Lots of Updates, Big and Small

As promised, here's an update sure to please everyone. Blog reader Trader tipped me off about some additional missing quickies from various Season 2 and 3 episodes, so I pulled out my DVDs and went through the entire seasons to see what else was missing. The result... unless Mark Evanier's guide is missing some, a total of 15 quickies from those two seasons are missing on the DVDs!

Bolded titles indicate quickies in my collection.

14/15- Garfield: "Asleep"
16/17- None
18/19- Garfield: "Little House"
20/21- Garfield: "Wide Awake"
22/23- Garfield: "Hungry"
24/25- Garfield: "Human Relic"
26/27- Screaming With Binky: "Baseball"
28/29- Garfield: "Balloon", Screaming With Binky: "Mountains"
30/31- Garfield: "Dresser Fun"
32/33- U.S. Acres: "Too Fat", U.S. Acres "Let's Play"
34/35- Screaming with Binky: "Ballerina"
36/37- None
38/39- None
40/41- None
42/43- Garfield: "Leftovers"
44/45- None
46/47- None
48/49- None

50/51- Screaming With Binky: "Pizza"
52/53- None
54/55- None
56/57- U.S. Acres: "Bouquets"

As you can see, 2/3 of the quickies are still missing. I've got a lead on Show 14/15's "Asleep" quickie, so hopefully that'll turn up soon. Regarding the quickies I have found, I'm meaning to post videos here, but unfortunately due to time code errors in the videos, I'm limited to just pictures for the time being. I know I've kept y'all waiting on the "Baseball" Screaming With Binky short, so I've posted a couple screenshots from it for everyone.

Another quick little update on Mark Evanier's episode guide also. Going through Seasons 2 and 3, I noticed a few quickies misnamed as Garfield Quickies when they were really either Screaming With Binky or U.S. Acres Quickies. Here's the true list of every Screaming With Binky segment:

Show 24 - Diamond Cutter
Show 26 - Baseball
Show 28 - Surgeons
Show 29 - Mountains
Show 30 - Circus
Show 32 - Building
Show 34 - Ballerina
Show 36 - Golf Pro
Show 38 - Laryngitis
Show 45 - Underwater
Show 46 - Clown Convention
Show 48 - Sand
Show 49 - Ear Plugs
Show 51 - Pizza
Show 52 - Wade
Show 57 - Cartoonist

And finally, I have a big update to announce. Previously the plan was to recreate the Garfield and Friends series following the originally intended half hour blocks as listed on Mark Evanier's episode guide. However, because the actual ordering of the segments in each episode is unspecified (which would make these recreations near impossible without the studio masters), I have decided to instead recreate the hour long version of the show. That way we can still view the series as it was originally meant to be seen, missing quickies and all.

And soon, we'll go over something I've discovered about the Season 7 quickies...

Screaming With Binky: Baseball

HEEEEEEEY BLOG READER! I've just obtained CBS premieres for episodes 26 and 27, so feast your eyes upon this clip as Binky the Clown screams at a baseball player for the first time since 1989!

Check it out at the official Garfield Restored page on Facebook, or take a look at the screenshots below!

My Collection

Here's the list of everything I have. Will update it as my collection expands.


CBS Airings (55/121)
Show 1
Show 3 (U.S. Acres quickie & title card only)
Show 6 (U.S. Acres quickie & title card only)
Show 12
Show 22-27
Show 34-35
Show 38 (incomplete, ends during U.S. Acres title card)
Show 40-45
Show 64
Show 68-69
Show 74-75
Show 78-79
Show 82-88
Show 90
Show 92-93
Show 95-104 (Show 98 and 103 are incomplete)
Show 106-117

Syndication Airings (50/73)

Cartoon Network (3/73)
Show 59-61 (missing quickies and credits)

Local TV (30/73)
Show 15-17
Show 19-20
Show 23
Show 27-37
Show 40-53

Nickelodeon (1/73) -- [Show 81 is listed in some papers]
Show 60

Toon Disney (31/73)
Show 1-5 (Show 1 is missing U.S. Acres title card)
Show 10
Show 15-16
Show 19-27
Show 29-36 (36 is incomplete, ends after U.S. Acres title card)
Show 75-78
Show 80
Show 82-83

The REAL Correct Episode Guide: A Work in Progress

For a while, it seemed like this was the correct episode guide. Having come from show writer Mark Evanier itself, it seems like it'd be darn near perfect right?

