After the silent comedy of Mr Bean, the live-action cartoon domestic violence of Bottom and all the vintage films I caught up on last year, revisiting this other childhood favourite felt like a natural leap. It's something to occupy the eyes while a boring grown-up audiobook drones on, at least.
I've never watched Tom and Jerry as a historical artefact before. It'll be interesting to see those mid-20th century American homes and old-fashioned values, or lack thereof. I didn't worry about ranking all 161 of them, this was supposed to be light-hearted fun. Before it became a compulsive catalogue of racism and homoerotic subtext.
Era key:
Hanna Barbera (1940-58)
Gene Deitch (1961-62)
Chuck Jones (1963-67)
Warner Bros (2001-14)
Puss Gets the Boot (1940) ***
Not on Jerry's side in this one, the thieving get. But Tom also gets in on the fridge action before long, so they both deserve what's coming to them. For the record, even as an overcompensating wet liberal snowflake etc. I don't have a problem with Mammy Two-Shoes (as she's apparently called). My only criticism is that she's far too lenient on these pricks.
The Night Before Christmas (1941) ****
This off-season Halloween special has more charming glimpses into the past, as Tom gets spooked by an old-time radio story and leaves a phone off the hook that apparently leads to an operator shouting at you. There's no food motive for Jerry this time, who just torments Tom for the fun of it and gets him into trouble with no payback. It also turns out Tom can speak fluent English all along.
The conventional animal heirarchy is done away with, probably realistically, as the family's dangerous, unleashed dog pursues both Tom and Jerry, leading to them briefly uniting against the common foe. Having seen stray dogs pester stray cats in real life, I found this one more sad than funny.
Tom's retconned as heterosexual or at least bi as he fawns over a new arrival who some inhumane twat's dressed up in ribbons and eye shadow. The open-minded Jerry is also attracted to her, but whether or not his wooing worked is left unresolved. Tom and Jerry briefly do uncalled-for Chinaman impressions, ha ha ha!
They've apparently run out of ideas for domestic situations after six installments, so the cat and mouse inexplicably fool around overnight at a really dreary bowling alley. The later Chuck Jones era gets some stick for being outlandish, but those have the excuse of being 100+ episodes in.
Tom and Jerry now live on a farm or are visiting a farm. Whatever, it's nice to be out in the fresh air. The mother hen wouldn't go on to become a recurring character like Spike and Lady Cat in her various forms, but the fowl actress puts in a memorable guest performance.
A revealing episode that brings the duelling duo's closeted homoeroticism and metal illness to the fore as Tom and an alley cat have a catfight over their beloved Jerry. Tom is urged by a voice in his head to commit murder against his will, but to his credit he resists, and we can enjoy some less lethal domestic violence with pans and convenient pies.
Tom and Jerry finally realise how dangerously codependent they are. When Jerry's deception gets his friend exiled, they engineer a mutually beneficial con to restore the status quo, at the expense of long-suffering Mammy who gets her arse set on fire. This one's mainly notable for a wartime Hitler gag and the duo being unusually talkative. I found Jerry's voice rather unrealistic for a mouse though.
The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943) ****
It's a shame that racism ruins what's otherwise a certified classic, bagging an Academy Award no less. Though admittedly, I was disappointed when the first explosion went off in Tom's face and he didn't sprout large lips and curly hair, so was relieved when further explosions provided the offensive screencap I lusted for. You could easily cut it out, I'm sure networks do. Then maybe I'd have space left to discuss the actual story. In brief, Tom is blown to smithereens.Baby Puss (1943) *
As a child unfamiliar with institutionalised slavery, I always innocently assumed Mammy was the owner of the house, so might have wondered why her "daughter" had a different skin colour in the first introduction of other humans to the mythos. But more likely, I would have accepted it as part of the general discontinuity. In today's episode, Tom's real owner dresses him up as a baby, which he eventually starts to enjoy and gets relentlessly bulled by his peers for, with no payback whatsoever. It's grim, but if you're both a furry and an adult baby, you might get something out of it. Peadophiles too.
Tom puts on clothes and starts smoking to impress a superficial bitch. Oh, sorry, wrong species. They proceed to dance a lot, in an early example of Hanna Barbera padding things out with repetitive animation. The whole thing's filler generally.
An incredibly contrived scenario sees Tom inherit a fortune with the proviso that he not bring harm to any other living creature, as if there'd really be any way to monitor that. Rather than putting Jerry in a cage or having him sent overseas, he tries to elaborately trick him into suicide before giving up and returning to the status quo we all love.
