What A Cartoon! - The Flintstones "The Great Gazoo"
Added 2021-01-11 05:00:00 +0000 UTCThis week, as chosen by premium Patreon subscriber Phil, we're covering a bedrock of TV animation: The Flintstones! The series is now a bit of a forgotten institution, so we explore how the show came to define the 1960s. And after we cover the creation of it, we also dive into the show's first downfall, as defined by a little green alien that only Fred and Barney can see. Listen along as we have a gay old time!
Comments
Obviously this cartoon is incredibly important in the history of cartoons but my god is watching it as an adult in 2021 an experience in patience. Say what you will about the issues with OG Scooby-Doo, but revisiting that was SO MUCH MORE FUN than coming back to this show.
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2021-01-21 02:23:05 +0000 UTCI forgot to share this when you guys did the Scooby Doo episodes so I'll share it here: someone in my partner's family (I think her uncle?) used to work for Hanna-Barbera. She has several personalized pieces of various H-B characters like George Jetson and Yogi Bear from when she was a kid and would ask her relative to give her pictures for her birthday. Her family knew Iwao Takamoto and my partner has a Scooby Doo poster in her condo signed by Iwao https://imgur.com/32tC7jB
Joshua Bjork
2021-01-18 05:51:27 +0000 UTCI’d like to recommend the Flintstones educational film Energy: A National Issue to any fans of the original Flintstones. It is the final production to feature Alan Reed as Fred. It’s a weird time capsule about the 70’s energy crisis in the US and narrated by Charlton Heston. Despite this Fred and Wilma have a very sweet and sentimental quality in this. There is an unfortunate segment of a musical number where Fred imitates various nationalities which hasn’t aged well, but otherwise it’s pretty good if you like outdated edutainment. https://youtu.be/g6qxUBEuGAQ
Brian Hortin
2021-01-18 04:25:29 +0000 UTCIt's no Jurassic Park, that's for sure.
Dan Vincent
2021-01-14 14:44:06 +0000 UTCI was born in 1997 so I grew up in the early 2000s. In the UK around 2004-2006 I remember BBC Two airing episodes of The Flintstones alongside The Munsters and occasionally Top Cat (which was called Top Boss in the UK when it first came out due to name similarities to cat food I believe). For some reason I recorded every episode I could of the Flintstones, despite not liking it nearly as much as the Munsters.
Scott Gerrard
2021-01-14 09:56:58 +0000 UTCWhat is a sitcom? A miserable little pile of secrets. But enough pod... Have at you!
Ron Sterling
2021-01-13 21:48:50 +0000 UTCFlintstones was one of those Hanna-Barbera shows I liked as a kid, but not as much as Scooby-Doo or The Jetsons, which we're definitely more quick-paced compared to the modern stone age family sitcom. But I had a thought while listening to this episode. In the late 50s to early 60s, there appeared to be a miniature boom of prehistoric/cavemen media. One of the big musical hits of 1960 was The Hollywood Argyles' "Alley Oop", a song about another, lesser known cartoon caveman of the same name. In 1961, Disney had their famous public film "Donald and the Wheel" where Donald was portrayed as a cave-duck. And let's forget the realm of B-movies with films like Teenage Caveman and Eegah! So I guess the reason why The Flintstones did so well right out of the gate was not just the novelty of being the first prime time cartoon, but because cavemen were a hot pop cultural commodity in those days.
KaiserBeamz
2021-01-13 20:51:05 +0000 UTCis it weird that the rules that the great gazoo has the same set of rules as that of god in the show god the devil and bob both can only be seen by the main male character and there kid both will randomly disappear throughout the episode except god has a reason why he's gone where gazoo does not.
y2kpodcst
2021-01-13 20:04:57 +0000 UTCI remember my stepdad being especially disdainful of "Bedrock Anthem" when the music video came on TV and in the long run I have to agree with him.
