A Garfield Christmas

Newspaper comics are, for the most part, terrible. There's the occasional bright spots, like Bloom County and The Far Side. But most of it is dreck. Like Cathy[ref]Seriously, I couldn't stand Cathy. Why was a comic supposedly about a modern women so loaded with internalized misogyny? I'm sure I spent part of a Sunday or two hoping that Hagar the Horrible would lop the heads off of both Cathy and Irving.[/ref].

A few strips get so big that they cross into other media. Most get collected and shoved into the funny corner of the bookstore with all The National Lampoon books you spent many an afternoon chuckling at while your parents shopped elsewhere in the mall. Some get animated television specials, or even series. There was once a Doonesbury musical.

The absolute king of the comic strips that went on to become more has to be Garfield. Sure, Peanuts produced better content, but it was a while before you could get properly collected strips. And nobody really had a Snoopy plush doll with suction cups on it. No, those ridiculous creations were always orange and black, and they were always in the window of the jerk cutting you off.

Since I'm likely to end this series with A Charlie Brown Christmas, it's fitting that I begin with A Garfield Christmas. If the former wasn't a popular annual television tradition, the latter would never have been made. We might have been better off, but that's probably just my hatred of Garfield speaking [ref]I'm mostly against the notion that there are things that you have to stop enjoying when you become an adult. But if you have a career and live on your own, and you laugh at Garfield, I don't know if I want to know you anymore[/ref].

First broadcast in 1987, A Garfield Christmas is a pretty basic special. Production values were low, as is to be expected for one-off television animation. The story is simple: Garfield, an obese cat, accompanies his owner, idiot man-child Jon Arbuckle, and Jon's other pet, seemingly vacuous dog Odie, on a trip to the Arbuckle family farm for a Christmas celebration. Over the course of 23 minutes, Garfield learns the true meaning of Christmas and makes an old lady happy. Lou Rawls[ref]Yes, him. Either he was a big fan or the check cleared.[/ref] sings some songs and everyone has a great country Christmas.

The show's too short for anything of interest to happen. There isn't any real conflict, and the only germ of an actual story lies in Garfield finding some letters Jon's grandfather wrote to his grandmother when their relationship began. Grandma Arbuckle is easily the most interesting character. Of course, this was the late Eighties, and every attempt was made to make old people seem hip. Cocoon is the prime example of this.

What we do encounter is Jon's mutant family. Jon is already drawn to have giant eyes. His brother, Doc Boy[ref]Who the crap names their child that? Damn Arbuckle rednecks.[/ref] also has giant eyes, which seems to indicate this ocular condition is genetic. Their dad[ref]The dude who played Schneider on One Day At a Time voices the dad. Nothing snarky to say about that, as that is awesome.[/ref] also has large eyes, but he can't open them all the way. I guess Jon and Doc Boy have that to look forward to.

Grandma has big eyes as well, and she needs glasses the size of saucers to see. Not entirely surprising, as she's of rather advanced age and there were no good glasses in 1987. The real kicker, though, is Jon's mom. Mom has no eyes.

I'll give that a moment to sink in.

Hurts, doesn't it? This lady somehow has no eyes. I can't tell if that makes me angry or scares me to no end. You'd also think that genetically, the younger generation of Arbuckles would have smaller eyes due to their mother's lack thereof, but Jim Davis was too busy counting his merch money to consider this problem.

Another problem is that Jon and Doc Boy are the dumbest men alive. Watching them drool over the Binky the Clown story[ref]Rather than use a public domain story for the Christmas Eve tradition, like "A Visit From Saint Nicholas", they wrote their own. This is the most creative thing in this special. And it's possibly the only creative thing.[/ref] was horrifying. I referred to Jon as an idiot man-child earlier. He and his brother are idiot men-children[ref]Man-children? Man-childs?[/ref]. Our only reprieve is that they're obviously not reproducing.

The kids who watched this special 24 years ago are now adults and are cranking out babies left and right[ref]Slow down, will ya? It's not a race to the top of Baby Mountain here![/ref], yet it's unlikely they will get to experience this oddity with those kids. The special has only aired once in the US since 2000 and that was in 2008. The Canadians got it last year. You have to see this thing out to see it in the United States.

I have two hypotheses as to why it's become so rare here. The obviously, and likely correct one, is that nobody cared about Garfield any longer. Once we collectively realized that removing Garfield from the strip and turning it into a depressing, existential piece about Jon's mental issues[ref]Garfield Minus Garfield. Go read it.[/ref] we gave up on the the fat cat and his merchandise empire. Irrelevancy leads to obscurity, and we bid the special adieu.

Alternatively, were realize that the entire special is a metaphor for self-pleasure. Odie gets very, very excited by the cat scratcher he builds for Garfield. Grandma delivers a short speech about how she misses Grandpa, so she's outside, stroking her kitty. She's talking about Garfield, right?

Right?

Either way, I'd be remiss to talk about the voice of Garfield, Lorenzo Music. A legend of comedy writing. He got his start with The Smothers Brothers and went on to create The Bob Newhart Show. Of course, we all remember him for his distinctive voice, be it telling Rhoda she has a visitor or kicking a drooling dog off a table. Looking back, I think the only thing that made animated Garfield enjoyable was Lorenzo Music's signature voice. He was one of the people that provided the soundtrack to my childhood. Between that and his contributions to television comedy, he'll be truly missed.

Too bad he didn't get to write A Garfield Christmas. Perhaps it would have been awesome, but it merely serves as a novelty, a relic of a time long gone. When comic strip cats ruled the universe.