Little Muriel
Original air date: 7/14/2000 (produced in 1999)
Production code: CCD-113a
A freak tornado turns Muriel into a rowdy toddler who drives Courage up the wall.
The Great Fusilli
Original air date: 7/14/2000 (produced in 1999)
Production code: CCD-113b
A mysterious puppeteer tries to make Eustace and Muriel part of his act.
"Little Muriel" features examples of the following tropes:
- Fountain of Youth: The tornado that destroys the Bagg household somehow causes Muriel to age down to a 3-and-a-half-year-old toddler.
- Rapid Aging: Invoked by Courage, who decides to dump Little Muriel into a tornado in the southern hemisphere to restore her back to the kindly old lady she was.
- Running Gag: Eustace spends the entirety of the episode getting knocked out by one thing or another. Each time he wakes up, something hits in the head to prevent him from handling the little Muriel situation.
- Similar Item Confusion: Courage accidentally repaints Muriel's rocking chair with a can of fast-drying glue instead of fast-drying paint. This, combined with Eustace accidentally nailing the rocking chair itself to the floor, leaves Muriel unable to get out of the chair and escape to the storm cellar when the tornado arrives, resulting in her getting swept up in it when the tornado rips the chair out of the floor.
- Spoiled Brat: Little Muriel is a brat who constantly wants to perform all sorts of shenanigans and forces Courage to cook multiple batches of macaroni based on her picky desires, only for her to dump the last batch onto the dog, revealing that she actually hates macaroni. To make matters worse, she performs dangerous stunts, scares Courage with Eustace's "Ooge-Booga-Booga" mask, and makes annoying revving sounds on the plane that prompt everyone onboard, including the pilot, to parachute out of the plane. Courage is so fed up with her that he decides to return her to her proper age.
"The Great Fusilli" features examples of the following tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Courage manages to stop Fusilli's spree of turning people into lifeless puppets, but he still failed to prevent the transformation of Eustace and Muriel into such puppets. Fortunately, Negative Continuity fixes this.
- Deal with the Devil: Signing up doesn't ensure fame and fortune as it's very blatantly a scam. Not that Muriel and Eustace realize.
- Knight of Cerebus: Fusilli is one of the darkest villains of the show and is one of the only characters that successfully killed Muriel.
- Mood Whiplash: After the previous episode was nothing short of comical, this one coming next was quite unexpected.
- Oh, Crap!: Courage when he realizes Fusilli's true motives and that he's next on the chopping block. It doesn't take long before the trope is in effect again when Courage watches in horror as he failed to rescue Muriel and Eustace.
- Puppet Permutation: Turns out that this is the fate that awaits those who perform in the Great Fusilli's plays, as they are turned into marionette puppets for him to play with. Courage is unable to save Muriel and Eustace from such a fate, but he unintentionally ensures that Fusilli is forced to perform and get turned into a puppet himself.
- Wham Shot: When Courage unknowingly opens a door after being hit by the pie, he finds a bunch of people turned into puppets and that he's next.
