The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures (1998)
First episode title: The Mouse-tache Marauder
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of it before.
Is this the first episode?: The show was preceded by a TV special called "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse: A Christmas Tale", but it looks like it's a bit different and not part of the actual show.
Here's another cute little cartoon! The titular Country Mouse and City Mouse are two cousins, Emily and Alexander. They are mice in little outfits reflecting their statuses - it seems that in this world there is a whole little mouse society, unknown to most humans. And these two, despite their different upbringings, go on adventures around the world together!
The opening theme song describes the concept of the show as above - my one gripe with it is that it describes rats as "evil". Excuse me! The show itself also seems to default to that position. Anyway, I was able to infer the part about them going all over the world because the title card shows a world map and then specifically focuses on France and labels it, clearly because that's where they go in this particular episode.
The episode itself begins with a pan across a city, in which the Eiffel Tower is visible, which is obligatory when establishing that your characters are in Paris. We also see a hot air balloon. There are humans riding in the basket, but our focus turns to a smaller basket attached underneath, where our mice Emily and Alexander are looking out on the city.
Emily: Oh, Alexander, this is going to be so exciting! I've always dreamed of visiting Paris, France!
Alexander: Ah, yes, cousin Emily! Paris... so beautiful, so romantic... I'll show you all the sights!
I didn't initially catch that Alexander has presumably been there before himself. Being a city boy, maybe he's also more well-travelled. Whereas Emily is the sort of person that has to specifically refer to it as "Paris, France".
The two of them remind themselves why they're going to Paris, for the viewer's benefit, by re-reading the letter their cousin Gaston has sent them. The opening theme specifically references visiting relatives as a thing they like to do, so I imagine we get to see a lot of their cousins over the course of the show. The letter says that something horrible is happening at the Louvre, and that Gaston doesn't have time to explain - it's a letter, what's the rush that's stopping him adding a couple more sentences? - but he encloses a photo to illustrate.
The photo is of the Mona Lisa - but she has a moustache! Alexander for some reason reacts as though he hasn't seen this already. Then they arrive at the spot where they planned to meet Gaston - the humans in the hot air balloon, despite not knowing about the stowaways, happen to lower the balloon enough at this point that the mice can safely jump down from their compartment, into a clear patch amongst the grass of a field. Alexander, after nearly getting hit by the bottom of the basket, complains about them not travelling in "first class", to remind us that he's the upper-class one here.
Then the most stereotypically French-looking mouse you've ever seen steps out from amongst the grass:
Gaston: Emily! Alexander! C'est moi! It's your cousin Gaston!
Gaston kisses both of his cousins in greeting and peppers his speech with French words like he's Poirot. The trio start making their way from that field into the city itself - Emily asks Gaston what's wrong at the Louvre, and he insists she'll see when she gets there. He really doesn't want to just say it for some reason!
They approach a horse-drawn carriage, which Alexander expresses his approval of. It already has a little mouse-scale carriage attached to the bottom of it - did Gaston set that up? Emily and Gaston get in, but it starts moving before Alexander can reach it! He starts running to catch up, this time complaining that this will ruin his shoes. OK, we get it, you're the posh one! He grabs onto the wheel and it flings him into the carriage, where Gaston catches him.
Next, they're in the city, where they find the Louvre closed. When Emily asks why, Gaston - if you can't already guess - tells her to come and see for herself! They sneak in when some artwork is being taken into the museum - it's a statue of one of those Egyptian figures with their arms in that weird position, so they can jump into the outstretched back hand. I'd have thought a mouse could quite easily sneak into a building anyway!
When they get in, they hear someone crying, and Gaston says it's his friend Monique. This friend is a little human girl - apparently the mice don't hide themselves from all humans. Gaston introduces his cousins to Monique, and apparently he's already told her about them. Side note: Gaston pronounces "Alexander" as if it were the French name "Alexandre", with a schwa at the end, whereas Monique gives the last syllable an "air" sound as though it's "Alexandère" or something like that.