Bob Mackey
2021-01-13 17:38:09 +0000 UTCHeavy Metal band Powerglove did an instrumental cover of The Flintstones theme on their album Saturday Morning Apocalypse (which also features a cover of The Simpsons theme). It's a dumb, fun record to throw on now and again. And if we're talking goofy videos, who could forget the Weird Al song "Bedrock Anthem" and its video? It was a cover of "Give It Away Now" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with a dash of "Under the Bridge." Flea was famously disappointed with it as captured in Weird Al's Behind the Music. I tend to agree with him, it's not one of Al's bests.
Joe Hodgson
2021-01-13 15:48:49 +0000 UTCMost of my Flintstones watching occured on Saturday nights. This was because I tended to sleep over a friend's house on Saturday nights. We needed a show to quickly change to when we heard his mom coming down to the basement to check in on us and we didn't want her to know what we were really watching: South Park.
Gavi Raab
2021-01-13 15:07:40 +0000 UTCAnd now a couple musical moments. The Saturday Morning Cartoon's Greatest Hits album has come up more than once, and does in fact feature "Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sun Shine In" as performed by Frente! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SPxgW0lSjA Maximum Carnage superstars Green Jellÿ also covered Anarchy in the UK but changed the setting to Bedrock and made a delightfully goofy and '90s-as-hell music video for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNlaNYWa68
John Barnes
2021-01-13 07:20:24 +0000 UTCProps for the Skidoo! mention. I think I taped (yes, taped) it off TCM like a decade ago and still haven't watched it. And Henry's emphasis on how good the show itself looks on HBOMax is also appreciated and seconded. I will also add that for everything that makes it boring or the hilariously outdated gender politics, it's not devoid of charm. There are gags that land and there are nice little flourishes in the character animation from time to time when the moment warrants it, despite all the necessary shortcuts. It might be a show best enjoyed as GIFs (quick, someone build Flint-iac.) I know The Man Called Flintstone did air at least a few times on TV in the '90s, I think on Disney Channel back when it was a premium cable offering, because I seem to remember it being commercial free. (It may also have been HBO before they were cousins with Turner, or possibly on TNT.)
John Barnes
2021-01-13 07:18:17 +0000 UTCAww Fred
Bob Mackey
2021-01-12 21:46:01 +0000 UTC80s/90s kids were sort of the last to grow up with Hanna Barbera products just being always on television. Like our esteemed hosts, I can remember watching a lot of The Flintstones despite not actually liking it. I didn't hate it, but it was just on and I watched too much TV. It's also easy to forget how the franchise persisted into the 90s with stand-alone specials and the like such as A Flintstone Family Christmas, which even got a network timeslot. Mostly, I remember how this was one of the few cartoons I can recall my mom ever making observations about. I distinctly remember her pointing out how Barney has those hollow eyes in the early seasons vs solid black ones in the later ones. I guess that's just due to her, being a 60s kid, having grown up with the property. The marketing though is where The Flintstones will apparently live forever. I never had Flintstones vitamins growing up because they were the "expensive" vitamins and I had to make due with store brand zoo animals. I never did care for the cereal, but it's funny how so many cereals of that era did the whole Trix bunny thing (I don't know where the concept originated) of characters denying cereal to another character, in this case Fred always keeping Barney from eating Pebbles. In another tale of Joe Hodgson's Christmas VHS, I mentioned how A Garfield Christmas was the one that got away, well the Christmas Fruity Pebbles commercial is the commercial equivalent. It aired right after the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and my mother, not foreseeing how nostalgic commercials would become, pressed stop on the VCR right as the commercial began. I die a little inside each time I see it. And even without that holiday favorite being on the VHS I watched countless times, I can still recite every word of that commercial from memory. We were so indoctrinated with commercials as a generation.
Joe Hodgson
2021-01-12 21:41:44 +0000 UTCAnd yet on The Simpsons we're all still waiting for Homer to meet an alien named Ozmodiar whom only he can see.
Patrick Risolo
2021-01-12 17:48:53 +0000 UTC
