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! You’ll need your hard hat for the conclusion of this one!

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 Cafe 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 to Handy and pancakes with syrup to Nutty. While Nutty drenches his pancakes in syrup, Giggles pours some coffee for Handy. He indicates that he'd 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 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 nailgun, 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 isn't plugged in. Upon plugging it in, a nail shoots out and hits Handy in the back of the head. Handy falls face down in 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 the cement. Suddenly, bubbles form up, indicating he was still alive. Realizing this, Lumpy then smooths out the cement and walks off, not until he decides to make his hand-prints

At this time, 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 now and unknowingly pours the bag of sugar into a cement mixer.

At Nutty's house, Nutty excitedly runs into his kitchen. Seeing something, Nutty puts only one piece of cereal in a bowl and dumps the whole bag of cement mix on top, still thinking 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, which makes him unable to move his mouth. Seeing a glass of water on the counter, Nutty immediately grabs it and chugs down 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 wait 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 cars to lose their traction and swerve or stop.

The ambulance sways up and down as it moves forwards, 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 down 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. 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.

We cut back to Nutty who is still eating the bridge, now holding onto either side of the split bridge. Nutty eats the last section of the bridge keeping the two halves together, causing them to fall away from each other and tears Nutty in half, giving what he deserves. 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, killing him.

At a supermarket, Pop is seen shopping. Then we see Pop putting a bag of sugar right next to Nutty's concrete stomach, which dons Cub's beanie.

Moral
"Take the bitter with the sweet!"

Deaths

 * 1) Mole is impaled by sharp rebar. (Death was shown afterwards)
 * 2) Handy is shot in the back of the head with a nailgun and then 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, (debatably) Cro-Marmot and several Generic Tree Friends die when their vehicles fall off the bridge. (Death not shown).
 * 7) Cuddles was driving the red car that Sniffles crashed into. He possibly died after being hit or may have died when the bridge cuts in half. (debatable and death not shown)
 * 8) Mime also dies when he falls off the bridge (debatable as he could have easily gone through the bridge as he was riding a unicycle).
 * 9) Cub is crushed by Nutty's cement-filled stomach.

