The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (1980)
First episode title: Farewell, Sweet Mouse / Droopy's Restless Night / New Mouse in the House
How familiar with the show am I?: I had, of course, heard of Tom and Jerry, but I wasn't aware of this specific version.
Tom and Jerry is one of those franchises where it's hard to imagine you're reading a cartoon blog if you don't know what it is, but to summarise: Tom is a cat. Jerry is a mouse. Tom chases Jerry, usually with the goal of eating him. Got it? In this one they're joined by some of their fellow classic MGM cartoon characters like Droopy and Slick Wolf (a newly-renamed Big Bad Wolf).
Unfortunately one of the first things I noticed about this cartoon is how low-budget it must have been. Some of the animation is sub-par and far too much of it is recycled. The humour in the actual shorts is alright, but the little between-shorts skits are not. However, if you're a regular reader, you'll know what my worst experience with a cartoon so far is, and luckily this one doesn't sink as low as that.
The opening sequence struck me, because the premise - the characters are trying to construct a title card while also chasing each other around and getting in each other's way - is the same premise as the opening of the later Tom & Jerry Kids, which I am familiar with from my childhood. I had a quick look and it doesn't look like any other Tom & Jerry shows have ever done this - it's just those two.
Anyway, we're in ABA format again - a Tom & Jerry short, then a Droopy short, and then another Tom & Jerry. Before each short there's a little bit with all the characters.
As I said, these little bits are not great. In each one, Droopy paints a background that will be the actual setting of the real short once it starts, makes some kind of comment, and then some of the other characters pop in with little jokes of their own. This first one begins:
Droopy: Roses are red, violets are blue, painting's my job, that's what I do. Cute and somewhat wet.
I think that last part is because he's painted a scene where it's raining. I hope that's why. Then we cut to other characters - Spike (a bulldog who usually antagonises Tom) explains to his son Tyke the reasons why rain is a good thing, the punchline being "it tests your rain hat". See what I mean? What is this?
Then Slick Wolf and a more obscure character called Barney Bear are standing in the rain, with Slick holding an umbrella that covers himself but doesn't quite cover all of Barney - Barney asks if he could move the umbrella over, and Slick steps away from Barney, for which Barney thanks him. I think Barney's meant to just be a bit of an idiot. Then Droopy shelters under a bus stop only to get splashed by a passing van, as an off-screen voice (Spike?) tells us "Now that's funny!" I'm going to have to disagree...
OK, time for the first actual short - "Farewell, Sweet Mouse", starring Tom and Jerry. As mentioned, the scene from Droopy's painting each time becomes the setting of the short, so here we have a view of a house where it's raining outside. Inside, Tom is sleepily curled up on the windowsill looking out at the rain, when suddenly a raindrop hits him on the head! It seems the house has a leak. More than one leak in fact - he walks across the room to find somewhere else to sleep, and we see a couple of containers have been placed below other drips. Tom settles down on a cushion in front of a shelving unit filled with all kinds of random objects, some of which will soon be relevant.
We zoom in on the top shelf, where Jerry is sleeping, between a plate and a xylophone. (Can that become a phrase? "Between a plate and a xylophone"?) Then a rain drop hits the top of Jerry's head, waking him up and annoying him. He drags the plate over and leans it against the xylophone, creating a makeshift shelter. (What would it mean? Surrounded by tools, if you can just find the right way to use them?) Now he'll be dry, but the next drip runs down the plate and disturbs Tom's sleep!
Unknowingly, Jerry has started the conflict in this one - you would expect that to usually be Tom's role. Anyway, Tom climbs up a ladder to get to the top shelf, grabs the plate, and throws it out of the room. But it boomerangs back in through another door and hits him in the back of the head! Jerry chuckles at Tom's misfortune, but then another raindrop hits him on the head and he's back to being annoyed again. Neither Tom nor Jerry is the antagonist here, really - Mother Nature is the cruellest villain of all.
