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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Here Comes Garfield: Babes and Bullets: Nothing to Do, But Do It

Welcome all you happy people to a very special retrospective on this fine blog: Garfield Goes Prime Time: A look at all 12 specials starring everyone's fat cat, cool cat, nobody's full cat Garfield that aired throughout the 80's and into the first few years of the 90's.

As for why do this, this has been on my to do list since the blog started but I finally decided to pull the pin and start reviewing these because I realized that a crucial thing I love had been barely coverd on this blog in any medium: Comic Strips. Ever since my Aunt Paula gave me The Indespensible Calvin and Hobbes (The same copy I still have to this day albeit far worse for the wear as would be any book a person has had since 3rd grade), I have had a deep love and fascneation with comic strips and only added more and more in my heart as I went on. From finding FoxTrot in middle school to Bloom County and Doonesbury in high school, to Something Positive in College, to even my adult life where just in the last few months i've found Kevin and Kell, Breaking Cat News, Crabgrass, Rosebuds, and JumpStart among many more. I likely will never stop finding good comic strips. Those listed are only a fraction of what I love. So I figured it was it was time to dive into them. And I figured a great way to start was to combine my love for comic strips with what I normally cover animation and knock something off my to do list i've been wanting to do since the blog began. Folks, please join me as I look at the sometimes strange, always entertaning, and always food filled adventures of Garfield as I take a look at his 12 prime time specials.

For those who haven't heard of them and are wondering what any of this has to do with Noir Garfield up there, some backstory: It was 1981 and buisness was going good for Film Roman, the company who was born out of the Peanuts Specials and thanks to them had had a near yearly gig making more ever since. Keep in mind while it's mainly the big three holiday specials that get replayed there were a LOTTTT of Charlie Brown specials. As in 46 with MORE coming as AppleTV+ has gotten busy at work making new specials, starting with last years for Auld Lang Syne and not slowing down since with three this year and that's JUST at the time of this writing. Given the pace I woudln't be shocked if one more came out before year's end. They go from more holidays, to adapting various arcs of the strips such as Snoopy's Engagment or Peppermint Patty taking up Ice Skating or Charlie Brown's time at camp, to stuff such as a life action and animation mix starring snoopy's brother and my faviorite Spike, Snoopy getting plunked into call of the wild, and the touching but still somewhat baffling Cancer Special. And yes I intend to cover these too though I will report that at least for now that sadly, not a one of them so far has had Snoopy's awkawrd teenage nephew in it

So with this gravy train a rollin, it's no shock both Film Roman and Peanuts Syndicate Andrews McMeel wanted more of this. And thus here came garfield

With his strip being one of the biggest break out hits in the industries history and his books selling hand over fist, Garfield broke into the TV Screen, into america's heart and kicked the Garfield boom into high gear. As a result we got a garfield special a year, and in 87 and 89 A BONUS SPECIAL on top of the usual, until 91 when they just kinda .. stopped for some reason.

CBS just kinda canceled them for some reason despite Garfield and Friends having sucessfully spun out of them.

Now you may be asking "Jake these specials aired in the 1980s and didn't really reair for a while, why do you know about them?" And that's simple

See in 2004 a great blight came across our land and ate our crops and would dot the landscape for centuries to come: CGI Adaptations of beloved cartoon and comic strip characters.. and also Marmaduke. Seriously it's happened twice. Once is an accident, twice is some divine being punishing us for our mere existance.

Point is Garfield got in on this, and the result was what happens when a computer makes passionate love to a pile of cat hair and somehow becomes pregnant and goes on to make millons of dollars somehow. Then again I saw it in theaters for reasons that escape me now, i'm part of the problem. But love it , hate it, or resign yourself to the fact people are going to want you to review it (points to self), it did two things right: Get Bill Murray in there as garfield (in one of the most ironic bits of casting in human history), and made Paws and Co want to cash in. Thus the Garfield specials started getting put out on DVD that same year and younger me eagerly saved up for each three pack of greatness.

