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Directors: David Gemmill & Michael Ruocco
Airing date: May 27, 2020
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Beaky Buzzard
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Buzzard School’ sees the return of Beaky Buzzard and his mother from ‘Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid’ (1942).
As in the original short, Beaky’s mother sends her son away to catch a rabbit for dinner, and Bugs “helps” the dumb bird by teaching him how to catch rabbits. Highlight of this short may be scene in which Beaky fights himself.
The design and animation of Beaky Buzzard are practically indistinguishable from the original ones in Clampett’s 1940s cartoons, making ‘Buzzard School’ an excellent example of the nostalgic homage quality of this 2020-2024 television series.
‘Buzzard School’ is available on the Blu-Ray-set ‘Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection’
Director: Ryan Kramer
Airing date: May 27, 2020
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Pest Coaster’ is the first cartoon of the fifth episode of the new Looney Tunes Cartoons series from 2020-2024. This episode starts with Bugs Bunny classically travelling underground, now ending up at an amusement park. In this park he wants to ride the rollercoaster called ‘The Murderizer’. Unfortunately, this ride is operated by Yosemite Sam, who has made a lot of rules, one of which is ‘no rabbits allowed’.
What follows is a string of gags in which Bugs Bunny does ride the rollercoaster and Yosemite Sam tries to prevent that. At one point Bugs dresses up like a Veronica Lake-like woman, emphasizing the nostalgia modus of the series. More interesting than the antics is the rather Joan Miró-like background art.
‘Pest Coaster’ is available on the Blu-Ray-set ‘Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection’
Director: Ryan Kramer
Airing date: May 27, 2020
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Pool Bunny’ starts with Bugs crossing a scorching hot desert. The chase cartoon starts when the hare enters Elmer Fudd’s swimming pool, but Elmer kicks him out, prompting Bugs Bunny to say: “of course you realize this means… You know what”.
This short is both a nice new take on classic tropes as a homage to the old cartoons. Bugs Bunny is particularly cruel in this cartoon and his revenge on Elmer is sweet, and even includes a classic death scene.
Watch ‘Pool Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Pool Bunny’ is available on the Blu-Ray-set ‘Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection’
Director: Unknown
Airing date: May 27, 2020
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Gossamer
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Big League Beast’ is the first cartoon of the second episode of ‘Looney Tunes Cartoons’ and in this short Bugs Bunny is reunited with the evil scientist and red monster with sneakers from ‘ Water, Water Every Hare‘ (1952).
This red monster was christened ‘Gossamer’ by Chuck Jones in 1980, and Bugs Bunny addresses the hairy fellow by this name. Unfortunately, the plot is rather weak (Bugs Bunny wants to see the big (baseball) game on the scientist’s television) and the gags are more of a homage to Jones’s classic shorts than adding anything new.
Watch the opening of ‘Big League Beast’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Big League Beast’ is available on the Blu-Ray-set ‘Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection’
Director: David Gemmill
Airing date: May 27, 2020
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Looney Tunes Cartoons’ was a television series that ran from 2020 to 2024 and which was a surprising revival of the classic Warner Bros. Cartoons of the 1940s and 1950s, featuring the same stars and the same frantic classic animation of the originals, but with slightly more modern designs and animation influences from the Renaissance period, most obviously from ‘Ren and Stimpy’.
The third disc of the ‘Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Edition’ Blu-Ray set contains nine Bugs Bunny shorts from the first season of this series and these show the high quality of this revival series. At their worst the cartoons are mere homages, but at their best they reshuffle the classic characters into new situations with new gags.
‘Harm Wrestling’, for example, the third cartoon from the very first episode, takes Yosemite Sam back to his Western roots, where he claims to be the arm wrestling champion of ‘Tough City’. Then, of course, Bugs Bunny comes along. This short reuses some classic gags from the 1940s, but add new ones and some particularly Ren & Stimpy-like takes on Yosemite Sam. Bugs Bunny, meanwhile, looks most like his 1940s self, harking mostly back to the Robert McKimson design for the Bob Clampett unit.
Watch ‘Harm Wrestling’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Harm Wrestling’ is available on the Blu-Ray-set ‘Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: April 5, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★
Review:
In ‘The Birthday Party’ Wilma organizes a surprise party for Fred at Barney’s and Betty’s house. Barney is to stall Fred until everything is ready, but he does his job a little too good.
‘The Birthday Party’ wraps off the third season of ‘The Flintstones’. Unfortunately, this last episode feels like a letdown after the great continuity of the coming of Pebbles. Small Pebbles isn’t even in sight. But worse, ‘The Birthday Party’ belongs to the more cartoony Flintstones episodes, high on slapstick and low on more sophisticated types of comedy.
