Wait Till Your Father Gets Home – The Complete First Season

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C     Extras: C     Episodes: B

 

 

Hanna-Barbera was known for making animated TV shows for children, often with talking animals, though they had hits with funny families (The Flintstones, The Jetsons) or both (Dastardly & Mutley) and lite hero action fare eventually moving into DC Comic adaptations.  Though the peak of those shows has to be Valley Of The Dinosaurs, they did create a unique show outside of all those great hits that was above and beyond anything anyone could have imagined or expected.

 

Following the influential effects of Norman Lear’s hits starting with All In The Family, the studio took the biggest risk of all with producing an animated answer.  No carbon copy, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home debuted in 1972 and was a hit for two seasons, often in syndicated showings.  The Complete First Season hits DVD finally and I was impressed how well the show held up.  Instead of a time capsule, it is an amazingly smart series that did a remarkable job of dealing with all the ideological debates and issues of the time through a very interesting, likable family and seems as ahead of its time now as it did 35 years ago.

 

Tom Bosley is great voicing father Harry Boyle, a great guy from the WWII/Korea era who is very practical and trying to make sure ends meet.  He has a great wife in Irma (Joan Gerber) and three children.  The older two, Chet (who has an aversion to employment) and Alice (Kristina (Tina) Holland particularly hilarious) are from the middle of the counterculture repeating al the mantras about civil rights and alternatives to conformist misery, but they are also naïve and that is where their parents come in.  This also applies to the youngest son, Jamie, who takes advantage of the conflict to nickel and dime both sides every chance he gets.  Add neighbor Ralph, constantly on guard for communists with anti-Semitic and racial issues and this is a far cry from Huckleberry Hound.

 

Instead of fights and anger, the show is surprisingly well-rounded and funny in ways Lear’s shows could not be.  This was very groundbreaking for animation on or off of TV and except for some momentum lost in the latter half of this season from the TV grid, charming and even brilliant throughout.  There are some exceptional talented people involved and other voices you may recognize include Jackie Haley, Marvin Kaplan (Henry on Alice), Pat Harrington (Schneider from One Day At A Time) and Isabel Sanford (Louise on The Jeffersons) all do great voice work.

 

This is a show that cannot get enough promotion, so get it ASAP and surprise yourself!

 

The 1.33 X 1 image looks good for its age with its unique, somewhat deconstructionist style and is color consistent.  Unfortunately, some digital video noise reduction (DVNR) and aliasing can be seen here and there.  The Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono shows the age of the optical mixdowns on each show and is sometimes hard to hear.  If Warner can find the original sound stems and music (like the great theme song with its amusing lyrics) for each episode, they should try to upgrade the audio when HD versions roll around.  Extras include previews for other Warner animation DVD sets and the featurette Animation For The Nation – Illustrating The Times about the show and the era it reflects with some of the great people who made this possible.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo