The Final Episode #101: Heathcliff (1984 - 1986)

 

It's time for the start of the next one hundred The Final Episodes. It's time for everyone to get exicted! Can we even make it two hundred? Do I even have enough shows I want to talk about? Will I give up like a lazy bum? Who knows! All I know is that the next Final Episodes are of stuff that's gonna be fun as heck to talk about. At least for me. I will save that for the end of this article so wait and see!  Anyway We are finishing off the Christmas Specials Final Episodes with Heathcliff. The original fat orange cat. The one port hates because he is a no fun bum who smells poorly. He needs to stop being wrong 98% of the time. 

Anyway Heathcliff was created by George Gately Gallagher in 1973. He was a New Yorker cartoonist and even had a comic strip before this called Hippie or some shit like that. It involved weirdos trying to bone a spoon shaped woman. I only learned of this recently and I was not a fan. I do not like having this information. Who the hell is attracted to spoons? Weirdos that's who. So yeah, Heathcliff was beaten in popularity by another fat cat, Garfield. I like Garfield more but Heathcliff still had his own charm that I enjoyed. Honestly Heathcliff feels more like a real cat to me. Tough creatures who take no shit. Heathcliff takes no shit from anyone, not even a dog twice his size. Garfield gets shit on my dogs that are not Odie. Garfield is a pampered wimp and Heathcliff is a real man. 

Heathcliff first foray into television was a Ruby-Spears television cartoon called Heathcliff and Rif Rat or something. It involved Heathcliff and some new characters made by Ruby-Spears. Those new characters were not a hit so in the second season of shows he was joined by Marmaduke. Marmaduke might be the worst animal related comic strip of all time. It was just WOW THAT DOG IS HUGE for over 60 years. I do like the art style of Marmaduke which is why it's a better comic than Family Circus. Anyway this series didn't last more than two seasons on Saturday Morning. So you could probably watch every episode within like two days if you wanted too.

The second one was this one and was created by DIC Animation, back when Jean Chalopin was in charge which is clearly the greatest era for DiC animation. I think I mention Disney and DiC the most of the shows I do. It's not my fault they made wonderfully fun and enjoyable television cartoons! Heathcliff lasted for two seasons of 86 episodes. DiC Animation was so good that they made Chuck Lorre put out good work and everyone thought that was impossible.  This show was one of the shows that came on I guess TBS. I forget when but it was before we got them as channels in our cable package. We would get a free weekend or week or whatever and holy hell would I just sit there and watch that and The Family Channel. I think there was a third channel of shows and a movie channel. I could be wrong on this. I am old and my memory has never been good. It was a great time when you realized you had those channels. Hell I'm sure there were times when I watched them when they were scrambled and all I could do was hear Duck Tales. It was certainly better than Little House on the Prairie. Heathcliff was one of those shows If I recall correctly and it was a lot of fun. Not my absolute favorite of all time but something I did enjoy watching. 

I also must mention the Cadillac Cats. They were a group of cats that would do....cat things. Yeah They were the second cartoon beside Heathcliff. It was like Garfield and Friends and U.S. Acres. They were fine. Both existed, both had some good moments but really you wouldn't have cared if they put another Heathcliff/Garfield cartoon in their place. I mention this because well We will end up talking about a Cadillac Cats cartoon too within this FINAL EPISODE article. 

The Final Episode of Heathcliff involved two cartoons. One Heathcliff and One of the Cadillac Cats. The Heathcliff one is A Christmas Episode where as the Cadillac Cats one isn't. This actually works out well because after this article we are going back to non-Christmas Final Episodes and we will still be talking about them during this month. So it's like a bridge between the two. Anyway let's start with "North Pole Cat", this segment starts out with Spike's owner uh Joe Bob (I don't know this kids name and I owned a ton of Heathcliff books as a kid.) is saying that he's been taught how to act like a bull. He sees a mailman and oh damn it's up to Heathcliff to save the day. He does his Matador act and we all have a good laugh. The Mailman gives him his mail which are returned letters to Santy Claus. 

This causes Heathcliff to act. He gets Spike dressed up as a sledding dog and goes all the way to the North Pole. Heathcliff does not fuck around when it comes to Christmas. Anyway we go to a elf toy shop and find out that an evil bad no good Elf named Tuck has been sending back letters. And breaking toys! Tuck is clearly played by Charlie Adler. I did not have to look that up. He's using the voice he uses for annoying characters. I kinda love it. It's just the right amount of annoying. Anyway he is fired for all these acts and that's when he sees Heathcliff and Spike. He starts throwing snowballs at them and they get knocked onto ice. He then pulls out what looks like Thor's fucking hammer and smashes the ice right good. This freezes Spike but Heathcliff pulls him out and gives him his hat and earmuffs. Heathcliff is a good guy...sometimes.

Heathcliff then creates a fucking snowball fort within seconds because he is a cartoon character and they can do that. He and Tuck start throwing balls back and forth. Heathcliff then gets the idea to make one giant ass snowball and launch it at Tuck. He is successful and Tuck goes rolling away in snow. Meanwhile a fucking POLAR BEAR wants to eat Spike so Heathcliff has to rush back and save him. It doesn't matter because the Tuck Snow Ball runs the Polar Bear over and back into his cave. Tuck is heard yelling for help and Heathcliff decides to knock down the icicles causing the Polar bear to be trapped but to save Tuck.

Tuck gets them an invite with Santy Claus himself! Now that's a good thing! Heathcliff brings back the letters and Santa asks if they have been good or not. They say yes despite the fact they enjoy mischief like there's no tomorrow. Santa Says the fact they brought back these letters is a good deed that takes away form all the mischief. I mean I suppose bringing back his owners letter is a good thing but that's just one letter! It can't make up for THAT much Santa!! Anyway Santa brings Heathcliff and Spike back to their houses and they end up having a snowball fight. Those rascals will never learn!

The Cadillac Cats cartoon is not getting anything more than a paragraph because that's not what I wanted to talk about. Mungo the big dopey one gets a letter from his grandma that his little brother might end up a bad alley cat so she sends him to live with him. His brother ends up stealing their car and joining some group of alley cats with girlfriends. Their girlfriends have tits. It's weird. I don't like that. Anyway they end up jousting to save the junkyard and Mingo, Mungo's kid brother clearly goes back to him and becomes a good guy out of nowhere really. Well it looks like because Cleo was nice to him. I dunno. This cartoon blows and I don't like it. As a whole I'd say Dennis the Menace was a better  cartoon because it knew that people wanted Dennis the Menace not Dennis the Menace and some other random losers. 

FINAL VERDICT: The Heathcliff cartoon was great fun. The Cadillac Cats was lame. That's all I really gotta say about this. I'd say watch the Heathcliff part of this episode and just go about your business. (Also return for the start of SYNDICATION SILLINESS a six part series of live action Syndicated shows! It'll be a hoot!)