YMMV / The Garfield Show

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: There is a real-life cheese theme park in South Korea similar to Eddie Gourmand's attempt at one, but it isn't literally made out of cheese.
• Awesome Music: Something nearly every fan can agree this show does as good as the original is its theme, which is incredibly energetic and jazzy.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Dirk Dinkum's Villain Song from the "Lion Queen" special. It is COMPLETELY unprompted with no real setup. Especially since it portrays him as the ultimate Card-Carrying Villain instead of the Villain with Good Publicity the show usually hints toward him being.
• Fanon: Since it's not otherwise indicated how they're related to Jon (they alternate between calling him "uncle" and "cousin"), some fans have theorized that Drusilla and Minerva are Aunt Ivy's daughters, to the point that it's treated as fact on the unofficial Garfield wiki. Given that they also refer to her as their aunt in "Everything's Relative", it's unlikely to be the case.
• He Really Can Act: While the voice acting is usually just decent for the most part, Wally Wingert absolutely nails it as Jon in "King Nermal". The scene where Jon sends Garfield and Odie out to punish them for messing with Nermal is especially chilling.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One episode had Garfield encounter a version of himself that can turn into an Eldritch Abomination, long before the Creepy Garfield/Gorefield meme started to take off.
  • While he's floating off into space at the end of "Cuter Than Cute", King Parma declares that there'll be a sequel episode where he has his revenge. While the Space Lasagna did make one more appearance after this, it was in an Alternate Universe in "World Without Me"; as such, this ended up being the last time we saw them in the main timeline.
• Jerkass Woobie: Hercules is a mean Chihuahua with a spiked collar who is one of the bully dogs in the neighborhood. Turns out he's just lonely and wants a friend, which is why he stole Pooky in "Desperately Seeking Pooky".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "You look shocked".^note A line said by Jon in the Season 1 episode "Time Twist", who has the body of a giant spider, to a scared Garfield. Somehow, context does not help it make sense.
  • Related to the above, a sped up version of the scene that follows where he is being chased down by giant spiders, often set to Spider Dance from Undertale, has also become quite common on social media.
  • The unfinished shot in "Land of Hold"^explanation A shot from the episode went viral for somehow being entirely unfinished in the episode's initial U.S. broadcast. Cue debates over whether or not the shot being unfinished was intentional, due to the show being incredibly meta in its humor and the error being seen as too blatant to accidentally slip past everyone involved. The unfinished shot was fixed in international versions, revealing that the unfinished version was indeed an error (according to the person who animated the shot, this was due to an editor accidentally using the work-in-progress version instead of the TV-ready version).
  • Jon's "Muahahah! Did you really think you could defeat me, wretched fool??" while playing some multiplayer game on his PC in the episode "Virtualodeon" has gained some memetic notoriety.
  • Garfield saying "I know where you live" at the end of "Mother Garfield" gained a memetic takeoff due to the dark humor of Garfield essentially threatening the viewer into not telling anyone he took care of some baby bluebirds.
  • Dirkposting^note In May of 2023, the character Dirk Dinkum and his song "Bad Boy" (more commonly known by the refrain "Go Away") became memetic after Twitter user n64cartridges pointed out how ridiculous it sounded. Since then, the song and accompanying sequence have been used as a Trolling anthem.
  • A gif of Jon opening a bin and finding Nermal in the bin became popular in 2024 to represent finding something unpleasent, similar to "Oh, that's real nice".
• Mis-blamed:
  • Given how often the show is accused of lacking the same wit and personality that Garfield and Friends had, it may come to a surprise to many that several of the original show's creative team like Mark Evanier and Jim Davis himself actually wrote a large helping of The Garfield Show.
  • A major error weaseled its way into the episode "Land of Hold", where an entire segment of seemingly unfinished animation was used in the episode. While people were quick to assume that the animation was indeed unfinished and that the animator was at fault, the animator revealed that they did submit the finished animation, but one of the editors accidentally used the unfinished version instead (notably, the international versions fixed this error, showing that there was indeed a fully animated version of the shot).
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Garfield's nightmare in High Scale, especially after the scale comes to life and Frank Welker drops into his Dr. Claw/Soundwave voice.
  • Jon’s enraged moments can be this, thanks to his voice actor's performance, but his rage in “King Nermal” takes the cake as he sounds generally furious with his pets throughout the episode.
  • In "Curse of the Cat People", Neferkitty and her cats make it perfectly clear that they want to kill Garfield so that they can take over his world.
    Courtier: In the sarcophagus, an hour will be your lifetime.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The series had three different games based on it — The Garfield Show: Threat of the Space Lasagna, Garfield Kart, and Garfield Kart: Furious Racing (allegedly a sequel to the latter, but it's more of an Updated Re-release than anything). The first one suffers from a weak plot, stilted voice acting (Garfield is voiced by Jon Barnard instead of Frank Welker), and Fake Difficulty by way of poor utilization of the Wii's motion controls; the latter two are just buggy Mario Kart rip-offs (with the latter being even more broken than the former).
• Questionable Casting: While the death of Lorenzo Music required Garfield to have a new voice actor, some fans felt that Frank Welker's performance didn't capture the same spirit as Music's. To quote The Rowdy Reviewer:
  "No one can replace the late, great Lorenzo Music. He was Garfield. But legendary voice talent Frank Welker? I must say that [...] I'm less than impressed. With him, it's all lethargy and no sarcasm, while Music always had the best mix of both."
• The Scrappy: Even fans who liked Nermal in Garfield and Friends bemoaned how this version of him became meaner and more obnoxious.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Nermal gets this every now and again. One example would be in "Parrot Blues" where he breaks down in tears because Paxton called out on him for his conceit and told him that he was a sickening sight to those around him. Also, "Super Me" has Garfield and Ultra Super Powerful Guy leave him on the moon after pestering them to tell him who's the real super hero (as Garfield was dressed as the superhero).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Compared to the older shows in the franchise, there's a lot: Garfield moving his lips when he talks, Jon's Relationship Upgrade with Liz, the shift from traditional animation to 3D, Nermal taking a level in Jerkass, the absence of US Acres/Orson's Farm in any capacity.^note The latter was Enforced, the creators considered getting as far as a cameo at least, but the show's overseas studio nixed it due to ethical laws against caricaturising pigs.
• Tough Act to Follow: The Garfield Show had to fill the shoes of the ever-beloved Garfield and Friends, and it very much struggled to do that. While it's generally considered to be a good show on its own, especially by those who grew up with it, fans and critics alike tend to find The Garfield Show to be sluggish and having more poorly written episodes when compared to Garfield and Friends.
• Unexpected Character: Did anyone honestly expect a character as obscure as Lyman to ever appear again?

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