DVD Review by Mike Thompson
 |
|
classiccartoonsdvd.com |
The show debuted in the fall of 1972, about a year and a half after All in the Family hit it big. That show pretty much revolutionized what TV sitcoms could talk about, and it seems the producers of Wait Til Your Father Gets Home (or Wait Til..., as I'll call it from now on, to save some space) wanted to do the same for animated sitcoms. Topics like racism and sex were openly dealt with on this show, so I guess the show should get marks for trying something groundbreaking. Unfortunately, once you get past the "hey! listen to those words that are coming out of that cartoon character's mouth!" reaction (and, after nearly 20 years of The Simpsons, it's doubtful anyone would have that reaction anyway), the show doesn't touch on anything All in the Family and the other Norman Lear shows weren't also dealing with -- and they were doing so in a more amusing, and resonating, way.
Wait Til... focuses on the Boyle family, headed by father Harry Boyle (voiced by Tom Bosley, two years before he became Howard Cunningham on Happy Days). Much like Archie Bunker on All in the Family, Harry is a conservative, middle-class working man who's routinely baffled by his liberal children. A key difference between him and Archie, though, is that Harry's not a bigot, and is actually a pretty likable guy. In fact, I found his family to be much more irritating.
The first episode in the set, titled "The Fling" (the pilot episode of Wait Til... isn't here, as that was made as an episode of Love, American Style), finds Harry needing to drive a female customer of his to San Diego. Unfortunately, the car breaks down along the way, and the two are forced to spend the night at a hotel while the car gets repaired.
This prompts Harry's daughter Alice (voiced by Kristina Holland) to immediately suspect infidelity. She soon gets her brother Jamie (voiced by Jackie Earle Haley in the early episodes, though by the end of the season Willie Aames takes over) on board with this, and the two of them convince their mom, Irma (voiced by Joan Gerber), that her husband is cheating on her. Why are the kids so quick to jump to this? It's never explained. There's not a hint of motivation given for them believing their father is a two-timer. Instead they confront him about it when he gets home and admonish him for not telling the "truth" about what happened.
And the confrontation is full of early '70s buzz-words and exchanges, to drive home the point that the kids are cutting-edge. At one point, Harry proclaims, "I did not commit adultery!" and Alice immediately chastises him, saying "Daddy!" Jamie then tells him to use the word "self-expression" instead. So Harry says he didn't commit self-expression. Ho ho ho.
I don't think I'm giving anything away if I say that eventually, after confronted with the evidence, Irma believes Harry. And everything ends peachy keen. But it was still troublesome that Harry's family (particularly his daughter) so quickly jumped on board the "dad's a cheater" train. It was the first episode of the series, so perhaps the producers wanted to open with a theme that was topical, and decidedly adult. The fact that there was no motivation behind the kids' reactions is, apparently, meaningless.
Things get even worse in another episode in the set, "Help Wanted." In it, Harry, who runs a restaurant supply business, fires one of his truck drivers. The driver has been with the company for years, is very old, and crashes the truck on a routine basis. So Harry reluctantly lets him go. But wait: The driver's name is Abe Finkle. So, naturally, Harry's oh-so-understanding family expects the worst.
The second, the absolute second, Alice learns of Abe's firing, she tells her father he's being anti-semitic. After trying to defend himself, a magazine salesman comes to the door. The house is visibly overrun with magazines, so Harry, very politely, turns the salesman down. But, the salesman was black. So, his devoted children and loyal wife tell him, Harry's racism is "coming through."
Again, where's the motivation for this? There's none, at all. The writers try to fashion these All in the Family-type situations, with the open-minded children against the close-minded, bigoted father.....but the key difference here is that, like I said earlier, Harry isn't shown to be like Archie at all. Quite the opposite; there are very good reasons why he lets Abe go, and very good reasons why he doesn't buy any more magazines from the salesman. The family doesn't care, and instead sets out to make sure Harry mends his "racist" ways.
Now's probably a good time to mention Harry's next-door neighbor, a one-note conservative stereotype named Ralph. Harry's a cartoon of a cartoon, waving the American flag and saying preposterously un-PC things that, today, would never come close to flying on network television. For example, in telling Harry that he's not a bad guy and that he accepts minorities, Ralph says, "I always give my laundry to the Chinamen, if I need my ditches dug I give wetbacks first crack, and whenever I'm downtown I go out of my way to have a black shine my shoes."
Naturally, Ralph wants Harry to hire a red-white-and-blue type to replace Abe. But his family wants Harry to fill the spot with a minority. This sets off a string of interviews with Indians, blacks and Chicanos. The show's producers handle the depictions of these minorities extremely delicately, but when it comes time for Harry to interview a homosexual, the producers take no such care. A flamboyantly gay man shows up at Harry's office. The man, dressed in purple, is from GLEE (the Gay Liberation Empolyment Effort), and says things like the job "sounds like it would be yummy for one of our boys." Harry says in response, "I'm looking for someone to drive my truck, not fly it. Out, out!" The canned laughter (did I mention this show has an absolutely hideous laugh track?) goes nuts. While the show is so careful about how it treats other minorities, its handling of gay people is, in the year 2007, pretty offensive.
So what minority does Harry wind up hiring? (I know you're on the edge of your seat.) Well, he takes Abe back. Abe says he got new glasses, but by the end of the episode he's crashing cars again anyway. But nobody minds, everyone's happy, and Harry has once again won back the love of his family......that is, until they turn on him again for no reason.
While the DVD is pretty bare-bones, Warner Home Video did splurge for two brief making-of documentaries. The first, "Animation for the Nation," gives a brief history of how the show came to be, and interviews a few talking heads. Unfortunately, none of the people interviewed seem to have had anything to do with the show. (Always a drawback when a making-of doc doesn't contain anybody who can give firsthand knowledge of the actual making-of). On the bright side, this is one of the most random collections of interview subjects you'll ever see, at least on a DVD about a short-lived 1970s cartoon show. There's Gary Owens....and Leif Garrett.....and former California governor Gray Davis! Fortunately, there's Hanna-Barbera historian Michael Malloy (as well as Mary Corey, who I've never heard of but who the DVD describes as "cultural historian"), so the documentary offers a little insight, and while, in some ways, it's more interesting than the Wait Til... episodes themselves, that's not saying much.
The second making-of, "Illustrating the Times," actually does interview a few people involved with the show. Now, one of the things I didn't like about Wait Til... was the look of the episodes. The characters were badly drawn and the backgrounds basically devoid of any detail. But, after watching "Illustrating the Times," I see that this was all intended! Apparently, the producers wanted to make the show stand out, and be different from anything H-B had done in the past. Mission accomplished, I guess, but that doesn't mean these episodes are nice to look at.
The DVD set includes trailers for upcoming Warner Home Video releases, including the glorious-looking new Popeye the Sailor DVD, and a collection of hilarious Pinky and the Brain episodes. For me, the trailers were the most entertaining part of the whole DVD. That's not good.
In closing, unless you have fond memories of lying on the floor in your den as a kid, watching Wait Til Your Father Gets Home on TV, don't buy this set. In fact, even if you do have fond memories of the show, you might not want buy this set. Sometimes memories are best left untarnished.