| The Jetsons | |
|---|---|
The Jetsons title card. |
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| Genre | Animated science-fiction Sitcom |
| Format | Animated comedy series |
| Directed by | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Voices of | George O'Hanlon Penny Singleton Janet Waldo Daws Butler Mel Blanc Don Messick Jean Vander Pyl |
| Theme music composer | Hoyt Curtin |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 75 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Running time | 22–30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Hanna-Barbera |
| Distributor | Screen Gems (1962–1963) Worldvision Enterprises (1985–1987) Turner Program Services (1987–1997) Warner Bros. Television Distribution (1997-Present) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | ABC (1962–1963)[1] Syndication (1985–1987) |
| Original run | September 23, 1962 March 3, 1963 (first run) – September 16, 1985 November 12, 1987 (second run) |
The Jetsons is an animated sitcom that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, originally airing in prime-time from 1962–1963 and again from 1985–1987. It was Hanna-Barbera’s Space Age counterpart to The Flintstones, a half-hour family sitcom projecting contemporary culture and lifestyle into another time period.[2]
While the Flintstones live in a world with machines powered by birds and dinosaurs, the Jetsons live in a futuristic utopia in the year 2062[3] of elaborate robotic contraptions, aliens, holograms, and whimsical inventions.[4]
The original incarnation of the series aired on Sunday nights on ABC from September 23, 1962, to March 3, 1963. It comprised 24 episodes, and was re-run on Saturday mornings for decades. At the time of its debut, it was the first program ever to be broadcast in color on ABC-TV; There were only handfull of ABC TV stations that were capable of broadcasting in color in the early 1960s. The Flintstones, while always produced in color, was broadcast in black-and-white for its first two seasons.[5]
The continuing popularity of The Jetsons led to further episodes being produced for syndication between 1985 and 1987.[6][7]
Contents |
George Jetson is married and lives with his family in the Skypad Apartments in Orbit City, where all homes and businesses are raised high above the ground on adjustable columns in the Googie style, reflective of Seattle's Space Needle and the Theme Building of the Los Angeles International Airport. George is married to Jane, the homemaker, and the couple have two children, teenage daughter Judy who attends Orbit High School, and preteen son Elroy who attends Little Dipper School. Housekeeping is seen to by a robot maid, Rosey, handling chores not otherwise rendered trivial by the home's numerous push-button Space Age-envisioned conveniences. The family has a dog named Astro, who talks with an initial consonant mutation in which every word begins with an "R", as if speaking with a growl.
Jetson's workweek is typical of his era: three hours a day, three days a week. His boss is Cosmo Spacely, the bombastic owner of Spacely Space Sprockets. Spacely has a competitor, H. G. Cogswell, owner of the rival company Cogswell Cogs (sometimes known as Cogswell's Cosmic Cogs). Jetson commutes to work in an aerocar that resembles a flying saucer with a transparent bubble top. Daily life is leisurely, assisted by numerous labor-saving devices, which occasionally break down with humorous results. Despite this, everyone complains of exhausting hard labor and difficulties of living with the remaining inconveniences.
George Jetson: age 40, is a loving family man who always seems to make the wrong decision. He works "full-time," 9 hours a week, at Spacely's Sprockets as a computer engineer. He is married to Jane and together they have two kids, Elroy and Judy. George is the protagonist of the show.
Jane Jetson: age 33 (self-reported in the first episode), is George's wife, mother of their two children, and a homemaker. Jane is obsessed with fashion and new gadgetry. Her favorite store is Mooning Dales. She is also a dutiful wife who always tries to make life as pleasant as possible for her family. Outside of the home, she is a member of the Galaxy Women Historical Society and is a fan of Leonardo de Venus and Picasso Pia.
Judy Jetson: age 16, is the older child in the Jetson family. A student at Orbit High School, she is a stereotypical teenage girl whose prime interests include: clothes, going out, and revealing secrets to her digital diary. Tiffany did the voice of Judy Jetson in the 1990 movie.[8]
Elroy Jetson: age 7½ (self-reported in the first episode), is the younger of the two children in the Jetson family. He is highly intelligent and an expert in all space sciences. A mild-mannered and good child, Elroy attends Little Dipper School where he studies space history, astrophysics, star geometry and math.
Rosey: age 45, is the Jetsons' household robot. She's an outdated model but the Jetsons love her and would never trade her for a newer model. Rosey does all the household chores and some of the parenting. She is a strong disciplinarian and occasionally dispenses advice to the family. Excluding a scene from the closing credits, Rosey appears in only two episodes of the original 1960s show, but makes many appearances on the 1980s show.
Astro the Dog: Astro is the Jetsons' family dog. Prior to being a Jetson he belonged to the fabulously rich Mr. Gottrockets. Astro is one of George's best friends, next to his work computer, R.U.D.I., and is able to speak in a rough sounding English, somewhat like Scooby-Doo, whom Astro "pre-dates" in the "real world" by seven years.
Orbitty: age unknown (probably 2 months), is the 2nd pet of the Jetson family. Orbitty is an alien with spring-like legs. He has the ability to express his emotions by changing color. This character was introduced in the 1980s version of the series.
Cosmo G. Spacely: is George's boss and owner of Spacely Space Sprockets. His company was founded in Newfoundland in 1937, where it continued to prosper until massive surface pollution necessitated a move to the elevated platforms seen in the series. He is a "little person" with black hair and a bad temper, the antagonist in the series. Spacely always comes up with ideas to bring in more business only for them to backfire. George, who Spacely has known since childhood,[9] gets blamed for most things that go wrong. A series' running gag involves him kicking George out of his office shouting "Jetson! You're fired!" Although, Spacely would later give George his job back in the end of the episode. Mr. Spacely is sometimes helped out by Uniblab, the company's robot assistant.