Unfortunately, as it turns out, recent research shows that even this episode guide has some inaccuracies. At least 3 quickies are missing from the episode guide. Because I want this project to be as complete as it possibly can, I'll need to obtain CBS airings (preferably premieres) for every episode. And thus, the project is just a smidgen more ambitious than I had planned.

Nevertheless, I'm going to finish what I started and seek the aid of collectors and traders to help me track down what I need and add corrections to Mark's episode guide as I go through the series. As for what I need, I'm working on a list of my current collection holdings and what I'm missing which should be posted shortly.

U.S. Acres Quickie Screens (Season 1)

To make up for the lack of posts in the past few weeks, here are all the original U.S. Acres Quickie screens from Season 1, courtesy of the German dub.

And as an added bonus, you check out three of them in action!

The Saga of Season 7

Alright it's not so much of a saga as it is a catchy title, but it drew you into this post, right?

Anyway, today we'll go over the history of the final season in Garfield and Friends which, as it turns out, is just as altered as the previous seasons. Let's start off with the most obvious thing, the one any longtime fan will remember...



As I mentioned earlier in the blog, Season 7 originally featured this rap-styled theme song as a replacement for the more familiar "Ready to Party" song. However, as you can see in this video, two notable things that remained the same throughout the many theme song changes are curiously absent here. The first change is pretty obvious. CBS goofed on the original broadcast of Show 110--the first episode to use the rap theme--and thus Garfield is missing his witty tag at the end. According to Peter Paltridge, this was corrected later on for Show 110, and as we can see below, the premieres that followed had Garfield's end tags properly reinstated.



The second change, as you may have observed, is a significant decrease in U.S. Acres clips with a total of only 6 clips from those segments being used. The reason for this isn't certain, although my best guess is that with the Garfield-centric theme song, they figured including too many non-Garfield clips would be awkward.

Now, let's move on to the credits. If you watched the video start to finish, you saw the Season 7 credits at the end, albeit with an annoying advertising voiceover over nearly half of it. Unfortunately, this is the only full copy of the Season 7 credits that I have been able to track down. If anybody has a "clean" copy of the Season 7 credits audio, please share!

Now let's go over the episodes themselves. By Season 7, the quickies were almost entirely phased out of the show to the point where only 4 episodes in the entire season used quickies. As a matter of fact, Show 113 was the final episode to use quickies. However, such is not the case on the DVDs! As it turns out, even though the final episodes of the show had no quickies, the DVDs lift quickies from previous episodes and repeat them in the show's final episodes anyway! So, how do the quickies on the DVDs compare to how they originally were presented? That is an answer for a later post...

The quickies weren't the only victims. The original premieres for Shows 120 and 121 were originally switched around for reasons unknown, and the ordering on the DVD set reflects that. Here's how they're listed on Mark Evanier's episode guide.

Show 120 - The Ocean Blue / The Monster Who Couldn't Scare Anybody / Arbuckle the Invincible
Show 121 - The Horror Hostess Pt. 1 / Newsworthy Wade / The Horror Hostess Pt. 2

The former's segment order raises a mystery. Although Mark's episode guide lists "The Ocean Blue" as the first segment in the episode, a snippet at the end of this recording of the Season 7 theme song suggests otherwise.



As we can see here, "Arbuckle the Invincible" is the first segment, revealing that the DVD set's ordering of the episodes was also used by CBS. This could mean one of three things--the first, this ordering may be a mere error on Mark Evanier's part. The second, the episode may have been originally produced in this order, but had its segments switched around by CBS before the premiere. The third, the episode may have originally premiered with Mark's order, with reruns using the switch. Of course, without a copy of the premiere, there's no way of knowing for sure.

That's about all there is to say about Season 7 for now. But, because you're probably craving more original title cards, here's the original for "Thing in the Box."



Image Credit: Mimitchi33

U.S. Acres - Season 1 (Original Title Cards!)

Today's post is a special one -- for the first time since Boomerang briefly aired Garfield and Friends in 2006, here are all of the original title cards from Season 1--almost. Unfortunately I don't have actual English copies of four of these originals, but thanks to the German dub (which mysteriously uses the U.S. Acres logo for the first 12 episodes), I've been able to make recreations that accurately show how the original title card looked.

Ladies and gentlemen... the originals!



Image Credit:
MySpleen: Wade, You're Afraid
Me: Banana Nose, Shell Shocked Sheldon, Wanted: Wade, Unidentified Flying Orson
YouTube: The Bad Sport
Big Cartoon Database: The Worm Turns, National Tapioca Pudding Day, Shy Fly Guy
German/English Mixes: Return of Power Pig, Keeping Cool, Short Story, I Like Having You Around!