The Carpal Tunnel of Love

The Carpal Tunnel of Love
Episode type	Music video
Date	February 5, 2007 April 1, 2009 (Atom) March 21, 2012 (YouTube, Fall Out Boy's channel)
Character(s)	Giggles Cuddles Lumpy Toothy Nutty Mole Fall Out Boy

"The Carpal Tunnel of Love" is a song by American rock band Fall Out Boy from their 2007 album Infinity on High. The song was written by Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley, and produced by Neal Avron. It first debuted as a single released on December 12, 2006. The music video was a collaboration with Kenn Navarro in the form of a Happy Tree Friends animation centered around Cuddles and Giggles.

Synopsis

Happy Tree Friends website: The Happy Tree Friends star in a Fall Out Boy video

Plot

Giggles is waiting at the bus stop. Cuddles is approaching the same bus stop and ends up locking eyes with her as they fall in love at first sight. Lumpy rushes to the place and sits between them, getting in the way of Cuddles who is about to put his arm around Giggles. Lumpy gets annoyed by this while the two lovers end up discouraged. Cuddles' mood brightens up again when he sees flowers on a large bush that Toothy is trimming. The rabbit takes a couple flowers, unaware that this disturbs a bee that was about to land on one. He shows the flowers to Giggles, who looks pleased, but Lumpy's hay fever acts up and he sneezes, destroying the flowers. Meanwhile, Toothy has finished trimming the bush into a heart shape, but the bee from earlier starts flying around his head before piercing his eye with its stinger, causing the affected eye to swell horribly.

The bus eventually arrives and Cuddles, Lumpy, and Giggles get on. Giggles is stuck sitting next to Lumpy whose hay fever is still acting up. Cuddles, who is sitting by himself, gets an idea to draw a heart on a piece of paper. He approaches Lumpy and Giggles' seat to give her the paper only for Lumpy to snatch it from him and use it as tissue to blow out all his snot before throwing it out from the bus window. The paper ends up sent flying into a scooter-riding Nutty's face, causing him to ride off the road and crash right into the back of a truck full of pipes.

The bus stops at a diner. Giggles and Cuddles enter, followed by Lumpy, who slams the door shut, unaware of Toothy behind him. The beaver's swollen eye gets caught between the door and its frame. He immediately pulls away from the door, releasing his eye ball from its socket. It falls into a tub of ice cream that Mole is about to use as ingredient. The Happy Tree Friends-styled, cartoon version of Fall Out Boy members enter the diner. Cuddles and Giggles almost kiss when Mole places a glass of ice cream float between them. The two laugh and then drink the float together. They end up disgusted and spit out the drink. The carbonation clears to reveal that they were drinking straight from Toothy's swollen eye that Mole happened to scoop up. The two are terrified by this, with Cuddles pushing the glass off the table, spilling out the eye ball, which is then stepped on by Lumpy. The moose looks down at his foot, panics, and runs away, slamming the diner door outward and unknowingly crushing a hurting Toothy with it.

Outside, Lumpy looks around before spotting a tow truck, one of the parked cars. He climbs in and starts it up, but he accidentally puts it on reverse, causing the tow truck to crash into the diner building. He then puts the truck in drive and takes off. However, the truck's hook was caught up in the diner's ceiling fan, and when Mole walks across the cable, the pulled cable goes taut, slicing him in half. The diner building itself begins to crack loose from its foundation before getting pulled along, killing all the Fall Out Boy members caught by the building wall, with their heads rolling along like wheels. Cuddles and Giggles are trying to outrun and escape the building. As for Lumpy, the bee from earlier flies around his head before stabbing his eye with its stinger like how it did to Toothy. Lumpy screams in pain as he starts to drive out of control. He ends up crashing into the truck with pipes (still with Nutty's corpse impaled behind). When the smoke clears, Lumpy comes up uninjured, but with the tow truck's cable tangled around his antlers. Then it begins to be pulled back by the tow mechanism. Amidst his agony, he ends up stepping on the gas pedal. The truck's back wheel runs in place, sending three pipes under it away. Cuddles and Giggles walk out of the ruined diner, also similarly uninjured, before one of the pipes fly straight at them. As for Lumpy, the tow eventually tears his head off, with his skull jamming it. The pipe that impaled Cuddles and Giggles is stuck on a tree at a downward angle, allowing Giggles' corpse to slide toward Cuddles, their her lips pressed against his.