Spencer Cogswell: is Spacely's big competitor. He owns Cogswell Cogs company and causes a lot of trouble for Spacely and George. To a lesser extent Cogswell is another of the series' antagonists. He and Spacely are always finding ways to bring each other's businesses down. Cogswell has often tried to steal Spacely's ideas and make them his own to gain an advantage (only for it to backfire on both bosses). He's also not above firing his employees when any little thing goes wrong. Mr. Cogswell's first name of "Spencer" is revealed in the 1980s version of The Jetsons.
R.U.D.I.: is George's work computer and also one of his best friends, next to his dog, Astro the Dog. His name is an acronym for Referential Universal Digital Indexer. He has a human personality and is a member of the Society Preventing Cruelty to Humans.
Henry Orbit: mid-1960s, is the Jetsons' apartment's repair man. He is always helpful and always in a good mood. His robot Mac has a crush on Rosey.
In later productions, Jeff Bergman has voiced George, Elroy, and Mr. Spacely. Bergman completed voice work as George and Spacely for Jetsons: The Movie (1990) after George O'Hanlon and Mel Blanc died during production. Controversially, Janet Waldo was replaced — after recording all of her dialogue — by then-popular singer Tiffany for Jetsons the Movie. Lori Frazier has provided the voice of Jane Jetson in television commercials for Radio Shack.
The show's original run consisted of 24 episodes that first aired on ABC from September 23, 1962 to March 3, 1963. In 1984, Hanna-Barbera began producing new episodes specifically for syndication; by September 1985, the 24 episodes from the first season were combined with 41 new episodes and began airing in late afternoon time slots in 80 U.S. media markets, including the 30 largest.[7] The 41 new episodes were produced at a cost of $300,000 each, and featured all of the voice actors from the 1962–1963 show.[7] Starting in 1987, ten additional "season 3" episodes were also made available for syndication.
The 1962 episode "A Date With Jet Screamer", in which daughter Judy Jetson wins a date with a rock star, provided the song "Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah (Means I Love You)" written by Hoyt Curtin, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, sung by Howard Morris. The episode was a surrealistic Busby Berkeley-in-space affair which prefigured conceptual MTV videos by decades.[2]
After the announcement of the fall 1962 network television schedule Time magazine characterized The Jetsons as one of several new situation comedies (along with The Beverly Hillbillies, I'm Dickens... He's Fenster, and Our Man Higgins) that was "stretching further than ever for their situations";[10] after all the season's new shows had premiered—a season "responding to Minow's exhortations"—the magazine called the series "silly and unpretentious, corny and clever, now and then quite funny."[11]
Thirty years later, Time said "In an age of working mothers, single parents and gay matrimony, George Jetson and his clan already seem quaint even to the baby boomers who grew up with them."[12] Conversely, Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute has argued that "The whole scene — which anticipated so much of the technology we have today but, strangely, not email or texting — reflected the ethos of time: a love of progress and a vision of a future that stayed on course ... The Jetsons' world is our world: explosive technological advances, entrenched bourgeois culture, a culture of enterprise that is the very fond of the good life."[13]
In the first episode of the 1980s show, an alien named Orbitty joined the family after Elroy discovered him on a field trip to an asteroid. Orbitty speaks in his own garbled dialect, has coil springs for legs, and changes colors according to his mood.
Other differences include the following:
In May 2007, director Robert Rodriguez entered talks with Universal Studios and Warner Bros. to film a live action film adaptation of The Jetsons for a potential 2009 theatrical release, having at the time discussed directing a film adaptation of Land of the Lost with Universal. Rodriguez was uncertain which project he would pursue next, though the latest script draft for The Jetsons by assigned writer Adam Goldberg was further along in development.[14]
The film, to be produced by Denise Di Novi alongside Donald De Line with Hanna-Barbera Productions, Universal and Warner Bros. was set for a 2012 release.[15][16] It was put on hold by Rodriguez in favor of a fourth Spy Kids film.[17] Universal's involvement in the project is a result of having previously acquired the film rights in the late 1980s, the resulting film being Jetsons: The Movie.
On June 28, 1990, Hanna-Barbera released six episodes from the show on home video. Warner Home Video released season 1 on DVD in Region 1 on May 11, 2004; upon its release, James Poniewozik wrote it's "as much about New Frontier 1962 as about the distant future. Its ditzy slapstick is like the peanut-butter-and-jelly mix Goober Grape—if you didn't love it as a kid, you're not going to acquire the taste as an adult—and the pop-culture gags ... have not aged well. But the animation is still a classic of gee-whiz atomic-age modernism."[19]
The review of the DVD release from Entertainment Weekly said the show "trots through surprisingly dated sitcom plots about blustery bosses, bad lady drivers, and Elvis Presleyesque teen idols, all greeted with laugh tracks" but points out "it's the appeal of the retro-prescient gadgets (recliner massagers, big-screen TVs, two-way monitors) that still carries the show."[20] Season 1 was released on DVD in Region 4 on July 5, 2006.[21] Season Two, Volume 1 was released on DVD almost three years later, on June 2, 2009 for Region 1.[22]
On November 8, 2011, Warner Bros. released The Jetsons: Season 2, Volume 2 on DVD in Region 1 via their Warner Archive Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com, and only in the US.[23]
| DVD Name | Ep # | Release date |
|---|---|---|
| The Complete First Season | 24 | May 11, 2004 |
| Season 2, Volume 1 | 21 | June 2, 2009 |
| Season 2, Volume 2 | 20 | November 8, 2011 |
| The Complete Third Season | 10 | TBA |
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