The Garfield Show (seasons 1 & 2)

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The Garfield Show (seasons 1 & 2)

Worse than any Monday.
Genre: Comedy
Running Time: 24 minutes (two segments)
12 minutes (one segment)
Country: France
United States
Release Date: December 2008-2014 (France)
November 2, 2009-October 24, 2016 (US)
December 2008-2010 (France, Season 1 & 2)
November 2, 2009-June 28, 2011 (US, Season 1 & 2)
Network(s): France 3 (during Toowam/Ludo block)
Cartoon Network
Boomerang
Gulli (rebroadcast)
Distributed by: Mediatoon Distribution
Starring: Frank Welker
Gregg Berger
Wally Wingert
Jason Marsden
Audrey Wasilewski
Seasons: 2
Episodes: 52
Previous show: Garfield and Friends
Next show: The Garfield Show (Seasons 3-5)


The Garfield Show is a French–American CGI animated television series based on the American comic strip, Garfield. In France, it ran from 2008 to 2014, and in the US, it ran from 2009 to 2016.

Monday Qualities

  1. The understanding of the source material is somewhat lacking:
    • Continuity error: In the comics, animated specials, and "Garfield & Friends," Garfield's dialogue is presented as thoughts. In this particular show, however, Garfield speaks out loud, similar to his portrayal in the live-action films and the CGI trilogy.
    • The series incorporates an abundance of sci-fi and supernatural storylines that seem out of place in the Garfield universe, conflicting with the comics' grounded tone. Yet, even Garfield and Friends, known for its sporadic extravagant plots, remained faithful to this tone.
  2. Many of the characters come across as uninspired, irritating, and unmemorable, making no significant contribution to the narrative. The story could be told without them, and it would remain largely unaffected.
    • Numerous characters have become severely flanderized:
      • Garfield has evolved into a character with few redeeming qualities, becoming somewhat of an unlikable slob. While Garfield has always been portrayed as a jerk, his mean-spirited nature has intensified. Additionally, he exhibits hypocrisy; despite expressing dislike for bullies in one episode, he consistently bullies Odie, Jon, and Nermal. His behavior reaches a pinnacle in "Mailman Blues," where he completely escapes any repercussions.
        • Moreover, he has adopted a goofier, more clown-like demeanor, with his new voice exhibiting a cadence shift as voice actor Frank Welker intermittently yells, whelps, laughs, and emits sounds in a rather silly manner, often for comedic effect. This change comes after Welker's persistent efforts to mimic Lorenzo Music's portrayal of Garfield. This is coupled with segments of animation that depict Garfield with exaggeratedly goofy expressions, such as going cross-eyed randomly during close-ups in chase scenes or otherwise, which are inconsistent with his established character.
          • While Garfield is typically portrayed as cynical and relaxed, with moments of humor and expressiveness, this iteration of Garfield retains the original's sarcastic, smug, lazy, clever, and hedonistic traits but becomes significantly more buffoonish. His goofy facial expressions and silly antics make him resemble a clownish jokester, complete with exaggerated comedic elements such as being accident-prone. This shift in personality feels out of character, especially in scenes like "Not So Sweet Sound of Music," where Garfield comically buries an accordion with a jackhammer and runs off laughing in a manner more akin to Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. than the traditional Garfield.
      • Jon has evolved from a good-hearted, albeit dorky, loser who is a caring pet owner, to a character with a profoundly mean-spirited and bumbling demeanor.
        • In the episode "Curse of the Were-dog," Odie transforms into a were-dog, devours lasagnas meant for ten people, and then reverts to his normal self. Jon hastily accuses Garfield, which seems somewhat justifiable given Garfield's usual behavior. However, Jon later offers an apology to Garfield after the professor's explanation airs on the news and he spots a dog bite mark on the chair.
          • Jon has ejected Garfield and Odie from the house on two occasions. Additionally, he has frequently locked them out, sometimes without a significant reason or over minor issues.