Spike's more cordial and talkative in his second appearance and Jerry's now mute. Honestly, it's as if they don't even have a series bible. The normally wily Jerry becomes pathetically dependent on his guardian until he's caught by the dog catcher again and things can get back to normal.
Dogs don't mind mice now, it seems, as Jerry seeks sanctuary in a dog pound and taunts his nemesis. Tom naturally doesn't stand for this, so sneaks in himself and occasionally wears or stands close to a model dog head which is enough to fool those idiots who keep irritatingly interrupting the Tom and Jerry action.
Mouse Trouble (1944) *****
A successful attempt to present the definitive Tom and Jerry short, this could serve as a prequel – since Tom seemingly learns about mouse traps and heavy artillery for the first time – and a finale – since after being hoist by his various petards, Tom unambiguously dies for at least the second time so far (seven lives left, I'm keeping score). An extra point for featuring that totally surreal bit where his voice echoes from the depths of the cosmos for no reason.
Mammy painstakingly prepares a meal for her owners, which Tom hijacks to impress one of those superficial broads he finds so alluring. He's also inspired to make Jerry his domestic slave, since his upbringing normalised that kind of behaviour. He thinks all of this entitles him to some kisses, but fortunately his date brought along her rape hammer and Jerry gets his customary revenge.
A bold break from the format as Jerry goes solo and gets up to uninteresting and occasionally racist hi-jinks in the big city. I'm all for shaking up the format, but when you take the violence away, this might as well be happening to any generic mouse character. Mildly interesting to see what was considered classy city fashion back in wartime.
Look, it's one of those unrelatable golf episodes I always enjoy so much in everything. Tom twats Jerry around a lot, which would surely kill the poor mite or at least cause brain damage, but then they exhaust the golfing iconography and it becomes about birds and bees. In a literal sense, they don't surrender to their desires (yet).
A big bird wants to eat Jerry now. Will they make their minds up? Tom's response is tellingly to dress up as a female bird (ignoring the fact that it's male birds who do the courting – bad science), which makes the target as randy and rapey as a Pepe Le Pew. Tom made his nest and has to lie in it, a bizarre post-coital coda implying that he's awaiting the chirpy meows of some kind of bird-cat hyrid children. Strange episode.
Spike's characterisation is all over the place, now tolerating Tom and Jerry's murderous antics as long as they don't interrupt his sleep. What follows is so similar to that time Tom tried not to alert the maid that they might as well have recycled the animation, but there's a new responsible section where Spike is forcibly overdosed on sleeping medicine and they play around with his comatomose form. For all we know, he never woke up.
Tom pervs over his sunbathing neighbour, but it's okay, because it turns out she's in heat and seeking attention, like all women. This makes Jerry intensely jealous (no mock queer theory this time, it's right there in the text), and he sics another male on her so the episode can descend into tedious alpha male oneupmanship.
Unseen, irresponsible parents burden Jerry with looking after their infant, so he has to risk his life providing the milk the bairn craves. It's all fun and occasionally racist games until Tom genuinely hurts the kid, then he gets the full force of Jerry's rage that's otherwise held back. The final scene makes their sexual dynamic clear.
Tom tires of his slapstick fall guy role and hires an exterminator to cheat things to a close, so he can move on to Garfield territory or something. Unfortunately, this exterminator is another cat, so now Jerry can have fun playing them against each other rather than making Tom mutilate himself like usual.
Playing pieces are moved around for the sake of story, with Jerry and "Killer" the dog now living with a
Tom's craving some fish today, despite never having shown any interest in the goldfish before. Maybe he just has more refined taste. It's always nice to get outdoors, and the pleasant dawn scenery is refreshing even if you're sitting inside watching vintage cartoons on YouTube and failing to appreciate the world around you.
I had this one on video as a kid, so it's one of eight Tom and Jerries I know inside-out, though I can appreciate it in a new light now that I've experienced the double-edged sword of drunkenness. This episode makes it seem like Mammy owns the house rather than just being a servant, which is nice. Unfortunately, it also offers a rare glimpse of her face, which they decided to fucking draw like that.
The Cat Concerto (1947) *****
Enough patrolling for racism and imaginary innuendo – time to appreciate an absolute classic, only slightly spoiled by the revelation that it might be a Bugs Bunny knock-off, unless it was the other way around. You know Bugs, that cartoon rabbit who famously duels with a small mouse. I hope it's not the best Tom and Jerry episode, because I've still got 130 to go and knowing it's all downhill would be a downer. But this is the one that's always come to mind.
The parody bridge is crossed as Tom inadvertently creates a super-strength potion that turns Jerry into the Hulk for brief spells, though kills flies for some reason. It's the sort of format-breaking that's frankly necessary even at this relatively early stage, and justified by a nice subverted ending.
