Electrified_Voltage
After the "Garfield" comic strip had been appearing in newspapers for ten years and several TV specials based on the strip had been made, Jim Davis' popular cartoon character finally got his own TV series, a Saturday morning cartoon. Unlike some of those cartoons, this one ran for many years. It was one of the shows I used to watch in my childhood, as I was a big Garfield fan at the time. Early in 2005, after I hadn't seen any episodes of the show for a long time and had since gone through adolescenthood, I purchased the Volume 2 DVD set, and really liked what I saw, making it clear that the show isn't strictly for kids. Since then, I've watched all the episodes on all five volumes of the DVD release, which hasn't changed my mind about the show.Each episode is divided into three different segments (other than the quickies). The first and third segments always feature Garfield, the lazy, overweight, bitter, sarcastic, cynical feline from the strip. He lives in a suburban house with his owner, a dimwitted, clumsy cartoonist who is terrible with women, and a good-natured but not so bright dog named Odie. Garfield loves to eat, sleep, give Jon and Odie a hard time, watch TV, attack the mailman, etc. He has annoyances in his life, such as Odie licking him, Nermal, a kitten who is generally adored by people and gets on Garfield's nerves during his unexpected visits, and Binky the Clown, a goofy clown who appears on TV. Although Garfield is happy with his lazy lifestyle and doesn't like to leave the house much, he often finds himself on adventures, and it's often up to him to solve problems.The second full segment of each episode is based on Jim Davis' short-lived, lesser known comic strip, "U.S. Acres" (a.k.a. "Orson's Farm"). This cartoon involves a group of anthropomorphic animals living on a farm together. The leader is a pig named Orson, a bibliophile who can get carried away with his imagination, but can also do some good with it. Other characters include: Roy Rooster, an obnoxious rooster who loves to play tricks on the other animals; Wade Duck, a cowardly duck who is afraid of just about everything and often runs in terror; Bo Sheep, a surfer dude sheep; Lanolin Sheep, Bo's loud-mouthed sister who loves to disagree with him; Booker, an adventurous chick who likes to try and catch worms, but they always outsmart him; and Sheldon, Booker's brother, who is still in his egg shell, with only his feet sticking out so he can walk. The farm often gets intruders, most notably the Weasel, who tries to steal the chickens and eat them, and Mort, Gort, and Wart, Orson's mean brothers (all bigger than him), who like to come to the farm to try and steal the vegetable harvest! I don't recall seeing most of the episodes of this long-running show on TV during my childhood, but do remember some of the episodes I've recently revisited on DVD, and it seems they're mostly still entertaining. This includes the episode where Jon gets in trouble with the police for paying in cash instead of using a credit card, which I find funnier now than I used to! There are many episodes I didn't see as a kid which have cracked me up in recent years, with Garfield (often Jon and Odie as well) in some bizarre situations and meeting crazy characters, Jon pathetically trying to impress his date, among other things. Many fans clearly consider the "U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm" segments far inferior to the "Garfield" ones, but I disagree. I tend to find those very entertaining as well, with some of Orson's fantasies (sometimes a problem for the others on the farm), Roy's pranks, etc. My favourite character in these cartoons is the cowardly Wade Duck, who makes me laugh so hard, though the other characters can be really funny as well! Sadly, Lorenzo Music, who gave Garfield his famous distinctive voice, passed away in 2001 from bone and lung cancer at age 64. Howard Morris, who provided the voice of Wade Duck (a voice which definitely fit the character), lived to be much older than Music, but died in 2005. I think this is a good time for me to say R.I.P. to both of them. Even though this show ended fifteen years ago, it's still memorable with a lot to like. Not all the episodes are that great (which is probably the case with any long-running show), and I don't find most of the things Garfield says at the end of the intro very funny, but overall, it's a great family cartoon show! It can obviously appeal to a lot of kids, and there are also things for adults to appreciate, including some clever satire that kids might not pick up. Forget the recent CGI Garfield, if you want good family entertainment for all ages, "Garfield and Friends" could be it!