          • He makes the claim that "nothing on the internet is false," which is an absurd and incorrect statement.
      • Nermal has evolved from being a somewhat arrogant but endearing cat to a detestably self-absorbed character, surpassing his depiction in the direct-to-video trilogy. Although he was depicted as somewhat unpleasant in the trilogy initially, the portrayal never reached such an extreme. His most egregious behavior is showcased in "King Nermal" and "Nice to Nermal."
  3. The humor is overly dependent on slapstick, sporadic fart jokes, meta humor, and breaking the fourth wall that comes across as weak and monotonous. In contrast, 'Garfield and Friends' employs meta and fourth wall-breaking jokes as well, but with a more measured approach and superior execution.
  4. All the human characters are complete idiots, including Jon (as mentioned in BQ#1). Most of the townspeople are also stereotyped with little to no personality.
  5. Many of the episodes are either dull, irritating, badly written, or have illogical plots.
    • Some episodes are very mean-spirited, like "King Nermal" and "Nice to Nermal".
    • Certain episodes are reiterations of ones from Garfield and Friends. For instance, "The Spy Who Fed Me" closely mirrors "The Pizza Patrol" from the original series. Similarly, The Garfield Shorts try to emulate the Quickies from Garfield and Friends but lack the original's appeal.
  6. It constantly reuses existing character models for many of the characters, which is very lazy on the animators' part.
  7. The CGI animation (by Ellipse Animation who also did the reboot of The Smurfs) is extremely bland, cheap, and unappealing due to its lazy execution. Even the direct-to-video Garfield trilogy boasts superior animation quality.
    • Sometimes there are animation frames that are reused, to the point that it can seem lazy. For example, the episode "A game of cat and mouse" reuses the exact the same animation of Garfield walking to the kitchen and looking surprised that was used previously in "Turkey trouble".
  8. Speaking of reusing things, some voices like Nermal's screams or the mailman's yell can be reused in episodes that are out of place, examples of these include a kid having Nermal's scream in the episode "It's a Cheese World", and the mailman's yell can be heard in the episode "Meet Max Mouse" when a mouse yelled while the Mouse Catcher caught them.
  9. While the voice acting is generally decent, some voices seem like they were intentionally made to be irritating the viewer. Like the kid characters that are given shrill voices to fit their personality that Garfield would often satirize, Nermal's raspy voice (Jason Marsden) isn't as charming as his voice in Garfield & Friends was and ended up sounds like Chester from The Fairly OddParents.
  10. Overuse of meta-jokes as mentioned above, something the original Garfield lacked.
  11. Some episodes have their gross-out moments, whether they seem mild or not. For example:
    • (While done humorously), Garfield uses Odie's long tongue to pretend that Nermal, with his eyes closed, kissed a female cat Garfield and Odie crossdressed in the episode "Glenda & Odessa".
    • In the episode, "Underwater World", Garfield tries something Jon ate and spits it out at Odie.
    • The episode "Freaky Monday" has Garfield making some implications of Odie having bad breath.
    • The episode "Orange and Black" has a scene where Catzilla eats stale taffy that slowly grosses him out.
    • The episode "Odie in Love" had Garfield and Odie come back from being in the dumpster just for getting Odie's grooming brush back, and Jon points out how smelly they are.
    • The episode "Nice to Nermal", has Garfield digging into what Odie has eaten, when Garfield found the corn beef sandwich Odie ate, Garfield eats it. Which is just pointless disgusting.
    • The episode "It's a Cheese World", is all centered around having a land full of actual cheese that genuinely stinks, to the point of having flown in the whole area.
  12. Lots of animation errors: An infamous example is in the episode "Land of Hold" during the scene where Garfield gets Jon to fix the TV, in which they accidentally added an unrendered scene in the English version. Luckily, this particular error was fixed in international releases.
    • Some missing details can be shown like Garfield's occasionally glitchy-looking eye pupils for example.

