The Tom and Jerry Show (2014)
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 And no, we're not talking about the awful 1975 version that the fans have hated, this is the 2010s take on Tom and Jerry which is much better.
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The Tom and Jerry Show is an American TV series based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Tom and Jerry, for Cartoon Network and later, Boomerang.
Why It Still Deserves A Custard Pie
- It's a big improvement over the 1975 show of the same name.
- Stays true to the original Tom and Jerry shorts in every level.
- Archival recordings from William Hanna and Mel Blanc as Tom and Jerry are used in a faithful and comedic fashion.
- Good Flash animation (now known as Adobe Animate), and the character designs are faithful to the original designs and it gets even better in Season 2 onwards.
- Great voice acting. Tuffy's voice by Kath Soucie sounds really cute.
- Speaking of Tuffy, he is arguably better than most of his incarnations (which were already good), as he is much more mature and caring, being able to take down Tom without Jerry's aid, and he is also considerably less reckless and impulsive when it comes to food. He is also not afraid to stand up to Spike either, unlike Tom and Jerry.
- Despite being short, the theme song is a nice updated version of the original Tom and Jerry theme tune.
- Tom & Jerry's dueling is still enjoyable to watch.
- Great musics during the episodes.
- The Cat and Mouse Detective series is a very nice addition to the series, being a great mix of great slapstick, funny dialogue from the narrator, the use of Tom and Jerry's love-hate relationship, and taking the franchise to new directions. It has various scenarios, like:
- The classic scenario of Tom and Jerry living in a common suburban house with Spike, Tyke, Tuffy, and their new owners, Rick and Ginger. (Which is used throughout the show)
- Tom and Jerry living in a witch's house shaped like a witch hat, with two witches and a newt. (This scenario retired in Season 3)
- Jerry living in a laboratory with a lab rat, hamster, a bot and a scientist, with Tom being an alley cat. (This scenario retired in Season 2)
- Tom and Jerry working as cat and mouse detective in Tolucaville (Los Angeles as of Season 2), complete with a narrator. (Also used throughout the show)
- Tom working as a butler and Jerry as a common rat in a Downtown Abbey property. (First used in beginning of season 3)
- Tom and Jerry Living in a scary Transylvanian environment in a parody of Van Helsing. (First used in season 3)
- The Witches' Cat and The Lab Mouse segments are really clever and open up new possibilities for storytelling.
- New memorable supporting characters such as Rick, Ginger, Napoleon, Hildi, Beatie, Newt, Red Herring, Dollface, etc.
- Many of MGM's other characters from the franchise such as Droopy, Butch the Irish Dog, The Wolf, George and Junior, and Screwy Squirrel return in the show after being absent in Season 1.
- Likewise, more Tom and Jerry characters that didn't appears in the last series return in the series such as Meathead, Muscles, Fluff, Muff, & Puff, Tara etc.
- It is one of the very few post-2013 cartoon reboots made for Cartoon Network and Boomerang that were well-done and received positive audience reception alongside New Looney Tunes, as opposed to the network's usual botched cartoon reboots.
Mouse-trapped Qualities
- Some bad episodes, such as "Spike Gets Skooled" (which started this reboot on a bad note), "Reward if Lost", and "Hunger Games".
- The Flash animation, while good, is not really the best. It appears to be much more stiff with no outlines and restricted during Season 1. Thankfully as of Season 2 onwards, the animation quality has improved to be much looser and more true to the original shorts.
- Speaking of which, in Season 1 the Flash-animated characters and backgrounds were lacking in outlines. Thankfully, this was fixed as of Season 2.
- While most of the characters stay true to their original personalities, Spike the Bulldog has been rather flanderized, where he went from from a stereotypical bulldog who had a good side (as he would either help out Tom or Jerry or both whenever it was necessary) into a mean, short-tempered and unlikable jerk who hates beats up both Tom and Jerry, and also gets into a lot of arguments with Tuffy, the only one who is not afraid to stand up to him.
- Spike is not the only character flanderized, as Muscles Mouse went from Jerry's strong cousin who beats up cats for justified reasons, to beating not only cats but dogs too for his own amusement (a notable example in Anger Management).
- Rick, most of the time, is very mean to Tom, the same with Ginger is very mean to Spike.
- In Season 1, Tom is very mean and very greedy towards Jerry, Tuffy and Spike, not until in the season 1 finale, that he redeems himself; in the later seasons, sometimes Tom is very mean-spirited, but it is not as frequent as the first season.
- It is revealed that Butch the Irish Dog is the twin brother of his previous name (Spike) who is depicted as a clone in The Cat and Mouse Detective episode Double Dog Trouble. This could get very confusing and is a major plot-hole to the franchise as in the original MGM cartoons Tex Avery renamed the character from Spike to Butch in order to avoid confusion with Tom and Jerry's Spike the Bulldog.
- Speaking of confusion, Toots (the small, yellow female cat from The Mouse Comes to Dinner) is mistakenly named Toodles Galore by Darell Van Citters, but the actual Toodles (the slender, white female cat who first debuted in Springtime For Thomas) appears in one episode in Tap Cat.
- The season 4 and 5, while not bad, are the weakest because they are less unique than the first three and their episodes air way too much on Boomerang and the first three seasons air less because of this (although this depend on your country), but even with some flaws those seasons are still decent.
Trivia
- Apparently, the animation change was because the series' director was not a fan of Season 1's animation style, so animator Rob Fendler was hired to improve its animation quality.
- Additionally, episode segments run for 11-minutes in season 1, and 7-minutes for the rest of the series. This was done to prevent the segments from running too long and become more faithful to the original theatrical shorts.
- Similar to how the direct-to-video movies Shiver Me Whiskers and A Nutcracker Tale were based off the TV series Tom and Jerry Tales, the 2014 TV special Santa's Little Helpers and the upcoming direct-to-video film Tom and Jerry: Cowboy Up are based off this 2014 series.
- On November 14, 2020, the show was retelecasted in India, making it the first Tom and Jerry show to do so. However, it was not well received like other dubs, as it included unfunny commentaries and gave the characters laughable and unneccesary dialogue.
Reception
The series has received generally mixed to favorable reviews, with criticism primarily directed at the switch from traditional hand-drawn animation to Flash animation since the previous Tom and Jerry TV series, Tom and Jerry Tales, and the praise being primarily directed at the well-done Flash animation and its success at recapturing the spirit of the original shorts.
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