Goofs

 * 1) As usual, the candy on Nutty's body changes places numerous times, sometimes during continuous shots.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) As usual, the directions of Lumpy's antlers change numerous times throughout the episode.
 * 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.
 * 5) It's unknown why Handy's hard hat doesn't prevent him from getting dizzy when he fall out of his car window. And since Handy became upside-down the hat didn't come out.
 * 6) In the cafe, Nutty doesn't have a fork when Giggles delivers his order, but he is later seen eating with one.
 * 7) Russell's car turns from red to blue.
 * 8) When we see the Mole impaled on the pipes, his sunglasses are behind his head.
 * 9) When Lumpy notices he shot Handy, only half of Handy's tail is on the cement. But when Lumpy went to check on Handy, however, his whole tail is on the cement.
 * 10) It's odd that Nutty went to construction site as they were fixing one part of the bridge and the construction was happening at the center. And since he isn't a construction worker, he shouldn't have been allowed to enter the construction site. (it was likely because Lumpy was the only one alive, so he probably would have let Nutty in or didn't notice).
 * 11) The positions of the cars on and beneath the bridge change numerous times.
 * 12) The steering wheel to Sniffles' ambulance becomes bigger after he hits a car.
 * 13) When Lumpy is knocked off the bridge, he falls as though he is about to land on the grass, but falls on the road instead.
 * 14) When Lifty and Shifty try to help Lumpy, Shifty's tummy marking doesn't appear at first.
 * 15) When Lumpy is run over by the van, his leg is out of place with a bone sticking out. Later, it's only a flesh wound and he is almost able to stand.
 * 16) Lumpy and the cement block with Handy in it disappears shortly after Lumpy dies.
 * 17) The cement was very flat at first, but changed to a thicker shape.
 * 18) The entire bridge melted as if it was made entirely out of sugar, even though Lumpy only used one bag (and even then quite a bit was inexplicably left on the ground). However the bridge may have melted because Lumpy didn't wait long enough to the cement to dry, but yet, the whole bridge was melting and Lumpy only began to use the sugar to fix a part in the middle.
 * 19) When Lumpy looks into the nailgun, we see his eyes are blue, however, in Wishy Washy, we see his eyes are green.
 * 20) 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 be THAT far away from it.
 * 21) When the drivers are cheering when the bridge opens, Flaky and her vehicle are nowhere to be seen.
 * 22) 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 full the entire time.
 * 23) Lumpy antlers up.png Nutty sees the cabinet of sugar, his face is dirty with a bunch of syrup. Although, when he runs out with a bag of it, his face is clean. It is possible he licked it off.
 * 24) Lumpy and Handy would have most likely co-starred. Also, Pop, Cub and Sniffles would have probably made featuring roles instead of appearance.
 * 25) When the scene changes to Lumpy after Nutty begins to lick the railing of the road, before Lumpy is crushed by the cement block, both of his antlers are pointing up.
 * 26) When the concrete falls on Lumpy and blood is coming out of his nostrils, blood is also seen around his nostrils. But when all the blood comes out, the blood his nostrils was not seen.
 * 27) When The Mole gets impaled he is way higher than he was supposed to.
 * 28) When Lumpy put the raw cement sack in the mixer, he poured already liquid without mixing water or even turning it on.
 * 29) Lumpy had a problem with pulling Handy's corpse from the cement, but he did not have any problem pushing it in.
 * 30) When Nutty trips in the cement, considering how Lumpy buried Handy, the corpse should have been visible.
 * 31) The bridge was apparently built already when the cars began to gather.
 * 32) Inside of Sniffles' ambulance, there was nothing in the walls to keep Nutty's litter still when it first appeared, but they did appear when Sniffles realized he forgot to fasten the litter.
 * 33) When Lumpy removes the road block to signal that the bridge is complete, the poles that support the block aren't visible.
 * 34) According to the law, when an ambulance arrives, the cars must make way for it to pass, but nobody made way for Sniffles.
 * 35) If the bridge was being build, why did everyone gather on the top of it thinking it was already done? It's likely that they weren't warned.
 * 36) Nutty's lower body disappears after it is ripped off.
 * 37) There was a lot of cars when the ambulance gets hit, but only the car it hit is shown when Nutty flies towards Lumpy.
 * 38) When the ambulance is shaking Nutty's litter around, his feet are faced to the front, when he is flung out due to the inertia, his head is facing the front.
 * 39) Nutty should have been thrown and fall from the height he was thrown, but he is a higher height when he flies towards Lumpy.
 * 40) The road barriers on the side of the road were apparently made of cement instead of steel.
 * 41) The block of cement Lumpy buried Handy appears in the end completely intact, with Handy body still visible, but the block should have merged within the bridge and Handy was supposed to be fully inside of the block.
 * 42) Nutty is holding the bar of the bridge when he starts eating it, but then he is holding the road when he is finishing. Though he may have eaten his way towards the road.
 * 43) There was a thick part of the cement that was holding the bridge, when the camera pans in, the part is thinner.
 * 44) When Nutty was finishing the bridge, there was a car not far from him, when the camera pans in, the car is near his hand.
 * 45) Nutty's stomach shouldn't have taken that long to fall.
 * 46) If Toothy's truck was knocked halfway on the road and Pop was driving in straight line, how did he managed to avoid it?
 * 47) Near Toothy's fallen truck, there was a car with doors open showing nothing inside.
 * 48) When the bridge started to melt, a car got stuck, implying that it was to sticky and unable to ride, but Sniffles' ambulance and several other cars are showing in movement after this.
 * 49) The door at the cafe was necessary to push it, but Handy became frustrated before Nutty opened it, even though he can push a door with his head or legs, it was likely because he thought that it was necessary to pull the door instead.
 * 50) Nutty was shown to have increased the size of his belly when he first entered Sniffles' ambulance, but later in the episode, his belly returns to the normal size, and since it was hard cement, it shouldn't be able to be damaged, but it's likely it crushed Nutty's internal organs, making space.
 * 51) Toothy was seen in a truck, but before the bridge collapsed, he was in a car.
 * 52) It is unknown how Lumpy finished the bridge without Handy and The Mole. Unless the other workers were Generic Tree Friends who were off-screen at the time.
 * 53) Even the the red car which looks like the one Disco Bear has in Blind Date is shown to be able to go through the bridge in the first scene, it later reappears next to the car belonging to Cuddles (right before Sniffles crashes in it) even though it was shown leaving it behind in the first scene.
 * 54) Before Nutty ate the last piece of the highway, there was a red car on his left. But when the two halves broke apart, the car fell off, and when we see the wide view of the damage, the red car is nowhere to be seen.
 * 55) When Lumpy slammed onto the ground, he cracked the cement. Lumpy shouldn't be that heavy to crack the cement.
 * 56) How did Pop NOT notice the destruction of the highway bridge around him? He drove right through it!
 * 57) Before Nutty rips open the bag of cement mix at his house, in one frame, his mouth is unaligned.
 * 58) 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 seen in the close-up when Lumpy looks inside the nail gun, Lumpy has blue 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 named "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. Also, Lifty & Shifty die twice, Cuddles dies only once, while Pop survives in all three.
 * 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 didn't seem to notice that The Mole's body was 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.
 * This is one of the few episodes where The Mole doesn't kill or harm anybody despite being killed himself.
 * 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 Russel slide looks exactly like the car Disco Bear had in Blind Date.
 * Lumpy's injury and death is similar to Sniffles' in A Sight for Sore Eyes.
 * At the beginning, when Cuddles's menu is shown, it has a picture resembling the Java logo.
 * After he leaves the Café, Nutty makes a similar noise he did in Milk Pong.
 * The moral is same as A Sucker for Love (part 1).
 * Splendid, Flippy, Disco Bear and Petunia were the only characters that didn't appear in this episode. Petunia could made an appearance role as a cook in the cafe in this episode and Disco Bear in the cafe with Flaky instead of Cuddles and Toothy.
 * This is one of only seven episodes Lifty and Shifty survive in. The other six are Cheesy Does It, Ipso Fatso, Easy Comb, Easy Go, Happy New Year, the Youtube Live Episode and Claw. Also, this is one of the few episodes (if not the only) where Lifty and Shifty steal something(Lumpy's wallet) and survive.
 * Handy, The Mole, and Lumpy die in the same order in Don't Yank My Chain, A Hole Lotta Love, and Pet Peeve.
 * Cuddles, Toothy, Russell, Cro-Marmot, Flaky and Mime made the most minor appearance roles than Giggles, The Mole, Lifty, Shifty, Pop and Cub.
 * This episode has by far the most known goofs in the whole series; with almost 60.
 * 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 ate/drank something that wasn't sweet and didn't get grossed out. He did this because he wasn't able to move his mouth after eating the cement powder.
 * Of all the characters in this episode, Giggles, Lifty, Shifty, and Pop were the only known survivors.