Garfield and Friends
| Garfield and Friends | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 The ideal television adaptation of two iconic comic strips.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
|
Garfield and Friends is an American animated television series based on the comic strip Garfield by Jim Davis and run on CBS Saturday mornings from September 17, 1988, to December 10, 1994, with reruns airing until October 7, 1995. Seven seasons of the series were produced.
In addition to the segments featuring Garfield, the series also included segments featuring the characters from U.S. Acres, a comic strip Davis was drawing concurrently with Garfield when the show premiered on television. Like the comic strip these were based on, the animated segments were re-titled "Orson's Farm" for viewers outside of the United States (taking the name of their main character, Orson Pig). Although Davis stopped producing new U.S. Acres comic strips seven months after the show debuted, the characters continued to appear on television throughout the show's run.
A total of 121 episodes were made, each consisting of two Garfield segments and one U.S. Acres segment, totaling 242 Garfield segments and 121 U.S. Acres segments. All episodes have been released in the United States on five DVD sets by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. The first season aired in a half-hour format before switching to an hour-length format in the second season, showing two episodes each week. During the last season, while the series was still an hour long, the second half-hour of the show featured either an episode from the previous season or one of the Garfield TV specials.
On May 25th 2016, 9 Story Media Group acquired the worldwide distribution rights to Garfield and Friends and its specials.
Why It Deserves Lasagna
- It stood out as one of the rare Saturday Morning cartoons of the 1980s that eschewed the era's typical merchandise-driven approach and overly saccharine characters, choosing instead to emulate the Looney Tunes style with its humorous narratives and sarcastic wit.
- It remains highly faithful to both the Garfield and U.S. Acres comic strips.
- The Quickies are amusing, charming, and humorous, with some being adaptations of previous comic strips.
- The characters are all likable and have such good spirits, including the titular Garfield.
- Decent voice acting, with Lorenzo Music returning from the Garfield specials to reprise his role.
- Entertaining humor of both the sarcastic and non-sarcastic variety, as well as good slapstick.
- The fourth-wall-breaking humor is also pretty enjoyable and resembles a Tex Avery cartoon, with some episodes specifically devoted to breaking the fourth wall alone:
- "Mistakes Will Happen" is a jab at the show's various errors sprinkled throughout the past episodes, but unlike the many Teen Titans Go! episodes which are made to offend the audience and critics, this one is still respectful as it's littered with many bizarre and utterly ridiculous errors, and Garfield does admit that there were errors in the episode- but not the ones we think of.
- There's also "How To Be Funny", which is not only a satire of typical comedy tropes, but also teaches a few good examples on how to write good jokes and humor, as well as "The Cartoon Cat Conspiracy" in which Garfield grows tired of the trope that cartoon cats have to suffer and makes his own show to combat the problem.
- The fourth-wall-breaking humor is also pretty enjoyable and resembles a Tex Avery cartoon, with some episodes specifically devoted to breaking the fourth wall alone:
- Even within this comedy-centric show, there are heartwarming and emotional moments to be found, particularly in certain US Acres episodes.
- The animation and art style are splendid, capturing the essence of both Garfield and U.S. Acres with perfection.
- The opening theme songs, "Friends Are There" for the first two seasons and "We're Ready To Party" for seasons three to six, are highly enjoyable and entertaining to listen to.
- Many great episodes such as:
- "Peace & Quiet" (which started the series on a high note)
- "Wanted: Wade"
- "Garfield Goes Hawaiian"
- "Box O' Fun"
- "Don't Move"
- "Unidentified Flying Orson"
- "Ode to Odie"
- "Dessert in the Desert"
- "The Lasagna Zone"
- "Maine Course"
- "Orson's Diner"
- "Monday Misery"
- "I Like Having You Around"
- "Big Bad Buddy Bird"
- "Binky Gets Cancelled" and it’s sequel "Binky Gets Cancelled Again"
- "Best of Breed"
- "The Binky Show"
- "Mistakes Will Happen"
- "Nighty Nightmare"
- "How to Be Funny"
- "The Secrets of the Animated Cartoon"
- "Video Airlines"
- "Invasion of the Big Robots"
- "The Sludge Monster"
- "Double Oh Orson"
Bad Qualities
- The rap song edition of the theme song for Season 7 is somewhat bland and lacks the charm and enjoyment of the first two theme songs.
- The initial episodes of U.S. Acres tend to be a bit preachy, tiresome, and lackluster, especially when compared to the Garfield segments. However, they gained a more comedic edge in Season 3, and by Season 4, they even began to satirize the earlier episodes, particularly in "Big Bad Buddy Bird."
- There are some occasional bad/mediocre episodes, such as:
- "Banana Nose"
- "Brain Boy" (considered as the worst episode of season 2)
- The backgrounds when zooming out can look unfinished at times.
- While the series preserved its quality to the end, Seasons 6 and 7 are deemed less compelling than the first five, due to the emergence of more outlandish storylines, an overreliance on breaking the fourth wall, the sidelining of numerous secondary characters—save for Nermal and Floyd—and the alteration of the theme song in the last season.
- The recent Boomerang remasters of the episodes by 9 Story Entertainment is more of a downgrade with the intro horribly reanimated in Flash, unnecessary cropping on most episodes, and other episodes using a cheap TV screen border referred to as "Retrovision", making this so-called remastered version worthless. The credits are also replaced with a cheap static background with the original audio intact.
- However, this so-called "remastered" version also applies color correction to all the episodes, which is the only good thing. Also, the original versions are being uploaded on the official Garfield & Friends YouTube channel.
- Desirée Goyette makes no attempt to give Nermal a boyish-sounding voice, causing many viewers who never read the original comics to think he was a girl. Fortunately, this incarnation of Nermal is MUCH more tolerable than the one from The Garfield Show.
- Some dubs are mediocre at best, examples being:
- The Galego dub, suffers from piss-poor voice acting (Booker being the most infamous example, and Garfield sounding like the voice actor didn't bother at all.).
- It was eventually followed by "The Garfield Show," which, particularly in its initial two seasons, lacks the charm and wit of its predecessor.