The Jetsons: The Complete Original Series Blu-ray set

I actually really liked the 80's seasons when I was younger. I loved Orbitty and I disliked how hard the outlines were for the characters in the 60's series. Somehow that worked for me with the Flintstones but not with the Jetsons.
Al in all, with arguably so little content (60 season+2 eighties seasons+two 2 movies+The Jetsons movie) it's surprising how they didn't just went for a complete Jetsons box set.

 

Seth MacFarlane was going to reboot The Flinstones for Fox about five years ago (maybe a bit more), but given all the various Flintstones series and movies, that concept seems done to death. There’s a lot more to explore with a Jetsons reboot.

 

I think a problem with a new Jetsons series is that real technology keeps outstripping the far-out technology shown in The Jetsons. Another problem is that George Jetson isn't the go-out-and-get-it type of guy that Fred Flintstone is, George tends to just take things as they are. This goes back to the basis for The Jetsons, the comic strip Blondie.

The type of guy George Jetson is was recently covered in the Jetsons comic book released by DC Comics. Despite the high technology that exists, George Jetson's job is to do hand-on tech support, repairing the equipment.

 

I don’t know - where’s my flying car? And my food erackacycle?

 

For reference, the Wonderful World of Disney episode that aired that night, what was also the first episode of the new season which was “The Golden Horseshoe Revue”.
It was: “A celebration of the 10,000th performance of Disneyland's Golden Horseshoe Revue”.

 

Here's a flying car from a 2017 Today Show report:






"The Jetsons: The Complete Original Series" Blu-ray Review

 

HBO Max is using the new Blu-ray transfers, complete with the sponsor spots. As of two months ago, the Boomerang app was still using decades-old transfers.

 

Visual quality and predictive acumen aside, how well does the show hold up overall? I’ve only seen one episode since I was a teen, and it was so badly dated - the story centered on George freaking out because Jane wanted to learn to drive - that it made me wary of investigating further.

 

You have to judge a show like The Jetsons in historical context: it's a 1962 show written by 1962 writers, and it reflects the culture and values of the early 1960s. That's the way things were back then. Whether it holds up or not is kind of a moot point, because it's a product of its time. Any TV show from 50-60 years ago is going to feel dated to a point. You either enjoy it from a nostalgic point of view, or you don't.

To me, it's like criticizing The Honeymooners because they don't have an electric refrigerator, or criticizing I Love Lucy because Ricky is always putting Lucy in her place. That's the way life was back then. Do they hold up? Well, those two shows still make me laugh on occasion. The Hanna-Barbera shows are hit and miss to me. I have to say, the Jonny Quest shows were favorites when I was a kid, and some of those actually hold up well -- in fact, I'm amazed they got them on the air.

 

There are degrees of this, though - ie, whether a show mainly deals in fundamental human behaviours and relationships, which don't change that much, or mainly deals in the tropes of the day. If the former it may hold up well, if the latter it's mainly a nostalgia trip or of historical interest. It's why Shakespeare gets more play these days than Spenser - early modern poets and playwrights being of course an apt comparison to the work of Hanna-Barbera.

 

Looks like The Flintstones has also been remastered in HD.

 

They may eventually do that, but I wonder if it's a technical issue with standard definition vs. HD. Were the 1980s ones produced on video? If they were, they would be standard definition.

Also, there is a big distinction between the original series and the 1980s shows, even though the point was to add more episodes to the package. As you mentioned, the drawing style is different, and while I wasn't born yet when the original series first aired, I saw them in reruns both Saturday mornings on NBC and locally in syndication, so they were "canon" to me. The 1980s ones didn't interest me all that much at the time, and seem like an "add-on," I guess because they were.

 

Would you elaborate? I am a fan of Jonny Quest too.
What might have prevented the shows from getting on the air?

 

Heavier stories than with any childrens TV show. Guns and death are features of most scripts. Essentially its an adult show lite.