It was like finding lost gold: Not only was there something beyond garfield and friends, but these were tightly made, expertly animated, peak piles of garfield at low prices. Even today you can still easily score copies on ebay or thrift stores and I highly recommend it. It was through this I gained a love and bond with these specials. I stupidly sold my dvds for money later but i'm making up for that by getting new copies. Their wondrefully animated, and contain tons of the late great Lorenzo Music at his best. They also introduced me to Lou Rawls, so I got that goin for me and we'll get to him in a moment.

So now the massive amount of intro is out of the way, why this one. Well it's simple: My friend Blah has a birthday coming up, so as an early present I let him pick a review, especially since last years ended up late. When I told him I was covering the garfield specials, he picked this and thus here we are. Not that i'm complaning: Out of the specials, this one is a prime contender for my faviorite, a wholly unique special with a weird premise it carries beautifully.

For those wondering just what that is i'm going to give the premise to you mostly straight just so you can drink it in: Babes and Bullets follows Garfield as Sam Spade, a down on his luck gumshoe who is hired by the mysterious and beautiful Tanya O'Tabby to investigate her husband's mysterious death. The police ruled it a driving accident, saying he fell asleep at the wheel and drove off a nearbye pass. Tanya isn't sure, and hires Spade who after running through a few cliches of her setting him up but finding them killed by evidence takes the case both because he needs the money and finds Tanya attractive. And contrary to the name Tanya is a human as is everyone else in the story. So it's up to Garfield to find out who done did it, and bring the killer to justice as evidence piles up, his new assitant Kitty turns out to be connected to the case, and his landlord wants his rent.

Yeah all of this is true and while there's plenty of jokes dotted around it's still given an air of seriousness at times, and it IS a Garfield special where someone outright dies. I mean there's ones where he fights a panther and Odie nearly gets sacrificed to a volcano, but this really takes the cake.

As for how this came about .. at all.. and where this idea came from that one's shockingly simple: There was a book in the mid 80's, Garfield and his 9 lives, 9 short stories following a diffrent life of our hero, from Caveman, To Viking waking up in modern times, to a fairy tale, to this very detective au but everyone's a realistic but anthro cat, to space, and of course the time he was a regular housecat possed by his primal self to impliclty murder an old lady

It was weird, it was wondreful, and it naturally inspired a special. As for why it wasn't part of His 9 Lives, it's simple: It was too good and too long. The story was excellent, one of the highlights of the book.. but as the longest story in said book, it likely wouldn't of fit into a few minutes. So unlike the other cut stories it only got cut so they could expand on it, and I wouldn't be shocked if they'd already done some design work and simply saved it for the special. Thus Babes and Bullets came out a few months after 9 lives in May of the next year, and the gamble paid off as it won a Prime Time emmy.

Creatively it paid off just as well. If I haven't made it clear, let me make it crystal: This special is amazing as it is entirely weird and unique. It's very much a noir, but lightly spoofs it Naked Gun style, taking itself dead seriously while letting jokes about Spade's last name ("Are You spade?" "I never know how to answer that question), it being noon when our hero says goodnight, and something something sports refrence Id din't get, while still being a good emotoinal ride. While Sam himself isn't much of a character, he's just garfield but now he has a trench coat, an office and a secretary, the rest of the cast are intresting with Tanya geninely greiving her husband and being heartbroken to be accused, Sam's girl friday Kitty having a sad backstory tied to the victim, and even our eventual killer being found in confessoinal begging for forgiveness. It takes it self just enough serious to keep you invested but has just enough fun nonsense to remind you "oh yeah this is garfield.

There's no real slapstick here, Odie's cameo as the matience man for Garfield's building is as close as it gets and it's simply him whapping himself in the head, which helps sell the fact that the violence here, while VERY sparing (just the plot kickstarting murder, which se do get to see if thankfully not the aftermath), but while Slapstick is Garfield's main tool in the arsenal, this special is a nice reminder Jim Davis, who wrote the special, was fantastic at dialouge, and Garfield's one liners, dry detective narration and meta awarness as always (getting paticuarlly annoyed at a recurring sting), make for a good time. Lorenzo Music really shines in this one as Garfield is left without his usual foils, not the first time in these specials but certainly the longest, and left to sink or swim on how good a character he is and how great a voice actor Lorenzo Music was. And both things have him sailing up a mighty mountain stream in quality.

