Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Television Families: The Jetsons

This is an old article pending revision:

George Jetson is an orange-haired thin individual with a big nose (which is common among half of animated characters) what usually wears a white shirt and works at Spacely Space Sprockets who repeatedly gets fired by his demanding boss. The work schedule is not that long, but sometimes the job can be very difficult and equipment malfunctions. The company manufactures machine components. A rival company called Coswell Cosmic Cogs does the same thing. Coswell's company appears to be very well maintained compared to Spaceley's.


Jane Jetson is pretty much a homemaker that relies on all of the appliances to do the work. She gives up on them, and instead relies on a housemaid. She also has orange hair and a purple dress.


Judy Jetson is a white haired teenage daughter that is into fashion, music, and boys... especially ones that are celebrities. Sometimes all of this is too loud for George to handle.


Elroy Jetson has blonde hair and wears some kind of green and white thing. He also wears a dark green hat. His eyes are different than of any of the other characters. He is a genius and he is into sports.


Rosie is a robot that is technically obsolete but is still considered part of the family. She is capable of doing many different things, but she also uses other appliances. She is found at a "Rent-A-Maid" service but stays with The Jetsons and can pretty much take care of The Jetsons forever since the owner of the shop introduced her as an economy model, and as a homely robot and her services are unable to come with a guarantee. She is blue colored and wears a black apron. She has two flashing antennas in the location of where ears would be that occasionally flash and beep. She is also capable of flattening leftover food and turning into rolled roast beef. When Spacely invites himself to The Jetsons for the purpose of eating their food because he is tired of his wife's cooking, he does not like the idea of Rosie being there and thinks that George is being paid too much or possibly working at a rival job. She smacks him with an upside-down upside-down-cake that Spaceley on the way home enjoys and inspires him to un-fire George and insists that he keeps Rosie around.


Astro is a talking dog, but does not talk fluently, and is about the same size of Scooby Doo. The kids find him and George does not like Astro and instead recommends an efficient, reliable, but ultimately boring robot dog. In the end the robot dog is given to the police department. He also appears in his own series "Astro And The Space Mutts". He is also featured in other cartoons like "Scooby's All Star Laff-A-Lympics".


Orbity is a space alien that Elroy discovers on a field trip and becomes part of the family. He is capable of different colors depending on his mood and can stretch his coiled legs and stick to the ceiling.


Di-Di (pronounced "Dye-Dye") is a pair of electronic floating lips that records Judy's messages. She is of course a Diary, but can have conversations with Judy and can give her advice.


"The Jetsons" appeared in 1962 as one of the prime time animated comedy shows that features background laughter. By the time that most animation was very much improved in the 1960s, Hanna-Barbera cartoons were not as much and most of them had obvious budget techniques such as bland picture quality and limited animation (such as the same thing in the background while somebody is either driving or running and it looks like sometimes the characters are just going in circles instead of going forward). During the 1960s and decades before that, there was an idea of how the future would look. The series is set exactly 100 years later in 2062. There are flying cars very similar to flying saucers with enormous dome ceilings, various appliances, a telephone that has a screen in it, holograms, jet packs, conveyer belts, automatic doors, elevators everywhere including one directly into the apartment rooms, and various other things. At first the look of these gadgets and style of clothes and future slightly reflected the 1950s era. The series was cancelled after one year and would not be around again for several more years. Astro started appearing in other cartoons by himself and after that The Jetsons returned in the 1980s. This time the same setting was supposed to be during the 24th century. This is when Orbity came along and Rosie was seen more. (and her name was spelled differently. In the 1962 season it was spelled "Rosey". Now it is spelled "Rosie"). R.U.D.I. was also added, and Di-Di, and numerous other characters were added. There were more plots, and there was much better color quality, picture quality, sound quality, and music. Despite the fact that this now wasn't a prime time comedy series with background laughter, it still had a prime time comedy show feel because of it featuring music that is commonly found in situation comedies. The ending credits that had George walking on a treadmill with Astro were replaced because of the added production staff which would not have fit correctly in the old closing scenes. There were several movie specials made of The Jetsons, such as a crossover series "The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones" which paired the stone age characters with the characters of the future. There was another one called "Rockin' With Judy Jetson." Well after the end of The Jetson's run, a movie was made. It was of course called "Jetsons: The Movie". It was animated and had even more improved picture quality. It resembles toon-shaded 3D CGI animation, because that is exactly what a lot of it was. The movie was the first time of the absence of Janet Waldo who voiced Judy Jetson, and also easily recognized as Glumdalclitch in a Hanna-Barbera-Australia cartoon.


Other characters of The Jetsons included Henry, who is the mechanic for all of The Sky Pad Apartments, where enormous housing space is available. The Jetsons most likely live in a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom unit, but with numerous additional living space especially since one time Jane Jetson redesigned and added onto it which suggests a lot of open space and giant rooms for that to be possible.


Cosmo Spacely is George Jetson's boss who is losing his hair (most likely because he probably keeps yanking it out). He is very stressed about his company, which isn't one of the best, and puts an enormous amount of work and responsibility for George's 3 hour a day, 3 day work week.


H.G. Cogswell runs a rival business which has counterparts to George Jetson and Miz Galaxy.


R.U.D.I. is a shakey voiced computer system.

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