Who's to Flame? is episode number 4.3 of the Happy Tree Friends television series.
HTF Episode Description
A fire rages out of control and it's up to the Happy Tree Friends to contain it. (DVD)
Plot
At Petunia's house, Petunia is making pancakes for Giggles and Mime. Petunia makes three irregular shaped pancakes (one of which is shaped like a rabbit you all know) and both Giggles and Mime are famished. Moments later, the phone rings, and Petunia answers it. She begins talking to the other person. Suddenly, her tail catches fire due to her leaning against the stove with the burner still active, and she runs around, screaming. Giggles, noticing this, reacts quickly. She grabs the tablecloth, and attempts to smother the fire. Giggles manages to put the fire out, and she and Petunia sigh in relief. Unfortunately, the tablecloth ignites and Giggles is set on fire as well.
Mime decides to take action and desperately tries to call the fire station. In the process, he forgets what the number for 911 was, but quickly remembers it. Lumpy, the chief of the fire brigade is seen playing with some matches. Seconds later, the phone rings and he immediately answers it. Mime is unable to communicate what's happening because he's a mime. Giggles then comes upon a vase with flowers in it. She instantly grabs the vase and tries to dump some water on her, but there was only one drop, and Giggles begins screaming when the flowers she's holding ignites. Mime continues to silently rant about the situation that's happening, but Lumpy, believing nobody is on the line, hangs up. Because of this, Mime hangs up the phone as well, and runs out the house to seek help.
Meanwhile, Cuddles, who works for the fire-brigade, rescues Mittens out of a tree, while his fellow firemen, consisting of Toothy, Sniffles, Disco Bear, and The Mole, cheer him on. Mime arrives and despite his best efforts to explain the situation at Petunia's house, the fire-brigade doesn't understand him. Luckily, Cuddles spots the fire from atop the ladder and convinces the fire-brigade to spring into action. However, as the brigade rides off, they forget to lower the ladder, and as a result, Cuddles loses his balance, and begins falling. He is impaled on a picket fence that surrounds the tree, while Mittens, unharmed, proceeds to play with Cuddles' severed scut.
When the fire-engine arrives at the burning house, Pop and Cub are watching it from the sidewalk. There, they notice Petunia, who is still screaming, and on fire. Toothy tries to enter the house by throwing an axe at the front door, but he accidentally hits Petunia (who's now a completely burnt skeleton) by pinning her to the door, who was about to escape (Giggles is nowhere to be found, since she's burnt to death). Sniffles tries to enter the house via the second floor window. He reaches using a ladder, but the window explodes as he reaches the top, the glass shards cutting him to pieces. Cub picks up Sniffles' helmet off the ground. Pop then notices the ladder is falling, and places Cub on his other side, but the ladder shifts direction, and slices Cub into multiple pieces. Pop then screams over his blunder.
The Mole tries to attach the fire hose to a fire hydrant, but instead attaches it to the fire truck's gas tank. Disco Bear, who controls the fire hose, doesn't see this and sprays gasoline on the fire. The fire spreads down the hose and this causes the fire-engine to explode. Flaky, standing on the street runs away when she realizes the remains of the engine flying towards her. Unfortunately, she is hit on the back of her head by the siren, forcing her brain out of her head. Disco Bear is now completely on fire, and now he's unable to hold the hose straight, which is now spewing fire on the other buildings. Luckily for the fire-brigade, Handy arrives in his helicopter and extinguishes the fire in one of the houses with water from his helicopter. Nutty begins cheering him on, while The Mole (facing the wrong direction) waves him off. Needing more water to extinguish the other buildings, Handy flies to a nearby river.
Unfortunately, Handy is unable to press the right button because he has no hands. When he finally succeeds, Russell's garbage boat sails underneath the helicopter and Handy's crane reaches down into Russell's boat. Not knowing this, Handy flies back. Meanwhile, Lifty and Shifty have stolen Pop's wallet from his corpse (he was probably killed by the explosion of the fire-engine), but they argue over who gets to keep the money. Eventually, Lifty knocks Shifty down and takes the entire wallet.
Then Handy comes into the scene to dump the load, but instead of water, piles of garbage and Russell fall out. Lifty then laughs over his victor, but his head is crushed by an engine block, forcing out his brain in several areas. Shifty then takes Pop's wallet, and then when he looks up, he gets impaled by multiple sharp objects dropped from Handy's helicopter. Some of those items include needles in the eyes, a ski, a walking stick, an arrow, a sword, a giant needle, and a machete impale through his body. Shifty, losing his balance falls dead on his back, pointing the sharp objects upwards, causing a falling Russell to be impaled on them as well.