Tom and Jerry go to the beach to exhaust another setting's worth of gags. Tom tries to impress a broad once again, through the unusual approach of scoffing her lunch, and in a memorable scene attempts to save a drowning damsel by headbutting her at speed. Why does he put on clothes to swim?
That black alley cat now cohabits with Tom and Jerry, for the sake of a scenario where one of them has to prove his worth by catching the mouse. With that contrivance out of the way, it's just a rehash of that one where the other cat was an exterminator and they both failed to catch the mouse, this time with added blackface hilarity.
Another gimmicky episode so soon, based around a fundamental misunderstanding of what invisible ink is, my main issue with this one is that cocky Jerry gets away scot-free. Tom needs to win more often, he was always my favourite. I wonder if Hanna & Barbera suggested the premise just to save on animation, it would be in-character.
A canary's added to the line-up for a bit of variety, who functions as Tails to Jerry's Sonic. Now that Jerry's got a new friend, he no longer cares when Tom is presumed dead, even rejoicing in it. There's some Native American appropriation that might annoy some people, but it's not as bad as they usually are.
Tom, Jerry and "Butch" (too easy) decide to stop fighting and sleep together, until they fall out over who gets the meat inside them. We almost went three whole episodes without blackface, but not to worry, they haven't forgotten. I'm getting desensitised to it, or maybe just bored.
Mammy's had enough of Tom's ineptitude and replaces him with a newer model. Fairly sure we've done this before, albeit without X-Men-esque electricity powers, but there's already been too many to keep straight in my head. They overuse the magnet gag towards the end for lack of ideas.
Tom's tutoring a kitten we've never seen before, for some reason. The lad's inherently happy to live in a caring multicultural househould, but Tom insists on warping his mind by indoctrinating him into hateful xenophobia. Then he smokes until he makes himself sick.
Jerry sabotages Tom's cleaning efforts to get him chucked out of the house. We've definitely done this one before. When the crafty mouse causes a hailstorm of coal to reign down on Tom, I thought I knew what was coming next, but they exceeded my expectations by having Tom put on his best lowly negro voice too. When will this end?
When Tom feigns illness to avoid being cruelly put out in the rain, Jerry makes him pay by manipulating him into overdosing on pills and subjecting him to home remedies that literal-minded kids can try at home. I couldn't believe my eyes when Tom got baked in the oven and didn't come out as a frizzy-haired minstrel. Things are looking up!
A rehash of the first Nibbles episode, except this time he's ravenous about all food and beverage groups rather than specifically milk. They should really check that kid for worms. An inevitably controversial Thanksgiving theme is worsened by casting the ever-victorious mice as the Pilgrims, but if you're not sure whether it counts as racist or not, Tom blacks up again to make things simpler.
When Jerry's little pecker breaks Tom's wood, Jerry embraces the motherly role thrust upon him. I'm always sceptical when they introduce a third party for the sake of variety, but they generally turn out for the best. Tom's delayed appearance and the extra size discrepancy makes him unusually threatening, which is another nice change.
Tom dies from a collision no more lethal than the ones he normally shakes off. That should have been the clue that this was just in his head. To psychoanalyse more than the show requires, it's interesting that Tom has such guilt-fuelled dreams about his abusive behaviour. The bag of drowned kittens is the most horrific thing in the series so far, imaginary and animated or not.
Two Tom dream episodes in a row (1949 spoilers), but I wasn't bothered by a cat breathing underwater and other outlandish things even before that reveal. It's a bit dull, but pleasant in the way underwater cartoons and game levels generally are.
Tom accidentally becomes a child predator when happenstance and Jerry connivings lead him to repeatedly harrass Spike's son. I don't know who the mother is; some bitch. The ending where they settle down to sleep on Tom's flayed skin is one of more disturbing resolutions in the canon.
It's disappointing to watch a clip show when you've just watched all of those episodes, but it's been almost a decade, so it's allowed. They aren't the best clips either, two of them being variations on the same duplicity and one of them featuring a classic blackface gag, because that's likely to happen even if you're just watching scenes on shuffle.
Tom and the black cat play violent tennis, which Jerry escalates into mutually assured destruction. Fortunately for the cats, they turn out to be indestructible T-1000s or something. For the first time, someone explodes and gets frazzled without invoking a racial stereotype. Probably because he was black already, that just would have confused the guffawing racists.
After the mother hen and woodpecker, this is so similar they might as well have recycled animation. They resist a blackface gag for the second time, which might mean they've turned over a new leaf in the new decade, time will tell. Why do female animals need to wear clothes, underwear and accessories to distinguish them from the "default" males? Let's get into that now.
