YMMV / Garfield Specials

• Awesome Music:
  • "Camping Is My Life" from Garfield in the Rough. Who knew Jon had such a good singing voice?
  • Pretty much the entire soundtrack for Here Comes Garfield, but especially "Long About Midnight".
  • "Well he's a fat cat, a cool cat, nobody's fool cat but look out cuz here comes Garfield..."
  • Really, a lot of the music that Lou Rawls did for the special series counts. This is what happens when you get a genuine jazz and soul legend to do the theme songs for your fat cat show. The theme for Nine Lives is an example that sticks out for many, despite never being released as a full single and only existing as the show's minute-long cut.
  • "Shake Your Paw", the song Jon dances to in Garfield Gets a Life.
  • Garfield's Halloween Adventure has "This is the Night". It's not even a minute long, but it's extremely memorable and catchy nonetheless.
    • The sea shanty Garfield sings while in his pirate costume is also really good. "Sixty men all lost at sea, all of them drunk except for me..."
• Crosses the Line Twice: Garfield Gets a Life has a scene where Garfield asks if they can rent the movie Old Yeller because he likes films with happy endings. The ending of Old Yeller, where Travis is forced to put down his dog Old Yeller, being regarded by Garfield as a happy ending would be rather tasteless if it weren't for the fact that he is a cat and cats tend to dislike dogs.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This comment about the panther in Garfield in the Rough:
    Its evil yellow eyes stare right into your soul!
  • The final special Garfield Gets a Life has Frank Welker voice a character named Lorenzo. The character sharing his first name with that of Garfield's voice actor Lorenzo Music comes off as prophetic towards how Frank Welker would replace Music in the role of Garfield after Music's death for later media (like the Garfield Animated Movie Trilogy and The Garfield Show).
• Memetic Mutation: Jon's disco dance from Garfield Gets a Life has recently become quite popular thanks to the recognizable character, silly dance, and surprisingly fluid animation.
• Narm: The look on Garfield's face after Odie is dragged away. It looks less like a facial expression you'd have after your best friend is taken away to be killed and more like one you'd make during a staring contest. Still doesn't help the song that comes after it, however.
• One-Scene Wonder: Binky the Clown's debut in Garfield's Halloween Adventure. It only lasts a minute, but it's the funniest minute in the entire special (and paved the way for him to appear in both Garfield And Friends and the strip itself).
• Retroactive Recognition: One of the animators for Garfield on the Town was Brad Bird.
• Signature Scene:
  • Garfield Gets a Life has Jon's epic dance to "Shake Your Paw."
  • The Christmas special has the very heartfelt, emotional scene where Grandma fondly, wistfully recalls her late husband and says how much she misses him. This scene has only become more iconic in the wake of the death of Pat Carroll in 2022, with this scene being cited as the other highlight of her career second only to voicing Ursula.
• Tear Dryer: In Garfield in Paradise, Odie and Monkey drive a car into a volcano to stop it from erupting. Garfield is sad that he Never Got to Say Goodbye to Odie and Owooda tosses a lei into the volcano, but then Odie and Monkey crawl out unharmed, so everyone cheers.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Garfield in Paradise features Jon staying at a motel where "the bathroom's down the hall". Nowadays, even the dumpiest motel would have an ensuite bathroom (and indeed may be required to by law, depending on jurisdiction). Granted it only helps the joke as the whole point is that the motel is a slum.
  • Here Comes Garfield has Jon's Jerkass neighbour very easily set up his pets to be captured by animal control, and emphasises the legitimate danger that Odie (and to a lesser extent, Garfield) would be put down if he's not claimed or adopted soon. While Odie and Garfield not having any kind of subdermal identification is a case of Technology Marches On, it was common practice to put down animals from the streets at the time the special was made in 1983. Soon after the special first aired though, attitudes began to change, and not only was it coming into law that this constituted animal cruelty, but many places that did this were beginning to get lawsuits from pet owners who were furious that the place had barely tried to reunite them with their pets before putting said animals down. Today (barring extreme circumstances), it would be a long time before Odie was at risk of being put down in the manner shown, and the whole scenario can seem strange to modern viewers.
  • Garfield's Halloween Adventure opens on an announcement that the broadcasting day will begin with an episode of The Binky the Clown Show. Today, even local TV stations generally broadcast 24 hours a day.
    • Also when Garfield shuts off the TV, it's not on the same channel when he turns it back on. Back then, televisions used to reset to channel 3 when turned off.
    • Binky is also a reference to the real life Bozo the Clown, who had various local TV shows produced across the country from the mid to late 20th century. The last Bozo show went off the air in 2001 and the character hasn't been relevant in kid's media since.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: In Garfield on the Town, when Jon calls Liz out of concern for Garfield being missing and potentially getting injured somehow, Liz's only response is to say in an annoyed tone, "Well, in that case, you don't need a pet hospital. You want a tow truck!" and hang up on Jon. Even if Jon does annoy her with his flirting (which he doesn't do once in this scene), you'd think a veterinarian would be at least a little concerned about an animal being missing and possibly hurt.

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