Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow

Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow is episode number 13.1 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.

HTF Episode Description
Lumpy loses his hearing, rendering him both deaf and dumb. (DVD)

Plot
Lumpy and Cuddles play telephone by attaching two tin cans together with strings. Lumpy tries talking to Cuddles several times, but Cuddles keeps telling him to move back. Eventually, Lumpy reaches the end of the string and, upon pulling on it, snaps the line. He next attempts playing telephone by connecting two coffee cups. Unfortunately, Lumpy filled the cups with coffee and Cuddles, not knowing this, scalds himself when he brings the cup up to his ear. Finally, Lumpy hands Cuddles a pepper grinder while taking a barrel for himself. Lumpy yells into the barrel, which sends a sound wave down the line and causes pepper to fly in Cuddles' nose. The ground pepper causes him to sneeze and the force of the sneeze through the barrel knocks Lumpy down. Lumpy sits up in a daze, blood coming out of his ears. Concerned, Cuddles runs over and panickingly shouts at Lumpy to see if he's okay, but from Lumpy's point of view, we can't hear a single thing, indicating he's now deaf.

Lumpy goes to Sniffles, the doctor, for help. Sniffles looks into one of Lumpy's ears, seeing right through to the other side. Sniffles prescribes an ear horn for Lumpy, which helps him hear again. While walking on the street, he comes across The Mole who is playing a trombone for money. Lumpy listens through his ear horn and tries to place a coin in a hat by The Mole, but it rolls out of his hands and into the road.

He runs to retrieve it just as Russell, driving a seafood truck, approaches. He honks his horn, but his warning falls on deaf ears. While screeching to a halt, Russell hits a pothole, flips his truck, hits and kills The Mole, and crashes in a mangled flaming wreck. Lumpy gets his coin and puts it in the hat before noticing the wreck. His ear horn was destroyed and he can't hear Russell's screams for help, so he takes the coin he gave The Mole (as well as the hat) and uses it to call the hospital in a phone booth. Giggles answers the phone, but because Lumpy can't hear, he doesn't respond to her. She hangs up the phone and Lumpy tries dialing again as Russell's truck explodes, sending pieces of him flying at the phone booth.

Lumpy returns home and doesn't realize his security alarm has gone off. He mixes batter in a mixer, oblivious to the numerous appliances in his home that are making noise. He sees the scene of the crash on the evening news and turns up the volume, but he still can't hear the report. He gets an idea and attaches large speakers to his TV, which are so loud they shake the walls of Flippy's home next door. Meanwhile, Flippy is fast asleep, dreaming about riding a unicorn through a beautiful meadow.

On the TV, Handy appears above the wreck in his helicopter to assess the situation. The noise of the alarms carries itself over to Flippy's house. He dreams that the evil version of himself chases down the good version of himself. Flippy and the unicorn eventually came across a cliff, As Evil Flippy was getting closer to them, The unicorn jumps off the cliff and grew wings. Flippy thought he has been saved, cheering, until his evil self sliced them up in the blades of his helicopter. Flippy then wakes up shrieking in sheer terror, making the whole background shake worse and immediately emerge to his evil side. He carries an axe and rings Lumpy's doorbell, Lumpy can't hear it though all the alarms. Irritated, Flippy throws his axe down and starts to throw rocks at Lumpy's window, trying to draw his attention. He then swings a spiked log through the wall of Lumpy's trailer, narrowly missing Lumpy as he bends down to pick up a carrot slice he dropped. Exhausted, Flippy doesn't notice the back-swing of the spiked log and gets hit.

Lumpy leaves his trailer, wearing a party hat and carrying a birthday cake in the basket of his bicycle. Flippy follows Lumpy in his helicopter, trying to slice Lumpy in the blades the same way he did to himself in his dream. As he draws closer, however, he imagines Lumpy turning into the good version of himself laughing and waving hello.

Holding back tears, Flippy snaps out of his trance and pulls up on the controls, losing control of the helicopter and flying towards Cuddles' house. Cuddles, hearing the helicopter, goes outside and recoils when he sees Flippy's approaching helicopter. It crashes into the side of Cuddles' house, but only one of the blades gets stuck, leaving Cuddles and Flippy unharmed. Flippy jumps down and they laugh nervously about the incident, when the helicopter begins moving. Before they can get out of the way, Cuddles and Flippy are killed by the tail blades of the helicopter, causing them to get sliced to pieces. Lumpy arrives at this moment and, seeing what has happened, begins calling for help on a tin can attached to a string. Before the episode ends, he gets a busy signal.

Moral
"Actions speak louder than words"

Injuries

 * 1) Cuddles has second degree burns to his left cheek and ear by hot coffee.
 * 2) Flippy is hit by a large log.

Deaths

 * 1) The Mole is killed by Russell's truck.
 * 2) Russell dies in a truck explosion.
 * 3) Flippy and his unicorn are sliced up by Evil Flippy's helicopter blades (Dream).
 * 4) Flippy and Cuddles are sliced by the rotor blade of Flippy's helicopter (Reality).