Disco Bear, severely burnt and still unable to hold the hose straight, accidentally sets Handy's helicopter on fire, making it ascend rapidly and causing the windows to crack. Then the helicopter falls into a nosedive. Handy is able to activate the ejector seat in time with his head, however this only causes Handy to get launched into the rotor blades, and get sliced into pieces. His remains fall on the sidewalk below, causing Nutty to scream in panic, and The Mole walks away.
The Mole accidentally falls in the sewer but survives and starts walking, unknowingly turning a giant ball-valve which releases gas into the town. He ignites a match, not knowing that there is a gas-leak, causing the entire town to explode. When the dust settles, the town is shown to be nothing but a barren wasteland.
The start of it all.
Mime rides up on his unicycle carrying Mittens from earlier. Mime looks around and sheepishly pretends to walk down an unseen staircase behind some wreckage. The episode then irises on the frying pan with the three burnt pancakes (which is in the background), the object that started it all.
Moral
"If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen!"
Deaths
- Cuddles is impaled on a fence post.
- Petunia is accidentally hit in the head through the door with an axe by Toothy.
- Giggles dies from being exposed from too much fire (death not shown).
- Sniffles is burned and cut to pieces when a window he attempted to climb into suddenly explodes.
- Cub is sliced to pieces when a ladder falls on him.
- Pop dies when the fire truck exploded in front of him (death not shown).
- Flaky is hit in the back of the head by the fire truck's klaxon, forcing her brain through her mouth.
- Lifty's head is crushed by an engine forcing his brain out.
- Shifty is impaled by two needles in his eyes and other numerous sharp objects through his body.
- Russell gets impaled on the same objects that killed Shifty by falling on top of him.
- Handy is shredded to pieces by the rotors of his helicopter.
- The Mole is likely to have died from the explosion.
- Disco Bear, Nutty, Toothy, Lumpy, and Generic Tree Friends all died in the explosion (debatable, as some may have ran away when they realize the situation got out of hand).
- Some Generic Tree Friends may have burnt to death when Disco Bear set all of the other buildings on fire (debatable).
Goofs
- The Mole, Pop, Cub, and Nutty didn't have featuring pop-ups, indicating they were appearing characters, even though they were more of featuring characters. Flaky is the only character who truly had an appearance role.
- Russell's voice can be heard cheering after Cuddles rescues Mittens from a tree, even though he does not appear until later in the episode.
- When Mime approaches the fire-brigade for help, he runs from the opposite direction that the fire is in.
- If the fire was in the opposite direction that Mime was running, Cuddles is looking the wrong way.
- When Mime tries to explain what happened to Sniffles and Toothy, he stands on the sidewalk. When we see their reaction to his performance, however, their bodies are angled as though they’re facing someone standing in the road.
- When Cuddles is impaled on the fence, his scut falls off. Strangely, there's no blood on it.
- Toothy throws the axe at the front door of Petunia's house, but it can later be seen flying through the air after the fire truck explodes. It could be a spare that was located somewhere else on the firetruck.
- Even though the fire truck explodes, the flaming gasoline still comes out of the hose.
- When Handy comes on the scene the first time, one can clearly see him activate the lever to pour out the water with his arm. Later, Handy was unable to reach the lever.
- When Handy dumps water on a house, Nutty and The Mole are standing on the sidewalk. The scene then immediately cuts to Nutty and The Mole waving at Handy, though Nutty is now on the grass and The Mole is on the edge of the sidewalk.
- While on his boat, Russell was standing under a small roof with walls on three sides of him and no garbage behind him. It would have been impossible for Handy to pick both him and some garbage up at the same time.
- Russell's hook goes from being on his right arm for most of the episode to being on his left arm when he dies.
- The houses surrounding Petunia’s house change places occasionally.
- The mole on The Mole's face changes places a few times.
- After Lifty attacked Shifty for Pop's wallet, Pop suddenly disappears.
- Russell should have fallen at the same time as the other items Handy picked up, but he fell last.
- He must have hung on to something that slowed down his fall or he was the lightest object.
- Even though the helicopter blades completely shred Handy's head, his screaming can still be heard until all of his body gets shredded.
- Despite crashing, the remains of Handy's helicopter are nowhere to be found.
- The gas signs that surround The Mole don’t appear until after he lights a match.
- When Handy was sliced by the helicopter's blade, his blood was red. But when it lands at Nutty's standing position, it is orange.
- Mime is given a starring role, despite only coming in at the beginning and then appearing at the end. Giggles and Petunia would have most likely had starring roles.
- Mime was given a starring role possibly because he had the most screen time.
- Mittens looked at Cuddles hair before it was in front of her.
- When Mime arrived at the destroyed town, his unicycle was next to the wreckage where he was about to hide. But when he began to hide, his unicycle disappeared.
- The rotary phone Petunia has on her wall only has 7 holes, when there should be 10 holes.
- The instant Giggles catches on fire, she can be seen smiling.