Lyrics

We take sour sips from life's lush lips
And we shake, shake, shake the hips in relationships
Stomp out this disaster town
You'll put your eyes to the sun and say, "I know
You're only blinding to keep back what the clouds are hiding."

And we might have started singing just a little soon
We're throwing stones at a glass moon

Whoa oh, we're so miserable and stunning
Whoa oh, love songs for the genuinely cunning, whoa-oh

We keep the beat with your blistered feet
We bullet the words at the mockingbirds singing
Slept through the weekend and dreaming
Of sinking with the melody of the cliffs of eternity
Got postcards from my former selves saying, "How you been?"

We might have said goodbyes just a little soon
(Stomp out this disaster town)
Robbing lips, kissing banks under this moon

Whoa oh, we're so miserable and stunning
Whoa oh, love songs for the genuinely cunning
Whoa oh, we're so miserable and stunning
Whoa oh, love songs for the genuinely cunning, whoa-oh

It was ice cream headaches and sweet avalanche
When the pearls in our shells got up to dance
You call me a bad tipper of the cradle
Tired yawns for fawns on hunter's lawns
We're the has-beens of husbands
Sharpening the knives of young wives
Take two years and call me when you're better
Take teardrops of mine, find yourself wetter

Whoa oh oh, we're so miserable and stunning
Whoa oh, love songs for the genuinely cunning
Whoa oh, we're so miserable and stunning
Whoa oh, love songs for the genuinely cunning

Fates

Deaths

• Nutty crashes into and gets impaled on pipes.
• Toothy is splattered on the diner building from Lumpy slamming the door outward and Toothy himself getting crushed by it.
• Mole is sliced in half by the tow truck cable.
• The cartoon Fall Out Boy members are decapitated by the diner building pulled by the tow truck.
• Giggles and Cuddles are impaled by a pipe.
• Lumpy's skull is torn off by the truck's towing mechanism.

Injuries

• Toothy gains a swollen eye from a bee sting.

Survival rate

• Number of surviving main characters: 0
• Number of dead main characters: 6
• Total rate: 0%

Destruction

• The diner building is pulled off its foundation and towed by the truck Lumpy was driving.
• Lumpy crashes the tow truck into the truck with pipes.

Animation errors

• During the scene where Giggles, Cuddles, and Lumpy enter the diner, Cuddles is depicted without his tail and slippers. The same mistake with the slippers happens when he and Giggles are shown trying to outrun the diner's wall.
• Lumpy's antlers change directions a few times, including during continuous shots. The same mirroring problem also applies to Mole's facial mole.
• The diner's exterior is inexplicably clean of Toothy's splattered remains after Lumpy attempts driving away with the tow truck.

Development

According to Kenn Navarro, the Happy Tree Friends show's crew and Fall Out Boy were admirers of each other's work. The former eventually got in touch with the band and took the opportunity to help them with one of their songs. The collaboration project began after meeting the band's bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz.

Reception

On the Happy Tree Friends Atom website, as of August 3, 2012, "The Carpal Tunnel of Love" music video was rated about 4.5 stars out of 5.

On the Fall Out Boy's YouTube channel, this video has around 151.000 likes and around 5.900 dislikes as of 2021.

Trivia

• "The Carpal Tunnel of Love" is the first official music video collaboration involving Happy Tree Friends. The show would later collaborate with Kirby Krackle to make the music video for "Unlucky". However, "The Carpal Tunnel of Love" is the only one of the two with original animation, as "Unlucky" re-uses existing show clips and promotional media.
• "The Carpal Tunnel of Love" is the only Happy Tree Friends short to feature real-life celebrity in the animation.
• Handy appears as the logo on the tow truck.