soymilk
At one point when I was very young, 'Garfield and Friends' was one of the after-school cartoons I always looked forward to being able to watch the most – every Thursday I would eagerly await getting home and tuning in to the sardonic ginger-tabby and his various musings on life. I LOVED the initial theme song, 'Friends are There' (in fact I can still remember how frustrated I was when they converted to the painfully catchy 'Get Ready to Party' opener – ugh!), and the escapades that the overweight kitty got himself into always held my interest from beginning to end. Even when production stopped and the show left the air, and when I grew up and lost my enthusiasm for after-school TV (though I'll always have a soft spot for cartoons deep down, and this show is one of the key reasons why), a whole load of the stories, the characters and of course the theme music stayed with me through the years. I was delighted, a couple of years or so ago, to find a satellite channel that broadcast repeats of 'Garfield and Friends', and decided to watch them chiefly for the childhood memories. It came as quite a pleasant surprise, therefore, to discover just how well 'Garfield' now stood up to even my cynical young adult mind. The writing here could be so smart and dry that I found myself smiling at lines which meant nothing to me at that age. Back then, I just loved it for the visual humour and the easy-to-follow narratives, but really there were so many layers to this show all along that I had to wait to be able to value.There was one mild disappointment that I probably should try and get out of the way as quickly as possible, and that's that the lesser known Jim Davis cartoon that accompanied it, 'US Acres' (or, as it was titled here in the UK, 'Orson's Farm') proved exactly the opposite – that is, it doesn't impress me nearly as much now as it did when I was six or so. I feel like I'm echoing pretty much everyone else here in saying it – that they were good for non-discerning kids who wouldn't mind the preachy morals or grating musical numbers that turned up in *every single damn episode*. Older viewers, on the other hand, might want to use the 'US Acres' segments as time to step out into the kitchen and fix themselves a cup of coffee before the next 'Garfield' one starts. That in mind, the inspired opening credits sequence, in which Garfield battles it out with Orson and his farmyard cronies for screen dominance, just about manages to justify them.Back to the truly great stuff – the 'Garfield' segments. There are so many glowing things to be said about those cartoons. Lorenzo Music's voice-work was fabulous. The anti-heroic characters were all wonderful, and so unlike any you could find in other kids' cartoons at the time – as well as our sarcastic, self-serving lead, we also had the hapless social misfit Jon Arbuckle, the mindless, relentlessly cheerful yellow canine Odie, and Nermal, a narcissistic little kitten who values his natural cuteness above everything else in life (and yes, he IS officially a male, no matter how feminine his voice-over sounded – that's something which always confused me as a kid). Another thing to be admired about 'Garfield' was just how brave and risk-taking it was for a cartoon that came after 'the Flinstones' but just before 'the Simpsons' – in between the great success that those two shows each enjoyed, animation had been widely regarded as exclusively juvenile stuff of no importance other than to keep the younger members of the family quiet for half an hour. Such disregard did little to dampen Garfield's attitude. His cartoons were willing to play around with the customs of the format, with its very post-modern self-referring humour (not to mention the fact that Garfield himself appeared to be fully aware that he was really a character in a cartoon show), and frequent stabs at experimental episodes – I'm thinking along the lines of the one where Garfield wakes up in the wrong cartoon, or those where he steps out of the context of his own cartoon and gives a lecture on what makes successful comedy, or whatnot. Most of it paid off really well.And I just realised that I managed to get through most of this comment without reference to that live action movie with a CGI Garfield that 20th Century Fox churned out last year. Well, maybe one day when I'm feeling bored I'll finally give in, sit down and give it a chance, but I don't anticipate that it'll come anywhere close to the standards set by this TV show (for one thing I just can't picture Garfield without Lorenzo Music's vocals). This is, after all, one the finest pieces of animated TV that us kids of the late 80s/early 90s ever had the pleasure of growing up with. And it's not the sort of thing that can be easily repeated.Grade: A (that's for Garfield, not Orson, mind)
