Concrete Solution

Concrete Solution is episode number 3.2 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.

HTF Episode Description
It’s all work and no play for the Happy Tree Friends! (Part 1)

You’ll need your hard hat for the conclusion of this one! (Part 2)

Nutty mixes up a sack of sugar with a bag of concrete at a construction site. (DVD)

Plot
Handy drives his truck to the Happy Tree Café and manages to make it inside after some difficulty getting out of his truck. Giggles, the rollerblading waitress, delivers orders to the customers, which includes bacon and eggs for Handy and pancakes with syrup for Nutty. While Nutty drenches his pancakes in syrup, Giggles pours some coffee for Handy. He indicates that he would like some sugar, but because the container is empty, Giggles has to get some more from the pantry. As Nutty happily chows down on his breakfast, he is awestruck upon seeing dozens of bags of sugar in the pantry. As is to be expected, Nutty runs out of the cafe clutching a bag of sugar in his hands.

Elsewhere, at a construction site on an unfinished bridge, Handy, Lumpy, and The Mole get ready for work. Lumpy and The Mole punch their time cards, but Handy has difficulty doing this. While Handy and Lumpy begin mixing cement, The Mole guides a truck, carrying numerous metal support wires, backwards. In the back of the truck, a particularly sharp wire moves ever closer to The Mole's unseeing eye.

Meanwhile, Lumpy tries to nail two boards together with a nail gun, but nothing comes out. He looks directly into the barrel of the nail gun and squeezes the trigger but still, nothing comes out. He finally realizes that it is not plugged in. Upon plugging it in, a nail shoots out and hits Handy in the back of the head. Handy falls face down into a square of wet cement, and when Lumpy's efforts to pull him out fail, he pushes Handy further into the cement. He then smooths out the cement. Suddenly, bubbles form, indicating that Handy was still alive. Realizing this, Lumpy then smooths out the cement again and walks off, though not until he decides to make his hand-prints in the cement.

After he leaves, Nutty comes running up, carrying his bag of sugar. He slips on the wet cement and falls face down on the ground, while the bag of sugar flies into a pile of bags of cement. When he gets up, Nutty unknowingly grabs a bag of cement mix and hurries on his way. Lumpy returns and unknowingly pours the bag of sugar into a cement mixer.

At Nutty's house, Nutty excitedly runs into his kitchen. Nutty puts only one piece of cereal in a bowl and then dumps the whole bag of cement mix on top, still thinking that he possesses sugar. Nutty then grabs his spoon and manages to devour the whole in thing in about three seconds. With that done, Nutty's mouth is all dry and twisted, making him unable to move it. Seeing a glass of water on the counter, Nutty immediately grabs it and chugs the whole thing down. We cut to the exterior of Nutty's house, where an ambulance is parked. Inside the ambulance, Sniffles, a doctor, begins to examine Nutty, who now has a giant bulge in his stomach. Sniffles pulls out a reflex hammer and when he finds the problem, Sniffles lets out a triumphant "A-ha!"



Back at the newly constructed bridge, a line of cars impatiently waits for Lumpy to remove a barricade blocking the bridge. At the end of the line, just behind the truck with the metal support wires, which have impaled The Mole's body in numerous places, Sniffles' ambulance pulls up. Lumpy removes the barricade and opens the road. Everyone on the bridge cheers, but it begins to rain. The sugar in the bridge begins melting as the water hits it, causing the cars to lose their traction and swerve or stop.

The ambulance sways up and down as it moves forward, causing Nutty's unstrapped gurney to roll back and forth. As Sniffles turns around to attempt to strap Nutty's gurney down, he slams into a car. Sniffles' head slams into the steering wheel, where he is crushed, while Nutty flies out of the ambulance through the windshield. He hits Lumpy and knocks him off the bridge, while Nutty grabs onto the railing for dear life. At that moment, the rain stops.

The concrete in Nutty's stomach begins weighing his body down, causing his lower half to fall off. His stomach is exposed and the concrete continues to pull him down. Lumpy lands on the road below and as he tries to get up, he is run over by Lifty and Shifty's van. Panicking, they get out and try to help Lumpy, but upon finding his wallet, they take his money and drive off.

While Nutty struggles to keep himself from falling, his tongue touches the rail of the bridge. Tasting the sugar, he enthusiastically begins to lick the railing. Back on the ground, Lumpy tries once again to stand up. This time, a section of concrete falls on him, crushing his back and making blood spew out of his nostrils and mouth. When the concrete falls forward to crush the rest of Lumpy's body, it is revealed that the piece of the bridge that fell was the piece that Lumpy shoved Handy into earlier.

