Here's another episode of Garfield and Friends that shouldn't be on YouTube. I'm told the lawyers will get around to getting them all taken down any day now. Of course, they've been saying that for months so you probably have plenty of time to watch this and the other clips before they disappear.
Quick story…or maybe not so quick. Season Five of the show, I wrote an episode called "Picnic Panic" which was one long song/adventure about Garfield and his chums getting bested by a colony of musical ants. I did the lyrics and a brilliant music guy named Ed Bogas did the tune and also sang for the ants. The episode aired and drew a ton of mail asking when it could be seen again and if the song was available on a record. (Answer to the latter: Nope.) This was unprecedented.
Saturday morning cartoon shows, back when we had such things, almost never got mail; not unless you count the occasional "I love you, [character name]" in Crayola…and there weren't even that many of them. Once in a while, there'd be what seemed like an outburst of complaints about something but even that would only be like twenty letters. Some very fine, long-running shows never drew one bit of written viewer response and even most episodes of Garfield and Friends received no mail whatsoever, positive or negative.
Until the ants. "Picnic Panic" (which you can view here) got a sackful or three, all of it enthustiastic, which caused many at CBS to take note. One day soon after it first aired, I was over at the network on an unrelated project and I was introduced to that week's Vice-President in Charge of Programming Until He's Fired. He shook my hand, made the connection and said, "The man who gave us the singing ants! When are you bringing them back? You have got to do another episode with those ants!" I got the impression it was not only his favorite episode of our show but also the only one he'd seen.
The producer I was with had no idea what we were talking about and he got even more confused as the Network Veep began singing — out of tune and from bad memory — a little of the ants' song. I told him we had talked of bringing the ants back but nothing had been written. "Please," he said. "You've got to do one as soon as possible. When are you doing more episodes?" I told him we'd try to get one ready in time for our next recording session, which was a few weeks away.
The day before that recording, I was finalizing the scripts when I received a call from someone at the studio. "I understand we're recording a sequel tomorrow to that singing ant cartoon of yours," said this person. I said no, I hadn't gotten around to writing one yet. Back came a worried response: "Well, you'd better get around to writing it, right away. The network called to make sure and we promised them there'd be one in the next batch." A brief argument ensued and I finally decided it would be prudent to postpone one of the scripts I'd planned to record the next day and quickly whip up the return of the ants.
I called Ed Bogas in San Francisco and told him what I wanted to do. I had to write the lyrics and work out all the actions to accompany them, and he had to write and arrange the music and record a temporary music track for the actors to sing to…and since we both had plans for that evening, we had to do it late, after we'd returned from our respective engagements. Ed said he was up for it. I think I started writing about 11 PM, e-mailing chunks of script to Mr. Bogas, and he'd phone me back every hour or so and play sections of the music for me. Around 4 AM, I received from him an MP3 of the temp music track…and five hours later, I was at the studio to direct the actors in the following song, as well as other things we recorded that day.
Here's what we wrote that night: "Another Ant Episode." Lorenzo Music is Garfield, Thom Huge is Jon, Gregg Berger is Mr. Crater the Bug Eliminator, and that's Ed again singing for the ants. This YouTube video is a tad outta-sync at times but I think it's still watchable. You'll notice that what was on my mind was that we were doing this story only because of viewer response…
By contrast, the ants' return did not yield a flood of complimentary letters or even a trickle. I believe CBS did receive one complaint that a cartoon show had used the word "butts" — as in "kicking butts." The people over at CBS Standards and Practices (very benevolent, non-destructive people, by the way) later told me that since they couldn't think of another word to go in there that would rhyme, they'd decided to pretend they hadn't noticed it. Not for that reason, I prefer this one over the first ant episode. We never got around to doing a third one.
So there you have it. And just in case Sergio Aragonés (or someone else who understands Spanish) reads this posting, here's the same cartoon in that language. I have no idea what they're saying but I think I like it even better this way…