Without a Hitch

Without a Hitch is an episode of the Happy Tree Friends internet series, released October 13, 2009 as the 2009 Halloween special. It is the tenth episode of the third season and sixty-fourth overall, and done in a Sin City-esque style of being mostly in black and white with occasional bursts of color (in this case, red blood).

HTF Episode Description
In the dead of night, Flaky finds that unimaginable terror lurks at every turn. Fasten your seat-belts for a one way trip straight to the end of the road!

Plot
On a dark night, Flaky happily drives her car when she suddenly spots a figure underneath a streetlight. Flippy casually puts out his thumb to catch a ride. Being kind, Flaky stops and picks Flippy up. Once inside, Flippy pulls out some cheese from his dufflebag. The cheese gives off a horrid odor, forcing Flaky to roll down her window and stick her head out for fresh air. As she sighs in relief, the window begins rolling back up. Flippy, who is now flipped out, presses the switch to raise the window, laughing manically. Flaky screams as the window closes on and decapitates her.

The scene then shifts back to Flaky in her car, her "death" having been a vision inside her head. She shivers at the thought of her gruesome death and drives on past Flippy. A few seconds later, however, Flaky runs over a nail and has to stop. As she stares at her flat tire, it begins to rain heavily.

Flaky starts to use her lug wrench to change her tire, when she looks up. Lightning lights up the sky, revealing Flippy's figure proceeding towards her. Flaky begins to panic and tries to speed up her work. Flippy catches up next to her, however, causing Flaky to drop her lug wrench shreiking in sheer terror. She reaches out to grab it, but Evil Flippy picks it up and stabs her in the eye with it. Flippy then twirls the lug wrench around, and pulls out her eye. To finish her off, he smacks her in the head, crushing her skull. Evil Flippy then drives off in Flaky's car with Flaky's carcass acting as a tire.

It turns out this, too, is just a vision Flaky made up in her frightened mind. She was zoned out and waving her hands away to defend herself, but, Flippy has already fixed her tire. Gracious that her car was fixed, a nervous Flaky gives Flippy a ride. After buckling in, Flippy pulls out a straight razor from his dufflebag. He then proceeds to smash Flaky's head through her windshield. Evil Flippy then lets go of the wiper blade, which he has tied his razor to, slicing Flaky's face off in several pieces as it moves back and forth.

However, this is also another convoluted vision from Flaky's imagination. Flaky is squealing as this vision goes through her head, taking her eyes off the road. Flippy tries to slap some sense into her to no avail as the car plows into a utility pole, forcing Flippy through the windshield of the car. Flaky is still in her car thanks to the many seatbelts she put on earlier, however she is badly injured and cut from broken pieces of the windshield.

Flippy, seeing Flaky is more hurt than himself, pulls out his straight razor to cut the seatbelts away from her. Flaky, however, whose overactive imagination has gotten the better of her, gasping as she sees the razor and grabs a nearby shard of glass. As Flippy starts cutting one of the seatbelt straps, Flaky jabs the glass into Flippy's eye. Flippy yells in pain, seeing in one eye, his spider-like sight and one eye, Flaky and flees from the scene, where he is run over by Lumpy, who is driving a semi-truck. Lumpy, noticing he's hit something, slows his semi-truck down and comes to a screeching halt behind Flaky's car. He barely hits her bumper, bumping her car forward a few inches.

Inside her vehicle, Flaky sighs in relief, having survived the ordeal. Suddenly her airbag deploys, splattering her body.

Moral

 * "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Deaths

 * 1) Flippy is run over by Lumpy's truck.
 * 2) Flaky is splattered to pieces by her car's airbag.
 * 3) Flaky has three imaginary deaths:
 * Flaky's head is cut off when Flippy closes her window.
 * Flaky's eye is removed and Flippy killed her with another blow to the head. Later, he is seen driving her car while using her stretched, bloody body as a tire.
 * Flaky's face is cut off with Flippy's knife. Had the hallucination gone on longer or the goof never happened, Flaky would have been decapitated.