When Mammy's away, the cat will invite his inconsistent mates around. Not a fan of noise disturbance, I sympathised with Jerry for once. Of course, this is mainly notable as the first (only?) time we get a proper look at Mammy Two-Shoes – if you pause at the right moment – and things have improved since last time we got a glimpse. She looks like an actual human being rather than a grotesque caricature.
I'm surprised it took them this long to go West, in some strange scenario where cats and mice are the de facto humans, but other animals remain dumb slaves subjected to the institutional abuse of the good old days. Hat colour symbolism proves Jerry was the bad guy all along.
Not exactly shark-jumping, but the point where Tom and Jerry has run out of ideas and needs to bring in increasing absurdities. Even then, the lion might as well be the bulldog, though the king of the jungle is curiously timid compared to the usual beasts of the week.
The patriotic mice celebrate ID4, but when Nibbles proves to be a young pyromaniac, Jerry turns the episode into a hypocritical public safety warning. Maybe he should read his diary from time to time. More recycled ideas, but at least the sunflower gag avoids giving Jerry hilarious lips this time.
Trying and failing to recapture the glory of the piano one, this isn't a very memorable, funny or ambitious installment. They just mess around on stage and then Tom gets squashed by a bus.
When Tom lies and gets Jerry into trouble, the mouse gets his revenge and more so. But he's not feeling especially creative, so his ideas amount to doing 'Love That Pup' again, but with a bone, and falling back on magnets again, again. I don't think I'm even even half-way through the Hanna-Barberas yet.
A new setting, but the cat and mouse premise is intact as Tom plays with his food using the available thematic props, rather than trying to explode him into a gollywog outright. There's no need to call in the ensemble, it's straightforward and fun.
Tom courts that same cat he's already failed to win multiple times, when he hears she's inherited a fortune. Fortunately, she doesn't seem to remember any of that, since they were quite a few years ago in real time. She's so enamoured with Jerry's racist minstrel dance, they end up hooking up for some hot interspecies action, I expect.
Tom decides to cook the goldfish again, which is more helpless than his prey usually is and doesn't pull its weight at all as Jerry dashes around saving it. Tom gets shot into space at the end, inevitably resulting in his death. I think that's three lives down.
Despite being victorious nearly all of the time, the pathetic Jerry begs his hard cousin for help so they can gang up on Tom. To Tom's credit, he beefs up and tries to tackle the intruder himself before conceding that he's met his match and taking a page from Jerry's dirty playbook.
Tom's knackered after a night on the town, but is forced to stay awake and earn his keep, treating us to some hilariously unpleasant Ren & Stimpy-style grotesquery. I feel tired watching him, but he brought it on himself.
His Mouse Friday (1951) **
Slicked-up Pup (1951) ***
Spike has OCD about keeping his son clean and bullies Tom into babysitting the lad and keeping him pristine while he goes to the shops or something. Jerry has fun with this, which leads to much stress for Tom, but more significantly a great deal of physical trauma for Tyke, who's subjected to various toxic substances and nautical punishments. If Spike knew what that mouse had been up to, they wouldn't all be laughing together at the end watching Tom drown in the washing machine.
Mammy accidentally gives Tom brain damage so he thinks he's some kind of gay marsupial. This is too easy and unambiguous for Jerry, who consults an irresponsible medical text that advises him to cure his frienemy with violence.
Tom and Jerry fight over a hammock, rather than find another place to sleep where they won't be rudely interrupted. Jerry picks on other small creatures for the sake of disturbing Tom, who's subjected to more extreme violence than usual. Jerry's such a prick.
Jerry moves in with a canary, and Tom's not having that. He dresses up in women's clothing that miraculously gives him the ability to fly, amping up his threat level but also exposing his crotch to new dangers.
How many more times are they going to do this same basic story? This time, the duckling Jerry befriends is a different colour, so that's some variety, and has been winged by Tom, whose rifle fortunately doesn't have a lethal setting and is mainly a pain in the arse.
It's a gimmick, but a well-realised one. After so many repetitive episodes, this variation on Tom and Jerry themes was welcome, complete with nice uniforms and Nibbles occasionally chipping in with educational French. Decapitating Tom off-screen makes it feel more serious and sombre than his usual loldeaths.
The second lazy clip show once again makes things worse than it would have been already by focusing entirely on one of their repetitive themes and framing the clips as if Jerry was the one who suffered the most, when he'd always win out and sometimes get the girl for post-credits interspecies delight. The presentation of the giggling dames who love a bit of ogling is also the worst yet.
