the other side of things
did anyone watch garfield? the cartoon show….it was good, real good. back when garfield had street cred and having a fat cat was not the norm. jon had trouble with women and odie had trouble catching his tail and garfield really didn’t have much trouble with his lasagna and his bed and his abu dhabi and his t.v. But then what happened after the first hilarious episode. did you guys notice. it was very subtle and no one ever talked about it but when they came back from commercial we weren’t reintroduced to happenings of the cat. they switched to something they called U.S. Acres. It was inexplicable and utterly confusing. this is what i can say about it; it was on a farm, it had a bunch of animals who had an established society, like on kid nation. and then something always happened on this show, too, but it was never funny like nermal becoming ruler of abu dhabi to annoy garfield or jon lighting his hair on fire. it was always something farm related like the tractor broke and the dog, chicken, and cow tried to fix it or the scarecrow fell over and everyone chipped in and worked together to pick it back up and, i don’t know, while this happened the pig and goat would make fun of each other but in the end worked together for the greater good and developed a newfound respect in the other specie. and then they would finish whatever they were doing, we would get a couple of commercials, and then we would go back to watching garfield. which left the viewer sitting on his sofa wondering, “what?!” perhaps the show existed because the writers only had two garfield episode-worths of good material each week and thought if they slapped together something about a talking horse and sheep people would be entertained. but the talking sheep was a segway between two stories about a talking cat who had a lot more going for him; he was fat, which during those times was funny, he was mean, also funny, and his supporting cast was an adequate complement. so we started using U.S. Acres the same way most people used the football content of the Super Bowl; time for something else. But we would rush back for the second garfield, fearing each time that the end of commercials would bring back a second episode of U.S. Acres and then what? But maybe someone liked U.S. Acres, and maybe someone watched garfield just for the U.S. Acres, and maybe someone did his homework during garfield and then watched U.S. Acres intently and then went back to his homework, maybe even turned off the t.v., and maybe someone had a U.S. Acres poster on his wall, and maybe someone wrote up a petition when it went off the air, and if that is so perhaps i can find this one person, because i can come up with boring, farm-related issues for a donkey and a squirrel and a bull to tackle each day. what about a drought, that could comprise a series of episodes, with major characters getting sick and dying and eventually a few would survive and pick up the pieces. that could be like an emmy-nominated storyline. or maybe they could sell the farm and move to the city. they could call it pig and horse and dog and duck and cow and gopher in the city.
