Stealing the Spotlight is an episode of the Happy Tree Friends internet series. It is the twenty-third episode of season two, and fiftieth overall.
HTF Episode Description
Once again, Lumpy is trying hard to be the best, but he just can't get it right. This episode opened our very first television special shown on MTV International and MTV 2, "Happy Tree Friends Winter Break." It was an exciting time for our team and we plan to do more specials for television in 2005.
Plot
Lumpy walks out of his trailer, holding a coffee cup and wearing a nightcap, apparently having just woken up. He looks with pride at the broken and flickering blue Christmas lights that decorate his home, but he spits out his coffee when he looks over at Pop's house. Pop and Cub are working together to string up brand new, multi-colored Christmas lights. Jealous, Lumpy mutters beneath his breath and retreats inside his trailer. As he closes his door, his Christmas lights fall down.
Meanwhile, Cub plays with a hammer while Pop descends his ladder. He picks the ladder up and unknowingly swings it around, accidentally knocking Cub face first to the ground. One of Cub's front teeth falls out of his mouth, and he begins crying. After sticking the tooth back into Cub's mouth fails, Pop uses his hammer to force the tooth into Cub's mouth. He and Cub are both satisfied with the result, even though the tooth is clearly not where it should be.
Lumpy drags a heavy ball of Christmas lights, while Nutty comes hopping down the road carrying a lollipop. He sees the brightly colored Christmas lights and mistakes them for candy. He throws his lollipop away and starts eating the cord of Christmas lights, not realizing he's consuming plastic and glass rather than the sugar he craves. As Lumpy tries to hang up his Christmas lights, he feels some resistance in the cord. He yanks it and we hear a squishing noise as Nutty screams from the top of his lungs. Later, Lumpy stares proudly at his lights, not noticing that Nutty's digestive system and organs are attached to them.
On the roof of his house, Pop hammers down nails to tie the Christmas light cords around. As he hammers, a bucket of nails next to him slowly slides to the edge of the roof, eventually falling off. Pop looks down from the roof and sees that the bucket has landed top-down on Cub. From Cub's point of view, we see Pop lift the bucket in horror and then replace the bucket as he is about to vomit. Inside, Pop removes the nails lodged in Cub's head with the claw of his hammer. One nail won't come out, however, so Pop hammers it down and smiles, satisfied despite Cub's cries.
Back outside, Pop and a bandaged Cub plug in their Christmas lights, amazing spectators, including Lumpy. Realizing that he has to pull out all the stops, Lumpy drops a small Christmas light he's holding and sneaks away while still holding onto a larger bulb. Back at Lumpy's trailer, a crowd gathers to see Lumpy's decorations. Lumpy has many items stacked on his trailer, tied together with Christmas lights. The items decorating Lumpy's home include a street lamp, a disco ball, Lumpy's car, and a lighthouse light, among other things that aren't even Christmas related.
Lumpy, donning a pair of tinted safety goggles, throws the switch to his lights, lighting up the entire forest. While shielding her eyes, Giggles' arm catches fire which soon spreads to her entire body. Behind her, a blinded Lifty and Shifty run into each other. Pop's head begins to boil, while the top half of Cub's body explodes. Toothy and two Generic Tree Friends are instantly vaporized from the extreme heat of the light, while The Mole actually has to shield his eyes. The rays from Lumpy's lights are so strong, they even cause the moon to explode.
Lumpy, burnt and blackened, turns off the lights and removes his goggles, and gives a smile of satisfaction, whereupon his eyes immediately melt from the hot temperature. Nearby, The Mole gives Lumpy a thumbs up, not realizing that his thumb is on fire.
Moral
"Always look on the bright side of life!"
Deaths
- Nutty has his organs and intestines ripped out of his body after mistaking Lumpy's Christmas lights for candy.
- Giggles is set on fire by the heat of Lumpy's lights and is presumably burnt to death. (Debatable)
- Pop's head boils from the heat of Lumpy's lights.