The scene cuts back to Nutty, who is still eating the bridge, now holding onto both sides of the split bridge. Nutty eats the last section keeping the two halves together, causing them to fall away from each other and tear Nutty in half. When Nutty gets split in half, his concrete stomach gets flung into the air. Down the road, Pop and Cub are seen riding in their car. When Pop notices something, he ducks down. At that time, Nutty's concrete stomach lands on top of Cub, crushing his head and killing him.

At a supermarket, Pop is seen grocery shopping. Pop grabs a bag of sugar from the shelf and places it right next to Nutty's concrete stomach, which is donning Cub's beanie.

Moral
"Take the bitter with the sweet!"

Deaths

 * 1) The Mole is impaled by sharp support wires all over his body. (Death not seen)
 * 2) Handy suffocates when he falls face first into wet cement.
 * 3) Sniffles' head is crushed when it slams into the steering wheel of his ambulance.
 * 4) Lumpy is crushed by a block of cement.
 * 5) Nutty is torn in half when he causes two halves of the bridge to break apart.
 * 6) Toothy, Flaky, Russell, (Debatable) Cro-Marmot and several Generic Tree Friends die when their vehicles fall off the bridge. (Death not shown).
 * 7) Cuddles is the one driving the red car that Sniffles crashes into. He may die after being hit, or when the bridge cuts in half. (Debatable and death not shown)
 * 8) Cub is crushed by Nutty's concrete stomach.

Injuries

 * 1) Handy falls out of his car.
 * 2) Handy is hit by a door.
 * 3) Handy is shot in the back of the head with a nail gun.
 * 4) Nutty trips and falls face-first on the ground.
 * 5) Nutty loses his concrete stomach, with the stomach taking his lower body with it.
 * 6) Lumpy falls from a tall height.
 * 7) Lumpy is hit by Lifty and Shifty's van.
 * 8) Lumpy gets his lower body crushed by a block of concrete.