Mammy adopts three problem kittens who immediately try to kill her, having presumably experienced a traumatic upbringing. The unsympathetic Tom and Jerry treat them as pests who need to be cleared out to restore the status quo. They're inexplicably never seen again, probably died.
A seal pup is the latest unlikely invader of the suburban home, for what turned out to be a much better variation on the theme than the rubbish lion one. There's an overlong subtitle gag 40 years before Wayne's World, the chase becoming an unintended circus is great, and Tom getting hoist by his own seal costume leads to a surprise happy ending where everyone's better off. Even the Asian cymbal hat gag is just harmless fun really, lighten up snowflake!
They're shamelessly remaking episodes by this point, here doing 'The Bodyguard' again with a whistle instead of a bell. I never like the ones where Jerry gets dependent on someone else's assistance and becomes inept. If mice got unemployment benefits, that sod would never work.
This Black Mirror-esque technophobic tale sees Tom get replaced with a recklessly armed machine and Mammy kicking his useless ass out into the street, since he was apparently a working cat and not a beloved pet all along. Since Mammy is never seen again, we can speculate that she got what she deserved.
Tom and Jerry on a cruise ship is disappointingly similar to Tom and Jerry at home. The one stand-out moment is some delightful fourth wall breaking when they catch a bit of 'Texas Tom' playing at the cinema. That's how to excuse a clip show. It also ends identically to how Fawlty Towers did.
More of the same as Spike warns Tom not to destroy his new kennel, but he inadvertently does so anyway and suffers for it. Spike's so bored of these repetitive plots that he's lost his lust for violence, unless he's on meds. The sunflower jokes continue to resist blackface, hopefully we're past that now.
Jerry tricks Tom into thinking he's a suicide bomber, giving us a reverse Tom and Jerry where he's desperate to prevent the rodent from coming to harm and causing mousageddon. No, Jerry whiting up isn't racist, obviously. Don't pretend to be an idiot.
Jerry and Jumbo (1953) ***
Another exotic animal invades the home, this time a baby elephant. Since there's only a limited range of elephant gags you can do, once they exhaust the trunk vacuum they hit on the idea of disguising the kid as a massive Jerry, which is nicely disconcerting. The rest of the episode is Jerry and Jumbo gaslighting Tom until his sanity cracks for good. Why does he have a giant mouse trap lying around anyway? Unrealistic.
Another high-concept one, by Tom and Jerry standards, but one I didn't get along with. The storybook layout is mainly an excuse to give the animators some time off, and it leads to an excess of narration, as if we're suddenly incapable of following events visually as normal. The dancing animation's nice, but that's taken as read.
Having finally succeeded in eroding his son's pacifism, Spike now teaches practical lessons in how to terrorise cats, through cheating and molly-coddling that's only going to get the kid beaten up in the long run. It's not funny when Tom's suffering for someone's agenda.
The second biggest surprise of this chronological watch, after the sheer quantity of blackface, is the sheer quantity of episodes where Jerry protects a baby bird. Checking the list out of frustration, there's about six more to go. This one at least has some plot structure going on, with a lesson learned and a redemptive ending.
I had this on video as a kid, and the impoliteness (to put it mildly) of the twins being anachronistic or downright fictional stereotypes of Native Americans didn't occur to me back then. Unlike the more time-bound minstrel/gollywog shit that was already out of style, Injuns were all over cartoons.
The most tolerable clip show so far. Even if its dipping into various eras gives inconsistent aesthetics, and even if it's got the mandatory blackface gag that no greatest hits should be without, at least most of the clips are actually memorable scenes this time. I'm not sure if a novelisation of Tom and Jerry would be such a hoot, but this was before home video, remember.
An unusually affecting tale, this starts out as bleak as a Watership Down or Farthing Wood with its attempted drowning of unwanted puppies, rescued by Jerry. Even after Tom kicks them out less lethally in the rain, he feels guilt about it and risks his life to bring them back into shelter. Humans are cunts, animals are best.
A return to the old West, but Tom and Jerry have been downgraded from running their own ranch to being regular animals now, suffering under a stereotypical trigger-happy
Spike unreasonably blames Tom for causing his son's hiccups and we get that same tired story again where Jerry tricks him into compromising situations. Turns out there are only about five Tom and Jerry plots spread across the decades.
The inverse of 'Professor Tom' as Jerry teaches Nibbles how to troll cats, before Nibbles winds up teaching the older generation how to put aside their differences and get along. Tom's more open-minded to this than Jerry, who was the alpha tormenter all along.