- Cub's head explodes from the heat of Lumpy's lights.
- Toothy and two Generic Tree Friends are instantly vaporized from the extreme heat of the lights.
- Petunia, Sniffles, Flaky, Lifty and Shifty are vaporized by the heat of Lumpy's lights. (Debatable)
Injuries
- Cub (before death) has his left tooth knocked out because Pop carelessly swung his ladder at him. A bucket of nails fall on Cub and gets numerous holes on his head.
- Lifty and Shifty blindly run into each other, knocking them out.
- Lumpy's body and antlers are burnt by the lights, his eyes pop and melt from the lights (after he turns them off).
- The Mole's thumb is caught on fire.
Survival Rate
- Amount of surviving main characters: 8 (2 including Debatable deaths)
- Amount of dead main characters: 4 (10 including Debatable deaths)
- Total rate: 66.67% (16.67% including Debatable deaths)
Destruction
- A light shatters when Lumpy drops it on the ground.
- The moon is hit by Lumpy's lights and it explodes.
Goofs
- When Lumpy is drinking his coffee, his mouth is at the end of his nose. When he spits it out, however, his mouth is further back where it usually is.
- Pop's pipe never falls out of his mouth when he opens mouth. At one point, he is facing down at an injured Cub from the roof and his pipe still doesn't fall.
- When Lumpy backs up into his house the door closes even though he kept his hands down. (This is mentioned in the Blurb)
- When Pop turns around while holding the ladder, Cub is hit by the portion of the ladder behind Pop, even though he was standing to where he should have gotten hit by the portion of the ladder in front of Pop.
- Pop's pupils switch to circles a few times.
- The direction of Lumpy's antlers changes frequently throughout the episode.
- When Nutty was eating the lights, his philtrum disappears. Later when Pop and Giggles panic as they are burning, they lose their philtrums at least once. Cub loses his philtrum for every time he jumps when he's burning.
- When Lumpy was pulling the string and causes Nutty's death his stomach passed the last step of the ladder without even bumping into it.
- When Pop looks at Cub from the roof, his hat doesn't fall off his head.
- When Pop is removing nails from Cub's head, he comes across a nail he can't remove. Prior to his examination of the nail there are about a dozen nails still lodged in Cub's head. After he hammers the nail down, however, there are only two other nails in Cub's head. Similarly, at the first shot where we see Pop removing the nails, there only a couple nails in the cup. In the next shot there are significantly more nails in the cup.
- Right before Pop plugs his Christmas lights in, Cub's tooth injury is gone. In addition, some of the nails he left in Cub's head switch places.
- As Petunia and Giggles approach Pop's house, the fence is as high as their heads. In the very next shot, however, the fence only comes up to their chests.
- In that same scene, there are holes on the back of the girls' ears, and their head markings are missing.
- When Giggles and Petunia approach Pop and Cub's house, the fence they're standing next to is shown to have separated, pointed boards, but in the next shot, the fence boards are together and rounded.
- When Giggles, Petunia, and Lumpy are gazing at Pop's lights, when the camera focuses on Lumpy, the tip of Petunia's tail disappears.
- While Giggles is screaming in pain after getting caught on fire, Lifty & Shifty bump into each other. After they fall down, Shifty's hat falls off his head, but what appears to be a second set of his ears are shown attached to top of his fedora.
- When Giggles' bow is set on fire, her pupils are facing away from each other.
- When Pop and Cub are burning to death, Cub's tooth injury is completely healed and all the bandages and holes in his head are gone.
- If you listen really closely, Cub can be heard screaming, even after his head explodes.
- Cub's tooth changes shape when it is out of his mouth. It looks more like a real tooth instead of a flat rectangle.
- Seeing how Lumpy was closest to the lights when they killed everyone, he should have died too, as well as receive the most damage to his body.
- It makes no sense for The Mole to be perfectly fine when Lumpy's lights are burning everyone.
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