The fourth episode of the fourth season of Garfield and Friends.
Post-Opening Sequence Line: "You notice how every week I say something different here?"
Squeak Previews
Two movie critic mice, Gene and Rupert, review a documentary movie about mice attempting to steal food from a dangerous cat (Garfield).
The movie starts with a mouse entering the kitchen. He manages to eat a bit of cheese, but is caught by Garfield and thrown outside the house. The mouse then tries commando-style, and tries to open the fridge, only to be tossed out by Garfield again. The mouse decides to go for a different approach in which he disguise himself as Odie. Unfortunately, Garfield catches on and tosses him out (nearly tossing the real Odie out in the process). So he decides to get help from his friends, and trains them day and night until they are ready to strike. Once Jon notices the mice inside his bathtub, he screams at Garfield for help. At first Garfield intends to call for pizza after seeing the mice raiding the kitchen, but is quickly stopped by Jon. So Garfield uses a 'sneak attack' by fanning the fumes of the smelliest items he can find towards them. It works, and all of the mice flee while the leader is thrown out, which ends the documentary movie.
Both mice disagree with each other bout whether to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, until Garfield comes and gives it a thumbs down which scares them off.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Wade
Wade hypnotizes himself into turning into a monster whenever he hears a bell and back again when he hears it again.
A Tall Tale
While Garfield takes a nap, Nermal tries to sneak towards the refrigerator only to be alerted by the alarm, waking up Garfield in the process. Then Nermal informs Garfield that he's going to tell a story in this show by the producer's request. While Garfield assumes that nothing will go wrong if he refuse, when he learns that his show will be cancelled if he doesn't go through with it, Garfield agrees, so Nermal tells a story about Paul Bunyan.
Paul Bunyan (played by Jon) is a lumberjack who helps his fellow lumberjacks to chop down wood accompany by his his blue cat (played by Garfield). While Paul cuts (or mow down) trees, the cat sleeps and uses the valley as his blanket. They make a meal for his cat after he's indulged in his favorite past time (bullying dogs) and he even drinks an entire large amount of diet soda. However Garfield decides to stop the story, as Nermal's story is too absurd and he talks more about the blue cat's appetite than Paul Bunyan. Just then the producer tells them that there's a vacancy at Studio 7. Unfortunately it turns out to be the sci-fi studio, and Nermal ends up in a movie with a mutant dinosaur.
"Squeak Previews" provides examples of:
- Don't Wake the Sleeper: The mouse in The Cat has to make his way to the kitchen without waking up Garfield. Despite all the loud sounds he makes, he doesn't wake up Garfield... until he eats his cheese.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: Jon calls for Garfield when he discovers mice in the bathtub as he's taking a bath.
- Modesty Towel: Jon wears one after he gets out of the bathtub.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The two critics Gene and Rupert are a jab at Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.
- Oh, Crap!: When seeing Garfield, Gene and Rupert run for their lives in fear.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The mouse tries to sneak past Garfield by disguising himself as Odie, using an Odie puppet as his costume. Although the puppet lacks limbs and the mouse's feet can be seen at the bottom, Garfield nearly tosses the real Odie out before doing the same to the mouse.Garfield: Not a bad resemblance, especially in the brains department.
- Visible Odor: Garfield drives the mice out with the odors of Jon's dirty socks, Odie's blanket after National Fertilizer Week, and Jon's eight-to-ten-week salmon mousse, all represented by green fumes.Garfield: (to the viewers) Just be happy they haven't invented smell-o-vision yet.
"Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Wade" provides examples of:
- Absurd Phobia: It is revealed in this episode that Wade has a fear of the names Flopsy and Mopsy, hence why he ran away during Orson's reading of Peter Cottontail.
- Accidental Hero: The monster Wade beats up Orson's brothers and saves the food from Orson's dinner.
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: Wade asks himself how he got outside the barn when he returns to his normal state.
- Big Ball of Violence: The monster Wade beats up Orson's brothers in one of these.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Wade gets hypnotized into turning into a monster whenever he hears a bell. Only the sound of a second bell can return him to his normal state.
- Hypocritical Humor: Wade tells Orson that he hates people who interrupt other people when they're talking, as he interrupts Orson reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
- Jekyll & Hyde: This episode begins with Orson reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the others and has Wade accidentally hypnotized into turning into a hideous brute whenever he hears a bell ring.
- Jerkass Has a Point: When Orson's brothers capture Orson and his friends, Roy tells Orson that there's no hope, only for Orson to realize that Wade hasn't been captured. Roy then tells Orson "Like I said, no hope!" Due to Wade's cowardly personality, he would most likely run and hide if he came across Orson's brothers. However, what neither Orson nor his friends knew at the time is that Wade becomes a monster when he hears a bell ring.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Orson's brothers retreat after the monster Wade beats them up.
- Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: When Roy demonstrates how to hypnotize someone into falling asleep, Orson assures him that no one has so little brainpower that they'd fall asleep from that. Cut to Wade falling asleep.
"A Tall Tale" provides examples of:
- And a Diet Coke: Paul Bunyan's blue cat's meal includes 100,000 gallons of soda. One of the cooks assures the other that it's diet soda, meaning it's only one calorie.
- Comically Missing the Point: At the end of the episode, Nermal is kicked off the show by the network executives after a plunge in the ratings, possibly due to people not believing his story. Garfield gives him a new job in Studio 7, where Attack of the Mutant Dinosaurs is being filmed. Nermal screams for Garfield to help him, as he's being chased by a 50-foot dinosaur, but Garfield assures the viewers that Nermal's exaggerating; the dinosaur's only 40 feet tall.
- End-of-Series Awareness; Parodied; the network executives want Nermal to take over as star for an episode. Garfield refuses to have him on his show and says "So what if they don't like it. What can they do to me?" and an announcer then threatens to replace Garfield and Friends with a show about snails and that the former will never be seen again.
- Executive Meddling: Parodied In-Universe; Nermal is made the star of the episode at the demands of the network executives, much to Garfield's ire.
- Hypocritical Humor: Garfield refuses to believe Nermal's story about a cat that eats too much, believing it too be too fantastic for him to believe. This is coming from Garfield himself, a cat who many times is shown to be a Big Eater.
- Toilet Humor: After Paul Bunyan's blue cat has the world's biggest sandbox. The entire California Coastline had to be dug to import its sand.