Goofs

 * 1) In the shots of Flaky and Flippy in the car, when Flaky is holding the wheel, she has four fingers and a thumb.
 * 2) When Flippy gets in the car, she puts on his seat belt. After the shot of Flaky buckling her seat belt, Flippy is not using the seat belt anymore.
 * 3) When Flaky runs over the nail, she blinks once. When she blinks, she has a pacman pupil over her closed right eye.
 * 4) As Flippy smashes Flaky's head through the windscreen her seatbelt disappears as well.
 * 5) When Flaky's face is cut by wiper blade in her imagination, her damaged face stays the same, even though huge chunks are cut off.
 * 6) The angle in which Flippy slaps Flaky isn't possible.
 * 7) After the crash, one of the headlights is lying near Flippy. The light is still working, despite the fact that the headlight is not attached to anything.
 * 8) When Flippy notices that Flaky is hurt, there is one shot in which his eyes become unnaturally large.
 * 9) Just before Flippy is stabbed in the eye, he was cutting Flaky's buckle. When Lumpy bumps Flaky's car, however, the buckle is not cut.
 * 10) The design on Flippy's beret changes places numerous times, sometimes during continuous shots.
 * 11) When Flaky is fixing the car's wheel (in her imagination), the car mirror is not seen.

Trivia

 * 1) This is the only regular episode that is in black, gray and white. For the most part, the animators try to avoid these colors (with a few exceptions, such as eyes, teeth, milk, snow, etc.). These colors were also used exclusively in the irregular episode Dino-Sore Days. This episode also contains red (blood) and greenish-yellow (Evil Flippy's eye color).
 * 2) This is the second episode to have an opening in the style of a Horror movie, the first being Peas in a Pod.
 * 3) This is the first internet episode to star Flippy since Remains to be Seen.
 * 4) There are no voices in this episode (only sounds, i.e., music, thunder).
 * 5) This is the second episode where Flaky and Flippy co-star together since Party Animal.
 * 6) This is the first time Flippy is killed by one of the main characters (other than himself). In this case, by Lumpy (directly) and Flaky (indirectly). The only other characters to kill Flippy so far were Toothy (Remains to be Seen) and a generic tree friend (Autopsy Turvy/Double Whammy Part 2 ).
 * 7) This was the first regular episode where Flippy did not flip out (although he did in Flaky's imagination, but there was no reason for him to flip out there). He arguably didn't flip out in Happy Trails Pt. 2: Jumping the Shark.
 * 8) Flippy's death is similar to his death in Autopsy Turvy/Double Whammy Part 2.
 * 9) This episode made some fans believe Flippy was cured from his flip outs for good (as he was cured in Autopsy Turvy/Double Whammy Part 2). However, he flipped out in his next appearance, On My Mind, indicating otherwise.
 * 10) This is the first time Flaky has intentionally hurt someone else.
 * 11) The aftermath of one of Flaky's imagined deaths was similar to Handy's death in The Way You Make Me Wheel.
 * 12) One of Flaky's imagined deaths was similar to Petunia's death in Peas in a Pod.
 * 13) Flippy injuring Flaky with a lug wrench may be a reference to Sorority Row.
 * 14) This is the only episode, so far, where Flippy doesn't die last.
 * 15) The car that Flaky drives in this episode, is somewhat similar to the car she drove in Easy Comb, Easy Go.
 * 16) This is the second episode where Flippy doesn't kill anyone (although in Flaky's imagination he can be seen killing her three times) the first one was Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow.
 * 17) At the end of the episode, just after Flaky was killed, if you listened carefully, you can hear the "Woo..." from the paper ghost in the Halloween Specials.
 * 18) This is the first internet episode to star Flaky since Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya!.
 * 19) The story is quite similar to the urban legend of "The Barbed Autostoppist".
 * 20) Since Flaky survived Double Whammy Part 1, it's possible that she remembered Flippy's murders in that episode, thus explaining her phobia.
 * 21) This is the first internet season 3 episode Flippy appears in. The other is Random Acts of silence.