Goofs

 * 1) Giggles, The Mole, Cuddles, Toothy, Sniffles, Pop and Cub have more of featuring roles. Lumpy should have most likely co-starred.
 * 2) It is unknown why Handy's hard hat does not prevent him from getting dizzy when he falls out of his car window. Furthermore, the hat does not fall off his head when he falls out of the car.
 * 3) The door at the cafe is opened by pushing it, but Handy becomes frustrated before Nutty opens it, even though he could have pushed the door with his head or legs. It is possible that he thought that it was necessary to pull the door instead.
 * 4) When Handy and Nutty enter the cafe at the start of the episode, the door opens inwards. When Nutty runs off with the bag of sugar, however, the door opens outwards. (Debatable, it may be a free swinging door)
 * 5) In the cafe, Nutty does not have a fork when Giggles delivers his order, but he is later seen eating with one.
 * 6) When Giggles gives Nutty the container of syrup, the container is full, and Nutty pours almost all of the syrup on his waffles, but the amount of the syrup in the container stays the same the entire time.
 * 7) When Nutty sees the cabinet of sugar, his face is dirty with syrup. When he runs out with a bag of it, his face is clean. However, it is possible that he licked it off.
 * 8) As usual, the directions of Lumpy's antlers change numerous times throughout the episode.
 * 9) After Lumpy puts the raw cement in the mixer, the cement he pours out is already liquid without him mixing it with water or even turning the mixer on.
 * 10) The wet cement only fills the container halfway at first, but later fills it to the brim. However, it is possible that more cement was poured in off screen.
 * 11) Similarly to House Warming, when Handy wipes the sweat off his head after flattening the cement, his arm extends until he has a visible elbow.
 * 12) When Lumpy notices that he has shot Handy, only half of Handy's tail is on the cement. When Lumpy goes to check on him, however, his whole tail is on the cement.
 * 13) Lumpy has trouble pulling Handy's corpse from the cement, but he has no trouble pushing it in.
 * 14) As usual, the candy on Nutty's body changes places numerous times, sometimes during continuous shots.
 * 15) The candy cane on Nutty's belly is missing just before he picks up a bag of cement.
 * 16) It is odd that Nutty comes to construction site, as work is in progress at the time. And since Nutty is not a construction worker, he should not have been allowed to enter the construction site. (It was likely because Lumpy was the only one alive, so he probably let Nutty in or did not notice.)
 * 17) When Nutty trips in the cement, Handy's corpse should be visible, considering how Lumpy buried him.
 * 18) There is a bowl of fruit on top of Nutty's fridge, even though he does not eat fruit. However, it could be decorative fruit.
 * 19) The glass of water that Nutty drinks to wet his mouth is not on the counter before the camera focuses on it.
 * 20) Before Nutty rips open the bag of cement mix at his house, in one frame, his mouth is unaligned.
 * 21) Inside of Sniffles' ambulance, there is nothing on the walls to keep Nutty's litter still when it first appears, but straps do appear when Sniffles realizes that he forgot to fasten the litter.
 * 22) Nutty's belly is larger than normal when he first enters Sniffles' ambulance due to the concrete, but later in the episode, his belly returns to its normal size. The concrete should not have been able to be damaged, though it is possible that it crushed Nutty's internal organs, making space.
 * 23) It is unknown how Lumpy finished the bridge without Handy and The Mole. It is possible that the other workers were the Generic Tree Friends and thus off-screen most of the time.
 * 24) The bridge is apparently already built when the cars begin to gather.
 * 25) Despite the fact that a bridge is being built, everyone gathers on the top of it, seemingly thinking that it is already done. However, it is possible that they were not warned.
 * 26) The positions of the cars on and beneath the bridge change numerous times.
 * 27) Russell's car turns from red to blue.
 * 28) Toothy is seen in a car before the bridge collapses, but he is in a truck after it collapses.
 * 29) According to the law, when an ambulance arrives, the cars must make way for it to pass, but nobody makes way for Sniffles. (However, the only time when cars must make way for an ambulance is when the ambulance is blaring its siren.)
 * 30) When the viewer sees The Mole impaled on the pipes, his sunglasses are behind his head.
 * 31) When The Mole is seen impaled, he is higher up than he was when he waved in the car.
 * 32) When Lumpy removes the road block to signal that the bridge is complete, the poles that support the block are not visible.
 * 33) When the drivers are cheering when the bridge opens, Flaky and her vehicle are nowhere to be seen.
 * 34) The entire bridge melts as if it were made entirely out of sugar, even though Lumpy only used one bag (and even then quite a bit was inexplicably left on the ground). It could be possible that Lumpy didn't give enough time to let the bridge dry completely.
 * 35) Random cars constantly appear and disappear on the highway.
 * 36) When the bridge starts to melt, a car gets stuck, implying that the bridge is too sticky to be driven on, but Sniffles' ambulance and several other cars are shown in movement after this.
 * 37) Throughout most of the episode, Nutty's left eye is his lazy eye. This changes to his right eye, however, when he is in the ambulance, sliding around on the gurney. His eyes return to normal when he flies out of the ambulance.
 * 38) When the ambulance is shaking Nutty's litter around, his feet are facing the front, but when he is flung out due to the inertia, his head is facing the front.
 * 39) The red car which looks like the one Disco Bear has in Blind Date is shown to make it over the bridge at first, but it later reappears next to the car belonging to Cuddles (right before Sniffles crashes in it).
 * 40) There are a lot of cars around the ambulance when it gets hit, but only the car it hit is shown when Nutty flies towards Lumpy.
 * 41) The steering wheel to Sniffles' ambulance becomes bigger after he hits a car.
 * 42) Nutty should have been thrown and fell from the height he was thrown, but he is a higher height when he flies towards Lumpy.
 * 43) Nutty's lower body disappears after it is ripped off.
 * 44) When Lumpy is knocked off the bridge, he falls as if he is about to land on the grass, but then falls on the road instead.
 * 45) Lumpy takes longer than usual to hit the ground after he gets knocked off the bridge.
 * 46) When Lumpy slams onto the ground, he cracks the cement. Lumpy should not be heavy enough to crack the cement.
 * 47) If Lumpy's body is strong enough to make cracks in the ground, considering how far he fell, the large chunk of cement that crushes him later should have added more cracks.
 * 48) For a brief second, when Lifty and Shifty run Lumpy over with their van, Lumpy's nostrils are missing.
 * 49) When Lumpy is run over by the van, his leg is out of place with a bone sticking out. Later, it is only a flesh wound and he is almost able to stand.
 * 50) When Lifty and Shifty try to help Lumpy, Shifty's tummy marking does not appear at first.
 * 51) The bridge barriers on the side of the road are apparently made out of cement instead of steel.
 * 52) Nutty is holding the bridge barriers when he starts eating the sugar, but he is holding the road when he is finishing. It is possible that he may have eaten his way towards the road.
 * 53) Lumpy_antlers_up.png Lumpy tries to stand himself up just before the cement block with Handy in it crushes him, both of his antlers are pointing up.
 * 54) When the concrete falls on Lumpy and blood is coming out of his nostrils, blood is also seen around his nostrils. But when the blood stops flowing, the blood around his nostrils disappear.
 * 55) The block of cement Lumpy buries Handy in appears in the end completely intact, with Handy's body still visible, but the block should have merged within the bridge and Handy should be fully inside of the block.
 * 56) Lumpy and the cement block with Handy in it disappears shortly after Lumpy dies.
 * 57) There is a thick part of cement holding the bridge together, when the camera pans in, the part is thinner.
 * 58) When Nutty is finishing the bridge, there is a car not far from him. When the camera pans in, the car is near his hand.
 * 59) Before Nutty eats the last piece of the highway, there is a red car on his left. But when the two halves break apart, the car falls off, and when the wide view of the damage is shown, the red car is nowhere to be seen.
 * 60) Nutty's stomach should not have taken as long to fall as it did.
 * 61) When Pop is driving to the store at the end of the episode, there are cars all around him, and even if they did fall off the bridge, they would not as far away from it as they are.
 * 62) When the highway is completely destroyed, there are four extra cars that were never seen on the highway before it was destroyed.
 * 63) It is unknown how Pop could have driven in a straight line when Toothy's truck was knocked halfway over the road. He should have had to avoid the truck.
 * 64) Near Toothy's fallen truck, there is a car with doors open showing nothing inside.
 * 65) Pop clearly drives through the destruction caused by the destroyed bridge, yet fails to even notice the damage around him.
 * 66) Cub's blood doesn't stain Nutty's concrete stomach.
 * 67) In the final shot of the destroyed bridge, Nutty's severed hands are nowhere to be seen on the split section of the bridge.

