Did we watch the same show? Courage the Cowardly Dog was brilliant, and is the only kids show I've ever watched as an adult that had genuinely disturbing content in it. Admittedly some episodes were way better than others but damn if the producers didn't play around and have fun with it. I can't think of a single other cartoon quite like it in existence.

I can't claim to have watched every episode, so maybe the show got good after a while. I recently tried giving it another chance on Hulu, watching from the beginning, and I found it boring and loud.

"Courage" is like this "Adventure Time" clip ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COFMBR7gbhg

... if Finn had been turned into a soccer ball, he'd hit the (single-headed) giant in the head, and the dialogue lacked all the delightfully strange twists.

Courage is great once it realizes that its real star isn't the title character, it's the weird threats and monsters he faces. From then on, each episode is like a mini-horror film, with just as much care paid to making its villains memorable and scary as we see in the the best slasher flicks. Best of all, many of them are embodiments of common childhood anxieties. If put a face on the things kids were already afraid of, and then taught them that being scared is okay, so long as you don't back down.

Maybe that's what I was doing wrong: I was focusing on the title character, whose two catchphrases were "AAAAAAAGH!" and "the things I do for love!"