The soundtrack is also neat, njice jazzy noir with a hell of a theme by the man who did ALL the garfield themes, the man , the myth the muppet co-star, mr. lou rawls.

Lou Raws was a 60's jazz and blues singer, with tons of great songs to his belt (I'm partial to Natural Man myself), and a storied career. So how'd he end up singing for cat specials? Well Rawls saw how well Sexual Predator Bill Cosby was doing off Fat Albert residuals, and decided....

Doing the themes for all the specials with each one being an utter banger. I"ll be ranking them once we have more to actually rank, but Babes and Bullets, which is the name of the song, is a hell of a start, a cool, smooth noir track that plays to Rawls strengths while fitting the tone perfectly: Darker, moodier and less lasgna stained.

Character design wise there's one thing to mention: everyone's human while Garfield.. isn't. This is a change from the book who as we discussed had realistic anthros for some reason. Never do that. Keep them just cartoony enough. Since they both coudln't afford that and also didn't want to scar children for life two specails in a row, they instead went with the usual garfield style with humans. So while it has Garfield romancing human women, it somehow works. It's weird.. but it's nothing I haven't seen

The plot is nice and suspenseful and highlights one of the only two major changes from the book: In the book O'Tabby and his elderly assitant O'Felix, who kept getting passed over, were clergymen. Here their professors, keeping the money flowing for O'Tabby so he and Tanya are still rich, but keeps the story signifigance nicely.

This does present a problem though. I WANT to talk about two major plot points in detail but doing so would spoil the last bit of the special for ya all. So to avoid that, go watch it first THEN come back and read the rest. If you already have great, here's a picture to help seperate things

So the first major twist is that Kitty, who for most of the specail is just Sam's ditzy assitant, had a crush on the professor and was his former assitant. She left because she couldn't bear being around him but not with him. Julie Payne, who also voiced Liz in these specails and Garfield and Friends, does a terrific job selling just how broken the poor girl is and how guilty she felt... and Kitty also let's something important slip: that she handled the professor's medication, he was an insomniac as previously mentioned and bragged that his meds could knock out an elephant. It sounds weird now but keep in mind this was the 80's. If your medicine coudln't possibly kill you it wasn't worth having. He drank coffee constantly to stay awake, hence a little chip Garfield found earlier in his shirt pocket... and always drank from the same mug. To the specials credit the clues are all there, and all built up over things... you just have to put them together. Sure some info isn't given to you till just before the reveal.. but it never is so obtsue you can't figure it out and gives you all the pieces, never pulling any offscreen clue nonsense i've seen on the ocasoinal half assed episdoe of scooby doo (full assed ones give you all the clues like a good boy).

So it turns out to be a previous interveiwey of our hero, Professor O'Felix, a constantly passed over staple at the university who killed Tabby for a promotion to not die being an old professor's assitant.

Sadly while Sam did solve the murder and get the culprit arrested. .he dosen't end up with Tanya despite some flirting. She's rich, he's poor and you know. .her husband died A DAY AGO. I mean that never comes up but it probably shoudl've you know "I think your sexy garfield but my husbands dead so I can't bone down with you right now". It's a wonder I never became a screen writer I tells ya. He ends up with Kitty though, their freaking adorable, give me a sequel now viacom

So that was babes and bullets. It's well paced, tense and excellent and if you ignored my warnings and didn't check it out, GO DO THAT. Thanks for reading.

Next Time: YOU DECIDE. I'm holding a poll to let you guys decide which Garfield specail to pick next as chosen my my patrons and my friend Mars whose fosterting some kitties and loves garfield. So go on to

THIS HANDY DANDY LINK AND MAKE YOUR CHOICE. VOTING ENDS THURSDAY AT MIDNIGHT.

PS: Sadly this review fell through. Said kitties are doing very well thoguh so there's that.

#garfield #garfield babes and bullets #jim davis #noir #comic strips #odie #john arbuckle #lou rawls #film roman

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