So Jerry gets under the xylophone instead. A raindrop, clearly aiming right at Jerry this time, hits the key above him and plays a note. Then another. Jerry gets inspired - he starts moving the xylophone above him, so that each drop plays a different note, making a little tune! Not a very good tune, but he looks adorable doing it.
Anyway, now it's the xylophone that's annoying Tom, so he gets back up the ladder and grabs it, but the ladder has become wet - I suppose from the leaky roof - and he tumbles down, and the xylophone unravels(?) over his face. Drops of rain start hopping down the xylophone, playing more notes. This rain is quite lively for drops of water!
Jerry, still on the shelf, gets hit by another drop of water. The music sting whenever anyone gets hit with water, combined of course with the animation, is really effective at expressing the annoyance the characters feel - it's jarring in a way that just a drop of water on-screen wouldn't be. I can relate - I hate an unexpected drop of rain on my head too, especially if it touches my neck.
This time, Jerry slides a bucket along so that it's in position to catch the raindrops. Meanwhile, Tom gets under a drum, hoping to sleep soundly in there. He dozes right off, but his snores (magnified by the drum?) annoy Jerry. So Jerry takes a clearly antagonistic role, tying a ball of string to the bucket and sort of abseiling down with a small trumpet (still the size of his whole body) in one hand, and honking it right at the drum! Tom wakes with a start, pops up out of the drum, and gets the trumpet blasted right in his face too!
Tom tries to grab the string to get Jerry, but ends up getting the bucket of water on his head - taking it off reveals that it's made his head bucket-shaped! That's uncalled for - he hasn't even tried to eat Jerry once here!
So Tom gets out of the drum and grabs a pair of stilts - you know, those cat-scale stilts all cat owners keep around - and tries to grab Jerry on the top shelf, but the stilts get tangled in the ladder and Tom flies off, landing in a jack-in-the-box that springs him back out towards the shelves! Real classic-style cartoon antics going on here. Jerry gets into a toy plane and flies off, out of Tom's reach, then comes back to skim the fur off Tom's back with the propeller! As he flies away again, Tom chases him off the shelf, ends up above nothing, and falls down into one of the containers that was catching the rainwater! Loving all of this.
Jerry parks the little plane outside his mousehole and walks inside. Tom notices a nearby croquet mallet and ball and gets a devious grin - he uses the mallet to drive the ball into the hole and plug it. Then he reaches out the window, turns on a hose, and pulls the hose into the house and puts it into a vent. Result: Jerry's space inside the wall starts filling up with water! Tom is back to being the cruel one here!
Jerry has somehow obtained a tiny balloon - the sort clowns make balloon animals from - and blows it up to make a makeshift inner tube. Tom goes back to his cushion to try to sleep again, when the wall bursts, water flooding out of it and all over the room! How ironic - all this started because he wanted to get away from the water. He rushes to open the front door, letting the water flood out, Jerry riding it the whole way.
We see Jerry riding the water along in the rain when his inner tube bursts:
Balloon wasn't up to the job, eh? Tom rushes outside, finds the burst balloon, and from the look on his face is clearly pleased by the conclusion that Jerry must be dead! As he walks off, though, our view descends to a nearby drain, which Jerry's head peeks out of, grinning.
Tom goes back into the house and once again tries to go to sleep. Actually, it looks like some time passes, so he actually does get some sleep for a while, until a crash of thunder wakes him back up. He blearily looks over at a nearby photo of himself and Jerry, when suddenly the angelic soul of Jerry rises out of him, kisses picture-Tom on the cheek, and flies out of the picture!
Angel Jerry is adorable. He waves at the real Tom, who looks stunned, then flies into the mousehole, puts up a "For Sale" sign and collects his suitcase, and flies up and away! Tom rubs his eyes, and the mousehole changes back to the cracked and destroyed one from when the wall burst - right, of course, even the mousehole was part of his hallucination. The music for this part is quite weird and eerie and makes me think of EarthBound. The real Jerry, meanwhile, shows up on the windowsill, but Tom doesn't notice.
