I have start this off by saying no this is not a part of the Portnoyd Guessing Game. That has to end because I miscounted the number of shows I had on my side and I don't think it was fair to add in new shows after Portnoyd had guessed. So this means due to my massive stupid blunder portnoyd is the winner of the first Portnoyd Guessing Game. He will have a field day with that. I mean I was enjoying doing different shows than my usual "hey let's talk about a cartoon or a sitcom's Final Episode" so we WILL go back to it. However even before I started I got it stuck in my craw that the first ten or so of these posts were just not very good. I knew that redoing the Power Rangers would just open up the flood gates. I think my writing skills and ability has just grown. Imagine what it will be like when I'm actually good at writing! So I will be redoing the first ten posts (for the most part). They were sparse, missing information about things and just felt like those shows deserved better. We will be mixing it up with other stuff because I don't want to just do redos but yeah. I know I harped on Bewitched for doing several plots over again but I still stand by that because 1.) they got paid to do the same thing twice and 2.) I'm looking to improve those older posts instead of shitting them up with more Dick Sargent. Man he was a terrible Darren. Did you know I knew a kid named Darren as a kid and my dad would call him Durwood. My dad's a wild man.
So to discuss Garfield one must discuss a man named Jim Davis. Jim Davis was born in Indiana on the date July 28th, 1945. He graduated High School in the early 1960s and went to college. After college he got a job helping Tom Ryan do the comic strip Tumbleweeds. This got him wanting to make his own strip. Which he did. It was called Gnorm Gnat. It was a giant failure. For the longest time people outside like Indiana did not know this but he had a comic that was in between them. It was found out by YouTuber Quinton Reviews. He did a whole video about it and found the lost comic strip Jon. Jon stared Jon Arbuckle and came out in 1976. Jon Arbuckle was the star of that comic and a very different Garfield showed up there. You can see how he looks like from the strip above this paragraph. He realized Garfield was the true star of the comic and even renamed the strip to that. He got a syndicate. Changed a bunch of things up and then we had Garfield. Which became INCREDIBLY popular. EVERYONE wanted a piece of his fat orange ass. You had collections of the comic strips. Garfield toys. Garfield plushes (I still have one that's missing a piece of his eye. I still wonder how that happened) Garfield fucking everything. You name the thing, Jim Davis shoved Garfield into it. I mean he did it by making sure the product was as good as possible but there's still Garfield hoses out there somewhere. I'm sure of it.
So now is the paragraph where I blather on about my history with Garfield. I'm pretty sure it had to be because of this cartoon. However I didn't become OBSESSED until I found the comic strip collections at a local book store. I had to have every single fucking one of them. I had to have so much Garfield stuff. I even remember crying because my dad had the idea to cut up a Garfield book for some school project. LOOK I WAS A SENSITIVE BOY YOU WANNA FIGHT ABOUT IT. That's not the only school related thing that involved Garfield for me. You see the MUSIC TEACHER who wasn't very nice and was totally blunt about mine (and other childrens) music ablitily (she literally said I was terrible and I'm like read the fuckin room lady. Jesus you gotta be nicer about that shit to children) had set up a singing thing and for some reason my parents really wanted me to do it and not skip out on it. I didn't even have to sing just fucking lipsync. I did it and got Garfield Takes His Licks a truly wonderful piece of literature. I gave up on Garfield around the 31st book. I think. I dunno. His time with me was over but I'll look upon it with great fondness. I still enjoy reading the 1980s and 1990s Garfield. The fact Jon is with Liz now just makes my brain explode. It's just not right man.
So, let's discuss Garfield's history on Television before this cartoon. Jim Davis wrote scripts for several Garfield specials. Here Comes Garfield, Garfield on the Town, Garfield in the Rough, Garfield's Halloween Adventure, Garfield in Paradise, Garfield Goes Hollywood, A Garfield Christmas, Garfield His 9 Lives, Garfield Babes and Bullets, Garfield's Thanksgiving, Garfield's Feline Fantasies and Garfield Gets A Life. This show showed up in 1988 sometime before Garfield His 9 Lives. The first two specials were done by Lee Melendeson and Bill Melendez. The rest were done by Phil Roman and Film Roman. They hired Mark Evanier. A man who's first job was working with Jack Kirby. He then worked with Hanna Barbera, Welcome Back Kotter, 82 thousand comic books, the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon and many other things. Mark is a pretty talented guy and did a very good job with Garfield and Friends.
One more thing Lorenzo Music is and will always be the best voice for Garfield. I swore some old timey Jazz musician guy voiced Garfield in the first special but memory is a fucking bitch and will lie to you. I'm not pretending that it means I'm from a different universe like those Berenstain weirdos. You just didn't pay attention when your LOVELY MOTHER WAS READING YOU THE BERENSTAIN BEARS BOOKS YOU LOUSY LITTLE SHIT. Anyway Lorenzo's voice was perfect for Garfield (and Peter Venkman before Dave Coulier SHIT THAT JOB UP) and I just had to bring it up. Lorenzo Music also had one wild career before being Garfield. Writing and creating the Bob Newhart show. Writing for the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Sadly he passed away in 2001. Frank Welker picked the job up and nothing but respect for Frank but he just not sound right. I don't think anyone could pick up that job from Lorenzo but that's just me.
