Story problems

Looking over the stories I’m working on, I’ve found two with problems I’m not sure how to solve yet.
•Salad Days.
Premise: Years after their Narnia-esque adventures, two women reunite when an old enemy enters our world to get revenge. But they’re not the same Sisters of Steel they were twenty years ago.
The problem: I think there’s simply too much stuff: The character arc, the action story, political aspects and one character’s daughter discovering her mother isn’t the boring bourgeouis she appears to be.
The solution: I think I need to simplify (I could expand it, but I don’t feel like doing that). Possibly cut the politics (both of them having become rather extreme over the years). And maybe the daughter—I don’t have a good character arc for her, but on the other hand it helps to have some kind of outside perspective on the protagonists.
•And He Bought a Crooked Cat
Premise: Repressed man discovers he’s a gateway for the entities pent up in nursery rhymes to enter our world.
The problem: The tone. The first draft of this was a kind of light-hearted whimsy. Since I shifted it to a 1950s setting it’s become more serious, but the ending in the nursery rhyme world is still whimsical. And it doesn’t fit.
The solution: It works better seriously, so I’ll have to rework the ending. A shame—having the protagonist beat up by the kids of the old woman who lived in the shoe rather amused me—but I think it’s the best choice. Only I don’t know how, yet.