While the first season of Garfield And Friends was clever and funny, the second season took the ideas, themes and characters from the first and upped the ante as far as the writing was concerned. The result was an overall better package than what viewers were treated to in the first series, with a lot more in jokes for regular viewers, an insane amount of clever pop culture and film references worked into the scripts, and a much funnier series of episodes.

This second series, which ran during 1989 and 1990, worked in jabs at westerns, horror films, popular television, science fiction, and even a few political snipes. While a lot of the humor still revolves around an overweight cat trying to steal lasagna and sleep it all off while avoiding the dopey family dog, there are a lot more clever winks and nods to the audience hidden among the dialogue that makes the show, admittedly geared towards a children's audience, a lot of fun for kids and grown ups alike.

While during the first season some of the U.S. Acres segments, which fill in the middle parts of each episode in between Garfield stories, felt a little stale and sometimes a little bit forced, much like the Garfield segments these too are improved upon both in terms of dialogue and in terms of situational comedy. The Orwellian parody is turned up a little bit and now that we know the characters a little bit better the jokes make things flow a lot smoother and keep things funny from start to finish.

Here are the twenty four episodes contained on the set, and the titles from each of the three sketches contained therein:

Episode 25 - Robodie/First Aid Wade/Video Victim

Episode 26 - Curse of the Klopman, The/Mud Street Mud/Rainy Day Dreams

Episode 27 - Basket Brawl/Origin of Power Pig!/Cactus Jake Rides Again

Episode 28 - Binky Goes Bad!/Barn of Fear/Mini-Mall Matters

Episode 29 - Attention Getting Garfield/Swine Trek/It Must Be True!

Episode 30 - Arrivederci, Odie!/Gort Goes Good/Feeling Feline

Episode 31 - Bear Facts, The/Nothing To Be Afraid Of/The Big Talker

Episode 32 - Cactus Makes Perfect/Hogcules II/Crime and Nourishment

Episode 33 - T.V. of Tomorrow/Little Red Riding Egg/Well Fed Feline

Episode 34 - Invasion of the Big Robots/Shelf Esteem/Housebreak Hotel

Episode 35 - First Class Feline/Hamelot/How to Be Funny

Episode 36 - Mystic Manor/Flop Goes the Weasel/The Legend of Long Jon

Episode 37 - China Cat/Cock-A-Doodle Dandy/Beach Blanket Bonzo

Episode 38 - Lemon Aid/Hog Noon/Video Airlines

Episode 39 - The Mail Animal/Peanut-Brained Rooster/Mummy Dearest

Episode 40 - Skyway Robbery/The Bunny Rabbits is Coming!/Close Encounters Of The Garfield Kind

Episode 41 - Astro Cat/Cock-A-Doodle-Duel/Cinderella Cat

Episode 42 - Ship Shape/Barn Of Fear II/Break-A-Leg

Episode 43 - Twice Told Tale/Orson Goes On Vacation/Wedding Bell Blues

Episode 44 - Clean Sweep/Secrets Of The Animated Cartoon/How The West Was Lost

Episode 45 - Binky Gets Cancelled Again!/Orson's Dinner/Flat Tired

Episode 46 - Return Of The Buddy Bears/Much Ado About Lanolin/Reigning Cats And Dogs

Episode 47 - Fit For A King/Ben Hog/Dessert In The Desert

Episode 48 - Hound Of The Arbuckles/Read Alert/Urban Arbuckle

Video:

This DVD maintains the original aspect ratio of the original television broadcast, fullframe 1.33.1. Picture quality suffers from a tiny bit of print damage in the form of dust speckles and a bit of grain, as well as some mild edge enhancement in pretty much every episode. This is fairly common in older animated shows, but regardless, it's here and you can't help but notice it in a few spots. Other than that though, the colors are really reproduced quite nicely, and there's not much to complain about as far as evidence of MPEG compression goes and this second season looks just a little bit cleaner and a little bit brighter than the first season DVD release did, though the improvement is a marginal one.