifying the heat. This destroys a plane being flown by Handy (killing Handy in the process) and burns the rope binding Giggles and Petunia, setting them free. Unfortunately, it gets too hot and sets them, as well as the lemonade stand's profits, on fire. Lifty and Shifty see this and run away, prompting Splendid to follow them with his deadly laser.

Always obeying the rules, Splendid stops the motion of his laser when he comes upon a red light at a street corner. The Mole pulls up behind the laser and begins honking when the laser does not move as the light turns green. Annoyed by this, Splendid deliberately destroys The Mole's car with no remorse. He once more pursues Lifty and Shifty, accidentally vaporizing Cub, who is playing on a swing set. Lifty and Shifty come upon a lake, which they jump into. Splendid tries to run his laser over them, but the beam is too weak to affect them in the water, where they are seen wearing diving gear.

Fed up, Splendid takes out a set of binoculars and fires his laser beam on the lake again. The extreme heat of the laser causes the water to boil and evaporate, leaving nothing but dead fish and the dead and swollen bodies of Lifty and Shifty. Splendid flies down, once more dressed in a radiation suit, and crushes the kryptonut into powder. He takes his helmet off and blows the dust away, only to have a gust of wind blow the dust right back in his face. The skin on Splendid's face begins falling off and he starts vomiting uncontrollably, hitting Giggles and Petunia with a massive wave of it. He tries holding his vomit in, but this causes his cheeks to swell until he bursts. Back at the lemonade stand, a tired and hot Lumpy drinks a glass of lemonade. The drink proves to be much hotter than he expected, as he spits it out and fans his burning tongue.

Moral
"Pressure Makes Diamonds!"

Deaths

 * 1) A generic tree friend might have died when it crashes a bus into Splendid. (Debatable)
 * 2) Cuddles, Toothy, and Sniffles fly out of a bus and are shredded by Lumpy's wood chipper.
 * 3) Handy is killed by Splendid's laser and disappears after flying out off his plane.
 * 4) The Mole is immolated in an exploding car by Splendid's laser.
 * 5) Cub is disintegrated by Splendid's laser on a playground.
 * 6) Lifty, Shifty and numerous fish are boiled to death in a pond of water from Splendid's laser vision.
 * 7) Giggles and Petunia drown in Splendid's vomit. (Debatable)
 * 8) Splendid's cheeks swell up like a balloon and he explodes.

Injuries

 * 1) Splendid vomits numerous times through out the episode when exposed to the kryptonut.
 * 2) Splendid is hit by a bus.
 * 3) Splendid crashes into the moon.
 * 4) Giggles and Petunia are set on ablaze by Splendid's heat vision.
 * 5) When Splendid breaths in the smashed kryptonut, his nose falls off and the skin on his face peels off.

Destruction

 * 1) Splendid's magnified laser vision...
 * 2) ...burns the rope holding down Giggles and Petunia.
 * 3) ...leaves a charred path as he goes.
 * 4) ...destroys a plane Handy was piloting.
 * 5) ...vaporizes The Mole car (on purpose)
 * 6) ...burns away the swing Cub was riding on.
 * 7) ...causes all the water in a lake to boil away.
 * 8) Splendid's death creates a giant crater on the ground.

Goofs

 * 1) When Splendid is in his bed, his tail is not visible (it may be under the blanket, however).
 * 2) Splendid is on the grass when he is wearing his radiation suit, but he is on the road after his pants are pulled down.
 * 3) After Cuddles, Toothy, and Sniffles fly into the woodchipper, their body parts are a bit larger than they were before.
 * 4) At the speed Splendid was headed toward the lemonade stand, he should have made it there before Shifty opened the box containing the Kryptonut.
 * 5) Splendid briefly stops his laser flow before destroying The Mole's car, so the laser should not have moved over The Mole's car. Rather, it should have disappeared and then reappeared over The Mole's car.
 * 6) Gemstobreak_giggles_and_petunia.pngia's head is smaller than usual when she and Giggles get set alight by Splendid's laser beam.
 * 7) When Splendid's nose falls off he starts vomiting through his nose, but when he plugs his mouth, the vomit stops flowing from his nose and builds up in his cheeks.
 * 8) Lumpy, Giggles, Petunia, Pop, Cub, Handy, and The Mole would have most likely had featuring roles.
 * 9) When Splendid crushes the kryptonut and dies, the dead bodies of Lifty and Shifty and all of the fish are gone.
 * 10) When the wave of Splendid's vomit hits Giggles and Petunia, if one looks closely, Splendid pukes his heart out, meaning that he should have died a little earlier.
 * 11) Throughout the episode, from Splendid's appearance to their deaths, Lifty and Shifty have regular eyes and Pac-Man shaped pupils.

Trivia

 * The title of this episode is a play on the phrase "Them's the breaks", which is an American/Australian slang for "That's just how it is", or "That's the way the cookie crumbles".
 * When this episode aired along with Snow Place to Go & Dunce Upon a Time on YouTube, the alternate title for the conglomeration of the segments was "Deep Six". Cuddles, Giggles, Toothy, and Lumpy appear in all three episodes. Additionally, Cuddles and Toothy die in all three episodes while Giggles dies twice and Lumpy dies only once.
 * The Cursed Idol is among the items that Lifty and Shifty steal at the beginning of the episode.
 * Splendid's weakness, kryptonut, is an obvious spoof of or reference to Superman's weakness kryptonite.
 * Lifty & Shifty steal money from Petunia and Giggles' lemonade stand, which first appears in Eyes Cold Lemonade.
 * This is the first episode in which a character has (momentarily) defeated and humiliated Splendid.
 * This episode marks the first instance of Splendid intentionally killing other characters.
 * This is the second episode where Splendid dies, the first being Class Act, and his first on screen demise.
 * Technically, Splendid is responsible for his own death by trying to hold in his vomit.
 * After Giggles and Petunia get killed by Splendid's vomit, one can see Splendid vomit up some of his organs (including his heart) as well.
 * The way Splendid's skin falls off could be a reference to the film "Poltergeist".
 * In a Q+A video, Warren Graff and Kenn Navarro both say that they do not like this episode.
 * This is the first instance of Shifty and Lifty kidnapping or taking hostage a major character to rob them or to get some benefit from them. The second instance is in Swelter Skelter, where they kidnap Cro-Marmot.
 * The YouTube thumbnail for Part 2 spoils Splendid during death.
 * This is the only one of Lifty and Shifty's TV starring roles where they both die in the same manner.