Tom and Jerry

I agree, I like when they break formulas, or when they change a character's usual dynamic, usually because it can get a sympathetic Hidden Depth out of them (as said, as cathartic as it was seeing Tom win every once in a while, I think Jerry got a lot of sympathetic cred from being able to 'lose' once in a while).

Same for the odd time in Looney Tunes when Bugs or Speedy lost, or when a Butt-Monkey character got thrown a bone, or even when they were just put in a different formula (eg. a non Karmic Trickster role for Bugs, or whether Daffy was in screwball or egotist mode). It was interesting seeing a character outside their usual schtick.

What was that 0.1% then?

edited 14th Jan '13 10:17:45 PM by Psi001

...I remember in one episode two instances: once the Roadrunner actually gets surprised at Wile E., and once the Roadrunner temporarily gets caught.

That's it.

I believe "The Solid Tin Coyote" was the only point Wile E Coyote got the upper hand (albeit briefly) and managed to provoke a genuine reaction of fear from the Road Runner (it was also unique in having a flowing story with one invention rather than just a bunch of interchangable gags placed together, I believe "The Wizard Of Ow" is the only other example of this).

FUN FACT: The Road Runner shorts were in fact meant to be a parody of Tom And Jerry, but to Jones' surprise, the first proved popular and he ended up making it into a series. Somewhat ironic considering how much of their basis can be seen in Jones' later Tom and Jerry shorts.

edited 15th Jan '13 12:20:53 PM by Psi001

I actually like the way the Chuck Jones ones were animated. I have a hard time saying which shorts as a whole are my favorite, though Cat Concerto (if that's the one where Tom sang Figaro's Aria) is definitely up there.

edited 15th Jan '13 7:22:58 AM by theLibrarian

The late Joe Barbera gave an interview that appears as an extra in one of the Spotlight Collections. In it, Joe recounts how MGM initially nixed the idea of a cat-and-mouse cartoon.

"Cat and mouse has been done already. There's nowhere left to go with it. Cat and mouse is dead," they said. However, Bill and Joe made Puss Gets The Boot anyway.

Since MGM needed cartoons to pad out their features, they distributed it despite misgivings. "Don't do that again," Joe and Bill were warned.

Later, MGM's biggest distributor phoned producer Fred Quimby and asked, "When you gonna make another one?" Quimby responded by telling Bill and Joe, "Don't just stand there. Make another one." This is likely as close as Fred Quimby ever came to an apology.

Perhaps the greatest appeal of Thomas Cat and Jerry Mouse is that they refuse to be one-dimensional characters. Their third cartoon, "The Night Before Christmas" has Tom Cat rescue Jerry Mouse from a snowdrift and thaw him out. In "The Cat And The Mermouse," Jerry is seen resuscitating Tom. Bill and Joe have clearly crafted one of the most rounded frienemy dynamics in animation.

By comparison, in the Chuck Jones directed "Bad Day At Cat Rock," most of the gags are recycled from Jones's earlier Road Runner + Wile Coyote cartoons. At its end, Jerry Mouse looks at the audience dolefully, and shakes his head as if to apologize for sinking so low.

Whichever is the short that has Tom tearing up his million dollar "Don't hurt Jerry" check is my favorite.

There was a short that ended with them both committing suicide?!? Whaaaaa...

The shorts you are thinking of are The Million Dollar Cat and Blue Cat Blues respectively.

In fairness, Jones did try emulating the extra dimentions seen in the HB shorts, there were still instances they shown a sense of playfulness or begrudged care for each other. Sure he recycled Wile E Coyote a lot, but that also meant he replicated the same enormous use of pathos.

edited 16th Jan '13 7:03:56 AM by Psi001

And though he used a lot more of his stricter "tricker hero underdog vs fanatical brute aggressor" formula in his episodes, he at least seemed to understand that the core of the humor in Tom And Jerry isn't the same as the humor in Roadrunner or some of this other characters.

I still prefer the episodes that aren't Jones, though. With the exception of 'Year Of The Mouse,' which is one of my favorites.

