#muriel and eustace actually care for one another

[slickbackdani]

So, like, can we talk about the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode “Ball of Revenge” for a moment? Because holy FUCK it has problems.

I liked the episode when I first saw it, mostly because I’m a sucker for “all the villains team up to take on the hero” plots. Even today, I don’t absolutely despise the episode because I feel like there were some elements that were done quite well. That said, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how fucked the episode’s actual plot is in execution.

For those who haven’t seen the episode and just hear me speaking gibberish right now, I’ll sum up: Eustace throws a temper tantrum because he wanted a blanket that Muriel knitted for Courage, so he calls up six of the monsters and villains the dog had confronted throughout the series (Katz, Le Quack, the Black Puddle Queen, the Clutching Foot, the Weremole, and the Cajun Fox) to get together and kill him.

You might’ve noticed the first problem with this plot: Eustace being the one to bring the villains together. Why Eustace? He’s not a villain! Sure he’s an asshole, and there were some villains on the show that were direct counterparts to him (like Mr. Nasty in “Angry Nasty People” and The Whip in “Cowboy Courage”) but the man himself has only ever been a comical, bumbling oaf who caused problems with his clear anger issues, shortsighted greed, and general idiocy. He is the last person anyone would expect to pull off a scheme like this!

How about the fact that his descent into villainy was because of a fucking blanket? And I thought Killian’s motive for becoming a villain in Iron Man 3 was stupid!

Now, let’s take a look at the bad guys the episode brought back. Some of them kinda make sense, but on the whole, their presence becomes baffling just because Eustace was the one to call them together. Eustace didn’t know most of these people, those he did know hated him and tried to kill him, and there’s no way he should’ve been able to contact half of them. Yeah, he had an operator “make some calls” (remember when people did that?) but sorry. I don’t buy it.

Katz: He’s the most obvious villain to bring back, being the most reoccurring enemy faced on the show, and I have no problem with him being part of this team. My problem is: why are he and Eustace working together? Katz has tried to kill him and his wife on four separate occasions, and he committed the unforgivable mortal sin of sitting in Eustace’s chair. Not to mention Eustace has played a direct role in defeating Katz twice, so there should be no reason these characters would be willing to work together. I’m sure some take issue with Katz being alive at all due to his apparent demise being eaten by a shark in “Katz under the Sea,” but I’m willing to give it a pass because it was ambiguous enough that you could bullshit a reason to say he survived.

Le Quack: Again, not only has this character repeatedly menaced the Bagge household and not just Courage, but Eustace and Le Quack have never actually met one another. In all of Le Quack’s previous appearances, Eustace only interacted with the devious duck when he was masquerading as a trusted professional, and by the time the fiendish fowl doffed his dastardly disguise and went full speed ahead with his evil plan du jour, the old farmer was either locked in a closet, hypnotized, or without glasses. Le Quack had also met his apparent end in a previous episode when his hot air balloon got shot down by police cannons, but like Katz, it was ambiguous enough that they could’ve easily brought him back.

The Black Puddle Queen: You’d think Eustace would harbor at least a tiny grudge against the woman who tried to cannibalize him, but nope! He can forgive that, but not stealing a blanket that didn’t belong to him in the first place? The old man needs to get his priorities in order! Also, it’s a little weird that she could even join these villains at all, since Courage left her trapped by closing the portal to her underwater lair, but whatever. We have no idea how her magic works, so you could always say she found a way back. I mean, either she or someone of her species was back to her old tricks by the very end of her debut episode after her defeat, so who knows?

The Cajun Fox: Again, how does Eustace even know who this guy is? The old man was completely absent from “Cajun Granny Stew,” the Fox’s only prior appearance. Also, Eustace doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered that the guy tried to eat Muriel. What is it about Eustace not caring if people get eaten? The Fox was also defeated when he fell into his own pot of boiling stew, but like with prior villains, you could very easily say he survived, so no complaints there.

The Clutching Foot: This is the character who makes the least amount of sense to be here. Leaving aside that I’d personally prefer it if he never showed up at all because of how stomach-churningly repulsive he is just to look at, he was only alive after having possessed Eustace’s body, so the two cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Also, unlike the other villains whose deaths were ambiguous, this guy explicitly got destroyed in his debut episode with no possible way of returning — and he even mentions how he died in this episode!

The Weremole: He has the second-least reason to be here, because he wasn’t really the same kind of villain that the others were. He was just a dumb animal acting on predatory instincts. And despite the villains in this episode being united by a desire for revenge, the Weremole has nothing to get revenge for since Courage didn’t actually “defeat” him. He just plucked a hair off of him (which he didn’t even notice) and cured Muriel of her curse before she could harm anyone else. Speaking of, he turned Eustace’s wife into a monster and almost got the old man killed, but I think it’s clear by this point that Eustace places absolutely no value on human life, his own or anyone else’s.

Again, this episode’s concept is fantastic, and there are many ways it could’ve been fixed. Here’s what I would’ve done differently. In my version of the episode, the ringleader of this band of monsters and freaks would not have been Eustace, but a different reoccurring foe: Benton Tarantella. His career’s been in a bit of a slump since his reality show got canned, so he decided to make a comeback by returning to his roots and making a snuff film with Courage as the “star.” He puts out a “casting call” to recruit anyone who’d have a bone to pick with the Cowardly canine, and Katz, Le Quack, the Black Puddle Queen, the Cajun Fox, Fusilli*, and Mad Dog enthusiastically sign on. From there, the episode plays out like normal: Eustace and Muriel get kidnapped, Courage has to save them, he falls into the villains’ trap, and they challenge him to a deadly game of dodgeball, which Tarantella will justify with “What? Sports movies are all the rage these days!” This version might have its problems, sure, but at least it’s more sensible than what we got.

* (And yes, I know Fusilli got turned into a puppet by the end of his debut episode, but hear me out: Eustace and Muriel also got turned into puppets in that episode, and we never saw them return to normal, but they fact that they’ve become human again by the next episode could be interpreted to mean that the puppet curse wears off if the puppets stay away from Fusilli’s stage for long enough. It’s not perfect, but any attempt at an explanation is good enough for me.)