Trivia

 * As is seen in the close-up when Lumpy looks inside the nail gun, Lumpy has blue eyes. However, in the future episode Wishy Washy, Lumpy's corpse has green eyes.
 * When this episode aired along with Doggone It and Sea What I Found on YouTube, the alternate title for the conglomeration of the segments was "The Third Degree". Lifty and Shifty, Pop and Cub, Cuddles, and Lumpy appear in all three episodes. Additionally, Lumpy and (Debatably) Cub dies in all three episodes, Lifty & Shifty die twice, Cuddles (Debatably) dies once, and Pop survives in all three episodes.
 * It was recently confirmed by Kenn Navarro that despite appearing on the bridge, Mime actually survived, which makes sense considering he is riding a unicycle and could easily avoid the accident since he was the only one who wasn't in a vehicle.
 * Russell's car is similar to Lumpy's brown car and Cuddles' car is similar to Flaky's car in Easy Comb, Easy Go.
 * Sniffles does not seem to notice (or at least care) that The Mole's body is impaled on the pipes in front of him.
 * Handy's image in the cement may be a reference to Han Solo being encased in carbonite at the end of "Star Wars: The Empire Stikes Back" and the beginning of "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi".
 * Lifty and Shifty neglecting to save Lumpy because they stole money from him may be a reference to the parable of the good Samaritan in Christianity.
 * This is one of the few episodes where The Mole does not kill or harm anybody despite being killed himself.
 * Despite only being a featuring character, Handy has a lot of screen time at the beginning of the episode.
 * The Mole's death is similar to Shifty's death from Swelter Skelter.
 * The red car that manages to pass the bridge when the cars belonging to Cuddles and Russell slide looks exactly like the car Disco Bear has in Blind Date.
 * This is the only episode where Sniffles dies as a doctor.
 * Lumpy's injury and death is similar to Sniffles' in A Sight for Sore Eyes.
 * At the beginning, when Cuddles' menu is shown, it has a picture resembling the Java logo.
 * The food that Giggles served at the cafe was:
 * Burritos for Toothy.
 * Soup or grits for Cuddles.
 * Bacon and eggs for Handy.
 * Pancakes for Nutty.
 * After Nutty leaves the café, he makes a noise similar to the one he makes in the YouTube game Milk Pong.
 * The moral is same as A Sucker for Love (part 1).
 * Splendid, Flippy, Disco Bear, and Petunia are the only characters that do not appear in this episode.
 * This is one of the only four episodes Lifty and Shifty survive together in. The other three are Ipso Fatso, Easy Comb, Easy Go and Happy New Year. This is also one of the few episodes where Lifty and Shifty steal something (Lumpy's wallet) and survive.
 * Cuddles, Toothy, Russell, Cro-Marmot, Flaky, and Mime make more minor appearances than Giggles, The Mole, Lifty, Shifty, Pop, and Cub.
 * This episode has by far the most known goofs in the whole series. It has 67 goofs, and possibly even more unnoticed goofs.
 * On the opposite end of the scale, the episode with the lowest amount of goofs is Tongue Twister Trouble.
 * Nutty is responsible for the deaths of the people who died in the traffic accident.
 * Lumpy is also responsible for the deaths of the people who died in the traffic accident, but in a more direct way.
 * This is the only episode where Nutty eats/drinks something that is not sweet and without complaining. He likely did this because he needed a way to make his mouth move again.
 * Out of all the characters that appeared in this episode, Giggles, Lifty, Shifty, Mime, and Pop are the only confirmed survivors.