Which is more or less a silent remake of the Hubie and Bertie formula (albeit lacking the usual Karma Houdini ending).

I admit most of my faves are Hanna Barbara, mostly the later 50s ones, but with a few of the better handled 40s ones.

I appreciated Jones tried to avoid being ''too' formulaic with the series like he was with some of the Looney Tunes later on, and kept up the same sort of variation as Hanna Barbara (there were still more or less the same percentage of team ups, 'Tom beats Jerry' or 'both characters win or lose' shorts, and similarly used several one shots and recurring supporting characters, even if the HB ones like Quacker and Nibbles didn't reappear). Execution wasn't as good at times, but there was plausible quality in a lot of them.

edited 16th Jan '13 6:16:54 PM by Psi001

Out of curiosity, what was everyone's opinion of Tom And Jerry Tales?

I've only seen a small portion of the series, but they go in and out. Some of the plots feel kind of clunky, either being too dialogue driven or trying too uneasily 'modernize' the franchise and it's humor, but there's some gems in there, and a lot of cases they Shown Their Work, with them keeping a lot formulas and characters from the original shorts.

There were also a fair few clever twists on the original mythos, for example, in one episode Tom becomes Genre Savvy to the whole 'smaller cuter animal always wins' concept and actually hires an even littler ant to reverse the roles and steal back all the food Jerry stole (it's a "Tom wins" episode by the way, they kept those too).

edited 21st Jan '13 8:20:51 PM by Psi001

Tom And Jerry Tales is a plus-minus thing for me. On the plus side, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera recovered their premiere characters, after MGM had wrested them away. Tom and Jerry had been handed over to Rembrandt Films of then-communist Czeckoslovakia, then were recovered by SIB Tower 12, which was under contract to MGM, which was bought by Turner Entertainment. Turner wisely handed them back to Joe Barbera. Bill Hanna had died on 22 March 2001.

On the minus side, Peggy Charen had her Action for Children's Television meddling with Congress and the FCC. Turner was sensitive to these Moral Guardians, so much of what Hanna and Barbera scripted for Tom and Jerry was heavily edited. So fans got Tom and Jerry back on the airwaves, though much the worse for wear.

Bump.

In response to the Tom and Jerry Tales question, I don't really like the shorts I remember seeing.

I thought it seriously neutered the formula-not by just the watered-down slapstick and cartoon violence, but also the music and sound effects. The music was just stock cartoon music rather than the familiar jazz/frantic orchestra music of the 40s-50s era shorts and the sound effects were nowhere near as effective as those from the original. On top of that I more or less cringed every time Jerry emoted a "cutesy" gasp or scream. The Recycled IN SPACE! plots weren't really too interesting either compared to older shorts who took the duo out of the house.

I know this all sounds like me viewing the series through rose-tinted glasses, so I'd like to note that I do like a few of the DTV shorts (which Tales was clearly based off from and/or vice versa) and I actually liked the Spin-Off Babies Tom And Jerry Kids (though again that might be my Nostalgia Filter talking).

edited 9th Dec '13 4:27:12 AM by Yeow95

Here's a promo of the new Tom and Jerry revival CN's working on (The Tom and Jerry Show). It's been available since August 2013 on some obscure YT channel, but someone else I know on another forum just recently posted it. Doesn't look like it's sitcom oriented like it's similarly-named Looney Tunes cousin.

• link removed as it was incorrect/video is dead*

Personal thoughts:

Looks a lot more violent/slapstick heavy than T&J Tales so this is an automatic plus for me. Artstyle looks nice, reminds me of the Chuck Jones shorts from the 60s, the animation could be better though, animation looks a bit too tacky (looks like it was done in Flash). Use of (stock) sound effects also gets repetitive at points too, but the use of the Mask music (don't know actual name/origin) leaves me hopeful the jazzy/orchestrated fast-paced music from the shorts will also be emulated for this series.

edited 28th Feb '14 4:02:54 PM by Yeow95

http://www.corusent.com/home/Corporate/PressReleases/tabid/1697/Default.aspx?Id=2646

Season 1 of The Tom and Jerry Show is set to premiere this Saturday @8am ET/PT on Teletoon in Canada.