Garfield and Friends ran from September 17th, 1988 to December 10th, 1994. It had three theme songs for its run. The original one, Friends are There (which was the best) We're Ready to Party (which was from season three to six.) and a Garfield Rap for season seven. It was not very good. The Friends portion was U.S. Acres a different comic strip (yes they had a comic strip prior to the cartoon they were not created for the cartoon) that started in March of 1986. It ended in May 7th, 1989. It was a very "yeah this exists" kinda thing. Nothing horrible offensive but despite a big push never really became all that popular. I remember liking the cartoons as a kid but I dunno what I was thinking now as an adult. Anyway they made 121 episodes and 363 segments. I'm pretty sure they were running out of ideas for Garfield and Friends at that point.
Our Final Episode, like every other episode has three segments. Two Garfields and a U.S. Acres. Our First Garfield Segment is entitled "Arbuckle the Invincible" We start like every Garfield story, out in outer space. We meet two aliens who are told by their leader to go to earth and bring back a cheeseburger. Just one. The leader can't handle more than one. Anyway these two lose the deflector that was keeping meteors away off their ship and wouldn't you know it. it falls from space right into Jon Arbuckle's pants pocket. He was up on the roof putting up a tv antenna. Remember those days? So many people would ask what an antenna would. Then I would tell them I'm going back to bed because I feel very very old.
Anyway the orb now gives Jon Arbuckle great strength and invulnerability. Garfield wanted to watch him get hurt and did not get that wish. The orb makes it impossible to anything to touch Jon. Jon tells an agent to hit him with a baseball bat and then with a ten ton safe. Garfield from their house with popcorn somehow watching this on tv tells the people NOT to do this. I uh, dunno how Garfield is seeing whats happening. Is that on TV? A Garfield cartoon shouldn't be that wtf? Anyway the Agent gets him a gig. A train runs over him for 1 million dollars. Jon then decides to take off his clothes removing the orb from him. So Jon's gonna get squished to goop. He leaves telling Garfield and Odie that he's gonna get a million dollars for letting a train run over him
Garfield says to Odie, when was the last time anything worked out for Jon? The two aliens which turn out to be just one alien with two heads. if that the case they really should get two cheeseburgers. Won't both heads want one? Anyway they notice the alien going down their chimney so they go inside the house. They find out that the orb was keeping Jon from getting hurt. Garfield is like "too bad he won't have it when they put him on the rail road tracks" causing them to freak the hell out and chase after Jon. They can't get to him so Garfield is like LETS EAT. They go to a Small Cheeseburger Stand and happen upon the Aliens. They do some alien crap which causes Jon not to be tied to the train tracks and he gets saved at the last second. They end up sitting at the Cheeseburger stand eating Cheeseburgers. What a weird episode.
The U.S. Acres segment is "The Monster Who Couldn't Scare Anyone" and its about Orson telling Booker and Sheldon about a family of monsters A mother adn father and three male children. Igor, Boris and Michael. Michael looks like a regular little boy while the rest of them are freaks. Kinda like The Munsters with the cousin character. Boris and Igor can scare people while Michael cannot. He is forced out of his house until he can scare someone. His father also forces him to wear a paper bag. He leaves the house and tries to scare a goat farmer. Then he sees Roy being chased by Orson's brothers. Roy gets Orson's brothers to run off hoping to score a touchdown in a football game. Roy tries to get Michael the Monster to meet Wade but Wade runs off before he can even see Michael and knocks himself out. Michael is saddened because he will never scare anyone. Orson's brothers come back and start pounding on Roy. Michael comes by, the bag gets taken off his face by a gust of wind and it turns out he looks like a famous TV farmer known for pork sausages. That scares the shit out of the pigs and the run off.
the Final segment is a song, sung all Jamican-y. I dunno the name of the type of music so piss off. It involves a shark and a Pizza delivery system that means you have to be on a boat to get any. They get on the boat. Jon gets stuck on the boat after falling on it. The boat starts to get eaten by a shark. Garfield gets the pizza and then gives it to the shark. This is all sung to you.
FINAL THOUGHTS: I'm gonna be incredibly lenient here for one simple reason. This show had 363 segments. Not every character can be made into 363 stories. Garfield is one of those characters. They clearly CLEARLY ran out of gas. They even make a joke about it in the opening when Garfield talks to you for a second. These still had some pretty good jokes but holy hannah they were just throwing anything at the wall at this point. Still somehow better than the second CGI Garfield Show cartoon. I'm only lenient because I'd probably go crazy trying to think of the 363rd short to involve Garfield for a TV show.
No comments:
Post a Comment