Aw, Shucks!

"Aw Shucks!" is episode number 9.3 of the Happy Tree Friends TV Series.

HTF Episode Description
Farmer Lumpy proudly protects his giant "son" ear of corn from a hungry crow!

Plot
Lumpy finishes making a full country breakfast, made up of steaming coffee, fried eggs, bacon, ham, and a stack of pancakes. He puts the food on a tray and carries it out to his cornfields where a giant ear of corn is propped up against other stalks of corn. Lumpy places the breakfast on the ground in front of the corn, next to another tray with several empty plates on it, and puts a bib around the corn before kissing it. A crow lands on the corn and Lumpy angrily yells and swipes at the crow to go away, comforting the corn after the threat is gone.

Lumpy returns to his house and has his breakfast, a moldy, stale sandwich, which breaks his teeth as he eats it. He looks over at a row of pictures and tears of pride well up in his eyes. The pictures show the growth of the ear of corn and everything it and Lumpy when through in between, such as the corn learning to ride a trike and the corn graduating with Sniffles. Lumpy is broken from his trance, however, when he notices some more crows are hovering over the corn fields.

He runs out to the field and chases the crows away again, placing a large band-aid over a small hole a crow punctured in one of the kernels of the big ear of corn. Taking action, Lumpy orders something "post haste" over the telephone. Cuddles arrives literally a second later to deliver a scarecrow, which Lumpy immediately sets up. Unfortunately, when he sticks the stick of the scarecrow into the ground, it severs a power-line. As Cuddles drives away from Lumpy's house, he stops at a railroad crossing where the lights are flashing. Because Lumpy messed with the power line, however, the crossing barrier doesn't go down. Confused, Cuddles looks both ways and doesn't see a train approaching, so he decides to cross. A train comes speeding by just before his delivery van enters the tracks, figuratively scaring the poor bunny to death. As the train passes Cuddles gets out of his delivery van and breathes a sigh of relief, only to have the crossing barrier come down and cut him in half.

Back on the farm, a crow lands on the scarecrow. It flies away in fear, however, when the scarecrow goes up in flames from the electricity of the power line. The crow flies past Lumpy and into a nearby tree, prompting an angry Lumpy to begin chopping the tree down. The tree falls and breaks a section of Lumpy's barbed wire fence, sending both down into a nearby pond. The crow flies into Lumpy's house and the door shuts behind it, locking Lumpy out. Lumpy uses his axe to break down the door and proceeds to take swings at the crow, trying to kill it. He can't hit the crow, however, and ends up completely destroying his house.

Feeling a draft, Lumpy places another order on the phone and once more only has to wait a second as Toothy shows up with an electric blanket. As Toothy walks back to his van, Lumpy sees the crow sitting on a tree branch hanging over Toothy's delivery van. He throws a rock at the crow, but misses and hits a beehive. The hive falls in front of Toothy and breaks, sending a swarm of angry bees to attack him. Toothy sees the pond from before and, getting an idea, runs over and jumps into the water. Unfortunately, he gets tangled up in the barbed wire from the fence, causing him to drown.

Later that night, Lumpy places the electric blanket and a sleep mask over the big ear of corn. He looks around and wonders where the scarecrow went. Seeing one of the posts from the fallen fence, Lumpy assumes he's found it. He places the post, with Toothy's dead body tied around it with barbed wire, in the ground in front of the corn. He then goes back to his destroyed house and sleeps on the floor, using a piece of wood as a blanket.

The next day at the carnival, Lumpy and his corn win the blue ribbon in a produce competition, beating Handy who dropped his giant tomato, Nutty who eats his large candy apple, Mime who is lifting a heavy imaginary vegetable, and Sniffles who holds a large glowing carrot. Proud at his victory, Lumpy places the electric blanket back over the corn when he feels another draft. He sets the temperature at the highest setting and accidentally breaks the temperature knob off, causing the corn to glow red. Lumpy attempts to remove the blanket, but cannot remove it due to the extreme heat it emits. As a result, the corn begins to pop.

Large pieces of popcorn fly out in every direction to Lumpy's dismay. While Disco Bear tries to seduce Giggles, they are both killed by falling pieces of popcorn. At a dunking booth, Flaky is decapitated by a flying piece of popcorn seconds before her body falls into the tank because The Mole has hit the target. He is killed shortly afterwards. Lumpy ducks as a piece of popcorn flies at him, causing Nutty, Mime, and Sniffles to get beheaded. Before long, the livestock, carnival-goers, and vendor runners are all dead at the hands of the killer popcorn. Lumpy crawls up to the burnt cob, which only has two kernels left on it. He cries in anguish at the loss of his beloved corn, before one of the remaining kernels pops and hits him in the face. Liking the taste, he removes the popcorn and begins consuming it, he then ducks out of the scene. As the episode ends, a crow then flies up and takes the last kernel.

Moral
"Friends are flowers in the garden of life."