I always found this one quite disconcerting. Keen to gobble Tom's meat, Butch's first thought is to disguise himself as a baby and get taken inside, a role he keeps up long after it's served that function. Adult babies creep me out, sorry.
Rather than going to an ice rink or frozen lake, the animators creatively concoct an ice skating episode without leaving the house, and this power over the elements makes for plenty of memorable moments. Tom dodging obstacles might be the basis for all those side-scrolling arcade shoot-em-ups.
Tom and Jerry go on holiday together in a dull episode that seemingly exists for the purpose of tourism promotion or as a backdoor pilot for a spin-off featuring their Italian counterparts that never happened. Could have been worse, could have been racist.
Not only does Jerry have to protect Quacker from Tom, he also has to save the body dysmorphic duckling from himself. The suicide gags might not fly today, but Quacker in a sandwich suit trying to court his demise is funny. Best duck episode, not that that's an especially high bar.
Tom's once-affluent owners are struggling through hard times. Having evidently had to fire their maid (Mammy hasn't been seen for a while), they can now only afford to keep one pet. Oh, Spike's their pet now. Why am I trying to graft consistent continuity onto this?
This Mouseketeer sequel or more accurately prequel has more swashbuckling sword-fighting action and Francophile fun. Tom's dumb expression with the painted-on monocle cracked me up as a kid, and the whole thing just looks lovely.
Too soon for another duckie episode. Quacker wants to fly south, but Jerry won't let him for reasons of pedantry. This is good news for Tom, who finally has use for his big, specific cookbook and who wins the episode big time.
Another episode where Tom inadvertently annoys a surprisingly patient Spike in pursuit of Jerry, who's the real criminal behind all this. Without him, Spike and his son would have had a really nice day out and Tom would have just slept or something. I hope Jerry dies at the end of all this.
Tom catches Jerry easily when there's a cash incentive. That would seem to be the end of their saga, except that his owner fetishises white pets, so Jerry returns and both animals dangerously bleach themselves repeatedly to win acceptance. I wonder what happened to the maid.
Tom designs a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg mouse trap and ambiguously dreams that the drawings come to life and foil his plans as an elaborate excuse for making an error in his calculations. I always liked this one, the animators probably enjoyed taking it easy too.
They're milking the Mouseketeer setting now, and this one can't really be bothered. Nibbles gives up being his lazily amorous boss' courier by the end and Tom just has to accept it. Bit of an anticlimax.
This time, the weak excuse for a clip show is cats watching films no one filmed. Selective commentary interruptions try to salvage it, but elsewhere the new footage consists of a long shot of a door with nothing happening. Not one to be proud of.
Jerry's annoying uncle visits and sings his song over and over, plucking a whisker from Tom every time he snaps a guitar string, which proceeds to happen six tedious times. Yes, Tom has six whiskers in this one, rather than the usual four, and they don't instantly grow back like they usually do. You'll have to reinforce the disbelief you've been suspending if you hope to appreciate it.
Does anyone associate Tom and Jerry with the needy duckling? There are so many of these. How many times has this same character hatched? They've surely gone through every permutation now, as Tom embraces his maternal role by the end. Kill me.
Another weirdly out-of-season Halloween special, there's nothing Tom and Jerry about this story of Tom signing up as a witch's cat and flying around, but at least it's a break from all the birdie episodes. We see full-body humans for the first time, sadly/mercifully too late for Mammy.
Not just a rehash, this is an outright remake of 'Hatch Up Your Troubles' from seven years earlier with more garish colours. Too lazy.
This feels like a sequel series now, with its strong human focus and Tom and Jerry working together. After 100 increasingly repetitive episodes, different is good, but the classics may be behind us.
Tom and some other bodybuilders compete to impress a shallow lady cat again again again. We're in the dregs now.
A bear dances. That's it.
'Solid Serenade' is still probably the best iteration of this story cycle, but the hilariously grim bookends excuse the repetition elsewhere. The inappropriate resolution made me laugh out loud more than anything else in the series so far, it's as if that "lost" Rainbow episode was actually real.
I didn't realise until the ants showed up that this is basically a remake of the picnic one. Spike ruins a load of steaks that Tom and Jerry aren't interested in any more, inexplicably.
Another straight-up remake. Not worth my time. Automatic fail.
Tom's scaredy cat cousin reminded me of my own cat, who gets scared by anything outside of his limited range of experience. It's interesting to see (I think) the first television set in the series, a sign of the changing times. Also satisfying to see the identical cousins gaslight Jerry until he checks himself into an asylum. Ha ha ha, serves the little twat right.
Seems like none of these remakes usurped the originals. Good.
