And the person who is rebooting The Flinstones is....

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And the person who is rebooting The Flinstones is....

Post by Darkblade » May 23rd, 2011, 3:13 pm

Family guy creator Seth Macfarlane!
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/17 ... intstones/

Some of you may have heard about this(while I can assume others have not). but I'm not to keen on Seth doing this, if they were going to do a reboot of the flinstones. They should have gotten somebody who knows the characters well enough(meaning history and everything) somebody like John K(who had pitches on his blog with the flinstones characters).

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Post by EricJ » May 23rd, 2011, 3:59 pm

EVERY edgy prime-time animator literally thinks they're The Next Flintstones because they had, quote, "a big dumb family-man" in a prime-time slot. (Even Matt Groening indulged in Fred/Homer jokes, and Seth had Peter Griffin talking to the Great Gazoo.)
It takes a lot more than that. :(

The one thing you notice watching the "real" first three Flint seasons is that Fred is NOT a drooling idiot falling over every other scene, any more than Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden was--For one thing, Fred seems to possess enough intelligence to deliver funny lines by himself, something that Homer and Peter are apparently functionally unable to do except by accident.
Get past THAT point of slacker-cynicism, Seth, and you got yourself a series...But for now, we'll just take our toons from a more proactively silly generation that remembered old-toon/old-radio silliness and liked their characters.

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Post by Randall » May 23rd, 2011, 6:08 pm

Seth seems like an extremely poor fit for these characters, but it's out of our hands. Given that it's happening, I 'spose I'm curious now to see how it turns out. But I'm not optimistic.

Regardless of who does the new Flintstones show, I would've preferred a great, original show instead. And, if I wanted more of a Flintstones fix, I'd campaign to get the other already existing versions (post-original series) out on DVD first.

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Post by EricJ » May 23rd, 2011, 6:33 pm

I can appreciate that the first Teen Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm series still had Alan Reed as Fred (and isn't that one out already, or did Warner delay it?)--
But anything from the Henry Cordern years I can give a pass. He just never quite caught's Fred's more lovable side as well, and was too busy arguing with Barney in the cereal commercials.

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Re: And the person who is rebooting The Flinstones is....

Post by Darkblade » May 23rd, 2011, 7:27 pm

EricJ wrote: He just never quite caught's Fred's more lovable side as well, and was too busy arguing with Barney in the cereal commercials.
I remember in the very beginning episodes of Flinstones Fred was a bit of a jerk. Although there were times that he did the right thing. One episode had Barney hitting fred's head with a golf club(I dont know if this was for laughs or on purpose) and fred presses agaisnt barney's nose with one finger.

I think this is going to get a whole lot more hate than what The Looney Tunes are up to now.

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Post by Ben » May 24th, 2011, 3:35 pm

Actually, I saw a recent Family Guy where they inserted a random Flintstones skit, and when I read about this news on our front page, my mind flipped back to that: it was a pretty authentic-feeling little aside.

Like Rand, I'm more curious than anything, but unless it's peppered with too much adult humor, I can't see this being a "disaster". Judging by his MGM Proms appearance over here a couple of years ago, it seems if he's truly in it for love, he can turn out some pretty impressive stuff.

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Post by GeorgeC » May 24th, 2011, 5:56 pm

To be honest,

I think Seth is a colossal hack.

He got lucky and go to know some people. I just don't see the writing talent.

The shows he's "created" have become vehicles for his vanity, increasing ego (he's already an egomaniac), and public w*****g.
This is not for love or proving anything beyond the fact that he's the highest-paid fratboy on the planet... even if he was never cool enough in college to belong to a frat.

There's just no art in that.

The longer his shows go on, the more obvious it gets to those of us who have the attention span to see beyond the dance numbers and asides that are only because the writing staff has no ideas of its own. The asides are very, very old for anybody who grew up watching the same shows he did in the late 1970s and 1980s.... and that's the point -- the people who can watch Seth's shows and say they're innovative or great are generally ignorant about films and TV in general and don't have the life experience to know when they're being led by the nose. Some will never have the common sense to appreciate that -- they're the great mediocre middle. That's one thing I appreciate about a lot of older TV shows in the US and Britain. They usually got cancelled before they soured badly or became self-sustaining machines that just won't shut down. This and a lot of the nasty and unnecessary politics inserted into network TV is why I don't bother with the alphabet networks or Fox. I go elsewhere for entertainment.