I'm surprised they've airing this show to essentially no fanfare whatsoever despite the popularity of the franchise. No promos, no advertisements, no hints or clues whatsoever about it's premiere whatsoever within the past weeks, let alone the past months. And when the show finally does get a premiere, it's premieres in Canada first (compared to the US network where the shows usually premiere first-though I'm not saying Canada doesn't deserve premiere, don't take this the wrong way please XP). On Tele Toon, no less (CN recently launched a Canadian CN channel a couple of years ago. Shouldn't it be airing over there and not Tele Toon? What gives?!) It's kinda worrying about what it implies about why CN/WBA is treating the show this way.

Pretty sure TLTS also suffered from this as well, albeit to a lesser extent-it's second season premiere was announced about a week/some few days prior to it's airdate. I guess CN throwing Beware the Batman, Young Justice, and GL: TAS under the bus has screwed up WBA's management of shows as a whole-Teen Titans Go being the lone exception thanks to it being adored by the network.

EDIT: Checked Tele Toon's schedule, it has the shows on there. If you miss the 8am ET/PT premiere, it will rerun the two episodes at 12pm and the first one at 4:30pm So yeah, this is real. Names of the first two episodes: S1 E1: Spike Gets Skooled/Cats Ruffled Furniture S1 E2: Sleep Disorder/Tom's In-Tents Adventure

Source: http://www.teletoon.com/en/schedule/

edited 28th Feb '14 3:28:20 AM by Yeow95

CN setting another show up to fail? Big surprise there.

Just wanted to note that I just recently found out that the link I posted /weeks ago/ to the sneak peek clip of the show (which has since been removed) was an incorrect link and I didn't notice until now. Really sorry guys. :X

At least we don't have to wait long to see the show.

So, did anyone catch the premiere?

While this is up, I just wanted to point out that Tom & Jerry kids was one of my all time favorite revivals of the duo(Along with the 70's Chuck Jones shorts). It was a pint-sized revision of the cast to sell to a new generation, along with all the 90's you could handle, but c'mon, who didn't love the theme song?

Does anyone recall the title of the episode where Spike plays Drill Sergeant Nasty to Tom (whom he finds familiar but seemingly doesn't quite remember) and other cats at what I believe is a military school-style camp ostensibly for rehabilitating lazy cats into true mouse-catchers?

Because there wasn't an actual thread for it I'm bumping this topic to talk about the T&J Show.

It had a first season. I think much of it like T&J Tales was pretty hit and miss. Animation/artstyle looked very cheap (it was made in Flash, so there you go...) and I feel the show emphasized speaking supporting characters and setting-specific characters way too much over simple cartoon slapstick and violence.

Now it's airing it's second season. And I gotta say...the animation actually looks kinda better! Everything (not just the characters) has proper outlines again and it doesn't blatantly look like it's animated in Flash now. I think Renegade Animation (who animates the series) might have actually switched to animating the series with Toon Boom.

I did make a thread for it. but since season one sucked ass, not many people went on it.

Sorry to bump this thread, but I remember looking at a Youtube clip of the short "Blue Cat Blues" and changing my perspective on it. As a kid, I wasn't aware of the fact that Tom & Jerry were willing to commit suicide, and the fact that the female cat was a Gold Digger. While it did suck to watch Tom lose the female cat to Butch, it was pretty stupid of Tom to even spend a lot of his money on a female cat who showed obvious hints that she was more interested in Butch than him. Even Jerry tries to warn him about it.

Ummm... yeah! It sure was!

Tom isn't exactly one of the world's leading minds, here. Plus, you know...

edited 7th Apr '18 8:43:08 AM by PhysicalStamina

Yeah, I forgot about that trope. That explains it. The episode was too dark, though. Jerry's sub plot was even worse, because said female mouse got married behind his back.