Emily asks Monique what the problem is. She says that her father takes care of the Louvre's paintings but that he might lose his job, because someone keeps painting moustaches on all of them! I suspect those environmental activists. Monique says it's been happening for weeks and her father has been cleaning them off every time, but it's been tiring and this time he's had to close the museum. Poor guy.
Gaston struggles to hand Monique a tissue bigger than his body so she can wipe her tears, as Emily says they should start looking for clues. They walk along a corridor filled with moustachioed paintings, and they immediately spot one - a soggy water lily in front of the Mona Lisa! It seems like Emily identifies it by smell.
They decide the vandal must have dropped it - Gaston says that means they're a frog, as he slips on the water and accidentally hurls the flower onto Alexander, but Emily more sensibly reckons that the perpetrator just lives near a pond.
While Emily wanders off to look at some more paintings (she noticed one without a moustache), Alexander asks Monique to lift him up to the Mona Lisa's face. On the moustache, he plucks off one actual hair, which he theorises must have come off the paintbrush used to vandalise the painting. By the way, if you have at any point thought "Isn't the Mona Lisa behind glass to protect it?" - well, we'll come back to that later.
It's only when Alexander hops back down to the ground that he notices that Emily is gone! She's walking along another corridor, lamenting the moustachioed status of the paintings, until she sees a shadow creeping around a corner... and runs into a fellow rodent, wearing a suit and a moustache! As he scampers off, Emily starts yelling that "There's a raaaat!" That racist.
She runs back to the others, crashing into Alexander, and Gaston insists that he's the only rodent living in the Louvre, so there can't be a rat. Then someone starts knocking on the door, and Monique and the mice hide themselves.
The man who's knocking has a beard and a hat and is demanding to see the paintings. The door is answered by a moustached man that Monique says is her dad, who tells him it's closed, but the bearded man seems desperate. Still, Monique's dad tells him to come back tomorrow and closes the door. I have to add that the bearded man has possibly the most silly and over-the-top French accent of the episode.
Monique and the mice watch the bearded man walk away from the window, Monique telling them that man has been visiting the Louvre every day recently, and Emily points out the man is wearing a water lily on his jacket! How extremely coincidental. They all go to chase the man down, but Monique's dad calls her to help him put a newly-cleaned painting up on the wall, so the mice go on without her.
Gaston: This way! Vite! Fast! Hurry!
They run through the streets, around people's feet, thankfully not getting spotted or stepped on. Then they spot a fromagerie - cheese shop - where the bearded man is making a purchase. Like any true Frenchman, he carries a shopping bag with a baguette sticking out of it, so the three mice jump into it as he leaves the shop, stowing themselves away!
Monique has apparently finished helping her father as she's now wandering the street looking for everyone, when she spots Gaston sticking up out of the man's bag. Inside it, as the mice are crammed in amongst bread and cheese, Emily jokes about Alexander still not getting to travel "first class". I suppose Emily is more used to rough travel!
The bearded man gets into a horse-drawn carriage, so Monique sneaks onto the back of it, and it takes them all the way to the man's house outside the city. The girl reunites with the mice in the man's garden - Alexander is sitting on a mushroom and eating a morsel of the man's cheese, which he compliments. It's the stereotypical holey cartoon cheese. No guilty man would have such good taste!
They look around and find a pond, with a bridge over it and with water lilies growing in it. Aha! Also, some of you are probably more well-educated than me and already know where this is going.
Alexander tries stepping onto one of the lily pads in the pond (taking his turn after a frog, which doesn't seem sapient, raising some questions about which animals are), but the lily pad doesn't hold his weight and dumps him into the water - as the other two mice help him out, he complains that the lily pad was "defective". Right, sure.
In the man's house, he is painting. He's just finished a piece depicting a bowl of fruit, when he laments that this isn't what he needs and he doesn't have much time left. The mice are looking in through the window, and Gaston, who recognises the style and brushstrokes, is shocked to realise that the man is Claude Monet!
