I don’t know if this is true for all the series’, but in the originals that I remember, Tom and Jerry knew they were putting on a show. Tom had no interest in catching mice and Jerry pretty much had free rein of the kitchen. Until Mammy (yes, there was a literal black woman named Mammy) threatened to throw Tom out if he didn’t start catching mice. Jerry knew that Tom would be replaced with a meaner cat who would actually kill him, so they work together to make it look like Tom’s doing a good job. And of course sometimes one of them gets carried away and the other actually gets pissed. But for the most part it was a kind of a “Mornin’ Ralph, Mornin’ Sam” dynamic