Beatlemiscellania - The Flintstones - "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes"

This post features a melding of two things my father exposed me to at an early age - The Beatles and The Flintstones.  I never thought it was odd for an adult to watch cartoons because both my parents loved The Flintstones their whole lives.  I'm fairly convinced one of the reasons we owned a VCR in my youth was so my dad could tape as many of the episodes off television as he could.  When we weren't in school, we came inside from playing at 2:05 to watch the show.  It would only take a few minutes back then to go "Oh, so it's the episode where Fred gets hit on the head and can't remember who he is" or whatever.  Watching this episode again after so long brought back many fond memories for me.

This episode is from the 5th season of the show, so the gang is all here.  The Flintstones have Dino and Pebbles, and the Rubbles have Bamm-Bamm and Hopper.  This is a return appearance for both the Hatrocks, hillbillies who had a feud with the Flintstones in Arkanstone, and the Gruesomes, the Flintstones' other neighbors who are a clear parody of The Addams Family and The Munsters.

The main plot is that the Hatrocks are passing through town on their way to the World's Fair and announce to Fred that they will be visiting.  He starts off afraid they're coming to rekindle the feud, but they just wanted to say hello.  Fred then opens his big, fat mouth and says he wishes they could stay longer, and they do just that.  They take over the Flintstones' home, eating up their food, sleeping in their beds, and controlling what they watch on television. Fred's mouth extends their stay from one minute to one night to one week to indefinitely.

Frustrated and uncertain of what to do to get them to leave, Fred thinks he's found the answer by having them go over to the Gruesomes' house, convinced their menagerie of monsters and man eating plants will scare the hillbillies away.  Naturally, the Hatrocks love every second of it, posing for pictures with the octopus, taming the man eating crocodile, and asking for a sprig of the man eating plant because "it makes a great baby watcher."

There is one and only thing that bothers the Hatrocks, and that thing is "bug music."  The 4 Insects with their mop topped look and their song that goes "She says yeah yeah yeah, he says yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah!!"  The Flintstones use a magic screwdriver and the help of the Rubbles and Grueseomes to wire the radio and telephone and don wigs to surround the Hatrocks with bug music and send them back to the hills.

Even the World's Fair isn't safe for them.

This is a fun and absolutely adorable episode of The Flintstones.  It's also fun to see something parodying the Beatles as they were at the height of their popularity.  I imagine there were probably a lot of adults in particular who were pretty sick of hearing "She Loves You" at this point that this parody song would have felt spot on.

In doing this post I remembered another episode of the show featuring The Way Outs, who were another band who kind of parodied the Beatles.  If the tie is strong enough, I may cover that one in another post.