Yes, some of you probably guessed that from the water lilies and the garden, but I hadn't actually clocked that we were in the past here - I thought all the stuff like horse-drawn carriages was just because the show was portraying Paris in a kind of old-timey way, not that it was really set in the 19th century! That's also why there was no glass on the Mona Lisa, since that seems to have been added later.
Monique is so surprised to hear that the man they've been following is Monet that she takes a step backwards and accidentally trips over some gardening tools, and Monet hears the noise! The mice hide, but there's nothing to stop Monet coming outside and seeing the young girl. She plays it off quite well, explaining who she is and that someone has been painting moustaches on the art in the Louvre - when she brings up the water lily, he freely admits it must have fallen out of his pocket on one of his visits, but denies the vandalism, of course. We have a meta reason to believe him now anyway - this doesn't seem the type of show to portray a real-life famous painter as a criminal out of nowhere!
Monet offers to show Monique some of his paintings, so they all go inside - the mice creep in alongside them, but Monet unknowingly shuts the door on Alexander's tail! Ow. Monique surreptitiously frees him.
In front of Monet's works, Monet tells Monique he's due to exhibit his works tomorrow, but he hasn't yet finished the painting that will serve as the centrepiece! Why would he plan for the centrepiece to be the last thing he'd paint, and not know what it would be yet? This doesn't feel logical! Anyway, Monique suggests he should just paint the pond and bridge in his garden - of course - and the two of them take his art supplies outside so he can work.
The mice stay inside the house. Emily is enamoured with Monet and reckons he must be innocent, but Alexander reminds her of the evidence - he still has the hair he plucked from the Mona Lisa, so if they can find a matching paintbrush, there's the proof. Unfortunately the paintbrushes are on a really high-up shelf and Alexander and Gaston have to climb multiple pieces of furniture to get up there - oi, Emily, you could help!
They reach the pot of paintbrushes but they can't shift it - in the end, Alexander, Gaston, and the paintbrushes all end up falling off the shelf! Alexander ends up with the container on top of him, and Gaston falls onto a spare canvas, which he sticks to. Are canvases meant to be sticky? Or is this meant to be a used one? It looks blank, though.
Emily at least helps Alexander out of the container and pulls Gaston off the canvas. However, Gaston loses a whisker to the canvas - and that's when Emily realises that the hair on the Mona Lisa wasn't a paintbrush hair, it was a rat whisker! Oh, how surprising, the "evil rat" did it.
Monique happens to come back into the house at that moment, so they alert her to what they've found, as Monet continues painting and tries to think of a name for his work. This time the girl and the mice sneak into a haystack being carried by a cart headed back into Paris. I wonder if Monique is accustomed to getting in and out of the city this way? She certainly doesn't seem to treat it as anything unusual!
When they get back, Monique's father has finished cleaning the paintings, and tells her that he's going to go and take a bath, and then Emily says they need to guard the paintings. They're too late, though - the next thing we see is some paintings getting re-moustached! One nice touch is that the rat paints the moustache using his tail - not only is that a smart way for a rat to paint, but it means there never was a paintbrush after all!
Very quickly, the mice happen to run into him! When he realises he's been caught in the act, he folds up his collapsible ladder into his suitcase (in case you wondered how he reached up high enough to paint the moustaches), and then flees, with everyone else in pursuit. There's a bit of running around the museum, with the rat hiding behind and inside various things, and then they get out onto the streets, the mice weaving around people's feet like before - Emily and Gaston get trapped in the crowd, so Monique picks them up while Alexander continues to chase the rat.
When the two of them reach a river bank surrounded by trash, though, the rat is able to use an empty can as a boat and a spoon as an oar - perhaps he'd already left them arranged there for his use - and Alexander is stuck on this side of the water. He attempts to cross on a lightbulb but he immediately gets dumped into the water! You know what they say about using a lightbulb as a boat. ...Don't do that. They say don't do that.
