Garfield And Friends

 

  GARFIELD AND FRIENDS! This Saturday morning gem of comedy was one of the funniest shows I've seen and a worthy adaptation to the comic strip. It followed a structure I haven't talked about yet, that is the 3 Segments. 3 Segments structure is my favourite for lightehearted comedies such as this, and it does the show a lot of favours, The 22 minute runtime of each episode was made up of 3 segments, each 7 minutes. The first and the last segment of each episode would follow the exploits of Garfield Cat, his owner Jon Arbuckle, and Jon's other pet, Odie Dog. The middle segment (the "Friends" in the title) was based off a less popular comic strip that shared the same page in the newspapers as Garfield; that is, Orson's Farm. Both the Garfield and Orson's Farm segments were jampacked with hilarity and well worth waiting through 8 minutes of spread out commercials over the 30 minute slot.

  Garfield was a stereotype of a slacker; he's fat, all he ever does is eat lasagna (and every other food, besides raisins, he hates those), he hates Mondays, worships the television, and bullies Odie. Now, one sign of the strength of the writing is that ODIE DOESN"T SPEAK. Odie, the deuteragonist of the series, never says anything more than "*pant**pant* YEAH *pant* *pant*", and yet we are able to understand his communication with Garfield perfectly well; he gets irritated, but he's a tad bit too dumbly loyal to stay mad at his only pal. Jon is another character who is defined by his interactions with others, primarily girls and his pets. Jon is a bit of a pathetic, lonely man, he's never had a 2nd date with a woman (EVER), and he treats his pets more like his kids. Regardless of his faults, he's an innocent and likable man who you pity and laugh at at the same time.

  Orson's Farm carried more of an ensemble cast. You had Orson Pig, the straight man (straight pig?) who simply enjoys his books and keeps the farm running smoothly, Roy Rooster, a swindiling con-artist who's always trying new ways to get out of his work and make his friends' lifes living hell, Wade Duck, who is literally afraid of absolutely everything, Bo Sheep, the super chill and mellow dudeeee who's always arguing with his sister, Lanolin Sheep, the super tense overly-competitive clotheswasher (she is literally always washing clothes but none of them wear any, wtf) who's always arguing with her brother, and Booker and Sheldon, twin chicken brothers who just hatched, except for Sheldon who willingly chooses to never hatch, hence the name. *Get it SHELDon, hilarious*

On top of the 3 segments, the show also had a 1-minute "Garfield Quickie" or a 1-minute "Orson's Farm Quickie" every episode. Now the shows are pretty equal, except for the fact that Orson rarely crosses over to Garfield's show, yet Garfield is the special guest star amongst his "friends" every other episode. Mind you, Orson is less of a dominant "main character" than Garfield, but with twice the cast to compete with and half the screentime to work with, he doesn't have the time to be.

Now, I like this show for one reason and one reason only: The humour, It is ALWAYS bang on and can make me laugh like no tomorrow. They break the fourth wall often, which isn't everyone's cup of tea but it is mine, and both shows have great recurring characters. Nermal is the world's cutest cat and both his attempts to show that and Garfield's attempts to mail him to Abu Dhabi after he gets frustrated with him are amusing, to say the least. Orson's Farm was mostly driven by farm conflict, such as Orson's bullying older brothers trying to steal vegetables, or Roy's nemesis, The Weasel, trying to steal and cook the farm chickens. (Or sometimes it would just be Roy being a jerkwad). Garfield was driven by a completely new and different conflict every episode, every segment even. This is a must-watch, I rate it a 92/100,