Garfield, By the Broadcasts: Show 10 (11/19/1988)

Inspired by Platypus Comix's "The Full Experience" series, I thought it might be cool to take a look at an original Garfield and Friends broadcast I added to my personal VHS collection this week, and maybe share some of my thoughts on the episode. I haven't decided whether this is a one-time thing, or if I'd like to do this with more episodes, but for now... let's dive in!

Anyway, today's subject... Show 10! Unfortunately my copy's missing the first 1/3, but it starts just in time for a wardrobe mishap from Orson.

Orson decides now's not the appropriate time to explore the pyramids of Giza and changes into a more suitable costume. It's actually interesting how much we've seen Power Pig by this point -- out of the ten U.S. Acres shorts thus far, we've seen Power Pig featured heavily in three. Strange. It seems there may have been plans early on to make Power Pig a recurring element of these segments, but Orson's alter ego was phased out fairly quickly and only used sparingly by the next season. 

In this midst of all this, Orson's brothers are busy breaking into the silo. Gort actually threatens the burglar alarm into submission, but asserting his dominance seems rather pointless, as Power Pig immediately leaps into the scene. Seriously though, take a look at this. Costume or no costume, that's some really impressive jumping on Orson's part. I don't know why he's wasting his time at a farm. With a distance like that, Orson could absolutely dominate the Olympics. Then again, all that prize money would kinda negate the need for a farm as a source of income, so I gotta hand it to Orson for thinking of others and sticking to his roots. 

Anyway, Orson's brothers are so busy laughing like idiots at Power Pig's equally idiotic costume that Roy and Bo are able to seize the chance to wheelbarrow the brothers off a small cliff. The brothers realize their crucial error far too late and come to their senses just as they're headed up a river to parts unknown. 

Because the burglar alarm is pushin' up daisies, somebody needs to stand guard and watch the silo. Booker volunteers, but Power Pig tells the enthusiastic chick he's too little and chooses Wade instead. Apparently a pantophobic duck is a much better choice than, I dunno... the guys who just saved your butt while you were busy showing off your costume. Wade's not too keen on the idea either, but nevertheless complies. 

With Orson's brothers disposed of and Wade guarding the crops, everybody returns to their usual business. But all is not well--the brothers return and bag everybody up. Booker tries to be a hero and tell Wart how mean he is, but... ahhh... let's just say that strategy is ineffective. 

Ultimately, the gang gets locked in the silo with no way out except for a tiny hole that--surprise, surprise--only Booker can fit through. Booker makes his escape and uses some clever thinking to instigate an argument between the three brothers that leaves them so distracted, they end up chasing each other out of the farm. It's a happy ending for sure, but I can't help but notice how many fruits and vegetables were lost in the process. Like, Booker did some great stuff here, but we gotta take all this carnage into account.

Let's see... although we only ever see tomatoes get destroyed on screen, the brothers also fight over carrots and watermelons, and we hear an off-screen splat at one point. For the sake of this post, we'll just assume all the food that appeared on-screen got destroyed. Looking at the prices on my local grocery's website, we can tally the cost of all these crops to... $87.83. Yikes... With damage costs like that, Orson may want to consider a career in the Olympics after all...

.... Eh, whatever. Booker frees his friends and they realize that even though Booker may be short, he can still be a big hero. The pint-sized hero affirms the moral with a corny, but infectiously catchy song. Here's a short... errr, brief clip from it. 

"Short Story" is one of those shorts that I look back to when I reminisce about the days I'd religiously tape early morning Garfield and Friends reruns off of Toon Disney and watch them before school. At this point I was in my third week of recording the show, and I think Booker's song was one of those defining moments that I realized "Wow... I really like this show." 

Now as an adult who's seen every episode of the series, it's obviously one of those network-regulated "teach a lesson" type stories. Unless you've never watched cartoons in your life, you've probably seen that "short guy does a big thing" story done a zillion times, and it's normally hard to feel that much enthusiasm for such a standard cartoon story. At the same time, this is a U.S. Acres story. While the story itself is dreadfully overused on TV, the characters bring a charm to it that ultimately wins me over.

Time for some commercials! First up, a dinosaur swipes Snap, Crackle, and Pop from a live action boy's box of Rice Krispies, and there's some promotional jazz for a Win, Lose, or Draw game that I guess they were including in cereal boxes at the time. 

Next, some children have a psychedelic experience with Lifesavers that have a tendency to morph into funny shapes. Eat those hard candies, boy! After that, a rock 'n' roll concert entices the world to eat Teddy Grahams before promptly scaring us off with a face that I so desperately wish I could erase from my mind...


Of course, what 80's commercial break would be complete without a load of doll commercials? Here we get a plug for something called the Style Magic Barbie, which is basically a standard Barbie doll with a pile of mashed potatoes masquerading as her hair. The commercial break wraps up with plugs for the cartoons coming up next (Hey Vern! It's Ernest! and Teen Wolf) and a movie called Paradise that aired that night. And now back to Garfield and Friends!

