"I'm Just Wild About Jerry" - I consider this the high point of the shorts on these discs. In six and a half minutes, Jones and Maltese tell a complete story that surprises and delights. The cartoon has a city setting with beautiful backgrounds by Maurice Noble and a properly film noir-ish jazzy soundtrack. At the end of a chase behind the credits, Tom is drawn out onto the train tracks and hit by a train. The short continues with each getting the better of each other. Even Jerry takes his lumps from Tom. Just when you think you know how the gags are going, then they start to have them backfire on the characters and blow themselves up. The long chase continues through a department store and eventually back into the city ending on a train track again with a train approaching. But this time, Jerry switches the track and the train avoids the cat. It's a simple twist and yet the story feels complete. Rarely do short subject cartoons have the pure physical humor of this short along with the classic storytelling and heart at the end.
"The Year Of The Mouse" - Here's the complete reversal of the series. In this and the following "The Cat's Me-Ouch", Tom will be the one terrorized by Jerry. Tom easily becomes a sympathetic character. In the first, Jerry works with another mouse to continually hurt Tom. In the second, Jerry gets a "tiny" dog who, like the Tasmanian Devil, will eat up Tom for multiple shorts.
The last third of the shorts start to show a lack of budget. There are two episodes "Matinee Mouse" and "Shutter Bugged Cat" that recycle footage from old Hanna-Barbera shorts. Three of the later shorts are set in space (a nod I'm sure to the Apollo missions) but their plots are all similar - including robot versions of both cat and mouse - and there is exact footage shared in all three.
"Cannery Rodent" is the last of the shorts to actually be directed by Chuck Jones. It's also the last in the series to really play with the conventions of the cat-and-mouse story. Set at a cannery, Tom ends up dealing with a very angry purple shark (the same shark will later be blue during "Surf-Bored Cat"). The episode has nice pacing as Tom has to balance chasing Jerry with being chased himself by the shark. It surprisingly ends with Jerry stepping in to save Tom from the shark. Both Tom and Jerry break the fourth wall by looking at the camera in the last sequence as both debate their good deeds towards each other versus ultimately going back to being enemies. There is only one answer to that question, but it's fun again to see Chuck Jones deal with it in a unique manner.
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