This is Garfield...staring Venkman from the Real Ghostbusters. I am sure there were complaints.
So it's about Garfield, he's the star, but it has the "and friends" tag. And in this case it is important. The Friends are really the stars of the show and the source of most of the humor.
Garfield is just kind of there to mumble and kick Odie off the table. That doesn't really work for a cartoon. At least not anything longer than a short video.
Somewhere along the lines the studio executives must have realized that you can't make a Cartoon around a lazy cat that hates Mondays and really only gets up to eat. The jokes work fine in a 3 frame comic strip but a full cartoon needs something more.
So the friends were introduced and in a few short episodes the focus switched to his friends...and it worked. The Garfield name draws you in...but really once you're watching it, if it's funny you are going to keep watching it even if Garfield gets the least amount of screen time.
And they made it great by doing the classic cartoon thing of taking cute characters and making them kind of sadistic.
So it's about Garfield, he's the star, but it has the "and friends" tag. And in this case it is important. The Friends are really the stars of the show and the source of most of the humor.
Garfield is just kind of there to mumble and kick Odie off the table. That doesn't really work for a cartoon. At least not anything longer than a short video.
Somewhere along the lines the studio executives must have realized that you can't make a Cartoon around a lazy cat that hates Mondays and really only gets up to eat. The jokes work fine in a 3 frame comic strip but a full cartoon needs something more.
So the friends were introduced and in a few short episodes the focus switched to his friends...and it worked. The Garfield name draws you in...but really once you're watching it, if it's funny you are going to keep watching it even if Garfield gets the least amount of screen time.
And they made it great by doing the classic cartoon thing of taking cute characters and making them kind of sadistic.