Garfield Specials

A series of 12 animated TV specials based off the popular comic strip Garfield. All of them (except the first two, which were animated by Mendleson/Melendez Productions, famous for the Peanuts and Cathy specials) were animated by Film Roman, and all of them were broadcast on CBS between the years of 1982 and 1991.

The specials are as follows:

• Here Comes Garfield: Odie is locked in a dog pound, and Garfield must save him.
• Garfield on the Town: Garfield falls out of the car on a visit to the vet, and is reunited with his mother.
• Garfield in the Rough: Garfield, Jon and Odie go camping. Unfortunately, a killer panther is there...
• Garfield's Halloween Adventure/Garfield in Disguise: Garfield and Odie go trick-or-treating, and while doing so, wind up at a haunted house.
• Garfield in Paradise: Garfield and Jon go on vacation.
• Garfield Goes Hollywood: Garfield, Jon and Odie attempt to win a talent show contest for people and their pets.
• A Garfield Christmas: Garfield and Jon go to Jon's parents house for Christmas.
• Garfield His 9 Lives: An epic hour-long special where we see past and future reincarnations of Garfield (or Garfield's "Lives") . Based off a graphic novel. Has its own page.
• Garfield's Babes and Bullets: A Deliberately Monochrome special that dramatically parodies Film Noir. Based off one of the Garfield His 9 Lives lives that didn't make it to the above special.
• Garfield's Thanksgiving: Jon invites Liz over for Thanksgiving and attempts to cook the food. It doesn't end well.
• Garfield's Feline Fantasies: Garfield has a imagination sequence Affectionately Parodying The Maltese Falcon.
• Garfield Gets a Life: The final special. Garfield and Jon attempt to add excitement in their life.

---

The Garfield Specials provide examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion: The Halloween Special adds Garfield stealing a ring, setting up the subplot of the ghost chasing them.
• Adaptation Species Change: In the Babes and Bullets book, everyone was a cat. In the special, everyone, save Garfield and Odie, is human. How this works with the implication that Garfield is implied to have sex with two human women is left to the viewer's imagination.
• Animated Adaptation: Apart from these being based off the strip itself, many of the specials featured gags and lines adapted from original Garfield comic strips.
• Appease the Volcano God: By feeding it a '57 Chevy.
• Bowdlerization:
  • This strip, like many others, was animated into a throwaway gag in Here Comes Garfield. However, due to the request of CBS, Garfield grabbing Jon's neck and shaking it violently was changed to Garfield grabbing Jon's cheeks and shaking them violently.
  • The original Babes and Bullets story featured the murderer and his victim as both being priests while the special makes them college professors.
• Call Back: At one point in Garfield in The Rough, Jon turns on the radio set, and after a We Interrupt This Program report about the panther, So Long Old Friend from Here Comes Garfield starts playing.
  • A trumpet version of the same song also plays in Garfield in Paradise after Odie's Disney Death, causing Garfield to start saying the lyrics.
• Canada, Eh?: According to Lorenzo, the teacher in Garfield Gets a Life, speaking Canadian is easy: You talk like you normally would, but sometimes, you add an "Eh?".
• Cargo Cult: The natives in Garfield in Paradise worship the '57 Chevy.
• Cool Old Lady: Jon's Grandma, who appears in both the Christmas and Thanksgiving specials.
• Darker and Edgier: While the Halloween Special is the standout, the series as a whole in much darker than the strips or Garfield and Friends. In Here Comes Garfield, Garfield fears that Odie will be put down and has to be held back from rushing to his rescue lest he be killed too.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The entirety of Babes and Bullets, the Krazy Kat scene of His 9 Lives, and the first scene of In the Rough (as all the colour has been drained from Garfield's life).
• Early-Bird Cameo / Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: Binky the Clown makes his first appearance in Garfield's Halloween Adventure, before his debut in the strip or Garfield and Friends.
• Empty Swimming Pool Dive: Occurs in Garfield in Paradise.
• Epic Fail: Doc's attempt at playing "Oh Christmas Tree" on the piano in A Garfield Christmas.
• Eureka Moment: Parodied in Babes and Bullets. Every extra sentence leads to one only for the next to disprove it and lead to another.
• Failed a Spot Check: In Garfield in the Rough, the Panther is stalking Lake Wobegon. John somehow failed to notice the sign indicating their campsite as that lake.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Babes and Bullets heavily implies that Garfield got laid. Twice. BY HUMAN WOMEN. It starts when in typical noir style, the sexy female client invites Sam Spayed to "have a little milk with her", and he reacts much as if she'd invited him in for coffee. At the end, his secretary picks up a pair of glasses and a bottle of milk, sashaying into Sam's office while throwing a few Fan Service poses, inducing an "oh wow" reaction from Sam. Also in Babes and Bullets, Garfield's alter-ego was named Sam Spayed.