After Fred returns home, the episode starts to drag considerably, and the end scene is anything but funny. Particularly annoying are no less than five talking tool animals, all having incredibly lame lines: a kitchen knife lizard, a shaving brush bird, a car horn bird, a golf cart Ceratopsian and a balloon pump bird.
Despite all the slapstick mayhem, the episode’s most enjoyable scene is that of all Fred’s friends waiting in the dark at Barney’s and Betty’s house.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Birthday Party’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is the 28th and last episode of The Flintstones Season Three
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Swedish Visitors
‘The Birthday Party’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: March 29, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones, Yogi Bear & Boo-Boo
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Swedish Visitors’ is the first episode since ‘The Surprise‘ that is not connected to (the coming of) young Pebbles. Instead, we follow Fred’s fruitless attempts to have some rest on his well-earned vacation.
The episode knows quite some plot twists, so I won’t reveal more, but the episode is noteworthy for Wilma’s dishonesty, a character trait mostly reserved for Fred, and it is a bit unsettling to see it in Fred’s normally so faithful wife.
‘Swedish Visitors’ also knows a great comedy routine at a bank, in which an unfortunate employee has to roll away three humongous stones to get into a vault. Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo also make a cameo appearance, but it’s the Swedes who make this episode special. Now, the very idea of ‘Swedes’ in prehistory is as preposterous as the yankee-hating colonel was in ‘Fred’s New Job‘, but one particular dumb one forms the direct inspiration for Cousin Svën in the Ren & Stimpy episode ‘Svën Høek’, with his repeated rendering of ‘he is Ole, you are Sven’, which was given to Svën as his opening line in the Ren & Stimpy episode.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Swedish Visitors’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 27
To the previous The Flintstones episode: The Big Move
To the next Flintstones episode: The Birthday Party
‘Swedish Visitors’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: March 22, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In ‘The Big Move’ young Pebbles triggers the action. When her first words turn out to be ‘scooby dooby doo’, ‘shoot pool’ and ‘play poker’, thanks to Barney, Fred wants to move to a more upper class neighborhood, so Pebbles can get a proper influence.
Soon he and Wilma move upon hill to a land leased house in the snubbiest neighborhood imaginable. Fred immediately starts lying about his car, his ‘personnel’ and his work, much to Wilma’s chagrin. But of course he misses Barney before soon, and with an unlikely scheme (with Barney and Betty posing as some hillbilly family) things are soon back to normal.
‘The Big Move’ is very predictable, and Fred behaves absolutely detestably in this episode. Most interesting is his bedtime story to Pebbles, with which the episode starts and the expression ‘scooby dooby doo’ six years before Hanna-Barbera launched the series featuring the famous hound and mystery solving team.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Big Move’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 26
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Ventriloquist Barney
To the next Flintstones episode: Swedish Visitors
‘The Big Move’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: March 1, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Carry on, Nurse Fred’ is the first Flintstones episode with the Flintstones as parents. The episode opens with Wilma and Fred going home from the hospital.
Fred has read a book by one Dr. Rock (an obvious nod to Dr. Spock, the most famous pediatrician of the post-war years) and he is over-concerned. Nevertheless, he fires the all too strict and stout nurse at home to take care of little Pebbles himself.
‘Carry on, Nurse Fred’ is a sweet little episode on what it means to be a young parent, but it’s also low on gags, and corroborates the sexist trope that men are unfit for housework. Highlight of this episode is Fred practicing his baby caring skills on Barney. I also like the military music accompanying the nurse.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Carry on, Nurse Fred’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 24
To the previous The Flintstones episode: The Dress Rehearsal
To the next Flintstones episode: Ventriloquist Barney
‘Carry on, Nurse Fred’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: February 22, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
‘The Dress Rehearsal’ forms the pinnacle of the continuity that had started with ‘The Surprise‘ a month earlier. In fact, the episode is the best of the whole third season, and perhaps of the whole Flintstones series.
The episode starts inconspicuous enough, with Fred and Barney practicing at a gym, owned by a phony character, but when red and Barney decide to practice the day Wilma goes into labor some really fine comedy starts, with the writers pulling all comic registers, from slapstick, via lame jokes to a great comedy of errors.
Barney looks particularly silly posing as Fred’s wife, more looking like Little Red Riding Hood. But all this is topped by a remarkable speedy sequence of rushing back and forth to the hospital. The episode ends with the coming of Fred and Wilma’s baby Pebbles. Unfortunately, her arrival also heralds a sudden drop of quality of the series, as the subsequent episodes will show.
