First episode title: Hip Dip Dip
How familiar with the show am I?: I hadn't heard of this show.
It's about a mouse and a mole named Mouse and Mole - you can probably picture the sort of thing already. It's a calm little show about two animal friends who live together.
Short one this week - only five minutes. It starts with Mouse and Mole walking along a street, and Mole spotting a toy boat in the window of a shop - a blue boat with a white sail. Mole declares it to be just what he's always wanted, and Mouse sounds pretty sceptical about that as he responds, "Is it?" Unfortunately, Mole doesn't have enough money saved up. What? How much is this shop selling toy boats for, that you have to save up to buy them? The animation doesn't show any prices, so it's impossible to tell right now.
Mouse says he has enough money, so he'll buy it for Mole. The friendship between them is adorable. Then, as they go home together (to get the money), they sing and dance. The song's relevance to the situation is clear:
Hip dip dip
My blue ship
Sailing on the water
Like a cup and saucer
You are it
But this is actually one of many variations on a real rhyme! It's one of those ones for choosing one out of a number of people or items, like "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe", and when it's not known as "Hip Dip Dip" it can also be "Ip Dip Dip" or "Ip Dip Doo" or... some cruder variations. Most of them determine who (or what) is not it, eliminating the options one by one. Here's the specific version I myself learned when I was growing up, for comparison:
Ip dip doo
The cat's got the flu
The dog's got the measles
Out goes you
So, back at home, Mouse has "just enough" money for the boat saved up in his money sock. It's just a few coins. This is going to be all the money they have between them, then? And they're spending it on a toy? How do these guys even eat?
Anyway, now that they have the money, they head back to the shop. It's run by Mrs Hare, who is, of course, a hare. Mouse empties the sock onto the counter and asks for the blue boat in the window, Mrs Hare apparently not minding that the money has come out of a sock. Hare goes to the window, takes down the blue boat with the white sail... and replaces it with a red boat that has a green sail. This attracts Mole's attention, and now he can't decide which one he wants, so Hare starts showing him all the other boats she has, in different colours and with different sails, making it even harder for him to decide. Other than colour and pattern, they're all identical - good thing, too, or he'd have an even harder time deciding.
Eventually Mole decides that it's all too much and flees from the shop. That's just like me in any situation where I have to make a choice.
The next we see, it's night time, and Mouse and Mole are both in bed - separate beds in the same bedroom. How many times have we seen that now? Why is this such a common thing in cartoons? Then again, if it costs all their savings to buy a toy boat, maybe that's the biggest house they can afford...
Mole isn't sleeping well - he's tossing and turning, singing Hip Dip Dip to himself, and having a nightmare that he's on a boat that keeps changing colours, on a stormy sea. It's scary, and quite bizarre to see in a show like this. Mole wakes up sweating, having fallen out of bed!
Abruptly, Mouse and Mole are now having boiled eggs and toast for breakfast. Something as simple as eggs can make you question how the world you're watching works - do these human-sized usually-small creatures live in a world with regular-sized hens, then? Mouse asks Mole if he's decided about the boat, and since he hasn't, Mouse asks why he doesn't do Hip Dip Dip to decide, for those of us that didn't already know what the rhyme was for. Mole says he's been doing that all night, of course.
They go back to Mrs Hare's shop, and all the boats are there, except the original blue one. Mrs Hare said that it was sold this morning, by telephone, to a mystery buyer. Thanks to Mrs Hare's over-the-top posh accent, I heard "mystery buyer" as "Mr Bear" the first time around, which would make sense as a name in this world!
Mole is upset - it turns out the blue boat was the one he wanted most after all.
Mouse: Good! Because I am the mystery buyer!
Yes, Mouse guessed that the blue boat was the one Mole really wanted it, so he thought of a way of proving it. Clever! Yes, I'm calling the plot of a little kids' show clever. Couldn't you tell that's the sort of person I am? Anyway, everybody in the shop laughs about it.
The two friends go off to some nearby pond together to try out the boat. Mole says he'd like to share the boat with Mouse, and they start singing about "Hip dip dip, our blue ship". And that's all!
It's simplistic, but sweet. And the art is very nice, like an old-fashioned children's book come to life! Appropriate, since it actually was a book first.