Written by El Articulo Definido

In 1989 The Simpsons aired their Christmas special, and for many, this was something totally new, a depiction of a dysfunctional nuclear family that seemed more familiar to many families than what was depicted on typical sitcoms. In the beginning that show had dysfunction, but its popularity was largely due to its heart.

However, when that show was aired, not once do I remember it being compared to, what seems to me, its obvious predecessor, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. With Season One released as a Hanna-Barbera Classic Collection by Time Warner last week, it has become apparent to me what an overlooked treasure this show is.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was originally aired in 1972 and features the voice of Tom Bosley as Harry Boyle, an understanding father trying to understand a vastly changing world. His neighbor is conservative, way to the right, terrified of the communist threat to America, and thus runs a crack outfit of pseudo militants, The Vigilantes, bent on bringing justice and safety to their quiet neighborhood. And so, The Vigilantes stand as a great example of just one extreme.

His children, however, go to the opposite extreme. The two oldest children, Alice and Chet, serve to show the bleeding-heart liberalism that was prevalent in the 1970s. Just one example, is in an early episode in which the family suspects Harry of cheating with his secretary. They don’t believe him when he denies it, yet they try to understand why he would cheat, rather than chastise him for doing so. Of course, not once do they consider that he didn’t. In response Harry utters, “I get treated better around here when they think I’ve done wrong.” The largest, most prevalent theme when dealing with the kids is that Chet, at 22, refuses to get a job.

Is it a case of history repeating itself, as more and more kids are frightened of entering the workplace after college? Of course, it doesn’t help that there are few jobs waiting for them.

The youngest son, Jamie, who is voiced throughout the season by both Willie Ames and Jackie Earl Haley, seems to be a prototype for Family Ties’ Alex P. Keaton, and sign of what is to come in the ’80s. The young, entrepreneurial Jamie is constantly trying to sell whatever services he has for a little extra change, and even tries to barter up the value of a lost tooth, asking why the Tooth Fairy doesn’t account for inflation.

In the middle of all, is Mom. She is a mom of the past, dependent on house and husband, but is ruler of the roost at home. However, she is always supportive of both the kids and Harry. She is the sole voice of reason, even when no one is listening.

Overall, it is a very unique family dynamic that encapsulates the feelings of change spreading through the mass consciousness at the time. Alongside of all of this social commentary is an animation style that fits the show so well. It is very pared down, putting less emphasis on backgrounds, and more emphasis on characters, and with this minimalist approach the viewer is left with a less-is-more feeling.

In the end, the best way to describe it is as Family Guy living next door to American Dad with the heart, emotions, truth, and honesty of the first few seasons of The Simpsons. For those who remember this show, it is worth the purchase as a reminder of the past, and a reminder of the present as it holds up remarkably better than many sitcoms of the ’70s. That, in my mind is due to the themes taking precedence over the visual commitment of painting the ’70s. It’s just a family, dealing with the issues of their, and our, times.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Celebrity Gossip, Movie Reviews, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

In my mind, there is a realm where childhood memories are so vague that, as the years pass, I wonder if they even took place at all. Were they real, or composites of things that coalesced into a story, or were they merely products of my imagination? One such example was Chiliwack's 1981 hit, "My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone)." I specifically remember this song when it was out, but I never knew its name. So, because the hook was so similar to The Doors' "Touch Me," I simply morphed the two together until I saw the video one day on VH-1 Classic. It confirmed my belief in the song's existence, but also made me wish the song never was.

Another such memory, but from even further back, was a prime-time cartoon called Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, which ran on ABC from 1972-74. Almost 35 years later, all I can remember is that it featured the voice of Tom Bosley and a snippet of the theme song, because my sisters and I used to sing it whenever our mother would give us that particular warning (my girlfriend, on the other hand, remembers the song almost word-for-word).

As it turns out, the show did, in fact, exist, and today, Warner Brothers releases the first season of the Hanna-Barbera show on DVD. The show stars Bosley as Harry Boyle, a 47-year-old Everydad living in the suburbs with his wife, Irma, and their three children, who range from eight to 22 years old. Most of the episodes deal with Harry's attempts to make sense of his children: Chet, a 22-year-old slacker hippie; Alice, a Cosmo-spouting teenager; and Jamie, an 8-year-old who is always looking to profit from a situation. If that's not difficult enough, he also has his über-conservative neighbor, Ralph Kane, to deal with.

So how has the show held up over the years? Not as well as I had hoped, I'm afraid. It's easy to compare Wait Till Your Father Gets Home with the superlative King Of The Hill in its portrayal of a hard-working, middle-class man struggling to deal with changing times. But where King's humor is sly and subversive, Wait employs standard sitcom plots and tired jokes about inflation and "these kids today." It's a Hanna-Barbera show, after all, so even though they're dealing with the issues of the day, like women's liberation, the Generation Gap, and civil rights, it's still done, for the most part, at the level of The Flintstones or The Jetsons. The annoying laugh track, even more pointless when dealing with a cartoon, doesn't help things, either.

But there are several highlights that make it worth watching. Played by veteran comedy writer Jack Burns, Ralph gets the best lines. A typical Nixon Republican, Ralph sees Communism in everything that isn't his definition of "American", and organizes a vigilante posse of the other neighborhood wingnuts to weed out the infiltration with disastrous results. He's part Archie Bunker and part General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove, shifty-eyed and spewing bigoted comments about minorities, and his ludicrous paranoid conspiracy theories provide every episode with a few genuine laughs.

As with his future role as Howard Cunningham on Happy Days (both shows received their start through the groundbreaking Love, American Style), few actors have been able to play the exasperated television dad as well as Bosley, even with the weak dialogue, and he handles it in a manner that fathers everywhere can understand. Like Hank Hill, Harry Boyle is on the conservative side of middle-of-the-road. He is constantly flummoxed by his children's liberal, modern ways, but he doesn't agree with Ralph's jingoism, either.

And there were also several episodes that tackled difficult topics very well, most notably when Chet gets drafted. Done without the laugh track, the show dealt with Chet contemplating desertion in a manner that was very sensitive to the many families that were going through the same situation.

But for all its admirable qualities, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home pales in comparison to the other groundbreaking topical shows of its day, like All In The Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show because the humor lacks the bite, referring to gloss over the issues rather than attacking them head-on. The four-disc set contains all 24 episodes of the first season, as well as two features, one explaining how the show reflected the turbulent times, and another about the history of the show and the reason for the sparse animation style.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 9:58 am and is filed under Celebrity Gossip, Movie Reviews, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.