- Considering the size of Petunia's tail, it should have been visible when Giggles wrapped the tablecloth around her.
- When Handy accidentally scoops up the garbage and flies away, Russell can clearly be seen still in the boat but when the load is dumped, Russell magically appears with the garbage.
- After Cuddles tells his team about the fire, Sniffles' glasses briefly have one lens when he turns around.
Trivia
- The inspiration for this episode came from a traumatic incident from when Ken Pontac was a toddler. He saw his mother catch on fire while making breakfast because she was talking to his grandmother on the phone and didn't notice that she was next to the stove.
- While dialing for help, Mime performs the old gag that he’s forgotten the number to 911.
- The kitten that the fire-brigade saves from the tree is none other than Mittens, first seen in Tongue Twister Trouble.
- Though it could've been a different cat with a different type of eyes.
- When the cat is playing with Cuddles' tail, background music plays. On the DVD, however, a different tune plays.
- Sniffles' death is similar to his injury (before death) in Take a Hike.
- Among the piles of garbage that Russell's boat carries on, numerous items that have appeared in other episodes can be seen. These include:
- The Cursed Idol.
- A Lumpy doll from The Wrong Side of the Tracks.
- A crushed rollercoaster kart from The Wrong Side of the Tracks.
- Cuddles is the only character who was a fireman and didn't kill at least one character.
- This is the only TV episode to hardly focus on the starring character (Mime). Most of the other characters have their own short stories within the episode, some of which surpass the amount of overall screen-time Mime had:
- Petunia and Giggles attempting to put out the fire only to have both of them set ablaze.
- Toothy, Sniffles, and Disco Bear trying to fix the situation.
- Pop and Cub's overall screen time.
- Handy trying to obtain water to put the fires out. Later attempting to eject from his helicopter.
- Lifty and Shifty fighting over Pop's wallet.
- The Mole exploring the sewer.
- Lifty and Shifty have somewhat switched roles. Shifty would likely beat up Lifty and win, since we saw how he has sacrificed his brother, in previous episodes, for his own gain or to save himself from death. This is the only time so far that Lifty has done something like this to Shifty.
- This episode features the only instance in the television series, and one of only four instances in the entire series, that Lifty dies before Shifty.
- Out of all of the numerous deaths, Handy is the only character who wasn't killed by someone.
- If every debatable death counts as death then Mime is one of the 4 characters to star in an episode with a large cast and be the only survivor. The other three are Giggles (Dunce Upon a Time), Splendid (Breaking Wind, Wrath of Con) and Lumpy (Aw Shucks!, Remains To Be Seen).
- This is one of the few episodes in which all of the featuring and appearing characters die or are presumed dead while the starring character survived.
- This is one of the darkest episodes of the TV series and the episode with the third most deaths (behind Wrath of Con and Class Act). Though there were a couple of other episodes with 16 deaths, this one shows almost every death and most of them are separate from one another.
- Flippy, Cro-Marmot, and Splendid are the only three characters who didn't appear in this episode, yet they also could have died when the town exploded.
- Handy's death is similar to Cuddles' death from Party Animal, Toothy's death from Mime and Mime Again, and Pop's death from Havin' A Ball.
- When this episode aired along with Easy For You to Sleigh and Wishy Washy on YouTube, the alternate title for the conglomeration of the segments was named "Four on the Floor".
- This is one of the few TV episodes where a starring character doesn't kill anyone. The others are A Change of Heart, Home Is Where the Hurt Is (debatable), and Tongue in Cheek.
- Another instance of Lumpy's stupidity is that he's a firefighter in this episode, yet he enjoys playing with matches.
- This is the only episode where Mime stars and survives without killing anyone.
- This is one of the few episodes where Lumpy's antlers don't change directions.
- According to the commentary on this episode, the writers needed to make a cheat sheet to keep track of the characters that died and how they did.
- This the only episode where Disco Bear cause the deaths of his two most frequent victims (Cuddles and Flaky) as a featuring character. Also, this is the first time he killed Pop.
- Cub's death is similar to Toothy and Flaky's deaths in the comic strip Lost Claws.
- When Cuddles was getting Mittens/Honey, he made the same noise in A Hole Lotta Love.
- Disco Bear's scream from when he used a hose filled with gasoline was reused in the episode A Vicious Cycle.
- Mime, Mittens/Honey, and debatably Lumpy were the only survivors of this episode.
- Since Petunia started the fire, she's indirectly responsible for all the deaths in this episode.
- The deaths of Giggles, Sniffles, and Cub mark as her first kills besides herself in the previous episode.
- This is the first and only time she killed Giggles, rather than the other way around.
- This is one of the few instances where Nutty shows concern for another character.
- While on the phone, Mime's eye triangle face paint briefly lower to act as makeshift eyebrows.
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