Femme Fatale: Are you Spayed? Private Eye Monologue: I never know how to answer that question.

• I Remember It Like It Was Yesterday: Sam Spayed's recollection of when he hired his secretary. It was yesterday.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Garfield. When push comes to shove, like say a panther attacking John and Odie, he'll leap into action.
• Metaphor Is My Middle Name: Garfield tries to do this in Garfield's Halloween Adventure, but finds it doesn't work very well:

Garfield: Halloween is my middle name! Gar-Halloween-Field.

• Missing Episode: Garfield's Judgement Day was a movie, then a special, that Jim Davis was forced to abandon due to being unable to find an animation studio willing to animate the film (possibly due to it being darker than the usual specials). The story was released as an (currently out-of-print) story book.
• Mundane Solution: As Garfield lampshades, can't they just push the car, with no one in it into the volcano?
• Never Send an X to Do a Y's Job: A Garfield Christmas has "Never send a man to do a cat's job".
• Noir Episode: Babes and Bullets. Wasn't included in the animated version of Garfield His 9 Lives but was adapted into a stand-alone TV special the following year.
• Non Standard Character Design: Many of the specials featured a character (usually the villain) drawn in a more realistic style compared to the other characters. Examples include the dogcatcher from Here Comes Garfield and the panther from Garfield in the Rough.
• Novelization: All the specials (except Garfield: His 9 Lives, which already was one) were adapted into small graphic novels. The art in them tended to look hurried.
• The Other Darrin: Sandy Becker voiced Jon in Here Comes Garfield. Thom Huge took over in the other specials (plus the TV series).
• Oven Logic: Shows up in the Thanksgiving special. Jon turns up the oven higher to cook the turkey faster, but ends up ruining it.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: This from A Garfield Christmas:

Jon: Doc Boy! My favorite brother. Doc: Don't call me Doc Boy. You've probably forgotten I'm your only brother. Jon: Oh. ...You're right.

• Remember the New Guy?: Most of Garfield's family appeared only in one week of strips and Here Comes Garfield without ever being mentioned again (except for his mom, who showed up in one other strip).
• Rule of Three: All three of the holiday specials have Garfield saying "Nice touch." at one point in the special: Halloween Adventure after seeing the Dramatic Thunder behind the haunted house, Thanksgiving after seeing the dinner table, and Christmas Special after seeing the decorated tree after the lights have been turned on.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After hearing a We Interrupt This Program broadcast about a panther stalking campsites and hearing the song "So Long Old Friend", Garfield decides the best thing to do is to pack up and go home. Shame that he's travelling with John.
• Saw Star Wars 27 Times: In Garfield's Thanksgiving, Garfield's talking scale is said to have seen Citizen Kane eight times. (It Makes Sense in Context.)
• Shout-Out
  • In Garfield's Halloween Adventure, while digging around in a chest for costume supplies, Garfield finds balls of string and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.
  • "Rhett! Rhett! Whatever shall I do? Wherever shall I go?"
  • "What we have here is a failure to communicate."
  • There was one in On the Town to West Side Story.
  • Frank Nelson spoofing his The Jack Benny Program' persona in In Paradise.
    • And then, referring to the room that Jon and company have rented, the cheapest, most run-down fleatrap room in the entire hotel as the ... wait for it... "Jack Benny suite."
  • Garfield also imagines himself as Don Ho at one point, while the character named "The Cruiser" seems to be a cross between James Dean and The Fonz.
  • Even though Jon's car rental is a 1957 Chevy, the red and white colors and trim and the fact that the car is apparently possessed are more likely to evoke comparisons with a certain 1958 Plymouth.
  • In Goes Hollywood, Garfield has dreams parodying The Wizard of Oz, Royal Wedding, and Singin in The Rain.
  • Several to Casablanca in Babes and Bullets.
  • The aforementioned Citizen Kane reference in Garfield's Thanksgiving.
  • Finally, Feline Fantasies references all sorts of things, such as Casablanca, Vertigo, Goldfinger, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark , and even Airplane!.
• Sneeze of Doom: Odie does this in Garfield's Halloween Adventure while he and Garfield are hiding in a cabinet from some pirate ghosts. The sneeze is not only loud enough to attract the ghosts' attention, but it's powerful enough to blow the cabinet doors right open. With sheepish grins, Garfield and Odie close the doors again, and Garfield says, "Maybe they didn't see us..." Cue the Scare Chord as the pirate ghosts come through the cabinet!
• Vitriolic Best Buds: As much as Garfield abuses Odie, he always sticks by him even lying to God's face to have Odie resurrected with him. To be fair, God clearly knows the truth but is simply letting them get away with it.