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''Garfield and Friends'' is an American Animated Television Series based on the popular Comic Strip '' Garfield '' by Jim Davis . This show was originally produced by Film Roman , and ran on CBS Saturday Morning s from 1988 to 1994. The show's seven seasons make it one of the longest running Saturday morning cartoons in history (most only lasted one or two seasons). Regular segments featured both '' Garfield '' and '' U.S. Acres '', a lesser-known comic strip created by Davis. The latter was retitled ''Orson's Farm'' for foreign syndication. 242 ''Garfield'' segments and 121 ''U.S. Acres'' segments were produced. There were two "Garfield" segments on each show, two "quickie" shorts based on Sunday comic strips, and in between was a ''U.S. Acres'' segment. A total of 121 half-hours were produced, and as of December 6 2005 , all of these have been released on five DVD sets by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment . The first season aired in a half-hour format. In the second season, it switched to an hour-length format, showing two episodes each week. However, in the show's last season, the second half-hour of the show featured either an episode from the previous season or one of Garfield's TV specials. For a complete listing of episodes, see List Of Garfield And Friends Episodes . VOICE ACTORS AND THEIR CHARACTERS
The Latin American dub was made by Leonardo Céspedes Producciones, in Santiago, Chile . The Spanish voice of Garfield was performed by Sandro Larenas. Jon Arbuckle's (Jon Bonachon for Latin America) voice was dubbed in Chile by the actor Adriano Castillo, who's been working in the Chilean sitcom "Los Venegas" since its debut in 1989. In addition to the regular voice actor cast above, there have been several celebrity guest stars who did voice acting on ''Garfield & Friends''. They are, in chronological order:
Other actors who have appeared:
THE CAST "Garfield"
"U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm"
HUMOR The chief guiding force behind the show was comedy writer Mark Evanier , also known as a co-creator of Groo The Wanderer , who wrote "virtually all" of the shorts by his admission (with the exception of several shorts that were written by Sharman DiVono during the first four seasons). Because of this, the show (particularly in later seasons) had a markedly different style of humor than the previous specials or strips. Whereas the specials and strips tended to focus on more character-based humor, ''Garfield and Friends'' frequently tended to be much wackier and admittedly more sophisticated, in the vein of later cartoons such as '' Animaniacs '' or '' Pinky And The Brain ''. Episodes were filled with puns and Non Sequiturs , and often lapsed into complete absurdity (such as the US Acres short "Over The Rainbow", in which Roy's quest to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow leads him instead to a '' Let's Make A Deal ''-style game show complete with Rod Roddy announcing). Running gags were frequent, throughout either single shorts (such as in the Garfield short "The Creature That Lived In The Refrigerator, Behind the Mayonnaise, Next to the Ketchup and to the Left of the Cole Slaw!", in which the name of said creature is spoken repeatedly), or entire seasons (the Klopman Diamond is mentioned in many, many episodes). ''U.S. Acres'' characters would frequently make unexplained Cameo appearances in Garfield shorts, and vice-versa. For example, the "Giant Radioactive Mutant Guppies" that Garfield and Nermal flushed down the sewer resurfaced in the ''U.S. Acres'' quickie that immediately followed, and then one asks the others if they could maybe get on the '' Muppet Babies '', which at that time preceded ''Garfield and Friends'' on the CBS Saturday Morning lineup. There was even some mild satire, particularly in the form of the "Buddy Bears", which spoofed such saccharine cartoons as '' The Get-Along Gang '' and '' Smurfs ''. Many episodes tended to break the Fourth Wall . Garfield would frequently address the audience directly, openly acknowledging that he is, in fact, in a cartoon, or he would read through the script to find out what would happen in the short. Another example is a scene where Garfield is trying to prevent a plane from crashing and asking the audience to check the TV listings to make sure it's not the last episode. The characters would even fight with unnamed network executives over the direction of the show, and in at least one instance, the show was "canceled". Entire shorts would even be built around this conceit, such as "Mistakes Will Happen", a short that featured Garfield disputing a claim