Tom is spooked by another flash of lightning and starts praying! I didn't know he was religious. Then he looks at a nearby grandfather clock, and Jerry's ghostly head appears on the clock face! As Tom cowers, the real Jerry gets a mischievous look on his face...
First he creeps onto a table and opens a bag of marbles, making them scatter on the floor and scaring Tom. Then he cuts a scrap of cloth from a nearby sewing kit, making himself a little "ghost" costume - the next flash of lightning casts his huge shadow on the wall, and Tom sees what seems to be a huge ghost! Tom flees into the next room, where a radio annoys him by announcing the next song as "Mouse House Rock", so he turns it off. Well, now I want to know how that song would have gone!
He does get to hear some music anyway, though - a nearby piano starts "playing itself". Of course, Jerry is inside. Tom jumps over and slams his paws on the keys, and the lid comes down and flattens them! He flees to the window to stick his hands out there, so that... a little bit of lightning... can restore them to normal? That's how it looks, anyway. Jerry continues playing, so Tom rushes back into the room to dive into the piano, but Jerry is able to flee before Tom can catch him.
Jerry's next plan is a little confusing - he spray paints some random musical instruments to make them glow, attaches them to transparent balloons, and lets them float over to Tom. They float into the room, making a weird noise because Jerry is spinning one of those noisemaker things and playing a tambourine at the same time! It's a little bit overly elaborate, and Tom figures out the prank anyway, noticing Jerry's silhouette from behind a curtain and spotting the "invisible" balloons. I thought Tom would see Jerry's silhouette as another ghostly apparition, so he's smarter than I thought!
So now Tom starts chasing Jerry again! Just a straightforward chase around the room to start with, but then Tom crashes to the ground and Jerry takes the opportunity to run right over him.
Jerry slips under a rug but Tom is waiting at the other side, and actually catches him! But all of a sudden - the front door opens, to reveal a ghost, a skeleton, and a scarecrow! Tom lets go of Jerry and they both start cowering under the rug, until... the three apparitions say "trick or treat" in children's voices, of course, and hold up their bags. I did see that one coming. No longer scared, Tom resumes chasing Jerry under the rug, as we fade out.
OK, second between-shorts bit, let's get it over with. Droopy paints a studio and tells us that "hi" is short for "hello". Not quite, looking at the etymology - "hi" is related to "hey", and "hello" is essentially "hey" + "lo" (as in "lo and behold"). Tyke cuts a big bush into a topiary elephant, which comes to life and chases him. Then Slick Wolf asks Tuffy (a grey mouse in a diaper) what the biggest mouse in the world is, and Tuffy responds with "a hippopota-mouse". Nothing funny happened here, and we move on.
The second proper short is "Droopy's Restless Night". On a construction site, a tower is being built - right now it's all girders. You'll have to forgive me for knowing nothing about construction and just describing what I'm seeing of the work with no knowledge of whether it's typical or whether I'm missing a joke. So, Droopy is riveting a girder - Spike, who's lounging on a pillow nearby with a bucket of rivets, is tossing hot rivets in Droopy's direction, and he's drilling them in with a riveting gun. Droopy is tethered to the building with a rope, which is a good thing because he goes too far, off the end of the girder - Spike hurriedly pulls him back, only for Droopy to land on his foot, still drilling, causing him immense pain. Don't worry, I know that part is a joke.
Droopy thanks Spike for saving him (we'll see that he's always very polite but also so sarcastic as to make it impossible to tell when he's being genuine). Then the camera pans down to Slick Wolf, as a foreman, looking up at them from the ground with binoculars. Spike gets nervous that the boss is watching and decides to switch places, taking the riveting gun and telling Droopy to throw the rivets. Droopy pauses to tell us, the audience, that Spike is his hero - again, very hard to tell how sincere this is.
