I LIKE CARTOONS

Courage is an ugly little pink dog abandoned at birth and adopted by Muriel, a plump, sweet old lady who lives in the middle of nowhere with her cold, selfish, redneck husband Eustice.

The middle of nowhere!	Courage wants nothing more than to lie on Muriel's lap while she pets him. He's also a complete coward who can be reduced to hysteria by a Halloween mask, a torment Eustice loves to inflict. But the middle of nowhere is a strange and dangerous place and various villains threaten, kidnap, or try to kill Muriel and Eustice. Muriel doesn't have a lot of survival instinct and Eustice's motto is "I ain't getting out of this chair!" so it's always up to Courage to overcome his fear. As he trembles and shakes or screams and cries, he sets out to save Muriel, saying, "The things I do for love!"
	Muriel and Eustice aren't very interesting. Even Courage is kinda two-dimensional, but the villains are the most imaginative I have ever seen.

My favorite is Dr. Zalost. He lives in a tower that walks around on spider legs and he shoots magical cannonballs that turn people unhappy, lethargic and green. He turns his evil cannonballs on the citizens of Nowhere and demands 33 1/3 billion dollars to reverse the condition. He is paid and, as his assistant, the scarred, obese and hunchbacked RAT counts the money, decides not to honor the deal because the 33 1/3 billion dollars made him no happier than before and he wants everyone to be as miserable as he is.. All he really wants is for Rat to come to bed with him to hug and cuddle and Rat, being a willing minion, is willing but also clearly reluctant. Rat wants to count the money and make evil cannonballs not cuddle. Eustice encounters Dr. Zalost's tower while going into Nowhere for the paper and it follows him back to Muriel and Courage. Muriel is stuck with one of the dark cannonballs and becomes bent and green and miserable. The nasty Eustice is struck repeatedly but since he doesn't feel much anyway he is unaffected. He tells Courage to feed Muriel since "she likes you best anyway." Courage tries to get Muriel to eat some of her Happy Plums, which would make anyone happy, but can't get the poor lady to open her mouth. He saves Muriel with Happy Plums which make Rat into a crying baby who wants to be cuddled and Dr. Zalost into a happy man cuddling his baby Rat.

Evil Eggplant People want to kidnap and eat Muriel: Courage saves her by disguising himself as "The Great Eggplant." In Banana Republic banana people are being fooled into sacrificing themselves to a banana-eating gorilla. Muriel and Eustice are wearing banana disguises and in danger of being eaten. Courage rescues them by exposing the charade.

A mold turns Eustice's foot into a monster foot that engulfs him and grows a criminal head from each toe, all under the direction of the Boss Big Toe, which demands that Courage rob a bank or "The Old Lady gets it!!" Finally Courage learns from his snide computer that the only cure for the mold is dog drool, that to cure Eustice and save Muriel he must lick the foot clean. First it's Eustice's foot, and there's no love lost there. Second it's a foot. Third it's covered with nasty mold.

But Courage overcomes his aversion and cleans it with his tongue. The mold is destroyed and the foot returns to its normal size, Eustice reappears, and Muriel is saved. But Courage is left with a mold infestation on his tongue. As Courage would say, "The things I do for love."

Eustice's Ma

Another great villain is the Sand Whale, who is a combination of Moby Dick and the sand worms of Dune. The Sand Whale surfaces at Muriel and Eustice's door and demands the return of his accordion which he says Eustice cheated him out of. It turns out Eustice's father, Icket Bagge, did the cheating but Eustice knows nothing about it and so the Sand Whale swallows both Eustice and Muriel, forcing Courage tot enlist Eustice's Ma, a nasty selfish, bald, wig-wearing old harridan, to help rescue them.

Eustice's Ma is only interested in capturing and selling the sand whale while Courage only wants to save Muriel. So off Ma and Courage go in a little row-boat, which Courage laboriously rows across the sand while trying to snatch the accordion from the net welding Ma so he can trade it for his beloved Muriel and her nasty husband. He finally suceeds and returns the accordian to the sand whale, Muriel is rescued and the episode ends with the sand whale, on stage, with his famous group of accordian playng sand whales.

Almost every episode is full of this kind of originality. There seems to be no end to the surprising characters found in the middle of Nowhere as the cowardly Courage overcomes his fear to save the woman he loves. The animation is okay, a combination of photographics and traditional animation, the music has won awards but it's the villains that really rock.