It’s no wonder. Unlike The Simpsons, which doesn’t know when to quit, the Flintstones ran out of gas before the fifth season ended. ABC sacrificed Jonny Quest to keep it on the schedule for a sixth year in 1965-66. That season opened on September 17th with the nadir in the original series’ run—the episode where Pebbles and Bamm Bamm sing an insipid song over and over and over again, and climaxes with a lame and cop-out ending that it was all a dream. Admittedly, they tried new ideas, but as much as I love Harvey Korman, Gazoo was too far-fetched even for me, age 9.
In a way, it’s too bad, as the daily comics were just fine. Plenty of variety in plot. Attractively laid out. The characters looked fine. One familiar gag even gets borrowed from the cartoon series when a poor toiling as a golf ball retriever tells us “It’s a living” (Sept. 11).
This means I’ve had to hunt around for a source of semi-readable dailies of the Flintstones. What you see below isn’t great, but it’s the best I could find. As well, the weekend sources I’ve been using don’t have the Sunday comics in their on-line archives.
One the writers of the comics decided to do a series (Sept. 27-29) about Wilma’s motion visiting. She looks decidedly slimmer than on the TV show. Aw. There’s a little heart between Wilma and Little Pebbly-Poo in the Sept. 30th comic. In the month of September, Pebbles drove the plot in 10 of 26 comics, while Fred was featured or at least part of the gag 12 times. Betty appears three times (Sept. 6, 7, 28), Dino once (Sept. 1), Bamm Bamm once (Sept. 6), and Baby Puss none-ce. We get two used car salesmen (Aug. 30, Sept. 15), TV gags (Sept. 8, 16) a huge creature (Sept. 14), trumpet-beaked bugs (Sept. 12) the old husband-vs-wife (Sept. 2, 7, 21, 24) and the postman returns for another go-around with Pebbles over free cookies (Sept. 3). Fred’s drawn with an awful lot of teeth on Sept. 24th. And in the second panel of Sept. 25th, the half-drawing of Barney looks more like George Jetson.
So tune in next month for more comics. And remember: smilers never lose and frowners never win.