Recap / HTF - The Way You Make Me Wheel

"One good turn deserves another!"

Airdate: December 8, 2002

"The Way You Make Me Wheel" is the eleventh episode of the second (internet) season of Happy Tree Friends.

Lumpy is driving down the road while shaving. Suddenly, a duck and its ducklings are seen crossing the road, prompting Lumpy to swerve away to avoid running over them, accidentally slashing his throat in the process. Blood begins splashing on the windshield, which Lumpy stupidly tries to clean using the windshield wiper. The car soon hits a small wooden log on the road, sending one of the back wheels off and making Lumpy unable to drive further. Thankfully, Handy comes to help. He does the fixing while Lumpy tries to clean up his windshield, losing more blood as the process goes on. Soon Handy is done and gives him the okay, so the weak Lumpy begins driving again, only for him to drive backward and crush Handy between his car and Handy's tow truck. Handy's tail then gets caught on one of the back wheels, forcibly pulling the poor beaver into the wheel and destroying his body. Lumpy finally dies from blood loss. The ducks are seen swimming on his blood, where one of the ducklings suddenly picks up Lumpy's razor.

"The Way You Make Me Wheel" contains examples of:

• Ambidextrous Sprite: Lumpy's antlers.
• Anti-Humor: Comedy Robot's routine in this episode, combined with a bit of Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
• Artistic License – Physics: The kind of razor Lumpy uses should not be able to cause such a deep cut. Exaggerated for Black Comedy, though.
• Ascended Extra: The Comedy Robot, usually having minor "appearances" in other BlurB!s, is the star of this episode's BlurB!.
• Behind the Black: All of Handy's actions that require hands.
• The Cameo: The cow from "Milkin' It" can be seen in the background as Lumpy drives down the highway.
• Caption Humor: One of the episodes with a BlurB! version.
• Continuity Nod: Combined in a way. Lumpy's car in this episode is a mix of the ones in "Treasure Those Idol Moments" and "Get Whale Soon".
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Handy gets crushed between Lumpy's car and his tow truck. His tail is then pulled by the car's back wheel, forcing him to vomit out his intestines and destroying the rest of him.
• Easter Egg: The Comedy Robot still slips in messages hidden behind binary codes.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: Aside from the ducks, the starring characters don't survive in this episode.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The BlurB! version's Comedy Robot 2.0 tends to speak about something dark/gruesome that flashes briefly either before being replaced with a more "friendly" caption or within certain captions. The non-CR captions claim that it is still invoked buggy.
• High-Pressure Blood: The blood from Lumpy's Slashed Throat.
• Kill All Humans: By the end of its routine in the BlurB! version, the Comedy Robot ends up spamming "DEATH TO ALL HUMANS".
• Lightbulb Joke: Comedy Robot does an Anti-Humor variant of this in the BlurB! video
  QUERY: HOW MANY DUCKS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW IN A LIGHT BULB?
  ANSWER: NONE. ANATIDAE ANSERIFORMES DOES NOT POSSESS OPPOSABLE THUMBS FOR SUCH A COMPLEX PROCEDURE.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Handy is depicted as an auto repairman in this episode.
• Obvious Beta: In-Universe. The non-Comedy Robot captions at the end of the BlurB! comment that said robot still has some bugs that are not fixed yet.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: By the time Lumpy dies, the pool of blood in his car has reached his chest.
• Pun-Based Title: "The way you make me feel"
• Puny Earthlings: The Comedy Robot in the BlurB! version considers humans inferior and is more than happy to slip in gruesome facts related to them.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The music at the beginning of the episode is reused from "Crazy Ant-ics" and "Tongue Twister Trouble".
• Robo Speak: The BlurB! version's Comedy Robot 2.0, instead of only speaking in binary codes.
• Shout-Out:
  • The episode's title might be a pun of Michael Jackson's song "The Way You Make Me Feel".
  • The binary code spouted by the Comedy Robot as part of its "interpretive dance" routine in the BlurB! version is translated as Totentanz (English: Dance of the Dead). Considering that this is the Comedy Robot...
• Slashed Throat: Lumpy suffers from this throughout most of the episode until his death.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Handy and Lumpy die.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: As Lumpy continues suffering from blood loss, his blue fur turns paler.