So Droopy starts flinging rivets, Spike starts drilling, but the boss is still watching, so Spike tells Droopy to speed it up, and he does - by a lot:
You'd think the speed would be what causes the next hilarious injury, so it's a nice subversion when Spike successfully drills all the rivets in the wall, but then steps on a stray rivet and gets burned that way! He flies up and his head gets lodged in the next girder up, making a perfect Spike-head-and-helmet shaped space in it - that's one weak girder!
The boss comes up on a lift, and Droopy says "uh-oh" but then chuckles, which is the only time in this short that he stops being so deadpan. Slick starts berating Spike for "hanging around" (heh) and then goes down again, and Droopy frees Spike using some kind of massive wrench that he just whacks the girder with.
Spike and Droopy's next task involves filling a wheelbarrow with some concrete, so Droopy is ready with the wheelbarrow as Spike starts the concrete machine. If you've seen a cartoon, you can probably predict the next couple of beats - the machine doesn't initially work, Spike looks inside it to see what's wrong, and gets covered in concrete. Any cartoon character should know not to look into a hole that's supposed to be emitting something! Droopy makes a joke about Spike being "hard-nosed", and then the boss comes up and accuses him of standing around like a statue - then he tips over and gets told off for lying down on the job! Spike hasn't even done anything to deserve all this torment in this one!
An old-timey whistle connected up to a clock goes off, the boss announces it's time to quit, and tells the two to improve tomorrow. Hey, they definitely got some work done!
Now it's night and we see inside... Spike and Droopy's bedroom. They live together? And they have a bunk bed! Cute. Droopy's bottom bunk is half the length of Spike's top bunk, too. Even cuter.
Spike is already asleep and Droopy is just getting in bed. He's muttering about how much work there is to do tomorrow as he drifts off... and then he starts riveting in his sleep! It's the same pneumatic drill motion he was making while awake! Droopy dreaming about getting the work done makes it seem like he is at least sincere about the work itself.
Somehow this wakes Spike up, although the only sound it makes is a cartoonish boing that doesn't seem like the sort of sound that would literally be happening in universe. Then Droopy sleepwalks right out of the window! Spike is concerned, but Droopy manages to bounce back up off the door canopy, and right into Spike's arms!
Spike gets a devious look on his face.
Spike: Shame to waste all of that energy sleeping!
The next thing we know, Droopy is carrying his work stuff and wearing his work hat, and Spike is telling Droopy to "foller me", pronounced exactly that way. It's interesting because he doesn't noticeably have an unusual accent outside of that one line.
On the construction site, Spike winds the clock attached to the whistle by hand so that it reaches 5 o'clock and blows to signal the start of work. Damn, that's an early start. Spike tells Droopy to drop his toolbox and start working, and of course, the sleepy Droopy tosses his toolbox right onto Spike's foot. His poor paws have been taking some major damage today!
Immediately, Droopy is riding the riveting gun along a girder - but he's headed right for the edge! Spike hurriedly gets in a crane, lifts another girder beside it, and when Droopy gets on the new girder Spike turns it around so that Droopy goes back where he came from. Nice of Spike to make sure Droopy doesn't die - although I guess he would only be making more work for himself if he didn't! Then Spike stops to wipe his brow in relief... and the girder drops down and flattens the crane, crushing Spike. What sort of backwards karma is this?!
So now Droopy is continuing to rivet while Spike rests on a nearby pillow - the exact same scenario we started the sketch with, except it's night-time, Droopy is asleep, and Spike is drifting in and out of sleep. Again, Droopy seems really sincere here, telling himself "I can't let my buddy down" in his sleep when Spike isn't even conscious enough to hear it.
As Spike dozes, Droopy does seemingly everything in his sleep - we see him sawing wood, hammering nails, and cementing bricks together! Eventually we fade back to the outside, in the daytime, where what had only been the framework of a building now looks like a finished skyscraper! I wish I was that productive when I'm awake!
We pan across a finished interior floor of the building to find the sleepy Droopy building a brick wall... around the area where Spike is dozing, walling him in! Droopy's eyes appear to be partially open now - I don't know if that's an animation mistake or an indication that this part is intentional, but again, it seems really unfair on Spike if it is!
