Spare Tire

Overview

Gallery

Trivia

Season:	Internet Season 4
Episode:	85
Aired:	January 7, 2014
Production Number:	407
Writers:	Ken Pontac Warren Graff Kenn Navarro
Director:	Kenn Navarro
Starring Roles	The Mole
Featuring	Giggles Pop Cub Toothy Lammy
Appearances	Lumpy Sniffles Mr. Pickels
Videos
Previous Episode	Put Your Back Into It
Next Episode	Camp Pokeneyeout

Spare Tire is an episode of the Happy Tree Friends Internet series, it is the seventh of Season 4 and 85th overall.

Plot

The episode begins with Giggles staring in confusion at an array of road signs that display many arrows pointing in seemingly random directions. Down the road, The Mole is seen driving in his car. However, his car is right on the sidewalk, and he barely misses Giggles as he runs over the road signs. A nail then pops one of The Mole's tires, making his vehicle stop. Giggles gives a sigh of relief, having nearly been killed by the blind driver. Unfortunately, the road signs come flying down and slice off a portion of her body, which rolls away like a wheel, seemingly killing her. As The Mole gets rid of his popped tire, Giggles' sliced body piece knocks away The Mole's fifth tire, and as a result, The Mole ends up using that piece of body as his new "tire" instead, which leaves a trail of blood behind as The Mole drives.

The Mole then comes to a stop at a gas station and Lumpy, the gas station operator, places the gas pump in The Mole's car. Moments later, Pop and Cub come walking by, and Pop lights up a match to light his pipe. Lumpy notices this, and runs towards Pop. At that moment, The Mole begins to leave, his car taking the pump along with it as well, leaving a trail of gas behind him. Lumpy quickly grabs Pop's lit match and scolds him for lighting a fire next to a gas station. Lumpy then confiscates Pop's match, but it accidentally lands on top of The Mole's trail of gasoline, setting it on fire. Seeing this, Lumpy and Pop attempt to extinguish the fire, but the fire creates an explosion which reduces Lumpy and Pop's bodies to skeletons.

The Mole continues to drive his car down the road, oblivious that a trail of fire is following him fast. The scene cuts to Toothy's house, which The Mole drives his car through, apparently leaving some major damage behind. As Toothy cleans up his partially destroyed house, the trail of fire comes in. Acting quickly, Toothy grabs a fire extinguisher and attempts to douse the fire. But due to Toothy's light body and the force of the fire extinguisher, the fire extinguisher instead punctures a hole through Toothy's body as he gets slammed into his house wall. As the active fire extinguisher continues spewing, Toothy gets killed when the fire extinguisher crushes his internal organs. Elsewhere, Lammy and Mr. Pickels are seen relaxing in a rubber pool. Unbeknownst to Lammy is that the trail of gasoline is directly underneath her pool. The trail of fire suddenly comes by, and as it travels underneath her pool, it creates a small stream of boiling bubbles, and comes out through the opposite side. A small bubble forms in the pool, and Lammy is happy to pop it. Unfortunately, due the amount of heat packed into the bubble, the bubble causes an explosion powerful enough to blow off almost Lammy's entire face off when she pops it.

The Mole's car finally stops (likely due to it running out of gas), and because of this, the trail of fire finally catches up to him. As a result, his car finally explodes. The explosion mangles The Mole, and his now destroyed body lands in a tree, where his intestines wrap around a branch with a tire at the end of them, making them resemble a tire swing. Cub then comes into the scene, mildly burned around the face and upset. However, he immediately perks up when he sees the "tire swing" and begins to ride on it.

The episode cuts to a hospital, in which Giggles lies on a hospital bed with a tire replacing the missing piece of her body. Sniffles, a doctor, tries to figure out how to bring Giggles back to life. Moments later, Sniffles brings out an air hose. He places the air hose on the intake tube, expanding the size of the tire. The heart monitor begins beeping, meaning that Sniffles has successfully brought Giggles' back to life, ending the episode.

Moral

"A bad leadership is like a flat tire. It doesn't go anywhere until being replaced."

Deaths

1. Giggles is cut in three by road signs, though at the end of the episode, Sniffles brings her back to life.
2. Lumpy and Pop are vaporized by an explosion at a gas station.
3. Toothy's organs are crushed against a wall by his fire extinguisher.
4. Lammy's face is torn off by an explosion of boiling water.
5. The Mole is killed when his car explodes.