Monique and the other mice arrive to find Alexander in trouble, so Emily asks Monique and Gaston to grab her a stick and some string from amongst the trash and she makes a fishing rod, and ties herself to the end. It's pretty clear what the plan is, but Emily nevertheless spells out for us that they'll be fishing except to catch a mouse instead. And so, Monique casts Emily into the water!
Alexander grabs on to Emily, and Monique brings them back to shore. Then Alexander sneezes - his brief dip has immediately given him a cold, complete with a noticeable voice change!
Rather than attempt any more river crossing shenanigans, the four of them proceed to a distant bridge, Alexander still sneezing all the way, and they search the other side - it's not that long (for the viewer!) until Gaston spots a small wooden crate that seems to have been converted into a home! It's got a chimney and an awning and everything!
Inside, the same rat we saw earlier is surrounded by his own rat-scale paintings, and working on a new one - it's Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy", except the boy's a moustached rat! Also, the rat is singing "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" to himself as he paints, which is pretty hilariously stereotypically French. The mice burst in to tell him he's under arrest (what authority do they have?), with Monique bending down to peek in behind them.
The rat immediately starts begging for forgiveness, explaining that he's just a struggling artist, and Emily admits he is talented. He refers to his Blue Boy copy as... "Blue Cheese Boy". Heh. Gaston is still annoyed about the vandalism though, and the rat agrees he shouldn't have done it - he explains he was jealous of all the attention given to the famous painters while no-one pays attention to him, Louis Moustache. Yes. That's his name.
That's when Monique suggests they should exhibit Louis's works! Louis can't imagine anywhere they could hold it or how to get people to see it, though. So Emily says they'll help him as long as he helps them undo the damage he caused, and there's a brief montage of all five of them cleaning up the paintings in the Louvre - I was amused by one shot of a painting that already had a moustache underneath the rat's addition.
Now it's the next day at the Louvre, and Monet is unveiling the centrepiece of his exhibition - the Water Lilies painting, of course. And then our view moves to a little box in the corner of the room, where Louis is holding a similar exhibition, attended by a whole bunch of posh-looking mice! I'm guessing Alexander has some contacts.
Emily, Alexander, and Gaston are there, but they have to bid Louis farewell, as they need to get a hot air balloon back home. Are they hitching a ride on scheduled flights, then? Also, I guess there was no time for Alexander to show Emily the sights like he wanted to.
Monique gives the mice a lift as Louis tells them all au revoir, and then we cut to a field, where two humans are preparing a hot air balloon at the same time as Emily and Alexander are getting another one of their little baskets ready. They hitch the basket to the balloon using a kind of grappling hook - Gaston does the honours, but presumably one of them would normally do it from inside the basket. Emily and Alexander wave goodbye to Monique and Gaston as they fly away...
Now, because the episode started with the two cousins already on their way to Paris, we haven't actually seen their home until now. It looks like they live in the back of a restaurant called Le Bistro, where Alexander is still recovering from his cold, and Emily is bringing him a morsel of cheese - although she gets chased by a cat part of the way, in a very Tom and Jerry-ish moment!
Emily crumbles the cheese into a bowl of soup as if the cheese were bread, and their little hiding spot is the best example in the episode of how the mice's world is such a mix of human-scaled things and rodent-scaled things, with a full-sized matchbox, teacup, and bobbin in the same room as mouse-scaled ink and paper, and of course the bowl of soup.
Another mouse-scaled thing Emily has is a photo album - I'd like to see the tiny cameras they use! - and she inserts a photo of Gaston outside the Louvre. It fits in alongside pictures of what look like a couple of other foreign relatives - one wearing a sombrero and poncho in front of a cactus, and another wearing a fez near a pyramid. Alexander seemingly tries to compliment the picture, but...
Alexander: That's very... very... Achoo!