Western Animation / The Triplets

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The Triplets (original title in Catalan Les tres bessones, in Spanish Las tres mellizas) is a Catalan animated series created by Roser Capdevila and produced by Cromosoma and Televisió de Catalunya. Its original run lasted from 1996 to 2003.

The main characters are the titular triplets, Anna, Teresa and Helena, who get punished by The Bored Witch ("La Bruixa Avorrida"), their day sitter whenever she catches them making mischief. Her method of punishment is to send them into a popular tale where they would have to help the protagonists to get out of it and learn their lesson.Due to the success of The Triplets, the Bored Witch got her own short-lived spinoff series called La Bruixa Avorrida or The Bored Witch.

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The Triplets provides examples of:

• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the episode adapting Oliver Twist, Fagin is changed from a shady guy that only takes in Oliver to make him part of his gang of young thieves to a wealthy man that adopts Oliver after saving him from Sikes.
• Aesop Enforcer: The Bored Witch always punishes the Triplets by sending them to stories so they learn their lesson.
• Ambiguously Evil: Technically she's the villain of the show, but the Bored Witch's level of antagonism to the Triplets varies heavily Depending on the Writer. The official purpose of her punishments to the triplets is to make them learn their lessons, and accordingly, she sometimes worries whenever the girls are under too much danger, and always keeps her word of bringing them back when the tale reaches its ending. On the other hand, she doesn't play fair and instead actively hinders the Triplets, not being above teaming up with the Villain of the Week from time to time to do so, and sometimes comes up with evil schemes that would have very deadly results for the Triplets if successful. Averted in her spin-off, however, where she is straight-up good.
• Anachronism Stew: Mostly Played for Laughs. Could you imagine Ali Baba's forty thieves getting distracted by a camel race on TV or Dr. Frankenstein working as a veterinarian? Well, those two happened on this show.
• Bedsheet Ghost: The episode "The Crystal Balalaika" has the triplets arrive at the palace by airplane. When the girls touch down on the ground and are covered by their parachutes, Helena comments on how they look like ghosts. The three proceed to play around, waving their arms and making ghostly moans. They happen to scare some guards standing nearby.
• Big Eater: Helena, whose love for food and sweets in particular sometimes means trouble for the triplets.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Little Mermaid episode maintains the bittersweet ending of the original book with the titular mermaid deciding to spare the prince's life at the last moment, giving up her only chance to return to the sea and regain her mermaid form, choosing to die instead. However, her sacrifice earns her a place in the afterlife as the daughters of the air carry her to heaven, where she becomes a bright star.
• Black Bead Eyes: Much of the cast has eyes like this. Occasionally, though, there's some with Black Dot Pupils, like the Bored Witch whenever shocked.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Spanish dub title is a literal translation from its original Catalan language. "Les Tres Bessones" translates to "Las Tres Mellizas" (The Three Twins) which refers to three different sets of twins rather than one set of triplets. In fact, there is a simple spanish word for triplets: "Trillizas".
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Witch's can come across as this the way she is written, as in some episodes she abhors any real danger for the Triplets and only wants them to learn, while in other occasions she doesn't care whether they survive her lessons and even outright attempts to murder them in convoluted, Bond villain-esque ways.
• Breakout Villain: The Bored Witch was popular enough to land her own Spin-Off.
• Butt-Monkey: The Bored Witch is this and sometimes her pet Owl Buho
• Christmas Episode: Episode 56, "Santa Claus", where the girls help Santa Claus to prevent a toymaker from arriving at his factory with the intention of forcing Santa to deliver his warfare-themed toys.
• Chromatic Arrangement/Color-Coded Characters/Identical Twin ID Tag: Each of the triplets has a specific color for her ribbon and the shirt she wears under their overalls: pink for Teresa, blue for Anna and green for Helena.
• Circus Episode: In Episode 57, "In the Circus", inspired by a puppet show that the triplets pull to win a contest, the Bored Witch sends them to perform in a charity circus to cheer the impoverished children from the pain of the war.
• Clip Show: The final episode is this in its entirety, with the Bored Witch remembering awful memories from the past episodes and rejecting to celebrate her 700th birthday while all the characters from the stories the triplets were sent talking about their experiences with her.
• Continuity Snarl: The Bored Witch covers her hair with a purple headscarf, but whenever she removes it, depending on the episode, she is either blonde or a brunette.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: As mentioned, the favorite method of the Bored Witch to punish the triplets is to make them live out a tale.
• Distaff Counterpart: An episode reveals there are three male triplets who are punished by a character named the Tired Warlock.
• Dub Name Change:
  • For the English dub, Anna, Teresa and Helena were renamed Annie, Tessa and Nellie respectively.
  • In Dutch the triplets are known as Anna, Tessa and Heleen.
  • In the Italian dub, Anna and Teresa keep their original names, but Helena is changed to its Italian equivalent "Elena", with the stress on the first syllable.
  • The Bored Witch was known as Camomille in the French dub.
  • The Polish title was "Bajkowe trojaczki" ("The Fairy tale Triplets")
