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The Flintstones | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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n a 20-minute documentary on the first of the four discs that make up The Flintstones: The Complete Second Season, a group of animation historians discuss The Flintstones' origins, evolution and place in history. As America's first full-length, prime-time animated series (with 24-minute episodes instead of the era's usual 6-minute shorts), The Flintstones had some unique design considerations: For instance, the heavy lines ensured that the characters would show up even on the smallest, most primitive early TVs.
But the show's pioneering status also meant that its primary inspiration was live-action sitcoms like The Honeymooners: As a result, The Flintstones' stories feel strangely but comfortably modest and human compared with more fantasy-oriented modern cartoons. Crabby, appetite-driven quarry worker Fred Flintstone, his dim-witted, amiable best friend and neighbor Barney Rubble, and their easily amused wives Wilma and Betty live relatively luxurious lives for inhabitants of the Stone Age: They have TVs, radios, cars and all the technology that can be constructed out of rocks and—in a running gag—amiable animals, which serve as everything from dishwashers to coffee makers while periodically breaking the fourth wall to editorialize about the action.
The visual goofery, from woolly-mammoth gas pumps to a pelican mailbox, does take advantage of animation's limitless capacity for creative imagery. But otherwise, this season's 32 episodes are mostly basic sitcom fare: In one typical episode, Fred insults Barney and refuses to apologize, but goes to great lengths to scare off a prospective buyer when Barney tries to sell his house and move. In another, Fred regrets sending his boss an insulting letter and attempts to get it back before the boss sees it. Some of the stories get a little more gimmicky, as when the two couples vacation in "Rock Vegas," or spend a month on a rich relative's Western ranch, but for the most part, these early stories (from the 1961-1962 season) are as down-to-earth as a series full of dinosaurs can get.
Before Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm
Older animation fans who grew up with The Flintstones probably remember how primitive the animation was, with its flat, repetitive backgrounds and extremely simple designs. But the show's sheer cheesiness may come as a surprise to anyone who hasn't watched it in a while. One typical exchange between Fred and Barney: "Just goes to show you, Barney, you put your foot down, you get results." "Especially when our wives put their foot down on ours!" It doesn't matter whether viewers laugh at such gags—the characters helpfully guffaw at their own jokes. The laugh track seems to find them hilarious as well, though it thankfully sticks to a subtle volume level.
Apart from a few daring experiments—like "Alvin Brickrock Presents," in which Fred and Barney suspect an Alfred Hitchcock-like neighbor of murdering his wife, and go looking for the body, in a pastiche of Hitchcock's movies—this season's episodes are pretty ordinary. But the set treats them well, adding in commentaries, pencil tests, a drawing lesson and more. The set's most bizarre extra feature, which pairs squawky tunes from the Songs of the Flintstones album with poorly matched stills, is shockingly terrible, but the handful of early animated ads, in which the Flintstones characters hawk everything from One-A-Day Vitamins to Carnation Evaporated Milk (in Spanish, even!) are amazing good fun.
At times, it seems like The Flintstones is more about one-off gags than any kind of consistent or coherent story—it's kind of amusing to watch Fred's car evolve from a one-seater to a two-seater to a four-seater, depending on how many people need to fit in it, but that and many other inconsistencies and contradictions speak to a show that doesn't pay much attention to the details. But it does carefully track the relationships among its lovable characters, which is a pleasant surprise. Even though it's about people in a version of a Stone Age that never existed, it's more about people than many of the cartoons that followed it.
I grew up with Flintstones reruns, but apparently not with any episodes this old—it was a little odd to see the Flintstones and the Rubbles as couples with no kids, but Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm didn't come along until season three. It was even odder, though very appealing, to see the series' original opening, in which Fred comes home and settles down to watch TV, all to an instrumental tune called "Rise and Shine": The show's memorable opening theme, lyrics and all, also wasn't introduced until season three. —Tasha
Also in this issue: Invasion Iowa, Highlander: The Series Season-Six DVD and Red Dwarf Series VI DVD
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