The Final Episode #77: The Flintstones (1960 - 1966)

 

Yeah, it's been about nine days since I updated this blog. No matter how long I write this blog for, it could end next week or in 25 years. I could be writing about this dopey shit to an audience of 10 people for whatever amount of time. I'm just going to not be updating most in August. August around here seems to be the shittiest month of the year, and it's somehow the one I was born in. Every day is humid and muggy and even sitting in a basement it's still annoying. It's pretty much days straight of "fuck I want to sit in the middle of a frozen lake" shitty hot weather. I don't like the heat. I am a fat man. Very fat. It does not sit well with me, but I doubt I'd be loving with weather if I were a skinny man either. I just do not do well with the heat. Every day you get some shitty weather just causing sweat in every part of your body. It makes me not want to talk about anything or do anything and just hope the next day will be tolerable. Not even good just tolerable. Yeah there's warm stuff in June and July but it's August when every day is like "go fuck yourself" weather. Yeah, I've decided to complain about the weather I've truly become an old person at thirty six years old. I will refrain from complaining about climate change and how it will end us all because some rich ghouls decided that having a billion dollars wasn't enough.

Anyway I guess I decided to pick the Flintstones because of a few things. One It feels weird too not talk about The Jetsons and then not talk about The Flintstones at least a few posts later. These two shows are completely connected at the hip now. Is it because one took place in the past and one took place in the future? is it because of the team up movie of the 1980s called The Flintstones Meet the Jetsons? I really don't know but they get connected. It's weird because for decades the Flintstones was one of the money makers and the Jetsons was just kinda forgotten. Like The Flintstones as a program may have ended in 1966 but Fred and Barney were put into all kinds of specials and tv shows after that. They even were in a series called Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. Yes the Thing from Marvel Comics. They had specials in the 1980s and 1990s and everything. I wonder if they had never decided to bring the Jetsons back in the 1980s to some success. Would people even remember the Jetsons these days? I don't know. the two series from the 1980s along with the 1960s stuff gave The Jetsons just enough episodes for YTV to completely rerun forever. And yes they at least to the best of my memory put the Flintstones and the Jetsons together.

Again I don't know if I mentioned it or not in my The Jetsons piece but I was not a fan of the Flintstones but I clearly liked them more than the Jetsons because I would at least watch the Flintstones. I did like Barney and think he has one of the more fun cartoon voices out there. Yeah I enjoy some Hanna-Barbera cartoons but two of the most popular are the ones I never liked. There are also tons of there shows I've never seen and have no real interest in. I like the ones that Michael Maltese had some work on from like 1958 to 1970. Also port you should look up Michael Maltese on Wikipedia or Google before you decide to slag him. It'll be the best idea for you. You probably won't though because you are a lazy bum. I also like Scooby Doo, and you'll probably see the shows I care enough about to talk about when I talk about them. The Flintstones isn't one of the ones I care about but I feel like you still gotta talk about it.

One positive you and I think everyone has to give the Flintstones is the fact that it made animated sitcoms in prime time a viable thing. People working at big TV companies jumped on the Simpsons because they remembered the Flintstones being a hit. You probably wouldn't have about all of the great animated sitcoms that have come across the tube since, and that's really about it when it comes to the Flintstones. Oh, it gave Harvey Korman a job as The Great Gazoo. That's always a good thing. I will point this out that The Flintstones is far from the worst animated sitcom. That award goes to Allan Gregory. In fact every Hanna-Barbera cartoon is better than that. Allan Gregory might just be the worst tv show to ever exist. Well that or The Big Bang Theory. (Don't worry Port your precious Tim and Eric makes the top five.)

Anyway I've shit out several pointless paragraphs so it's time to finally discuss The Final Episode of The Flintstones. Which is the 166th episode and was entitled "The Story of Rocky's Raiders" and came out on April 1st, 1966. This is an interesting episode because it just might be the first time a sitcom does the tell a story from the past but put the characters from the show now in roles. You know like it takes place in the history of the characters grandparents in the wild west or some shit and all that. It happens in live action shows from time to time but animated shows do this a LOT. That's probably the most interesting thing about this episode. The Final Episode starts out with Fred and Barney getting ready for a trip from Grandpa Rockbottom Flintstone. That's a really dumb first name man. Anyway they are putting out all of the gaudy presents he has sent over the years. Like a giant dinosaur head that he killed or some shit. You can really tell how much I'm into this episode.

So Fred finds Grandpa Flintstone's diary and that's where it turns into the episodes story. It starts off in a café and we see Grandpa Flintstone looks exactly like Fred Flintstone. I mean didn't you look exactly like your grandpa? Totally. Uh, Reggie Van Pebble or whatever his Barney's not grandpa's name is. Wouldn't you be freaked out if you saw a guy who wasn't related to you but looked exactly like you just 50 years older? Oh and Betty is here but she has a French accent and slightly different hair. A spy for the CIA tells Grandpa Flintstone that he has to save the spy Mata Hari. Yes they give her a weird name for the show but I forget it and I really don't care enough to look it up. Yes I just watched the episode before writing this and I forgot it. It wasn't a good joke or name anyway. I'm sure I don't have to explain to you that there actually was a spy named Mata Hari. I just thought she was in the second world war and not the first. 

By the way they called it the Stone World War I. Yes, they were clearly not caring any more at this point. Also Mata Hari looks just like Wilma and I think she has a Russian accent, I do not care enough to look this up or try to find what that accent is so I'm just going to say it's Russian. Anyway they easily see the building she's in because she runs out of it. Away from Baron Rock Pun. Anyway Baron Rock Pun's men knock Grandpa Flintstone and Reggie Van Pebble out of the sky. They land on a tree and thankfully a train comes by and they just jump on it. They get off the train and catch up to Baron Rock Pun in the German army base? I think it's German. 

So they pretend to be guards and help out Mata Hari who is being dunked in water. They get her but she yells AMERICAN PILOTS when they explain to them who they are and that well alerts Baron Rock Pun to them. They uh run to a plane and then run out another door on the plane and I think they clearly ran out of steam on this episode right here. I'll talk more in a paragraph or two. They jump off a cliff into a hay barrel connected to a dinosaur and the diary ends right there. I'll ruin the big ending joke which is that Baron Rock Pun is still chasing after Grandpa Flintstone and Old Barney. No discussion of Mata Hari but I guess they didn't have the money to animate her within it.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I think why I didn't like the Flintstones or the Jetsons as much as other Hanna Barbera shows as a kid was because they really didn't have enough plot for an entire 25 minute episode. You could easily make two 12 minute Flintstone stories in a one episode and they would have worked much better. Wacky Races did that. Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, etc did that. They were 5-6 minutes and you got some fun slapstick and silly jokes and the plots never felt dragged out. The plot in this episode feels so dragged out. I'm like yeah yeah I get it. They would have been something I probably would have watched if they had two stories per episode. With that said I don't think the Flintstones is far from the worst Final Episode. It's not a clip show. It's not repeating something that another show by the same people did or anything like Spider-Man or Bewitched did. I think after Final Episode #100 I'll do some kind of Tier list because that would be interesting honestly, but yeah this won't be in one of the higher tiers. Now I wait port to blather on about the same boring points he always makes.