When it comes to the popularity of Garfield, one of the odder disconnects has been the difference in the quality of the daily comic strip and the quality of the television shows spun off from it. To be sure, Garfield the comic strip was much better in the 80s than it is today, when it's largely a collection of lame punch lines. But even in its heyday, Garfield was mostly just a gag-a-day. The prime-time specials, however, as well as the Saturday morning series Garfield & Friends, were, for the most part, pretty terrific. As it turns out, Garfield worked better in the longer medium that TV can afford, though the talent involved in the TV production--musician Lou Rawls, who sang a number of memorable original songs, voice actor Lorenzo Music, whose wry tones breathed life into Garfield's words, and, probably most importantly, animator Phil Roman, who directed most of the early specials and produced the Saturday morning series before going on to work on some of the greatest seasons of The Simpsons--certainly didn't hurt the quality. While I don't want to oversell the Garfield TV output as unheralded gems, the shows were of consistently high quality, especially compared to most TV animation of the 1980s.
Garfield's Thanksgiving closed out the 80s in style, premiering only a few weeks before the end of the decade. It's probably one of the weaker Garfield specials, and definitely the least of the three holiday-based specials after Garfield's Halloween Adventure and A Garfield Christmas. Still, its a solid half-hour, and one, that unlike most of the Thanksgiving specials covered by this column, is actually about Thanksgiving.
For a show called Garfield's Thanksgiving, the focus is less on Garfield and more on his owner Jon, who finally convinced Garfield's vet, Liz, to go out with him, specifically to come over for homemade Thanksgiving dinner. The sequence where he asks her out has not aged well, as Jon refuses to take no for an answer, and ultimately resorts to holding his breath until Liz agrees. Her decision to accept the date is odd, given that she had already rejected Jon three times in that one short scene, and that was before he acted like a three-year-old, but hey, the story needs to be moved along.
Of course, Jon has no idea how to cook Thanksgiving dinner, which he doesn't realize until the still-frozen turkey is being put in the oven at 500 degrees. Luckily, Garfield convinced Jon to call his grandmother, played by Pat Carroll, whose late-in-the-show appearance livens things up considerably. Carroll, whose arguably most famous role, as Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid, had opened the Friday before this originally aired, is a delight, though she doesn't get nearly enough screentime. Her character also helped highlight the special's touch of misogyny. Liz not only went out with a guy who held his breath until she said yes, but apparently, she had nothing better to do on Thanksgiving. Neither did Grandma, who was nearby and happy to drop whatever she had planned to bail her grandson out. Even worse, she slipped out before dinner. Why didn't she stay? And why wasn't Jon already spending Thanksgiving with her?
These flaws aside, at least Garfield's Thanksgiving actually involves the holiday. Yes, a story about Jon getting someone to prepare dinner for his date could have been done anytime of year, but the story still involves Thanksgiving traditions, and likely wouldn't have been as potent set on any average day. That gives it some extra points.
This was near the end of the line for Garfield's primetime specials. The Saturday morning series was already into its second season, and there would be only two more primetime specials over the next two years. This was also Carroll's final time as Grandma. While Garfield continues to be popular (Bill Murray, of course, voiced the cat in two live-action feature films during the aughts, and a CGI Garfield series aired from 2009 to 2016, with another one in development), he will certainly not have the cultural impact he had in the 1980s. Garfield's Thanksgiving served as a capper for that run.
Next time: Thanksgiving across the pond.
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