Apparently, this has been in the works for years and they’re retconning the last 3 animated tv specials from the 00s but all the commenting sections I’ve seen are saying its going to the next poorly received Velma or whinging it’s gonna be “woke trash”
So is anyone going to give this a chance ?
Stephen Root and Amy Sedaris as Fred and Wilma sounds like pretty solid casting to me.
I’m assuming this is what the Seth MacFarlane Flintstones show was originally supposed to be?
Show description:
Bedrock catches up with the Flintstone family two decades later, with Fred on the brink of retirement and 20-something Pebbles embarking on her own career. As the Stone Age gives way to a shiny and enlightened new Bronze Age, the residents of Bedrock will find this evolution harder than a swing from Bamm-Bamm’s club
Definitely sounds like it’ll have plenty of room to be accused of “wokeness” if it’s all about this progressive new world the Flintstones boomers just don’t understand. I doubt I’ll watch it but mainly because I don’t watch much television at all and Stephen Root as Fred Flintstone playing Archie Bunker doesn’t sound like something that’ll change that. Not because I give a shit about The Flintstones or care if they – I dunno – make Bamm-Bamm bisexual or something, it just doesn’t sound funny or interesting. Like a pretty standard modern sitcom, just have the Flintstones doing it to give it a hook.
(Today I learned that there’s four m’s in Bamm-Bamm)
Heh, I was going to make a “have they finally gotten to the Bronze Age yet?” Joke.
The MSN article says “Pedro is on the verge of retirement…” and the Deadline article it cribs from says “with Fred on the brink of retirement…”
Is Fred turned into Pedro (Peter = Rock) in the Spanish version or something? Weird change of name between articles.
From the linked article:
"Pedro is on the verge of retirement "
Pedro, who the fuck is Pedro?
Now that makes more sense. What an odd error.
You know I loved the Flinstsones as a kid. As an adult I notice that outside of a few episodes, they are pretty stupid. Fred and Barney tended to get shit on by life and by their wives far out of proportion for their “sins”.
They reflected their time. Fred was an animated version of Ralph Kramden, Who?, the youngsters say. Exactly!
What could an updated version bring to the table? They could barely do a stone age version of 1960 without a lot of plot holes, how do they expect to do a stone age version of 2023? You can hand wave a shell phone, but not a shell cell phone. And the stoneternet is just right out.
I wish they’d just acknowledge the reality that the Flinstones and the Jetsons both live in The Future at the same time, but that the modern stone age families are luddites, rebelling against the foodarackacycle and the homogenized, pasteurized, synthesized glorious world they live in,
Pebbles joins PETA, People for Ethical Treatment of Appliances, and unshackles her parents woodpecker phonograph players, mammoth sink sprayers and television rabbit ears. She’s confused when the pelican washing machine decides to stay, citing that “it’s a living…”
Hollywood, call me.
Velma is bad because the writers seem to have contempt for not only the source material, but the audience.
This is being written by Lindsay Kerns, whose portfolio is almost entirely cartoons. That doesn’t mean it’ll be great, but I doubt it’ll be as obnoxiously contemptuous as Velma is.
How many kids today know who the Flintstones are? I was in a grocery store a few months ago and saw the boxes of Pebbles cereals, and I thought “does anyone under 40 know who those guys on the box are?”
The chewable vitamins are still around, too. I think kids today are as aware of the Flintstones as I was of Mickey Mouse as a kid of the Seventies.
Data point of One: My 12 year old guessed that “The Flintstones” were a band when I asked.
Edit: follow up, “Have you heard of Fruity Pebbles?” Response: “Yes, I’ve seen it in videos and it’s a ceral that looks sort of like rocks and their mascot is a caveman”
So even knowing about Fruity Pebbles didn’t translate into Flintstones knowledge. Mind you, we don’t really eat cereal in the house nor buy Flintstones vitamins.
I looked for Flintstones vitamins a few years ago and couldn’t find them.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle a couple decades ago that Joe Camel was more recognized among children than Mickey Mouse. People were up in arms over a cigarette mascot being ubiquitous. I think it had more to do with there being no Mickey Mouse cartoons for years.
There’s was a generation of kids who grew up watching all those classic cartoons because they played ad nauseam on cable. Cartoon Network was originally just a vehicle for old Hannah-Barbera content.
We didn’t have a choice. You watched what was on. Kids these days (kids these days!!) have a million choices and they’re not beholden to network scheduling. They watch what they want when they want.
I’m sorry, but since when do the Flintstones have canon. There’s nothing to retcon.
The whole culture that’s portrayed, the individual personalities and relationships and behavioral norms. You don’t need complex plot arcs.
There was the 2016 Mark Russell Flintstones comic. Not sure if that was supposed to be too woke, not woke enough, or something in between. How did it fare commercially?
I don’t really see why cell phones or the internet would be any more (or less) ridiculous than wired phones or, say, television. Fred makes calls on a shell he keeps in his pocked, instead of a shell mounted on the wall. To the extent that this is a joke at all in the first place, I don’t see how the first one works any better or worse than the second one.
Same with the internet. Fred sits in front of a stone pc and types, and a bunch of ants scurry out the back carrying copies of what he wrote, or something.
Obviously, none of these examples are actually funny, but this is the Flintstones. “Funny” has never been a requirement.
In fact, there has never been a better time for a reboot of The Flintstones because AI can provide us with an almost-limitless well of unfunny, rock-based puns.
Tik Rok!
Instagranite!
Donald Travertine!
Corundum-19,000,000BC!
The non-jokes write themselves!
…using Chert GPT, obviously.