Guy and Sam get arrested and go to jail, where they encounter a mouse who may help them break out.
Tropes appearing in "Mouse"
- Actor Allusion: Daveed Diggs, famous for playing a Frenchman in the Broadway show Hamilton, plays the mouse, a French Jerk who's character is a parody of a different Broadway show about a Frenchman.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The mouse, like the fox and the goat, was hardly a character to begin with in the book and only existed as one of the many things Sam suggested eating green eggs and ham with. Here, he's a Jean Valjean expy who was thrown in jail for stealing a scrap of food to feed his impoverished family.
- Ambiguous Syntax
- Sam's arresting officer offers Sam "one call." Sam accepts it and calls out for Guy through the bars for his cell window.
- Later, when Guy comes to Sam's cell wearing a fake mustache.
Sam: (not recognizing him) And who might you be?
Guy: It's me, Guy. With a mustache.
Sam: Nice to meet you, guy with a mustache. I'm Sam with a jail hat. - Animal Talk: While the audience can understand the mouse, none of the other characters can and only hear squeaking when he talks, much to his chagrin.
- Apologetic Attacker: The cop who arrests Sam is very polite and the two exchange compliments and apologies as he chases Sam down. He even gives Sam a hug before arresting him when Sam tells him that Guy ran off.
- Bait-and-Switch: Sam climbs the water tower and calls out for Guy to wave to him. He indeed sees Guy waving... down a taxi to get out of town, much to Sam's disappointment.
- Call-Back: When Guy returns for him, Sam lets out the same long, guttural gasp he made when they first met.
- Captivity Harmonica: Sam imitates the sound of this while in his prison cell.
- Captured on Purpose: In order to help Sam escape prison, Guy turns himself in and gets arrested, only to find out that Sam didn't have a plan to escape, meaning he got himself arrested for nothing.
- Caught in the Bad Part of Town: Instead of mailing themselves to South Shvizelton where Sam and Guy are, Gluntz and McWinkle accidentally mail themselves to North Shvizelton, which turns out to be The City Narrows. The city slogan is even "You're probably here by mistake."
- Curse Cut Short: The mouse begins to call Guy a "filthy son of a-" before switching back to Sam and Guy's perspective, where the offending word is rendered as squeaks.
- Foreshadowing: The "one call" gag. After Sam screams out Guy's name, the scene cuts to Snerz on the phone.
- French Jerk: The mouse, being an expy of Jean Valjean.
- Glove Snap: Gluntz does one before entering Sam and Guy's cell to interrogate them.
- Human Mail: The BAD GUYS follow Sam and Guys' example from the previous episode and have themselves packed and shipped to Shviselton to catch up with their targets. But they end up being shipped to North Shvizelton instead of South Shvizelton by mistake.
- Literal Metaphor: While making an escape rope of neckties, Sam runs out and leaves him and Guy several feet above the pipe they need to jump onto. They're literally at the end of their rope.
- Mythology Gag: During the chase at the beginning, Sam stumbles into a graduation ceremony and knocks the valedictorian off the podium mid-speech. He launches into his own speech, starting with "Oh, The Places You'll Go!", the title of Dr. Seuss's last book published during his lifetime and a popular graduation gift.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: When Guy turns himself in, his briefcase containing Mr. Jenkins is taken into custody and thrown into a huge pile of identical briefcases.
- Noticing the Fourth Wall: The mouse is offended by the narrator calling him a vermin, even if it's only to fit the rhyme.
- One Phone Call: Sam gets the obligatory "one call" offer from his arresting officer. Rather than take the call, he simply yells Guy's name out the window...only for it to cut to Snerz on the phone...
- Prison Episode: Sam gets arrested and thrown in jail. Guy ends up believing that Sam has a plan to get him out that requires Guy to be in prison as well, so Guy turns himself in and also gets arrested, only to find out that Sam didn't actually have a plan, but is still glad to have Guy with him. They end up having to follow a mouse who has been working on an escape plan for many years.
- Say My Name: When offered "one call," Sam walks to the window and screams Guy's name as loud as he can.
- Secret Message Wink: Sam gets arrested and Guy wonders how to bail him out. Sam tells Guy with a wink that it "looks like a two-man job to me, if you know what I mean!" Guy gives Sam a knowing smile back, showing he gets the plan, and dashes off.Narrator: Guy knew what Sam meant by that mischievous wink. He'd have to get caught, and thrown into the clink!
- Shout-Out:
- Sam's speech during the graduation he stumbles into: "Oh, the places you'll go!" See Mythology Gag above.
- The prison hats resemble a certain striped stovepipe hat, but in greyscale.
- Sam carves little wooden figurines of himself, Guy and Jenkins in his cell like Quasimodo does in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- The mouse's entire character and backstory are a parody of Les Misérables. He's thrown in jail during a time when those living in poverty are revolting against their oppressors and he tells his backstory in a pop-opera song.
- The ending parodies The Shawshank Redemption, complete with the protagonists escaping through a sewage pipe and the narrator briefly affecting a Morgan Freeman imitation. Sam even strikes the iconic pose from the poster when it starts raining.
- Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: The narrator grumbles about having to change "vermin" to "mouse" when the mouse gets upset with him saying the former.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Dark, gloomy North Shvizelton is quite literally on the other side of a train track from the more colorful, pleasant South Shvizelton. One's attitude changes depending on which side they're in, as Gluntz demonstrates by bodily dragging a guy from South Shvizelton into North Shvizelton, which immediately turns him from a neighborly fellow who doesn't like to gossip to a nasty gossipy hen.