The third act of this show opens with a Garfield Quickie based on the 05/31/1987 strip. Though the same general premise is followed, the quickie adds dialogue ("This is the most brilliant idea I've ever had."/"...maybe not!") that unfortunately slows down the pacing and ultimately kills the sight gag. And unlike the original comic strip, we see the bird's enormous size long before it lands in Garfield's mouth. I feel like the gag's full potential is reached when it's left up to the viewer (or reader) to imagine what Garfield thinks about his predicament, and that element of surprise is maintained. It may also be a matter of personal preference, but I thought the bird's gruff expression in the comic strip was funnier too--almost appearing to imply that it'll be sitting there for quite some time.

The third and final short is the first of two that would explore Garfield's hatred of Monday. It opens with Garfield waking Jon up by playing a couple lines of the "Yo Ho Ho!" song from Garfield's Halloween Adventure on an accordion. Nice callback. Anyway, facing the threat of an encore, Jon is coaxed out of bed and makes blueberry pancakes for Garfield's breakfast.

As Garfield begins to enjoy a towering stack of pancakes, Jon realizes he forgot to tear off a page on the calendar and remedies the situation. He also mentions something about mailing a package to his Samoan pen pal which totally won't be relevant again later. Anyway Jon comments that it is, in fact, Monday today, and Garfield lapses into panic mode -- portrayed by a movie trailer-styled imagination sequence which essentially establishes Garfield's hatred of the day for viewers who may not have read the comic strip before. It's a creative move that still offers a pretty funny experience for more familiar fans. Rather than describe the sequence itself in too much detail, I thought I'd instead highlight some of the fun, goofy drawings that appear in it.

Problem now well-established, Garfield tries to go to sleep until Monday's over, but Jon's not having it. Monday is just a day after all, right? Heeding Jon's advice, Garfield walks around outside and actually finds himself enjoy the day for a little while, but Monday quickly catches up with him. Garfield's front yard exploration leads to him the obligatory face-splut because eh, he's listened to enough instructions for one day. Cute gag, but I'm finding myself wondering where this shed came from, why Jon(??) put a sign on the door warning potential entrants of said splut, or why Jon would even send Garfield outside in the first place, knowing full well that his cat could potentially get splutted. I'm telling you guys, there's something real shifty about this Jon Arbuckle fellow here. The guy may seem like a dorky cartoonist, but he's actually the evil mastermind behind all this Monday chaos!

Or I could just shaddup with my silly conspiracies and enjoy the cartoon.

After a walk in a vacant hillscape winds Garfield up on the receiving end of a grand piano's descent, the cat figures the Mondays in Samoa can't be half as bad as the one he's experiencing and mails himself there in place of Jon's package. Also, Jon's somehow able to afford overnight international shipping. Nope. Not even gonna touch that one.

A brief scene in the mail sorting area brings a few funny visual gags. A worker (who's probably a caricature of a crew member) is a little overzealous with his stamps and somehow approves an anvil for overnight delivery somewhere. Any guesses where the anvil falls?

After a long flight, Garfield finally lands in Samoa and thinks Monday is finally over. But cartoon logic applies to time zones here, and Garfield learns the hard way that the dreaded day is only just beginning there... with a gorsh. That's Samoan for splut! Garfield would later take Monday matters into his own hands in Season 5's "Day of Doom", but for now, I think it's best we leave him to come to grips with the inescapable hardships of Monday. And perhaps Garfield will surmise that because Jon's so-called pen pal never appears, it can only mean that his geeky owner masterminded this entire episode and planned Garfield's gorsh in advance, all because his cat blackmailed him into making blueberry pancakes through the power of polka music. Y'all may think I'm crazy here, but there's just something about Jon Arbuckle that I can't trust...

But enough of that -- time for more commercials!

First, Ronald McDonald makes contact with alien life and appeases their brain zapping wrath with.. what else? A McDonald's Happy Meal! Then Barbie's deranged cousin Hula Hoop Maxie proves to the world that all you need to entertain two little girls for hours on end is a miniature hula hoop. And for some reason, this sales pitch takes place on the beach. One recurring thing I'm noticing about these commercials is how simple pleasures bring such elaborate smiles to everybody's faces. Even something as horrifying as animatronic Teddy Grahams or artery-clogging as a McDonald's meal brings out the best in people (or aliens). Perhaps it says something about the late 80s that such a feat was even possible. Then again, I wouldn't know. This was before my time.


Incidentally, the last commercial in this break is less about the simple pleasures in life, and more about scaring children into drinking milk. Seriously, this kid basically turns into the Hulk, then a skeleton, and then this balloon-head thingy that'll take some intense therapy to erase from my memory.






And now back to Garfield and Friends!

Overall, this is a nice early installment in the series. Garfield and Friends is still far from what it would become, but what we have here is a nice early spark of the clever writing that would continue to blossom as the series went on.

Experience the commercials for yourself here!