 

I liked the episode that showed how professional sports evolved after the concerns over concussions in the 2010s, and the great pandemic of 2020.

 

A whole lotta violence. There's a degree of racism in there as well, but that was kind of that early-1960s culture. Jonny Quest is one of those shows where lots of henchmen are seen getting shot and killed, knocked off boats, falling from giant trees, going over railings, stuff like that (not unlike the James Bond films), only you see no blood or mayhem. You couldn't get away with that today. I totally dug it and thought it was fine in 1964-65, but those moments tend to get snipped in syndication now.

 

Considering the difference in length of time for shows in the early 60s vs nowadays, I can see where those problematic scenes could be cut left and right to satisfy current time constrictions as well as latter day societal norms. 'Course, if kids today want to see such things, they can just turn on the news and bask in humanity's failings.

 

I remember Mark Evanier once writing on his “News from Me” blog that in a 1980s cartoon he couldn’t show kids using a knife to cut a rope bridge to escape the bad guys. He had even them being trained a a Boy Scoutmaster on the proper uses of a knife. Ultimately he had to write the kids using rocks to cut the rope.

 

Oh, I worked on the Rambo syndicated cartoon show in the 1980s, and the writers and producers were flummoxed that the characters could carry guns but not shoot them, and they could carry knives but not throw them or stab somebody. Trying to take all the violence out of a very violent concept is almost impossible... but they somehow got 65 episodes out of that one. My memory is that there were a lot of explosions and missiles, and the theory was that since kids can't buy those, that was permitted.

They could cut the scenes out, but then the show plays really choppy and is hard to watch. The violence on today's news is hard to take and really concerning. A cynic would say, "the violence is from people who were kids in the 1980s and 1990s and watched violent cartoons!"

If you want money for people with minds that hate...
all I can tell you is, brother, you have to wait...

 

Thanks for ‘splaining.

 

This is why I tend to watch older programs/cartoons and anime via home video rather than relying on broadcast television (in its various forms). As an example, the anime series 8Man was great but it ended up being pulled from TV for one issue: To power his body he uses energy capsules that look like he is smoking cigarettes. There is a similar issue with Underdog , like Popeye and spinach at a critical moment, he takes a super secret energy pill secreted on his body to charge up. Another more recent similar issue is with The New Adventures Of Mighty Mouse (the Ralph Bakshi series) where in one scene Mighty Mouse sniffs powder from a crushed flower and because it looked similar to him using drugs the scene, and later the series, was pulled.

Another series that got hacked up for violence is Gatchman. The original anime was an adult series with a large amount of violence and other issues. As an example, the character Joe was supposed to be in incredible pain due to a brain injury, the main villain was supposed to be both male and female, and (IIRC) one character didn't want to talk about their training because it took him into very dark places. When they first brought the series to the U. S. as Battle Of The Planets they replaced about half of the footage in each episode with U. S.-created footage (there were repeated scenes of the characters lounging in their headquarters and scenes with 7Zark7 to supplied exposition) to make it acceptable for U. S. audiences.

 

Even those aren't always safe from scissor happy censors as the Jonny Quest dvd set suffered from some snipping, unlike the later Blu Ray.

 

There are 3 different end titles for The Jetsons when it aired on ABC in 1962-63 when it comes to the Screen Gems card over George is walking Astro. First it said, “Television Subsidiary Columbia Pictures Corporation”, Second was “Color by Pathe”, and Third nothing at all.

ABC did run The Flintstones in color during the 1962-63 season----Friday night at 8:30pm---This season started on September 14th, 1962, airing in color just in a handful of markets. The Jetsons premiered on Sunday, September 23rd, 1962—so it’s not the first ABC show to air in color, but was the first new series to be aired in color as well as B&W on ABC.

 

I use the same technique to get through long days at the office.

 

For me it chocolate. Some chocolate gets me through the shift.