I remember as a kid watching The Honeymooners and the episode had Ralph becoming the apartment superintendent (“Dial J for Janitor”) and having to move with Alice into the basement. The next day, the Flintstones had Fred becoming a building superintendent and having to move with Wilma into a basement. (“Moonlight and Maintenance”)
Even at age nine or so, I knew something was fishy…
As I looked up the episode titles, I saw that Syd Zelinka wrote the Honeymooners episode in question and also wrote two Flintstones episodes, although not “Moonlight & Maintenance”.
The first two years of the Flintstones were classic. It was after Pebbles was born that it went downhill and switched to a kid’s show. By the last season it was just a campy commentary 60s era TV shows and personalities.
“What’s New Scooby Do” is better than the 1969 original series. All the incarnations between those two suck, and suck hard. I haven’t seen the very-very latest series.
I hate to pick one for “worst”, but it’s a tie for me between the celebrity-guest-star run and the Vincent-Price-little-Hispanic-boy-in-white-sweats run.
I really liked The Flintstones when it was originally on. Yes, it had similarities to The Honeymooners in that it had an overweight gruff husband and tolerant wife with neighbors in supporting roles. Hell, that describes a ton of sitcoms to this day! To say that The Flintstones had no originality is silly. It had some of the most memorable prehistoric jokes and I remember them to this day – who cannot like shaving with a bee caught inside a clamshell or taking a shower from water out of a mammoth’s trunk! And how about that “garbage disposal” under the sink! Having said all that, I have no idea what Seth MacFarlane can do with the characters that have not already been done during its original run. But if anyone can come up with something new it would be him. For instance, how would he depict technology, like cell phones and laptops, that didn’t exist when Flintstones first aired. And will he take on controversial topics like abortion and same sex marriage that were verboten in the 60’s. It’d be fun to get a prehistoric view of global warming!
If Perry Gunnite, James Bondrock, and some of the other minor characters are given cleverly updated cameos, I might be persuaded to watch. The four central characters, though, shouldn’t be taken too far from their established personas. Pissing all over Hanna Barbera characters through “adult” humor and situations was done to death on Harvey Birdman and I don’t see Macfarlane bringing anything new to that party.
And when Pebbles and Bam Bam were shown as teenagers, it went from bad to excruciatingly awful.
The animal technology was okay, but mostly used as cutaway jokes to cover the fact that the writers could not come close to the brilliance of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney’s performances (not to mention Audrey Meadows, also brilliant.) The rock translated guest stars were only useful in generating plots as they ran out of ideas. The original show couldn’t afford big guest stars, I assume, and was better for it. “I Love Lucy” shows with guest stars were usually pretty bad, with a few exceptions.
It’s about time someone rebooted The Flintstones, the original series looks so dated to me. We’ve learned a lot about paleoanthropology since the '60s!
I’m not disagreeing with you that the show didn’t have some creativity to it, but you do realize that The Flintstones was literally created to be “The Honeymooners in the Stone Age”, right?
The first live action Flintstones movie was pretty popular: it was a #1 film and 4th most successful at the box office for 1994, despite being having of the more notorious too-many-cooks scripts (~36 folks worked on it according to IMDb). IMO, this demonstrates that the brand can be initially successful in a relaunch, regardless of actual quality. And it perhaps helps that the kids that grew up with the movie, which is the most popular incarnation of the Flintstones since the 1960s, now are the young adults who (1) like Seth McFarlane’s work and (2) are ratings gold if they can be snagged.
As far as rebooting the concept and making it hip, several other examples have been mentioned (who’d have thought My Little Pony, of all brands, would be cool?), but I’m also reminded of Bakshi & Kricfalusi’s take on boring, staid Mighty Mouse (and the Mighty Heroes) in the 1980s. Controversial animator? Check. Oddball humor? Check. A show that was boring and old-fashioned being refashioned into something both popular with kids and adults? Check in MM’s case… and it’d be interesting to see happen here. I’m not sure why the overall idea that this is undoable, that the concept is sacred or that it’s blasphemous, seems so prevalent… it’s been shown to work.
My big question is how far Seth can go. The product-shilling mentioned earlier-- Pebbles cereals and Flintstone vitamins-- have kept the characters present and up-to-date with kid markets. Little kids know the characters and will be a presumed part of the viewing audience. Seth can’t push the edges too much without losing the kid audience (or at least that part of the kid audience that has parents who monitor TV viewing), and if the kid audience is lost or parents offended, Time Warner risks losing its immensely profitable licensing deals with Post Cereal and Bayer and the long-term benefits of having its characters continually exposed to children to create a perpetually-renewable market (kids using Flintstones-branded products today might be too young to appreciate a reboot, but they watch the reruns now and will keep consuming, they’ll be ready in 10 years for another live-action film reboot, and in 20 years can buy their own kids some cereal and vitamins…).
Mighty Mouse, Scooby-Doo, My Little Pony, and all the successful “edgy” reboots mentioned above haven’t had this problem; they’ve been slapped on consumer products, but they’ve never been permanent mascots for product lines like the Flintstones characters have been.
IIRC, Hanna-Barbera got folded into Time Warner’s animation department about a decade back and no longer exists as an independent outfit, so they’re not likely to be involved too much with a Fox show aside from the licensing rights.
Hmm. So we could have “Superman Saves the Flintstones.” Or “Batman in Bedrock.” The Great Gazoo (and you know he’ll be there) could be explained as one of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
My Little Pony has never been anything other than a half hour toy commercial - even Friendship is Magic, despite its high quality, exists only because Hasbro has toys to sell. (The same holds true for Transformers, even the movies with their not-particularly-appropriate-for-kids content.)
Having said all that, I have no idea what Seth MacFarlane can do with the characters that have not already been done during its original run. But if anyone can come up with something new it would be him. For instance, how would he depict technology, like cell phones and laptops, that didn’t exist when Flintstones first aired. And will he take on controversial topics like abortion and same sex marriage that were verboten in the 60’s. It’d be fun to get a prehistoric view of global warming!