Tom meets Jerry and Butch's Spanish, occasionally curiously ginger counterparts. There's bullfighting and that, obviously. I think the pace is supposed to be relaxed, but with my attention span being depleted by so much Tom and Jerry, I just found it tedious.
Tom's Photo Finish (1957) ***
Happy Go Ducky (1958) ***
It's like that board game, Don't Wake Dad, except it's a king with his guard cat and two naughty mice. Otherwise identical.
The last Quacker episode is a mash-up of that one where Tom wanted to cook him (one of them, anyway – or maybe it was the canary) and the one where Jerry went invisible. So much useless, specific knowledge I now possess.
A Robin Hood episode featuring a potty-mouted Nibbles with a blooming awful English accent getting pissed. Didn't do a lot for me, but vore furries will get off.
The last of the Hanna-Barbera line is far from typical. A sequel to 'Busy Buddies,' which was already pretty weird, it also does Baby's Day Out 40 years in advance.
It's an odd decision to start this bold, new era of Tom and Jerry with a Transylvanian Gothic horror with a glut of one-off characters, but the whole thing looks so distractingly awful and amateurish that you won't even notice the plot.
I'm already nostalgic for when bad episodes at least looked nice. Tom's new owner is a crudely-drawn abusive freak who makes Mammy Two-shoes look progressive by comparison. It's a good thing Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry went downhill before the end, or this would be heartbreaking.
Tom and Jerry in Ancient Greece, why the hell not? They've put some thought into it, with a sequence where Tom unintentionally creates iconic artworks through destruction. Just a shame it looks like crap.
An episode we've seen multiple times before, but with a crudely-drawn man standing in for the dog, which makes the animal abuse distressing for the first time.
Finally, an authentic-feeling episode that almost looks like it might be proper Tom and Jerry if you squint. It also brings back the co-dependence in a big way, Tom falling apart exaggeratedly when Jerry leaves him to go and live in space.
The fucking birds are back. This is pretty much a remake of several old ones, which means it's at least more watchable than most originals from this nadir.
The art's too poor to tell if that's supposed to be racist. Another mash-up of earlier episodes, but in fairness that's probably unavoidable by this point.
Tom's shanghaied into slavery and forced to scrub decks by a variant on the only man these animators can draw. The Gene Deitch era is depressing as hell. At least he's not racist, so there's that.
I had this one on video, and its fourth-wall-breaking surreal minimalism always made it stand out in a good way, giving it a licence for weirder visual gags than usual. It runs out of ideas as it goes along though.
More Western jokes. Nice camera focus effects. When I'm praising the camera focus effects, you know the episode's lacking.
Don't worry, it's not racist. Just inhumane. It's not surprising that Tom's current psychopathic owner is into hunting, but it's a little surprising that hunting was being presented as a viable vacation option by the 60s.
In a reversal of the early Christmas episode that's probably coincidental, Jerry helps a homeless Tom in from the cold, has his charity thrown back in his face and customarily gets his own back. One of the few Deitch era cartoons that feels on brand.
Maybe they were trying for another classic musical instalment, but it's boring as hell and the animation's choppier than ever. I've only just read that these were comparatively low-budget cartoons, which explains a lot, but doesn't make them any better. At least it's over.
The Chuck Jones era starts out creatively convoluted and silly. He also seems to have it in for the mouse more, before his contractual victory, which I hope keeps up.
The famously mute Tom and Jerry can sing opera now. This is another of those boring musical episodes they keep churning out after that first one turned out so well.
Jerry's performing reckless vivisection on himself again as he tests out various potions, such as one that speeds up his metabolism with the side-effect of making him ravenous. Tom figures it out, but rather than getting his comeuppance, Jerry randomly goes all big to cheat a victory. It's just not fair.
I'm not cultured enough to know if the Shakespeare reference is relevant, but I'm well-read enough in Tom and Jerry to recognise this as at least the third time they've done this identical story with the dog whistle. Except the dog looks different now and Tom's apparently made out of plasticine.
Another Christmas special, I guess, that repeats some of the first one. Jerry building a house out of cheese is a nice image. They've always been gay, but they're getting downright camp now. Maybe it's the new eyelashes.
Tom gets catty when Jerry befriends a new kitten, but it ends up being an excuse to fuel their unhealthy BDSM lifestyle. I feel bad for the kid.
Bread and butter Tom and Jerry chases with no distracting secondary characters and no humans in sight. It's also pretty funny.
They get out of the apartment for a violent tour of the city. When Tom accidentally dresses as a lady, he gets a taste of the endemic harrassment that turns him into an abuser in a vicious cycle.
