Garfield, Odie, and the Dead Vinyl Years

by editor Michele Catalano

I am sitting here at 3 a.m. on Election Day morning, watching a Garfield and Friends episode. I have never seen a Garfield and Friends episode before—it’s just not my choice of animated shows—but I’m watching this one because a) i am high, and b) it is about Jon Arbuckle’s record player. It’s about seven minutes long, and that is probably seven minutes too long to be watching Garfield and Friends, especially at 3 a.m. 

But here we are in Jon’s apartment, where Garfield (cat) and Odie (dog) are wreaking havoc by playing “stagecoach” with Jon’s furniture. Meanwhile, Jon has answered his door to find an “attractive” lady who has the wrong address. This somehow ends up with Jon showing the woman his records.

“What’s a record?” the woman asks.

And so we are taken on a journey where no one except Jon remembers what a record or record player is. They only know of CDs. This posits that the people in Jon’s world have long term memory issues. There is no other reason that these people—most of whom seem to be in their thirties don’t remember records. This episode aired in October 1992, only a few years removed from when CDs took over. Are they all under some collective spell cast upon them by Big CD that causes them to think this is the only way they ever listened to music?

The episode is about one minute in, and I already have a million questions. I’m about to turn it off, but then Odie and Garfield break Jon’s record player. The very record player he wants to use to play records that night for the woman who had been looking for a different address, but who has carelessly agreed to come to Jon’s house that evening to listen to music with a complete stranger who comes off as unhinged. But that’s a whole other story. Right here and now, we have the problem of Jon being without a record player for this date. So he goes to an electronics store and asks to purchase a record player but—no surprise here—the clerk doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This is like that movie where the guy remembers the Beatles but no one else does. Just a collective mindfuck in which a very specific cultural artifact is removed from memory. I am trying to suspend my disbelief. But come on, it’s hard.

So Jon heads to an antiques store with Odie and Garfield (both unleashed). Jon has to jog the memory of the old guy working there as to what a record player is. He finally shakes loose his memories enough to dig out a vintage stereo cabinet. Jon purchases the piece of furniture. Then he leaves Odie and Garfield with the record player as he gets the car.

Fans of Garfield and Friends—of which there are many, I’ve discovered—will immediately know what happens next. Because Garfield and Odie are mischievous idiots, they decide to use the record player as a stagecoach, having not learned their lesson from the previous stagecoach incident. 

Long story short, they wreck the stereo cabinet, and Jon gets pissed. But he does not give up on being able to play records for his unnamed date. He gives Odie and Garfield some musical instruments and stuffs them inside the broken record player like so:

He pretends to play a record while Garfield and Odie play some instruments, and this unnamed woman is going to be entertained by this blatant subterfuge on Jon’s part? I’m sorry, but I am not buying this or the entire premise. 

This was written and aired during a time in which vinyl was declared dead. No one was pressing records anymore. Record stores were now CD palaces. Only the most diehard hippies still collected vinyl. For all intents and purposes,  was dead, and Jim Davis, Garfield’s creator, was obviously riffing on this. Imagine being in Jon’s shoes, having an integral part of your life called into question by everyone around you, and the only one willing to indulge your version of the truth is some woman who appears to have the IQ of Odie. 

Where Jon and I differ here is over the end game. He is using his records as a means to an end, to possibly get laid by the unnamed woman. Jo

n is always wanting to get laid. This is canon. Does he really love his records? If he did, would he handle them like this?

No. None of us would hold our records like that. But only Jon Arbuckle, weirdo extraordinaire, could get a strange woman to agree to come into his house by wielding the record in front of her like a matador with a cape. But that’s neither here nor there. What I started thinking about was, What if I woke up one day and was the only one who knew what records were? What if all my favorite record stores disappeared and this site was called I Have That on CD? What if the only records left were the ones on my shelf?

In a way, we lived through an era just like that, didn’t we? The transition from albums to CDs was swift and thorough, and Jim Davis is probably lamenting the fact that, in 1992, nobody was listening to records. They were artifacts, booby prizes awarded for being old and in the way of progress. No one back then could have foreseen the eventual resurgence of records. They remained a punchline to ageist jokes. 

I wonder what Jon Arbuckle thinks about this. Has he bought more records? Updated his stereo equipment? Made out with a chick while Dire Straits played in the background (Jon would own only classic rock and smooth jazz records)? Maybe Jim Davis should do an updated version of this episode, in which John sells his record collection for a small fortune and immediately regrets it when the unnamed woman comes over with a gift for him—a new turntable. 

Well, I’ve already read too much into this episode of Garfield and Friends. The moral of the story is to not take your record collection for granted. And, I guess, don’t use stereo equipment as a stagecoach. 

disclaimer: not only did i watch the episode under the influence, but i was very obviously high while i wrote this