Deaths

 * 1) Cuddles is cut in half by a falling barrier at a railroad crossing.
 * 2) Toothy is attacked by bees and ends up drowning when he jumps in a lake and becomes tangled in barbed wire.
 * 3) Giggles is hit by Lumpy's killer popcorn, forcing her brain out of her head.
 * 4) Disco Bear is crushed by Lumpy's killer popcorn.
 * 5) Flaky is decapitated when she is hit by Lumpy's killer popcorn.
 * 6) The Mole has his head crushed by Lumpy's killer popcorn.
 * 7) Nutty, Mime, and Sniffles have their heads and arms knocked off by Lumpy's killer pop corn.
 * 8) A cow, a goat, two pigs, two sheep, Lifty, Shifty, Handy, Russell, Petunia and Cub are also killed by Lumpy's killer popcorn. Though their deaths are not shown, they are seen dead when the popcorn has finished popping.
 * 9) Pop is found unconscious after the mayhem, possibly dead. As there was no actual blood coming out of him, the blood on the ground could be Cub's, despite having a giant pop corn over his head, it didn't appear to have went deep in his head like Giggle's, he may have only been knocked out and not actually have been killed.

Injuries

 * 1) Toothy is stung by bees before jumping in the water.
 * 2) If Pop wasn't dead, he was knocked out by a giant pop corn.
 * 3) When Lumpy tries to remove the heating mat, his hands burn due to the increasing heat.
 * 4) A giant pop corn pops on Lumpy's face.

Goofs

 * 1) Lumpy's antlers change directions numerous times, sometimes during continuous shots.
 * 2) First the door to Lumpy's house opens outwards. When he opens the door for Cuddles, it opens inwards. When the crow flies into Lumpy's house, it opens outwards again. When Lumpy bursts open the door to attack the crow, it opens inwards once more. When he opens the door for Toothy, it opens outwards again, but now it opens in the other direction.
 * 3) Toothy's mail van is right next to Lumpy's porch, but when Lumpy throws a rock at the crow, the van is further away by a tree.
 * 4) The beehive on the tree doesn't appear until after Lumpy throws the rock.
 * 5) There are no lily pads on the surface of the pond, but they are visible when Toothy is below water.
 * 6) The barbed wire goes from being wrapped around Toothy's left ear to his right ear when he goes from being above the surface of the water to below it.
 * 7) Even though it was The Mole who knocked Flaky's body into the dunk tank, Handy's body is seen in front of the tank. The Mole's body is close to the stage that Lumpy stands on. He might have gotten excited over something else.
 * 8) After the image zoom out to show the destroyed fairground, Lumpy and his corn aren't seen on the stage.
 * 9) It's pretty odd that Sniffles lost the competition as he was smart enough to make a growing formula in his Smoochie.
 * 10) Giggles corpse is smiling when the camera overlooks all the deaths at the fair.
 * 11) Lumpy's antler "folds" as he rests on the floor.
 * 12) When Sniffles died his pocket holder disappeared.

Trivia

 * 1) In this episode, Lumpy shows signs of codependency.
 * 2) Giggles is the only character in Lumpy's photos that didn't go to the zoo with Lumpy in From A to Zoo and with Lumpy in Take a Hike.
 * 3) Lumpy breaking down the bathroom door with an axe, sticking his head in, and shouting, "Here's Lumpy!" is a reference to The Shining, most specifically its famous "Here's Johnny!" scene. Also this is the first time a character mentions his own name.
 * 4) This is one of the few episodes in which all of the featuring and appearing characters die while the starring character survives.
 * 5) Lumpy is responsible for every death in this episode.
 * 6) About 14 characters are killed at the fair, yet we only see about half (7) of them.
 * 7) This is one of only four times Lumpy isn't seen living in a trailer, the other three times being Junk in the Trunk where he lived in a house, Dunce Upon a Time where he's a giant in a castle, and Peas in a Pod where he lives on a farm.
 * 8) In the Fall Out Boy music video The Carpal Tunnel of Love, we see that Toothy seems to be allergic to bee stings. In this episode, however, the bee stings don´t cause any apparent allergic reaction (though it's possible the music video wasn't canon or Toothy is being stung by wasps or hornets in this episode).
 * 9) Lumpy, Cuddles, and Toothy are the only characters (that appear in this episode) that aren't killed by Lumpy´s giant popcorn.
 * 10) This episode has 16 deaths (The same amount as Who's to Flame?). However, this is not considered as one of the most violent episodes as most of the deaths are fast and unseen.
 * 11) As the camera pans across the carnival (not when everybody's dead), we see Lifty and Shifty wearing their signature smiles next to a cow, a possible reference to the episode, Milkin' It.
 * 12) When the crow turns on the TV in Lumpy's house, the carnival is depicted on the screen.
 * 13) Splendid, Flippy, and Cro-Marmot are the only three characters that didn't appear in this episode.
 * 14) When this episode aired along with Idol Curiosity and Home Is Where the Hurt Is on YouTube, the alternate title for the trio was called Nine Lives. Lumpy, Giggles, and The Mole appear in all 3 episodes. Giggles and The Mole died in all three episodes, while Lumpy died twice.
 * 15) Nutty's, Sniffles' and Mime's death is similar to Mime's, Disco Bear's and Russell's death in Wrath of Con.
 * 16) Giggles seems to be smiling in her remains.
 * 17) Nutty must have lost because he began to eat his entry, a caramel apple. Sniffles might have been disqualified for (possibly) using chemicals to grow his plant. Mime might have lost because his vegetable is imaginary, and Handy lost because he dropped his tomato, which would've been the winner.