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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 8, 1963
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Ventriloquist Barney’ starts with Barney practicing and immediately mastering ventriloquism. He first fools Betty with his act, then Fred.
But the episode only really gains momentum when Barney has two tickets to a wrestling match, while Fred has to babysit Pebbles. Unfortunately, little is done with either idea, and the whole episode drags on, with the few gags falling flat after one other. Pebbles herself is cute, but little else, and this episode is so appallingly boring that one wonders if bringing her in was such a good idea in the first place.
Highlight may be the unexpected feminist message Barney delivers Fred to get him taking Pebbles with him to the wrestling match.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Ventriloquist Barney’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 25
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Carry on, Nurse Fred
To the next Flintstones episode: The Big Move
‘Ventriloquist Barney’ 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 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: October 26, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★
Review:
It’s Wilma’s birthday and Fred buys her a doozy dodo, a talking bird, from a seedy street vendor. At home it first seems the bird doesn’t talk after all, but when Fred and Barney are conspiring to go a three days convention of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes in ‘Frantic City’, the bird reveals all to their wives.
This episode follows all familiar tropes existing since the Laurel and Hardy feature ‘Sons of the Desert’ (1933) and is utterly predictable from start to end. The stone age gags bring some light into this listless episode, and involve a sneezing mini mammoth as a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner, a dinosaur bus, and best of all, a monkey-operated traffic light.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Buffalo Convention’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 7
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Here’s Snow in Your Eyes
To the next Flintstones episode: The Little Stranger
‘The Buffalo Convention’ 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: October 19, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
Here’s Snow in Your Eyes’ starts with Wilma grouching over housework. Then she hears that Fred and Barney are invited to a state convention of the Royal Order of Water Buffaloes in Stone Mountain, a luxurious ski resort, and naturally she assumes she and Betty can go, too.
Unfortunately, Fred has to talk her out of that idea, as there wasn’t enough money for the wives, so the girls stay home. But when Betty and Wilma discover there’s a beauty contest at the very place, they change their minds, and go anyway to keep an eye on their husbands.
‘Here’s Snow in Your Eyes’ knows a quite complicated plot, which also involves a diamond theft, but for once the guys have nothing to hide, and the episode is one of two happily married couples. Unfortunately the beauty contest subplot ends abruptly, and one gets the feeling there’s was more to the story material than what finally materialized in this episode. Nevertheless, this is one of the more enjoyable Flintstones episodes from the third season, with fun little scenes, some nice takes on all four main characters, and an enjoyable final scene.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Here’s Snow in Your Eyes’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 6
To the previous The Flintstones episode: The Twitch
To the next Flintstones episode: The Buffalo Convention
‘Here’s Snow in Your Eyes’ 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: October 12, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘The Twitch’ is the Flintstones’ answer to Chubby Checker’s huge success with ‘The Twist’ (1960).
In this episode Fred promises Wilma to get ‘Rock Roll’ (voiced by Hal Smith) to play for free at her auxilliary show. Rock Roll’s big hit is ‘The Twitch’, a catchy parody song, which is accompanied by the familiar twist gestures, as well as Chuck Berry’s duckwalk.
The fun is further enhanced by the final scene (a twist in itself), a series of terrible vaudeville acts and several stone age gags, like a horned crocodile-like potato peeler, a nail-polishing bird and a weird massage device. Also note the caricature of Fred Sullivan. All these aspects make ‘The Twitch’ one of the more enjoyable episodes of the Flintstones’ third season.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Twitch’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 5
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Bowling Ballet
To the next Flintstones episode: Here’s Snow in Your Eyes
‘The Twitch’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’
5
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