The Flinstones

Of all the shows we have written about on this site so far, The Flinstones might be the only one my grandmother has ever heard about. The only reason she’s heard about it is because it took place during her childhood!!!! Get it because old people and stuff? Nah she only knows it because there are absolutely no black people on The Flinstones. It was safe for her children. Now that I think about it, there were no black people on The Jetsons either. Was this Hannah Barbera’s idea of a Utopia?

September 30, 1960 was when The Flinstones debuted. Over its six season run it had 166 episodes. Not a single of these episodes is a memorable one either. You would think such a classic show would have classic moments. Of course there are the times when there were pelicans getting used as cement mixers or the gag where their cars are just them running which is cute, but it’s not a story. I guess back then when the home run record was still held by Babe Ruth and America’s biggest enemy was the Russians, not obesity, coming up with a clever idea was not on anyone’s mind.

The Flinstones focuses mainly on a family living during the Stone Age in a town called Bedrock. That’s what I call my bed whenever a girl comes over. I like to tie a girl down to the bed then drop heavy rocks on them. It tests if they’re a witch or not. In some earlier episodes the town was called Rockville. I prefer Bedrock so much more because naming a town with a “ville” at the end is too simple.

The father in the Flinstones is Fred. He’s fat, ugly, and basically an unfunny Homer Simpson. He has a redheaded wife named Wilma. As is the case and was pointed out in Family Guy, this was a formula that many cartoons came to use. The Honeymooners is the main basis of this plot structure. Hopefully this is true because I’m only basing it off a drunken memory.

(She regrets this marriage already)

Fred and Wilma have a daughter named Pebbles. Would you believe she doesn’t even come around until season three? She even has a cereal named after her, Fruity Pebbles. It’s nobody’s favorite. Do they even make it still? The Flinstones hasn’t been popular since Transformers came out in the 1980s. Who wants to watch old dead people pretend to drive cars when they can watch alien robots battle on earth for unclear purposes? A fool, that’s who.

In addition to having a daughter with a terrible cereal named after her, they have a pet dinosaur named Dino. Dino is basically a dog and he’s a cute character. I always felt bad for Dino because he was clearly retarded. I guess all animals are. If they weren’t then they would have religion, government, lying, and other things that make humans so much more advanced.

(Pebbles is the one with the red hair and Dino is the one that’s a dinosaur)

The Flinstones also have a pet Saber Tooth tiger named Baby Puss. Yeah, I’m not touching that joke. Baby Puss is the one who throws Fred out of the door during the opening credits. Baby Puss rarely ever made an appearance because the Hannah Barbera artists felt strange drawing something named Baby Puss. They had daughters to think about.

Next door to the Flinstones was the Rubble family. I would hate to have the last name Rubble. It makes me think of 9/11. I guess back then they didn’t have 9/11. Calendars weren’t invented for much longer so they weren’t being insensitive or anything. The dad in the Rubble family is Barney. He’s Fred’s blonde best friend with no real personality. Barney has a wife named Betty. Unlike Wilma who has little tiny Lily eyes, Betty has big gorgeous ones. She also wears a hot tiny turquoise number. For some reason despite being hot in the cartoon, in the live action movie they chose to have Rosie O’Donnell play Betty Rubble. Rosie O’Donnell looks a lot more like Fred Flinstone than anything. You can catch her in a clip from this terrible movie below.

Barney and Betty also have a disabled child named Bam Bam who likes to smash things. He’s not actually even really related to him, he’s adopted. Yep. People in the Stone Age cannot figure out the wheel yet adoption agencies exist. Maybe this is the charm cartoons have. We’re supposed to forget about reality and remember that all of the images we saw were probably drawn by lonely fat people or Japanese men.

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