The whistle blows - it's showing 5 o'clock again, so I guess the clock thinks it's 5pm?
Droopy: Oh, my goodness! Quitting time already! And we finished just in time, Spike. Now, where did he go?
But then the boss shows up outside, making it seem like we've actually just reached the real start of the working day, which I'm not sure squares up with the numbers we've seen. Or maybe Spike set the clock back to the real time after the initial trick? Slick looks shocked, then very pleased. He takes the lift (looks like a fully built one too!) up to the floor where Droopy is, congratulates him, and tells him to take the rest of the day off!
Droopy tries to say that Spike deserves the credit too - see, this just makes his earlier sarcastic moments harder and harder to understand - but the boss says he'll deal with Spike if he ever shows up, as we get to see Spike's eyes glaring out of the one empty brick hole in the wall!
Third and last of the between-shorts. Droopy paints a living room and jokes about how handsome he is, and Barney Bear does the old joke about how it doesn't matter if he doesn't have a fire to toast his marshmallows on, because he doesn't have any marshmallows either. The reaction to the joke doesn't seem to fit the joke, but it makes a nice reaction gif:
Tuffy: That's really gross.
Barney: Maybe so, but I liked it!
The final short of the episode is "New Mouse in the House". We open on the same living room Droopy just painted - it's apparently the living room in the house where Tom lives, but it looks nothing like anywhere in the house from the first short. Has he moved since then?
But some things never change - as we begin, Tom is sleeping! We see him dream of various meats in a thought bubble above his head, and when he attempts to eat the fish that appears, it vanishes and he wakes up in shock, seeming to wonder where the fish went! I wonder if cats do dream about food like that. Of course, we've already seen one who does!
Tom rushes to the kitchen and opens the fridge. In there, Jerry is on a revolving platform, sampling something out of a bowl! Tom is ready to grab him - yes, Tom definitely does want to eat Jerry in this one - but Jerry starts running, causing the platform to spin. I have to admit, I've never seen a fridge with a revolving section like this. As it spins faster and faster, food starts to fly out all over the kitchen! Jerry giggles and runs away.
We pan across the resulting mess. Fruits, meat, eggs, milk cartons and everything else are splattered all over the room. A human man walks in - he evidently owns Tom here, but I have no idea who he is. He asks Tom who's responsible for the mess, and Tom mimes that it was a little mouse - yes, it's an impressive mime for a cat to pull off. The man still blames Tom for not getting rid of the mouse, and kicks him out of the house, straight into a rubbish bin!
Tom pops up from the bin to see someone advertising a robot mouse. "She walks, she winks", apparently. And she essentially looks like Jerry in a bow and a dress. That's how you make girls in cartoons, you know. Tom looks like he has an idea, and we cut to him back in the house...
Now here's a shot that confuses me. Tom has somehow obtained (probably stolen) two of these robot mice - one of them is open with wires hanging out, and there are tools and robot parts everywhere. Tom pulls the cord at the back of the other robot, and she starts walking in one spot on the floor, saying that she's hungry and thirsty. I'm not really sure what the other mouse with the parts hanging out was meant to be - we never see it again. Does this imply that Tom needed the parts from two robot mice to get the result he wanted?
Tom uses a remote control to make the robot approach Jerry's mousehole, which has a door in this incarnation, and knock on the door. When Jerry answers, the robot says "Let's play! Let's play! C'mon, big boy..." and Jerry hilariously falls for her instantly, love hearts in his eyes and all. Jerry must be very stupid to fall for this - normal mice clearly can't talk in this world, for a start!
The robot leads Jerry into the kitchen and says that she's hungry, pointing to a large cake on top of the counter, which looks very high up from a mouse perspective! Still, Jerry is able to dash up there, grab a cake slicer, and start cutting a slice the size of himself. Meanwhile, Tom is ready with a cloche, and as Jerry walks along with the cake, Tom catches him with it! He sticks out his claws, then raises the cloche and grabs... some bits of cake. And Jerry has slipped onto the cloche! That sneaky rodent.
