User blog:AustinDR/Happy Tree Friends (Review)

Happy Tree Friends. What more do I have to say here? On the surface, Happy Tree Friends appears to be family friendly with its cutesy art style and character designs. However, this is merely a façade underneath which belies a truly screwed up premise. Each episode starts off fine with cute little forest animals going about their daily lives but then without that much time in, the show transforms into a violent display of death and mayhem with characters getting into horrible accidents or dying in some of the most brutal ways. Which is one of the reasons as to why I love the show.

I can't remember the first video from Mondo Media I watched about Happy Tree Friends, but I can definitely recall being utterly shocked because I was reeled in thinking that it was a kids' show. To me, the violence reminds me of some of the older cartoons such as Wile E. Coyote and Tom and Jerry. I always imagined what it would be like if for instance Wile E. Coyote was crushed by an anvil from ACME but with a more realistic spin to it, or if Tom got into accidents that he couldn't easily recover from. Happy Tree Friends fulfills that curiosity for me. Knowing the gist behind how each episode plays out, it would seem that the show would lose some interest due to its predictability, but Happy Tree Friends usually subverts this by playing with expectations to keep the show fresh.

They would set up a scenario where it appears to be a shoo-in for a character to meet their bloody end only to then subvert that expectation...only to have them die a different way. For instance, there's one episode where Flaky -- a nervous-prone porcupine -- is blending nuts only for the gear to get clogged. At first it's pretty obvious that she would get horribly maimed if she were to try to reach in and unclog it, but at the last minute, she stops herself and goes to turn off the blender. She dies later on when she accidentally ingests some nuts and bloats up exploding when a blind mole mistakes her for the donkey. Another character winds up falling victim to the blender. This bait and switch tactic is one of the things I love about the show aside from its creativity when devising endless numbers of ways for the forest animals to die.

The characters for the most part are simplistic in personality. There's Petunia, a skunk who has severe disdain for anything dirty and must clean it due to her OCD. There's Lumpy, a moose who is often the one indirectly responsible for the deaths of the other characters his main schtick being that he has several jobs despite his idiocy. Sniffles, a nerdy anteater who is often seen inventing or trying to eat a family of ants (who are some of the worst characters in the show). Or Nutty, a squirrel obsessed with candy or anything sugary. As for characters I personally like there is Flippy. Flippy is a green bear who suffers from PTSD that he had acquired from his time in the W. A. R. While he is probably one of the nicest characters in the show, whenever he sees anything that reminds him of his time in service whether it be a knife, gun sound, or fire, he shifts into his "Fliqpy" persona. And he is an absolute beast whenever he is in that persona. As Fliqpy, he can relentlessly kill other characters with ease and is a force to be reckoned with. One of my favorite episodes with Flippy is "Double Whammy" where he realizes all of the carnage he causes whilst in his Fliqpy alter ego and tries to find ways to suppress it which eventually leads to him having an all out war with his evil side. Despite some of the character's simplistic personalities some do have moments where they have hidden depths such as Disco-Bear. Originally I disliked this character, but later episodes give indications that he has low self-esteem so he acts like an egotistical jerk in order to gain acceptance.

Other than that, a very enjoyable show for anyone who is into this type of visceral black comedy, but be warned that it is most certainly not for young children or anyone who finds this type of comedy squeamish.