Injuries

1. Cub is seen with minor burns he received at the gas station. (Not seen)

Goofs

1. Lumpy has more screen time than Lammy and just as much as Pop and Cub, yet he is not listed as a featuring character.
2. Lumpy's antlers change directions several times.
3. When The Mole drives off and leaves a trail of gasoline behind, there is a trail of blood behind him as well. However, when Lumpy throws the match on the gasoline, the trail of blood is gone.
4. When Lumpy and Pop are reduced to skeletons from the gasoline explosion, all of their clothes are burned away, except for Lumpy's bow tie.
   1. In that same scene, before the skeletons fall to the ground, Lumpy's bow tie is layered behind and to the left of his rib cage instead of over his neck.
   2. Furthermore, when the two skeletons fall to the ground, the bow tie stays in the air instead of falling with the skeletons. (Debatable, as it may have been done for comedic effect.)
5. The car Mole is driving does not get damaged after going through Toothy's house.
6. It is unknown how the blood and gasoline-trail got under Lammy's rubber pool, unless she placed it there after the trail had already been laid (though considering how fast the fire was spreading and the fact that a trail of blood and gasoline would probably be noticed by her, this is quite unlikely). This was probably needed for the scene to take place in general.
7. It is highly illogical for Cub to travel from the gas station to the location of The Mole's death in just a matter of minutes. The episode may have had time sped up in order to get to this moment.
8. When Giggles is on the hospital bed, her blood is pink. (However, it could be her hospital bed soaking it in.)

Trivia

• The sneak peek for this episode was officially posted 19 days after the previous episode.
• Mondo released this episode on YouTube a month after its main debut.
• The gas station Lumpy works at has a very similar appearance to the real life gas station company Texaco.
• This is the first episode of 2014.
• This episode has a title similar to the episode Spare Me. Coincidentally, both The Mole and Sniffles appear in both episodes.
• This is the second time a character (Lammy) has been killed by a bubble. The first instance is Cub in his Smoochie.
• This is Toothy's first appearance in Season 4.
• This is Lammy, Mr. Pickels, Pop, and Cub's latest appearance in the series so far, and Giggles' latest physical appearance (she appeared in one of Sniffles' dreams in Dream Job.)
• This is The Mole's first appearance in Season 4 since Pet Peeve, and his first starring role in the season.
• This is the first of only three episodes to air in 2014, followed by Camp Pokeneyeout and Dream Job. Lumpy and Sniffles appear in all three, and the latter survives all three.
• This is the third instance of The Mole driving a vehicle in Season 4. In this episode, however, The Mole is not driving the van he has in Pet Peeve, and it is a different car than the car he has had in past episodes. Instead of being purple, it is red; instead of being a wide and tall car, it is narrow and short.
• Every death in this episode (except Toothy) involves an explosion.
• This episode was supposedly going to be released during the Christmas break, but it was delayed.
• When Giggles is sliced by the sign, her scream is the same as Petunia's scream in Royal Flush.
• This is the third time that Lammy dies (after All Work and No Play and All In Vein).
• This is the first- and so far only- time Lammy appears without her sweater.
• This is the second regular episode where Cub survives while Pop dies (the first being A Vicious Cycle).
• This is the first time that The Mole's face is seen onscreen, proving that he does not have eyes (though that may have been caused by the explosion which also ripped that part of his face off).
• This is the second time that a character survives just by getting air pumped into their body. The first is Disco Bear in A Change of Heart.
• This makes Giggles the fourth character to be revived after death, the other three being Petunia and Handy, (I Nub You) and Disco Bear (A Change of Heart). However, only Disco Bear and Giggles remain alive through these episodes.
• Like in See You Later, Elevator, all the deaths in this episode (not counting Giggles' death) are due to Pop lighting a match.
• This marks the first regular episode since We're Scrooged! where Sniffles survives.
• If Giggles had not been revived, The Mole would be responsible for every death in this episode. Since she was revived by Sniffles, The Mole is responsible for all the deaths along with Pop and Lumpy.
• This is the first episode of Season 4 without a video bomber, as well as the third episode of Season 4 in which Truffles does not appear.
• Lumpy and Pop's deaths are similar to Lumpy's death in Brake The Cycle.
• This is the first episode where Cub seems to realize what death means (unless he was crying because of the injuries he got from the explosion).
• Toothy is the only character who did not die from an explosion. He is also the only character who dies a slow death.
• Toothy's house seems to consist of only one room.
• Since Giggles is revived at the end, this marks the first episode in which Lammy is the only female character to die.
• This is the first time that Lammy and Mr. Pickels appear in an episode without Truffles.
• This is the first time that The Mole and Pop are responsible for killing Lammy.
• This is the third time that Mr. Pickels stays inanimate through the whole episode. This first happens in All In Vein, and then in All Work and No Play.
• Lumpy, Pop, The Mole, Lammy, and Mr. Pickels are characters who often survive. Giggles, Sniffles, Toothy, and Cub are characters who often die. These two groups are reversed in this episode, with the former being killed and the latter (with the exception of Toothy and Mr. Pickels) surviving.
  • Coincidentally, all of the characters who often survive do what they do best in this episode (except Lammy and Mr. Pickels): unintentionally killing other characters. The characters who often die, on the other hand, kill no one.
• This is the first, and so far only, time that The Mole stars without co-starring with someone in a regular episode.