Lasagna Qualities

  1. There are lots of funny moments, such as:
    • "Did you really think you could defeat me, wretched fool?"
    • The fourth wall breaks can be pretty hilarious at times, despite being overused.
    • Sometimes, the animation errors can make or unintentional comedy.
  2. Some characters remain endearing and consistent with their depiction in the comics and earlier animations, including Odie, Arlene, Liz, and Squeak.
  3. The voice acting is generally solid, with notable performances by Frank Welker as the main character, Wally Wingert as Jon, and Gregg Berger, who reprises his role as Odie from both Garfield & Friends and the CGI films.
  4. There are some people who might like these seasons, despite its flaws.
  5. The overall soundtrack throughout the series is generally well-made (if reused a lot in a consistent way or not), its theme song is unforgettable and extremely catchy.
  6. It largely remains faithful to the original source material.
  7. The character designs appear to be very accurate to Jim Davis' comics.
  8. This was the series that finally won June Foray an Emmy (although the "Outstanding Voice-Over Performance" category is a fairly recent addition).
  9. There are a handful of good/decent episodes, such as:
    • "Pasta Wars" (which started the show on a high note.)
    • "Mother Garfield"
    • "Bone Diggers"
    • "A Game of Cat and Mouse"
    • "Turkey Trouble"
    • "Pet Matchers"
    • "Meet the Parents"
    • "Down on the Farm"
    • "Curse of the Cat People"
    • "Underwater World"
    • "Out on a Limb"
    • "The Amazing Flying Dog"
    • "T3000"
    • "Perfect Pizza"
    • "Jon's Night Out"
    • "Family Picture"
    • "Virtualodeon"
    • "It's a Cat's World"
    • "Heir Apparent"
    • "From the Oven"
    • "Agent X"
    • "Super Me"
    • "Night of the Bunny Slippers"
    • "Gravity of The Situation"
    • "The Haunted House"
    • "With Four You Get Pizza"
    • "The Bluebird of Happiness"
    • "Inside Eddie Gourmand"
    • "Fido Food Feline"
    • "Cuter Than Cute"
    • "Depths of a Salesman"
    • "Penny Henny"
    • "Night of the Apparatuses"
    • "Pampered Pussycat"
    • "Parrot Blues"
    • "The Gripping Tale"
    • "Pirate Gold"
    • "Blasteroid"
    • "Jumbo Shrimpy"
    • "Detective Odie"
    • "The Mole Express"
    • "Unfair Weather"
    • "High Scale"
    • "Full of Beans"
    • "Love and Lasagna"
    • "Great Pizza Race"
    • "Home for the Holidays"
  10. Starting in season 3, the show massively improved for the following reasons, despite having a poor start:
    • Most of the one-hour specials in season 4 featured some of the iconic and famous guest stars like Rose Marie, Mark Hamill, Emilie Gassin, etc.
    • Starting from season 2, the show features some iconic and likable new characters that give so many contributions and impact to the whole show and stories like Mrs. Cauldron (voiced by June Foray), Winona Cauldron, Abigail Cauldron, Angie, Gloria, Varicella (voiced by Rose Marie), Master Control (voiced by Mark Hamill), Celest St. Clair, and the others.
    • This show features characters that comic strips include even Garfield and Friends don't have like Squeak, Arlene, Doc Boy, and the reappearances of Lyman in season 3.
    • Jon has become less of an idiot and he didn't punish Garfield and Odie very often starting from season 4.
    • Since season 3 the episode became more interesting and more exciting to watch since it's more adventurous yet combined with funnier jokes.
    • CGI animation has become more solid then before since season 3 than it was back in season 1 and season 2.
    • This is the very first Garfield-related media to reveal the disappearance of Jon's old roommate and Odie's original owner Lyman, and we finally see him again after 29 years since his final appearance in the comic series.
    • The later seasons have less supernatural and sci-fi plots, which are considered confusing.

Episodes With Their Pages

Trivia

  • Many crew members from the previous animated series based on Garfield that debuted in 1988 returned to work on The Garfield Show.

Videos

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