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the episodes of the first season, the designs of the characters were a bit closer to the books; the title characters' hairstyles were also different. The Bored Witch used to have normal eyes right before getting Black Bead Eyes in later episodes. Her pet owl, Buho, had a completely different design design and his voice was also different.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Bored Witch is horrified when she sees Pinocchio and several other children turned into donkeys and kidnapped, and genuinely hopes the girls would save them (she only intervenes personally at the very end, though).
  • The Bored Witch often teams up with other villains to prevent the Triplets progress, but even she despises the idea of working with an evil toymaker who wants to force Santa into delivering violent toys.
• Eviler than Thou: The Queen of Night towards the Bored Witch.
• Exact Words: When the Triplets and Raoul from The Phantom of the Opera fall on a pit of gunpowder, the Bored Witch maliciously promises to neutralize the gunpowder with water. She then completely fills the pit with water in an attempt to drown them.
• Expository Theme Tune: One of the lines from the theme tune perfectly sums up the whole concept: "If the witch punishes us, there's another story to tell."
• Fat Bastard: The Bored Witch is quite rotund and not any less nasty.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Some of the episodes are parodies of the fairytales. For example, the cinderella one has the twist that the titular protagonist married a broke prince from the start.
• Friendly Enemy: Half of the time. Even though the Bored Witch sends the Triplets to fairytales when they misbehave, on the rare instances the kids are in actual danger she either rescues them or looks genuinely worried about them.
• Full-Body Disguise: An inconsistent variation happens in the adaptation of The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids. The Bored Witch disguises the Wolf as Mother Goat by means of Shapeshifting powers. But upon the Wolf revealing his true identity to the kids, the disguise suddenly becomes a Latex Perfection mask he dramatically rips off combined with fake hooves and the appropriate clothes he quickly sheds.
• Funny Background Event: The show features a trio of mice whose role more or less boils down to this. They can often be seen humorously re-enacting scenes from the various stories, but don't really have much significance beyond that.
• Historical Domain Character: The few episodes that weren't really based on a Public Domain Story instead featured historical characters such as Cleopatra, Christopher Columbus or Antoni Gaudí.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": It is explicitly mentioned that the Bored Witch's first name really is Bored.
• Kiddy Coveralls: Each of the triplets are always seen wearing overalls over a shirt of their iconic color.
• Lighter and Softer: The episodes either severely tone down or entirely remove any violence or other dark elements from the stories they adapt to keep it child-friendly.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: In the story of The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, when the Bored Witch magically transforms the Wolf into a perfect lookalike of Mother Goat, upon completing the transformation the Wolf briefly feels "her" crotch and chest areas.
  Wolf: I can't even (voice changes into Mother Goat's) recognize myself!
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The episode that adapts Around the World in Eighty Days has guest appearances of characters from many other stories, whom The Triplets already encountered in previous episodes based on those stories.
• Must Have Caffeine: The owl needs coffee to stay awake during the day.
• Palette Swap: While it's justified due to them being identical triplets, Anna, Helena, and Teresa look exactly the same other than different-colored shirts and hair bows.
• Public Domain Stories: Most episodes were based on one. During the series' run the triplets found themselves in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Don Quixote, The Bremen Town Musicians and Sleeping Beauty to name a few.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: The final episode has the Bored Witch celebrating her 700th birthday.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The three mice that always accompanied the triplets, and could often be seen parodying a scene from the tale of the week.
• Same-Sex Triplets: Anna, Teresa and Helena.
• Setting Update: The adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio has cars rather than wagons.
• Talking Animal: The witch's pet owl, who often acts as The Conscience for her.
• Tickle Torture: Used twice.
  • The episode about Oliver Twist has Oliver tortured this way by Sykes for information about a stolen clock.
  • In the episode about Robinson Crusoe the three protagonists themselves are tickled by a group of natives before Robinson rescues them.
• Unexplained Recovery: Despite dying at the end of their respective episodes, the Little Mermaid, Gaudi, and The Wicked Witch of the West are somehow able to attend the Bored Witch's 700th birthday party in the finale.
• Unishment: The girls consider the Bored Witch punishments as these, as while they ultimately learn an aesop, it allows them to visit the worlds of fairytales and interact with the characters of said stories. Sometimes they even provoke the Bored Witch by misbehaving on purpose so she can have an excuse to punish them. In the finale episode, the witch discovers the girls purposely planning to get in trouble in order to draw her attention and decides not to punish them anymore.
• Wizard Duel: The Bored Witch loses one against the Man of Mayapan, who keeps turning her into a statue because she wastes time in verbally insulting him rather than fighting back.

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