that the show was featuring various mistakes—and then proceeding to run a short that was filled with dozens of animation, sound, and writing errors. In one short, "Flat Tired", Garfield refused to do a cartoon, stating to the cameramen "Go away. I'm not in this episode." Odie takes over the short (complete with a title card with Odie's name/logo) as "A Witch In Time", wherein he is kidnapped by a witch, and rescued (reluctantly) by Garfield. PRODUCTION When the show was originally broadcast on CBS, the episodes usually had three Quickies (30- to 45-second gags), usually two "Garfield Quickies" (the first one being played before the intro theme) and one "U.S. Acres Quickie," the latter of which was never shown in Syndication . Midway through the second season, "Screaming with Binky" quickie-style segments were added. These "Screaming with Binky" segments were typically used at the halfway point of hour long blocks of ''Garfield and Friends'' (as Garfield ended each one with "We'll be right back.") to let the viewers know that unlike most Saturday morning cartoons at the time, it was not over in the usual half-hour. However, in the syndicated reruns, only one Quickie is shown per episode, and it's always at the end rather than around the shorts. The DVD sets and Boomerang reruns restore the original rotation. After the third season, only one "Garfield Quickie" is shown per episode. The seventh season (1994-1995) was the last one because CBS wanted to cut the budget (it was still doing well in the ratings). The production company nixed this proposal, so they mutually agreed to cease production. Theme song The show has had three different theme songs. The first one was used during the first two seasons, and was also occasionally hummed or sung by the characters within the show. It was a song-and-dance style number about friendship, presumably based on the fact that the show was called ''Garfield and Friends''. In the original theme music one of the female singers is Desirée Goyette, the voice of Nermal. The second theme song first appeared in the third season and was used for almost the rest of the show's run, although some of the clips in the sequence were changed in the sixth season. The idea of this song, which featured upbeat conga music, that watching the show was as much fun as going to a party. This theme song is the only one used in The Program Exchange reruns. In the seventh (and final) season, a rap-based theme song was used, and perhaps due to not being included in the international version, it does not appear on the DVD releases. Directors The following people have directed various episodes:
DVD RELEASES Fox Entertainment has released Garfield and Friends on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. All seven seasons have been released in five volume sets. U.S. releases
Each ''Garfield and Friends'' DVD Volume Box Set features Garfield with a '' U.S. Acres '' character. Volume 1 features Orson Pig, Volume 2 features Roy Rooster, Volume 3 features Wade Duck, Volume 4 features Booker and Sheldon Chick, and Volume 5 features Bo and Lanolin Sheep. ''Garfield and Friends'' Volume Box Sets contain 3 DVDs in each box. Volumes 1-4 contain 8 episodes on each disc. The first two DVDs on Volume 5 each contain 8 episodes, while the last DVD on Volume 5 contains 9 episodes. Each disc order of each set is like this: Disc 1 always features Garfield, Disc 2 features a ''U.S. Acres'' character and Disc 3 features a different character from the comic strip. The following is the order of the inside of each disc for each DVD set:
These DVD sets are also available in Canada . Australian releases The "Volume 1" set was released in Australia (Region 4) on December 13 , 2004 . The contents of this set are exactly the same as that of the U.S. release. However, unlike in the U.S., the Australian version is also available as three separate discs. As Of 2007 , the other four volumes have yet to be released. SYNDICATION HISTORY Argentina
Australia
Chile
Estonia
Finland
United Kingdom
United States
Only 73 episodes out of the 121 episodes were syndicated by The Program Exchange between 1992 and 2007 . This is due to CBS selling syndication rights when the show was still on air and wanting to keep the rights for certain episodes. When the series ended, the rest of the episodes were offered to the syndicate, but declined. However, the reruns shown on Boomerang are the same as the DVD masters. The show was removed from their lineup on December 3 , 2006 , but returned in May 2007 only to be removed again. It is unknown if they still own the rights to the show. TRIVIA
FURTHER READING
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