WesternAnimation Excellent entertaining cartoon, a great contribution to Garfield's legacy - but I never really liked the show's structure
"Garfield The Animated Series" has great character development and writing, good humor and jokes, intelligent stories written by Mark Evanier (who I think is some of TV's greatest writers of all time) and this was by far one of the best cartoons I've watched. This is a great component of my childhood.
I thought most to all Garfield segments were very clever and well-written, my personal favorites of the show were:
- Food Fighter - Garfield keeps tempting a professional boxer to pig out on food by cooking in the kitchen and thus making the aromas make the boxer keep wanting food and get angry at Jon for the food aromas.
- Great Getaway - Jon falls in love with a beautiful woman who also happens to be a pickpocket
- Taste Makes Waist - Garfield and Jon are tricked by a beautiful blonde woman Sylvia on TV to buy delicious-looking diet food to help out overweight people, but it turns out to be awful and meager-portioned and then Garfield realizes that Sylvia is ALSO a junk food addict and exploits on her weakness.
- Cinderella Cat - Garfield gets a fairy godfather (who happens to sound and look just like Marlon Brando) who keeps granting him wishes but those wishes turned out to be illegal and just plain theft.
- Multiple Choice Cartoon - Garfield elects to allow a "democratic" cartoon in which the most popular vote for a choice will be how the cartoon plays out because he's of course gotten a little lazy to write the cartoon's plot himself. But only then does Garfield realize the true flaw of democracy - the ignorance of the masses.
- Home Away from Home - Garfield gets kicked out of the house by Jon and so he decides to find a new place to live in. He gets taken in by granny, who only feeds him awful food and makes him chase a mouse. At first it seems Garfield has 2 problems, but by finding granny's original cat (Fluffy) he realizes how to make both problems cancel each other out.
- Five Minute Warning - Jon wants Garfield to stop eating so much so he makes Garfield choose a bet with a wager: skip 5 minutes and get his delicious 7-layer chocolate cake OR go ahead and indulge in other foods anyway but skip the cake. Even though it's just ONE cake, Garfield shows some really strong self-control and resists eating the VASTLY LARGER quantities of food being offered to him by everyone! I guess Jon's cake really is that good, I know Garfield complains about Jon's cooking all the time.
You can clearly tell what the irony in each of these episodes is just by describing their plot outlines!
But the thing is I never really liked how this show was structured. It was always Garfield then farm animals then Garfield. So what, Garfield is the bread and the farm animals are the meat and cheese to go with it? Garfield is both the bread, cheese, meat and condiments all on his own.
WesternAnimation The Orange Cat's (comedic) Magnum Opus
I've always felt indifferent to the Garfield comics. They seemed less funny than advertised. With this show, it was different. I rarely didn't laugh when I watched this show and even as an adult, I'm still laughing whenever I watch this show. Now I've come to a realization. For me at least, the series works better as a visual medium instead of a comic strip like it usually is.
As testament to this, even when the Seasonal Rot hit the show, I was still laughing my arse off. Easily the franchise's Magnum Opus. I was only a Garfield fan for this series and the specials. No other piece of official Garfield media tops this. To quote the Greek dub of the intro:
"you're the unique cat which I love"