"Haircuffed" is the second segment of the 1st episode of the sixth season of Trolls: The Beat Goes On!, and the 65th overall episode in the series. It premiered on April 9, 2019.
Synopsis[]
Tired of Creek and Branch's quarrels, Poppy ties their hair together and forces them to reconcile.
Plot[]
The episode begins with Smidge lining up for a game of bowling. She must get a strike for Troll Village's first perfect-score game. As Smidge rolls herself into a hairball down the alley, Branch and Creek appear arguing. They walk into Smidge, making her lose control. They tell Poppy that they need to settle this right now, and Poppy groans about settling another one of the pair's dumb arguments. Poppy stops the two mid-fight over a noisen berry Branch grew and Creek took a bite out of to tell them that everyone's sick of their bickering.
Poppy tells Creek that he can be insensitive, and Branch that he can be strict with his rules. She doesn't expect them to be best friends, but threatens them with punishment if they can't get along. They bicker over he warning and go to walk away from each other but can't. Poppy has tied their hair together with a befriending bow, something from her father's day that serves to teach Trolls how to get along. Satin and Chenille mock them as they're now similar to them. The two pull to get out of it but Poppy stops them, warning that it's self-tightening; the harder they pull, the tighter it gets, and it'll become permanent if they pull it hard enough. She bids them farewell, as the pair dodge Smidge, who wins a strike after getting a perfect game.
At his bunker, Branch unsuccessfully tries to break the bow. He has to endure Creek's sarcasm who tries to break it himself but also fails. Branch sniffs the bow, and realizes Poppy coated it with hairspray. Branch tries to do a schedule with Creek to split up their activities, but Creek doesn't comply with schedules and suggests they take turns doing everything, to which Branch says that's what a schedule is, though Creek frames from calling it that.
Branch starts with a 1000-piece puzzle, and states they're not moving until the last piece is placed. Since this will take hours, Creek pushes the lot into his fireplace. At Creek's yoga class, Branch breaks the tranquility of the class by burping loudly. Creek snaps the hair and tosses Branch over his head, who does the same back. They keep doing this until they go over a ledge and are stuck hanging from a branch. As they argue, they come to a realization: they shouldn't be mad at each other. They should be mad at Poppy instead due to her having the nerve to tie them up like this.
Poppy and the others are looking for Branch and Creek, worried that something may have happened to them because of the bow. The two appear and are getting along well, too well. It appears that Creek has adopted some of Branch's ideals, and Branch some of Creek's. They spend the entire day proving to Poppy they're now good friends. The next day as Poppy is relaxing, as she receives a card from the pair stating they're having a "Friendship Permanence Ceremony".
At the ceremony, Poppy is announcing the pair's willingness to have the bow become a permanent thing after just 2 days of friendship. To do this, all they have to do is simply pull it tightly until they can no longer escape from each other, though Poppy is nervous about it. As the pair start to pull, Poppy stops them and unlocks their hair. She apologizes, saying she should never have done that.
To her surprise, the pair only wanted to hear her apology; it turns out they decided to work together to teach Poppy a lesson. As they go off bragging about their plan, Smidge points out that by working together against Poppy they achieved the desired effect the bow was meant to have anyway. Poppy tells her it's fine.
Cast[]
- Amanda Leighton as Queen Poppy
- Kevin Michael Richardson as Smidge
- Skylar Astin as Branch
- Fryda Wolff as DJ Suki, Satin & Chenille
- Matt Lowe as Creek
- Ron Funches as Cooper
- Biggie (non-speaking)
- Fuzzbert (non-speaking)
Songs[]
Physical distribution[]
This episode is available on the "Trolls: The Beat Goes On! - Complete Seasons 5-8" DVD.
Trivia[]
- Branch pulling Creek up while sitting on the moon is a reference to the DreamWorks logo.
- This is the second time the DreamWorks logo was referenced in Trolls: The Beat Goes On!, the first being in "The Imposter". Coincidentally, Branch was involved in both references.
- The only member of The Snack Pack membership missing in this episode is Guy Diamond. This is one of the few episodes in which most of the group appears together.
- The plot is a reference to the "chained heat" trope, in which two characters who are complete opposites to each other are "chained" together in some way and have to cooperate to escape the situation.
- The ceremony is based on the phrase "tying the knot", which refers to marriage. A nod to this is when Poppy asks just before Branch and Creek if there's anyone who can think of a reason for them not to go through with their ceremony; before a marriage in a church, the priest often asks if there are any objections to the marriage. Another nod is that earlier in the episode, the pair spend all day going through the Tunnel of Friendship, which is a reference to the "Tunnel of Love".
- While Poppy had issues with dealing out punishment for other Trolls in "Funishment", here not only has she gotten over this and accepted that she does need to punish badly-behaving Trolls, but the punishment displayed here is her father King Peppy's form of punishment, showing that he didn't have the same issues with punishing Trolls Poppy had earlier in the series.
- The Tunnel of Friendship would reappear in the Trolls: TrollsTopia episodes "The Tunnel of Friendship" and "Fastest Draw in the West".
- The puzzle aspect of the episode, where Branch refused to leave until the last piece was placed was later expanded in "The Search for Piece". Given the context of the latter episode, this does not reflect well on Creek's destruction of the puzzle.
- According to the Trolls: TrollsTopia episode "Hair-aldine: The Musical", hairspray was a Country Troll invention. This leaves a question on how Pop Trolls would have this invention prior to having met the Tribe during Trolls World Tour.