Note that ‘The Dress Rehearsal’ knows a rare appearance of the saber-tooth cat of the title sequences. In the hospital we also see two clear caricatures. These appear to be Vince Edwards and Sam Jaffe from the television series ‘Ben Casey’ (961-1966), which is set in a hospital.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Dress Rehearsal’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 23
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Fred’s New Job
To the next Flintstones episode: Carry on, Nurse Fred
‘The Dress Rehearsal’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: February 15, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In ‘Fred’s New Job’ Fred would love to get a raise, now he is going to have support a family. Barney conceives a plan that backfires, and soon Fred is looking for another job, e.g. in a drive-in restaurant, partly reprising the ‘The Drive-in‘ episode from season one.
‘Fred’s New Job’ seems to have been made by a B-team: the designs are often off, and the story contains a lot of silly and nonsensical elements. For starters, the episode starts with a silly boink bird, then there’s a corny steamed clam gag, and a Southern colonel who dislikes ‘yankees’ (in prehistory?!), one in a long line of Southern colonels swarming Warner bros. cartoons. But most absurd is watching Fred flying like a bird.
When compared to such episodes like the earlier ‘Dial S for Suspicion‘ or the following ‘The Dress Rehearsal’ this episode is just subpar, relying more on silly gags than on clever comedy.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Fred’s New Job’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 22
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Foxy Grandma
To the next Flintstones episode: The Dress Rehearsal
‘Fred’s New Job’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: February 8, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Foxy Grandma’is the third episode of the ‘Flintstones are getting a baby’ continuum. It’s easily the weakest of the lot. Little is done with the pregnancy idea, even though the whole plot is based on the fact that Fred doesn’t want Wilma to do housework in her condition.
Wilma naturally wants to ring her mother to help her, but Fred insists on getting a housekeeper, which turns out to be a more difficult task than imagined. The episode takes a particularly silly turn when one ‘Grandma Dynamite ‘ turns up. There’s even a surreal road gag straight from a Tex Avery cartoon.
Unfortunately, all the antics are more tiresome than funny, and the slapstick feels tried and uninspired when compared with episodes focusing on the relationship between the four main protagonists. In this episode the Rubbles hardly have a role.
The stone age gags, too, are familiar: a lawnmower dino, a hedge trimmer bird, an intercom parrot, and a saw-billed bread knife bird. The water tap mammoth can be credited with being given the lamest gag of the whole episode.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Foxy Grandma’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 21
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Mother-in-Law’s Visit
To the next Flintstones episode: Fred’s New Job
‘Foxy Grandma’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: February 1, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
The second episode of the ‘The Flintstones get a baby’ continuum is all around a visit of Fred’s mother-in-law. True to formula, Wilma’s mother is a genuine hag, but Fred tries his best, repeating to himself ‘I love my mother-in-law’ over and over again. When Barney suggests Fred work overtime as a taxi driver, the episode takes a surprising turn.
‘Mother-in-Law’s Visit’ is hampered by the all too old evil mother-in-law trope, but rescued by the fine comedy during the taxi night. Nevertheless, the silliest part is when a motor agent takes Fred and his mother-in-law to a maternity hospital, thinking she will deliver any time soon.
Outside of the comedy, the episode’s highlight is watching Wilma walking around pregnant, being the first animated cartoon character shown to be in expectation.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Mother-in-Law’s Visit’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 20
To the previous The Flintstones episode: The Surprise
To the next Flintstones episode: Foxy Grandma
‘Mother-in-Law’s Visit’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: January 25, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘The Surprise’ is the first episode in what was to become the first continuum in television animation. The show starts with Betty pushing a baby carriage. The carriage contains little Marblehead, her nephew.
Barney completely falls for the baby, and even forsakes the last game of the bowling tournament, making his team lose. Fred, of course, is not amused, and throughout the episode expresses a disliking of babies. Of course, he softens up as time progresses, and then Wilma indeed has some surprising news.
The whole episode is more gentle and cute than genuinely funny, but Fred’s doubletake when Barney and Betty catch him entertaining little Marblehead is priceless. The episode is also noteworthy for Fred addressing the public directly at the end.
The stone age gags, meanwhile, are modest: a crab and a bird used as scissors, and a mammoth as a water hose. None of these animals speaks, which spares us some lame gags.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Surprise’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 19
To the previous The Flintstones episode: The Hero
To the next Flintstones episode: Mother-in-Law’s Visit
‘The Surprise’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: January 18, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★
Review:
In ‘The Hero’ Fred and Barney both are nominated for the election of ‘Grand Imperial Pooh Bah’ at the Royal Order of Water Buffaloes, but then one of them rescues a baby…
‘The Hero’ progresses in all too predictable strides, and is one of the most boring of the Flintstones episodes. The episode gets a little surreal when Fred’s ‘self’ materializes as a blue doppelganger, haunting our hero. The episode shows how mild the characters had become: Fred certainly behaves much less nasty than in the first series. but with that, some of the sharpness of the humor was also lost.