I don't know if it's good continuity or laziness that that scaffolding's been outside their apartment building throughout Chuck's tenure. They've done all the construction site gags now though. Tom gets stuck in a self-harming rut by the end that bores Jerry so much, he calls it a day.
The contrived pun titles are meaningless these days. In a break with the new continuity, Tom and Jerry now live on a ground floor house. Tom has a female mouse costume easily accessible in storage, which begs analysis, but his prank backfires when he almost gets gang-raped.
Jerry's magic relative pays a visit. And things were going well too. The title and spooky credits have sod-all to do with the story.
This one was a childhood favourite, with its vast department store setting offering seemingly endless gag stimuli and the recurring joke of Tom calmly accepting his fate on the train tracks.
Jerry gets aid from his evil fairy godmother, as if he isn't the one who always comes out on top. Later, he and Tom put aside their differences and strip.
Jerry shows off in front of his new mate by taking harrassment to the next level, gaslighting Tom into thinking he's trying to kill himself. This is about as extreme as Tom and Jerry gets, and I thought it was funny as a kid, so shut up. Amazingly, TOM WINS!
Tom goes all Shining, so Jerry buys a piranha puppy that eats his arms off. That'll learn him.
Tom and Jerry honourably fight using deadly weapons, but they're piss poor at it, so just beat each other up some.
Jerry sleepassaults Tom. He could eat the troublesome somnambumouse, but instead he takes the abuse and ends up leaving home. Jerry doesn't deserve this martyr.
Jerry runs away from his abusive home to join the circus, only to find himself receiving the unwanted affection of an elephant. Meanwhile, Tom gets blown to smithereens and meets Satan.
In this strange, contrived scenario, Jerry plays on a female cat's maternal instinct to manipulate her into caring for him, until it wears off. Jerry doesn't get eaten, tragically.
Jerry stows away on a boat to steel the cheese and winds up stealing Tom's job too, after he tricks him into getting eaten by a shark. Does anyone like Jerry?
Jerry saves a goldfish from Tom in solidarity, but mainly because he fancies her. Then he gets cuckolded by an urban shark.
Tom and Jerry go to the cinema to watch themselves looking slightly different and better animated in a seemingly random selection of Hanna Barbera toons.
Tom and Jerry coincidentally take skiing holidays at the same time and are neighbours. It's a bit of a busman's holiday. Tom gets force-fed booze.
In one of his more industrious schemes, Jerry constructs opposing mouseholes to trick Tom and some random neighbour cat who's showing up in episode #151 into beating each other up. They continue to do this relentlessly, never thinking to take a look and see what's actually going on, which is quite funny.
One of the more atmospheric ones, thanks to its rickety waterfront setting, though I'm not sure why a dog wants to eat Jerry now. Homeless and starving, I guess. Jerry gets pissed.
This space trilogy's gimmicky, but it's one of the more rewarding digressions of the era. Tom sends various inevitably backfiring gadgets against the mouse and they both sort of win.
Tom and Jerry automate their own jobs, until the cat robot gets fed up of being the loser and rebels against his creator like a Ternimator.
I really feel for Tom in this one, having suffered sleepless nights due to mouse jazz myself, and he gets the usual physical abuse on top of that. I hope this is all building to Jerry getting eaten at the end of the run. This is more like a Mr. Bean episode at times.
Tom, Jerry and a shark astonishingly fall into bespoke tins with their faces on. What are the chances? Then there's some repetive seaside stuff, because it's almost over and they've run out of ideas.
It's not often they do a direct parody. I haven't seen the thing it's referencing, but this is basically Dangermouse. They blow each other up a bit.
Tom loves surfing now, so the animator who likes sharks gets to draw the shark again. That shark is the Quacker of the Chuck era.
The framing story for this clip show makes no sense at all. It's like they intended to have a few more original clips in there, but didn't have the time or money, so sod the story.
Partly a lazy reworking of the two earlier space ones, but it's the best and most thought-provoking, as close as Tom and Jerry gets to Black Mirror.
The piranha dog's back. Tom gets eaten all up various times, but he gets better.
That's all, folks. But not quite.
You'd think the first Tom and Jerry short in over 30 years would make a bit of effort, but with its generic geometric Cartoon Network backgrounds and lack of grit, this is ugly, dull and sanitised.
An authentic imitation of classic Tom and Jerry, down to the borderline racism and directly recycling ideas. As a 21st-century revival short, it doesn't do much to justify its existence though.
Despite their racist past, Tom and Jerry are invited to take part in Children in Need to help flattering caricatures of celebs show how generous they are. Absolute crap for a good cause.