Goofs

 * 1) Lumpy's antlers change numerous times throughout the episode, sometimes in continuous shots.
 * 2) Cuddles only splashed coffee on the right side his face, but he also bandaged up his right ear, which didn't receive any damage.
 * 3) Cuddles' hair should be half covered since he had bandages on the side of his face.
 * 4) The Mole's chair is seen on the ground after he dies, but when Lumpy gets his coin back, it is gone.
 * 5) When the Mole dies his blood is brownish color, but when Lumpy gets his coin its red.
 * 6) The symbol on Flippy’s beret changes places several times.
 * 7) At the beginning of the episode, the moves are seen to move highly irregularly.
 * 8) Cuddles suffered second degree burns when he splashed coffee on his face, requiring him to bandage his injured head. Later that same night, however his bandages are gone and his face has completely healed. It should not be possible for a second-degree burn to heal that quickly.
 * 9) Russell's truck exploded while Lumpy used the pay phone, but reappeared on Lumpy's TV.
 * 10) It's likely that it was broadcasted another truck, or possibly on from a movie or so.
 * 11) The Mole wouldn't be able to play the trombone, since it's not exactly at his mouth, since the long purple turtleneck is covering his mouth.
 * 12) When Lumpy puts on the birthday hat the strings are tangled around his antlers and his face but it is impossible to get the hat on like that in such a short period of time.
 * 13) When it shows a shot of Flippy's bunker you can't see the helicopter he uses to chase Lumpy.
 * 14) Russell was in the left side of the fallen truck, yet his remains managed to fly on the other direction.
 * 15) Why wouldn't Evil Flippy just chop down the door instead of waiting Lumpy to answer it?
 * 16) The rotor of the helicopter would break when colliding the ground and yet it doesn't have any effects when it hits the ground.
 * 17) The rotor of the helicopter was vertical and yet managed to cut down Flippy and Cuddles' bodies leaving their heads unharmed.
 * 18) Cuddles should've felt the heat coming from the coffee cup he was holding, but he didn't feel anything.
 * 19) Russell's truck flew in straight line and landed in the middle of the road, but it still managed to hit The Mole on the sidewalk.
 * 20) If Lumpy's head was hollow after the incident with the telephone, he shouldn't have been able to hear anymore.
 * 21) The speed of Flippy's helicopter in this episode is inconsistent: it managed to stay behind Lumpy's bike when Evil Flippy was trying to hit him, and after Flippy snapped out of his trance, he managed to get to Cuddles' house before Lumpy did. And judging by the speed Lumpy was traveling, he should have arrived at Cuddles' house before the helicopter killed Cuddles and Flippy.

Trivia

 * The start of this episode seems to be based on a comic of the same name, from the Third Strike DVD.
 * When Cuddles runs to Lumpy after he gets injured, he shouts Lumpy's name. This is the third instance in the entire series where a character calls another character by their name, the first being in House Warming, second is Water Way to Go.
 * Lumpy's injury is similar to Giggles' injury in From Hero to Eternity.
 * Lumpy's trailer is heavily decorated with pictures of cheese, boots and even of himself.
 * The nightmare Flippy had was foreshadowing his own (along with Cuddles', even though he did not appear in the dream) death.
 * This episode marks the second instance that Flippy resisted his evil side. He does this in Party Animal roughly three times, but he eventually succumbs to his evil side. His actions of going against his evil side are repeated in the next two episodes, where he receives therapy for his flip outs in Double Whammy Part I and defeats his evil self in Autopsy Turvy (Double Whammy Part II) (shortly before being killed by a semi-truck).
 * This is also the first episode to refer to Evil Flippy as the second-self to Flippy.
 * This episode marks one of four instances where Flippy attempts to kill Lumpy and fails (the other three being Remains to be Seen, Double Whammy Part I and By the Seat of Your Pants).
 * Every death in this episode is caused by a vehicle. (Russell and The Mole by a truck, and Cuddles and Flippy by a helicopter.)
 * This is the first time Flippy flipped out without being actually reminded on war and without killing anyone, the second was Without A Hitch (although he killed Flaky three times in her imagination, he remains normal through the whole episode).
 * This is also the first time Evil Flippy showed a sympathetic emotion, when he begins crying just before returning to normal.
 * This was Kenn Navarro's first time voicing Good Flippy.
 * This is the first episode on TV which Handy survives, the other one being Double Whammy Part I.
 * When Lumpy sees Cuddles and Flippy sliced and diced, he says  "What the hell..."
 * This is one of the few TV episodes that focus on a specific part of the body (ears). The others are A Sight for Sore Eyes (eyes), A Change of Heart (heart), and Chew Said a Mouthful (jaw).
 * Flippy's shriek when he wakes up in his bed sounds familiar to the Casper The Friendly Ghost cartoons. When people saw Casper, they shriek in terror, sounding identically to Flippy's scream.
 * This was also heard in various other episodes, Such as Double Whammy Part I, Autopsy Turvy (Double Whammy Part II), Happy Trails Pt. 2: Jumping the Shark, Remains to be Seen and Pop's BBQ Smoochie.
 * This is the earliest hint that Good and Evil Flippy are both two different people (although it wouldn't really count since it was a dream). This happens again at the end of Double Whammy Part I (which continues in Autopsy Turvy (Double Whammy Part II)).
 * This is the only episode in which Evil Flippy does not kill anyone.
 * This episode was released on TV along with Double Whammy Part I and Autopsy Turvy (Double Whammy Part II). Lumpy, Cuddles and Flippy appear in all three episodes; Cuddles and Flippy die twice while Lumpy survives all three. When the conglomeration of these three episodes aired on YouTube, the alternate title for it was named "Friday the 13th".
 * This is one of the only two times in the television series where Handy survives. The other episode is Double Whammy Part I.
 * Lumpy is indirectly responsible for every death in this episode despite that he survived and didn't notice except Flippy and Cuddles' deaths.
 * When Flippy's unicorn grew wings, it is similar to the TriStar mascot growing it's wings in the 1984-1993 TriStar Pictures opening logo.