There are a few stone age gags: a tortoise as a jack, a mammoth as a tow and a porcupine as a hairbrush, but they cannot rescue this boring entry.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Hero’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 18
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Wilma the Maid
To the next Flintstones episode: The Surprise
‘The Hero’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: December 21, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★
Review:
The boys are having their vacation at home, and the episode starts with a long and superfluous slapstick routine of Fred trying to get Dino to the vet for a shot. Then another long scene at a store leads to the main story in which Fred and Barney take up photography.
The result is another slapstick episode with a story that never satisfies the story ideas to their full potential. The stone age gags are all in the beginning with one of those numerous mammoths functioning as a tap, a porcupine, and a little bird inside Fred and Barney’s camera.
The designs on Fred and Barney are erratic from one scene to the next and the background art is particularly dull in this episode, with its faint shades of gray and blue. Harvey Milstone and his wife look like stone age versions of George and Judy from The Jetsons, a series that had just started in September.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Flashgun Freddie’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 15
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Dial “S” for Suspicion
To the next Flintstones episode: The Kissing Burglar
‘Flashgun Freddie’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: December 14, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Dial “S” for Suspicion’ starts with Fred having applied for a job at the exclusive Stone Valley Inn. As Fred has lied about his degrees and his ability to speak Spanish, one can guess where the episode will head to, but the story takes a surprise turn, in which Fred gets suspicious about his wife to downright paranoid.
It’s almost unbelievable that this sophisticated comedy of errors comes from the same writers as the silly slapstick from ‘Nuthin’ but the Tooth’. When the different characters are played against each other, the Flintstones episodes are so much finer. Fred’s paranoia is enhanced by the score, which features some eerie organ music in several scenes.
The stone age gags are less inspired and consist of a monkey and a mammoth functioning as a shower, a long-billed bird as a can opener, and a particularly silly checkerboard turtle. The designs, too, are erratic, and in some scenes, Fred’s design is downright poor.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Dial “S” for Suspicion’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 14
To the previous The Flintstones episode: High School Fred
To the next Flintstones episode: Flashgun Freddie
‘Dial “S” for Suspicion’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: December 7, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In ‘High School Fred’ Fred’s employer calls in an efficiency expert who tells Fred that he will be ‘terminated’ because he hasn’t got a high school diploma. But Fred’s boss lets Fred finish his missed last two weeks in high school, so he can stay. When Fred tries to tell Wilma all this, she misunderstands and thinks Fred goes to an executive school to get promoted.
Unfortunately, the writers do little with the high school premise and mostly show Fred excelling at sports. The whole episode is low on gags, the most bizarre being a throwaway gag of a roast bird preparing itself, while Barney and Betty are talking. There’s also a mini-mammoth used as a spray gun, and the occasional bird acting like a record player needle.
Watch an excerpt from ‘High School Fred’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 13
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Nuthin’ but the Tooth
To the next Flintstones episode: Dial “S” for Suspicion
‘High School Fred’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: November 30, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★
Review:
This episode starts with some mysterious wailing in the night, which turns out to be Barney with a toothache. The next day Fred takes Barney to the dentist, but when Fred wants to save the necessary $10 to see a fight, he changes plans.
‘Nuthin’ but the Tooth’ is one of the silliest Flintstones episodes, full of nonsensical cartoon humor and slapstick scenes. Unfortunately, the writers milk the gas gag way too long, and there’s nothing of the more subtle character comedy of other episodes.
The best stone age gag is the parrot who functions as the dentist’s intercom. Notice the rare appearance of the sabretooth cat, so frequently seen during the titles, within an episode itself.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Nuthin’ but the Tooth’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 12
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Ladies’ Day
To the next Flintstones episode: High School Fred
‘Nuthin’ but the Tooth’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date: November 23, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
Until this point in the third season the Flintstones episodes were only mildly funny at best, and frankly more often than not dragged a little, but ‘Ladies Day’ is over before you know it.
The story starts rolling when Fred wants to go to the ball game, but he’s both flat broke and he has to work. When he learns from Barney it’s “ladies’ day” at the ball game he gets an idea. What follows is a comedy of errors that involves the wives, the police and Fred’s boss and the boss’s South American customer, who appears to be a ladies man.
For once the story stays surprising throughout and the writers play nicely around with the four main characters. Naturally, there’s less room for stone age gags, and we have to do with a single crocodile acting as Betty’s laundry machine. But it doesn’t matter, for ‘Ladies’Day’ is one of the best written Flintstones episodes of all.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Ladies’ Day’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 11
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Hawaiian Escapade
To the next Flintstones episode: Nuthin’ but the Tooth
‘Ladies’ Day’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 