Dinosaurs (1991)

Oh Dinosaurs! The 1991 sitcom from ABC and made by the The Jim Henson Company. I watch it first as a kid when it premiered and recently re-watched and it’s the kind of show that you enjoy more as an adult. I mostly have good things to say about it, but some history first.

The show was originally thought by Jim Henson, but no one took it seriously until The Simpsons were a hit. It ran for four seasons and was pretty successful, but it had a dramatic drop in ratings in the fourth and last season thus its cancellation and the end of the planned movie and videogame.

This show is great. I mean, the writing is excellent, the animatronics are amazing specially in how expressive and life-like they are, all people involved are true professionals. But what amaze me the most is its clever social commentary. Some of the topics the show deals with are:

• The taboo of sex-ed
• Gender roles and sexual harassment.
• A war made by profit against another country with media used as a propaganda tool (the show aired during the Gulf War).
• Creationism thought in schools (or in their case, Flat Earth).
• An episode deals with a how religion was artificially created by the rulers to avoid people asking too much and keep them under control.
• The government blaming immigrants during an economic crisis to distract the public’s outrage.

This show aired 30 years ago and its social commentary still applies today, is like we haven’t advance much as a society, if any.

In any case, the show was ahead of its time, it was clearly not meant for kids, it had a very crude humor, sexual innuendos and some very sadistic jokes. In fact if I had some criticism I think sometimes they were too dark, especially in their endings which they rarely had a happy ending. And yes, I know, the show is famous or infamous for its season final when Earl destroy’s the world causing the Dinosaurs’ extinction and the family’s fate it’s implied to be a cold and painful death. Thing is, the show’s run in syndication and overseas presented eight episodes after the official final “Changing Nature”, which I don’t remember to have seen as a kid. But I do remember the episodes that were aired afterwards so for me and a lot of other people the real “series finale” was “Georgie Must Die” and not "Changing Nature" which save us a lot of trauma.

In any case, there’s currently a petition for this show to be rebooted, which I think is a great idea. I never care for Full House or Roseanne, this is the kind of show that should be brought back. I really thing that watching this as a kid alongside The Simpson opened my mind and molded me into the critical person that questions the established order that I am today.

Any thoughs?

edited 2nd May '18 2:54:45 AM by Luppercus

I remember this show actually being on the Disney Channel, and I watched reruns as a kid.

I literally do not remember watching that episode as a kid, I think I blocked it

An interesting way to make a continuation of the series would be to established that they all got frozen and then are de-frozen in modern times and have to adapt. It would give a lot of opportunities for modern social commentary in things like Relaity shows.

edited 2nd May '18 9:03:52 PM by Luppercus

That actually would be an awesome idea. But I heard Henson did that downer ending, because they didn't want to continue the franchise.

And while we're at it, Bambi's mom never got killed.

Don't touch the ending! Yeah, it was depressive, but it might be the most memorable and poignant show ending of all time. Adding anything to it just would ruin it.

I think the de-frozen idea could be fun. If the family is reawaken they later find themselves in some of those crappy MTV reality shows like “My life as a teenage dinosaur” or something like that.

Other characters may reappear later. Earl finds a job in a lab facility and discovers that his boss is Mr. Ritchfield’s clon.

The Loch Ness Monsters happens to be Monica who was defrozen first and has been living incognito there.

Roy was also defrozen before alongside other dinosaurs and went into movies, first as a stunt double for Kaiju films (he’s actually good friends with Godzilla), then staring in other films with The Last Dinosaur as his biggest role, but after the failure of Theodore Rex his career suffered and he was without job specially do to the disinterest in dinosaur actors, until they made The Good Dinosaur using Motion Capture.

Sounds like a promising premise.