# Stupid "Jetsons" question...did they ever show the "ground level" of Earth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 27, 2003, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223 "2003-07-27T05:39:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/1 "2003-07-27T05:39:42Z")
I’ll give no pretense that this isn’t a silly question, but…all the buildings on “The Jetsons” were vaguely top-shaped structures, perched on top of “poles,” like birdhouses. But what exactly were the poles themselves standing on? I’d _like_ to assume that the building-poles didn’t just meet up in some big “koosh ball” joint a few hundred miles down, and that the “planet” was actually just a giant spacebourne “bubble” of atmosphere held in place around the koosh-buildings. Sorta like a reverse Dyson sphere, very Niven-esque. But, realistically, such a structure would probably been a _little_ beyond the imaginings of Hanna-Barbara. So, we’re left to assume that the buildings actually were built on the surface of a planet. But…what _did_ the surface level look like? Post-apocalyptic wasteland? Waterworld? “Scrap Iron City?” The place where the Morlocks and the other “slave castes” toiled? (Hey, it _was_ the '60s.) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/2 "2003-07-27T05:48:06Z")
They showed it at least once. A bird was _walking_ on it. Walking, because there were too many humns flying around in those buble cars.So, as the bird complained (in English), the ground was the only safe place for them. The ground as flat and featureless. No plants or trees, as I recall. But no cyberpunk industrial or post-apocalyptic wasteland, either. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/3 "2003-07-27T11:46:11Z")
I remember one time they were on the surface of Jupiter(!), and one of them made the comment that “We need to hurry. You know how short these days are on Jupiter.” I think they were filming something. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/4 "2003-07-27T12:37:09Z")
I also vaguely recall the episode where George had been wearing the prototype flying (super?) suit; he threw it away and a vagrant on the ground found and donned it. In the movie (non-canon in my opinion) Rosie makes a reference to adjusting the habitat’s height above the “smog layer”, which would seem to imply a more disutopian scenerio. ---
**Author:** ![Daniel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Daniel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daniel)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/5 "2003-07-27T16:01:19Z")
Yeah, **Jetsons: The Movie** made a big deal of this actually. The ground was the polluted leftovers of Earth, and the buildings are built so high that they rise above the smog and soot of ground-level Earth. Individual apartments had control of the building’s height, so that Rosie was able to cause the structure to rise above the smog on a particularly polluted day. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/6 "2003-07-27T19:02:26Z")
I’d just always assumed that they never showed the ground so as not to ruin the utopian image of the show with scenes of the Morlock-like slave laborers who labor in the smog-pits below. ---
**Author:** ![Koffing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@Koffing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koffing)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/7 "2003-07-27T19:49:40Z")
The Flintstones world is down there. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/8 "2003-07-27T23:13:47Z")
Okay, as a child this question _really disturbed me._ As you may recall, in the first few seconds of the introductory sequence, we zoom fast in a shot of a cartoon Earth as seen from space–then, just as that first brassy trumpet note from the theme music sounds, _the Earth explodes into a million Technicolor shards._ This, combined with the fact that actual ground was hardly ever featured in the cartoon, led my Super Sugar Crisp-embalmed brain to the inevitable conclusion: _the Jetsons were living in a future after the Earth had disintegrated like the planet Krypton. \* This is why they were forced to live in those odd sky houses and use flying cars, I reasoned. This is why they never showed the ground–because, somehow,_ there was no ground.\* The supporting pillars just went down, and down… what, if anything, were they ultimately attached to? I didn’t know, but it worried me. This strange idea of mine gave _The Jetsons_’ techno-utopia more of a dark side (at least in my own mind) than the creators of the show were probably shooting for. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/9 "2003-07-28T07:44:47Z")
I could have sworn there was one episode where Elroy and George went down to the ground, and the part they went to was a well-manicured public park…? ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/10 "2003-07-28T07:52:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Miller \* > \*\*I’d just always assumed that they never showed the ground so as not to ruin the utopian image of the show with scenes of the Morlock-like slave laborers who labor in the smog-pits below. \*\* Bummer. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/11 "2003-07-28T12:21:14Z")
> [@](#): > > I could have sworn there was one episode where Elroy and George went down to the ground, and the part they went to was a well-manicured public park…? I was going to post the same thing! ---
**Author:** ![SirRay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@SirRay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirRay)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-jetsons-question-did-they-ever-show-the-ground-level-of-earth/191223/12 "2003-07-28T13:37:56Z")
I just remember (on one or two episodes) a brown, featureless plain (with no mountains or anything) - this is just the series, not the movie. I think we can chalk the lack of ground detail up to the same reason Zorak said “Actually, nobody moves much in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon”…