Honestly, Seth would be at home doing remakes of the same motion pictures and TV series everybody else is doing for the silver screen. He's been doing the same thing on TV for over ten years now... We all know how that trend's worked out for movies. Fewer people are going to theaters than before and are looking to alternatives for entertainment because the main course is all recycled fat and grease...

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Re: And the person who is rebooting The Flinstones is....

Post by Darkblade » May 27th, 2011, 3:38 pm

^ I know a person who said something similar to that. Although it was more vulgar.

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Re: And the person who is rebooting The Flinstones is....

Post by EricJ » May 28th, 2011, 2:20 pm

....Cartman? ;)

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Re: And the person who is rebooting The Flinstones is....

Post by Darkblade » May 28th, 2011, 3:54 pm

Eric, very funny but no. The person I am talking about is my friend's younger brother. Who particularly dislikes Seth's work to death, and even accuses Seth of doing animation as an excuse to make a quick profit. Although, like me. He believed that John K would be a more suitable choice to reboot the Flintstones. I do know that one episode of The Simpsons has a couch gag of The Simpsons seeing the Flintstones on their couch, and Fred just waves.

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Post by EricJ » May 28th, 2011, 5:33 pm

Darkblade wrote:Eric, very funny but no. The person I am talking about is my friend's younger brother. Who particularly dislikes Seth's work to death, and even accuses Seth of doing animation as an excuse to make a quick profit.
(Well, shows how we disagree--I would've thought it was because Seth was a sad ADD brain-scrambled slacker who functionally didn't know how to make human conversation outside of hostility, adrenaline shock-slaps and stoner-SW lines, and who grew up in a generation where the Simpsons was always on and kids just grew up thinking that was what TV humor was supposed to look like.) :P

Every other board I've seen this rumor pop up, I've been trying to stick up for The 'Stones being one of the three smartest-written funniest sitcoms of the entire 60's, live or animated. (Close behind the Dick Van Dyke Show, and a step or two ahead of The Addams Family.)
Which's had me searching YouTube to find evidence (while everyone else just guffaws over the fact that they found that Winston commercial :roll: )

Early Hanna-Barbera (with ex-Looney writers/voices) had talent that came out of old-radio, and were more directly influenced by the days of the Jack Benny Show in making satire sillier, more overstated, and timed more out-of-nowhere.
All I've been able to find on YouTube is complete episodes, but even so, I'll stand by my claim that I've never found cynical Simpsons moments of satire (FG, of course, has none) funnier than the Flints managed with the School Bus, Little League and ex-Honeymooners love-letter episodes.

...Star Wars refs are easy. Wit is hard.) :)
Last edited by EricJ on May 28th, 2011, 5:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by Ben » May 28th, 2011, 5:44 pm

No need to stand up for The Flintstones around here, Eric, we're all big fans (and for all the right reasons).

Those are copyrighted episodes, though, which I'd appreciate you removing from your post, or describing the sequences you're linking too (you could provide the keywords for people to self-search the YT links, but we refrain from direct links to preserve our relationships with the studios, in this case WB, who have sent us Flintstones titles in the past). Thanks.

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Re:

Post by EricJ » May 28th, 2011, 5:55 pm

Okay, okay, out of respect for the Archive reviews (and wishing to see more), fixed.

Just too battle-scarred everywhere else, I can't get used to this being a safe sanctuary of H-B fans: I've had to do work on other boards trying to give the Kids Today a a lazy link-specific kick in the pants to remember something about the show besides the Winston Commercial, or that Fred Looks Sorta Like Homer. :)

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Post by Ben » May 28th, 2011, 6:13 pm

...Or that the Simpsons' opening titles are an almost direct lift of the same structure!

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Re: And the person who is rebooting The Flinstones is....

Post by droosan » May 28th, 2011, 9:04 pm

While I'm not particularly a fan of the various prime-time Fox series created by Mr. MacFarlane .. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt WRT a Flintstones revival, if only because he actually worked for the Hanna-Barbera studio during its final 'Cartoon Cartoon' phase (as a writer for Johnny Bravo, Cow & Chicken, and Dexter's Laboratory).

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