Jerry dashes away, Tom chases, and Jerry vaults over the cake and off the counter, leaving Tom to crash into the cake and get a face full of it! Then the man comes in again and does the exact same routine with Tom about who caused the mess, with some painfully recycled animation of Tom miming a mouse and then getting thrown out into the bin.
Tom goes back to the house and looks in through a window, and sees some jelly - his expression indicates that this has given him a devious idea. Cut to later, where he has obtained some of the jelly mix - sorry, "Tastee Gelatin", according to the box. He constructs a wooden bowl "pool" complete with diving board, and fills it with hot water and the jelly mix, and puts a "Free Swim!" sign in front. In case you can't see where this is supposed to be going, Tom gets another thought bubble of Jerry trapped in some jelly (heh) and licks his lips.
In case you thought this short had forgotten what it was about, Tom remote-controls the robot to lead Jerry to the "pool". Again, a stupid thing for Jerry to fall for - why would the kitchen randomly have a mouse-sized pool in it? But then Jerry gets on the diving board, dives in... and comes back out fine! Tom is confused and the robot is applauding. Uh, I'd be confused too! And then Jerry skips off with the robot.
The jelly knows the rules of traps in these sorts of cartoons. Tom tries jumping in the pool himself, and now he gets trapped in the jelly. He bounces along the floor in it, all the way out the door and back into the bin again!
Later, in the living room, Jerry is with the robot, and Tom is leaning in through the window with the remote control. He makes the robot say "Let's dance!", so Jerry hops over to a record player - it's one of those ones with multiple records that it can switch between. Jerry turns it on by turning a "Speed" dial away from the "Off" position. The robot starts dancing, but Tom directs it to say "Faster!" over and over, so Jerry carries on turning the dial and the robot starts spinning more and more. It doesn't even seem like Tom has a goal relating to eating Jerry this time - he just seems to be taunting him by messing with his "girlfriend"!
Anyway, somehow the speed of the record player makes the records start flying off it! They each narrowly miss Tom, but one of them hits the window and makes it fall down onto Tom, trapping him between the window and the sill! And then one does hit Tom - in the mouth, where it gets stuck. In a display of pure cartoon logic, Jerry is able to bend one of Tom's whiskers into a needle shape and spin the disc, and the record starts playing in Tom's mouth! Jerry dances with the robot to the music, but then Tom, who is obviously pretty annoyed, chomps down on the record, breaking it.
Tom's still stuck, but he's able to reach the remote control - he makes the robot grab Jerry by the hand and start spinning him around! The robot lets him go and he flies out the window, and Tom, who I suppose has given up on the "eating Jerry" thing, slams the window shut and nails some boards to it.
Outside, Jerry flies along, hits a rubbish bin (not the one from before, this is further away and lying on its side in a trash heap), takes it along with him, and hits what I suppose is a washing line which rebounds him and the bin back towards the house. Jerry must be a heavy mouse for his momentum to cause all this! Oh, and he surprises a random stray cat he goes past both ways.
In the house, the robot is cleaning up the kitchen while Tom relaxes and directs it with the remote. I get the idea of "getting the robot to do the chores", but surely the chores aren't Tom's responsibility? Then again, he was blamed for the mess in the kitchen earlier, so maybe he's trying to please that nameless owner of his.
But then Jerry rides the bin back in through the window, smashing it and dumping trash all over the kitchen (and on Tom)! And as you might predict, the human walks back in at this point, and this time he's had enough and tells Tom to stay out.
So now we see the house from outside - it's now dark and rainy, just like in the first short, which highlights the fact that the house itself does not look like it did in that one. Tom is outside the window looking in, while Jerry dances with the robot again. Does Jerry still think it's a real mouse? All the evidence of this short suggests he's pretty gullible on that front. Tom breaks down crying as the short comes to a close.
