With the new trailer for the Garfield animated movie featuring Chris Pratt as the orange tabby, what better time to look back on Garfield’s Thanskgiving. The animated short aired this day, Nov. 22 in 1989.
While Garfield (voiced by the late Lorenzo Music) dominated the 1980s with an animated short being broadcast at least once a year followed by the Saturday morning cartoon Garfield and Friends, you can tell writer Jim Davis and Phil Roman were kinda running out of ideas. They had already collaborated that year with Babes and Bullets, a parody of the film noir genre which Garfield played private detective Sam Spayed, a joke that some younger viewers might have missed.
With Christmas and Halloween already handled, why did they wait so long to focus on Thanksgiving which Garfield should like because it involves eating? The plot involves the orange tabby being put on a diet on Wednesday before Thanksgiving when his owner, Jon Arbuckle (Thom Huge), takes him to the vet, Dr. Liz Wilson (Julie Payne). But Jon has a different motive. He wants to ask Liz out to dinner but she initially rebuffs him, but accepts an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner because they won’t be seen in public.
But being that it’s Thanksgiving, Garfield is tempted to eat and must deal with Odie (voiced by Gregg Berger) who takes on the role of health coach blowing a whistle everytime he tries to sneak food. Naturally, Jon screws up the dinner leading Garfield to tell him to call his grandmother (voiced by Pat Carroll) to call in to cook while Jon stalls. Liz has relented in her diet for Garfield and told Jon to hold off until after Thankgsiving to put him on a diet.
It’s a simple story, but it could be that production was already ongoing with two seasons of Garfield and Friends through Roman’s company Film Roman. You could easily call it a pseudo-bottle episode as most of the show takes place at the house where as other animated shorts ventured more out of the house. A total of 39 episodes had been produced for the first two seasons.
Like most animated shorts, it’s based on a book Davis had published a year prior to the broadcast. But Odie doesn’t come in to “coach” or torment Garfield in his diet and there’s no scene where Garfield steps on a scale and the woman voice mocks him thinking he’s Orson Welles. We also see more of how Jon ruins the dinner in the book. I say this was probably of time restraints with the TV series.
Thanksgiving always seems to get little attention with TV shows compared to Halloween, Christmas and even Easter. Since most of these shows are geared toward children, I guess they think younger audiences will be bored by a story of people eating or having fights, which seems to be typical of most Thanksgiving-related shows.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 