Another intensive survey of “The Flintstones”, this week focusing on Fred’s exercises in awkwardness – and frequently special training – to fit into situations of social status, upward mobility, or unexpected prestige – sometimes my choice, sometimes against his will. Also, a few more instances where Fred tries to adapt to moving times or a new popular genre.

Much like Mickey Mouse, Popeye, and Goofy, the art of dancing daunted Fred’s life on several occasions, forcing the broad ankles of Mr. Flintstone to try to rise up upon their toes. In Arthur Quarry’s Dance Class (1/13/61), an old school-chum of Wilma’s, Gussie Gravelpit, has married into society, and remembered Wilma when an unexpected emergency caused her and her husband to be unable to use four tickets to Bedrock’s most swank social event, a charity dance at the Rockadero Tilton. Wilma receives the tickets in the mail free, saving the 100 clams per person admission fee. She and Betty figure the boys can’t complain with no charge, and will gladly take them to the event. To their dismay, both Fred and Barney refuse, saying they’ve “got their reasons”. The reasons are – two left feet. Both of them can’t dance a step. Feeling guilty about their refusal, Barney hits on the idea, what if they surprised the girls, and learned to dance? Self-instruction in the garage from a library book proves unfruitful, but the boys have little trouble convincingly covering-up their actions to the girls by converting their moves into wrestling holds. Formal instruction will be necessary, so the boys sign up for a one-week crash course at Arthur Quarry’s Dance Studio. Barney remembers on the way home the little problem of getting out of the house every night for class without tipping off the wives – but also recalls a sure-fire answer. Joe Rockhead (in his first series appearance) has recently organized a Bedrock Volunteer Fire Department in his backyard garage. Odd, because no one recalls there ever being a fire in Bedrock – as everything is made of stone, leaving nothing to burn. As Barney explains, and Joe later elucidates to Fred, the whole operation is a cover-up for the local boys to have their pick of evenings out. Every night at 7:30, Joe rings the fire bell. Everyone comes a-running, but it is always a false alarm. Everybody can go on home – or if they so choose, do whatever they please, as long as they are out. The rank and file membership choose the second alternative, engaging in poker, bowing, taking in ball games or the fights, etc. Fred and Barney see this as their perfect out to attend dancing class – though Fred sees possibilities in it long after classes are over, and vows never to turn in his new membership. Joe wonders if his great idea might just sweep the nation.

Fred appears home for dinner, dressed in his new fireman’s slicker and hat, announcing his signing up for duty as a “civic minded” citizen. Wilma can’t understand why he refuses to remove his hat at the dinner table, and watches the clock down to the last second, until the bell sounds from Joe’s garage promptly at 7:30. Fred charges out of the house, upsetting the dinner table and Wilma too. “How civic minded can you get?” she ponders. Barney is right behind Fred as they race down the street to answer the call, and Betty complains she almost got trampled in the rush. This goes on for a week, the boys dispersing for the dance studio as soon as Joe announces the daily “false alarm”. Fred and Barney are more than happy for Joe’s cover-up when they meet their shapely female instructors – something the wives would never understand, and even the boys can barely understand themselves. Everything seems too suspicious for the girls, and Joe Rockhead preserves his oath of silence about the boys’ activities by providing the girls with no information upon Betty’s interrogation, claiming all information is classified. Betty finally hits upon a way to outwit them – call in a fire alarm herself, and see just what happens as to their “boys in action”. Joe receives Betty’s call, unaware of her identity, and panics. A real fire? What are they supposed to do? Oh, yeah, ring the bell. Joe sounds the alarm, even though all his volunteers have already left the station for their nightly activities. The other volunteers come running from the ball park, pool hall, poker tables, etc. But Fred and Barney miss the call, hearing only their dancing music. The other firemen jump onto the back of a bright red dinosaur with a ladder strapped to its back and a bell and siren added for equipment (a sort of miniature version of the dino engine first seen in Max Fleischer’s Granite Hotel, which was also regularly seen passing through Bedrock as a part of the original opening credits animation of the series used in the first few seasons but replaced with “Meet the Flintstones” for many years of television syndication). Everyone but Fred and Barney arrive at the Rubbles’ house, and Joe has some explaining to do – especially since in their haste, the crew even forgot to bring along a fire hose). As Wilma and Betty level a threat to spill the beans on the operation to the other wives of Bedrock, Joe breaks his oath of silence, and lets slip that the boys are at the dance studio. The girls arrive there to spot Fred and Barney engrossed in their terpsichore (which looks more like a triple-speed stumble), while their dancing partners look exhausted and ragged. The wives cut in on the surprised boys, and, even though the story sounds fishy even to them, Fred and Barney tell the wives the truth. The wives are pleasantly surprised, embarrassed for mistrusting the husbands, and completely forgiving. All attend the big dance, and, while the boys continue to dance in the same step for every number like tippytoeing stumblebums, the girls remain quite happy at them for being “in there pitching”, and all dance the night away as the episode closes.

Quite similar is Social Climbers (11/17/61). Again, Wilma and Betty meet an old school chum. But this one is a total braggart about her rich husband. Wilma and Betty can only put up with it by themselves putting on airs, claiming that their husbands are rich and pedigreed too. The braggart is on the invitation committee for the Ambassador’s Reception – the most elite event of the Bedrock Country Club – and gives Wilma and Betty invitations to meet their delightfully rich husbands. Wilma and Betty decide to go through with the bluff to keep up appearances, use their charge-a-plates to buy gowns they really can’t afford, and enroll the boys in charm school so they can live up to the charade. A few well-timed displays of tears to the boys (who intended to only take them to Joe Rockhead’s Fireman’s Ball instead), and the boys are talked into going along with the act.

We barely witness Fred and Barney’s lessons, but by the night of the event, they at least appear on the outside dignified – including white tie and tails outfits (using real tails that look like they were cut from a black panther or at least a dyed lion). The event is totally an affair for snobs, and dead on arrival. The girls can’t get a word into conversation between the snooty bragging of the other women, and Fred and Barney break themselves up with corny jokes that otherwise fall on deaf ears. The girls decide they want to leave, but the boys, remembering their charm school lessons, declare that when an affair is dead, contribute their own skills to liven it up. The boys drop some of their pretense, and turn to a piano and bass not being played, pounding out a piece that sounds like Lawson and Haggart’s “Big Noise From Winnetka” played sideways, while the girls dance in unsophisticated manner. The crowd thinks them uncouth and riff-raff. But when two waiters turn out to be crooks intending to heist the riches of the guests (oddly pulling a stick-up without any display of weapons), Fred and Barney drop their charm lessons altogether, and begin clobbering the robbers. The police arrive, and want to take in all the rioters. But the party’s host acclaims the boys as heroes, releasing them from arrest. To end things on a high note, the Flintstones and Rubble lead the whole group to the Firemen’s Ball, where everyone manages to have a good time.

Bowling Ballet (10/5/62) – The prologue to this episode features an unusual cross-over between H-B primetime series, with Wilma resorting to Top Cat strategies to wake Fred up, by banging two ash can lids together like cymbals (with the standard Top Cat sound effect). As Fred heads off to work, Wilma cautions him to watch his aim getting out of the driveway, but Fred crashes into the fence – for the second time in two days. Fred claims Wilma jinxed him (no, not Mr. Jinks), but Fred’s coordination is just as bad at the rock quarry, where he drops a boulder from his dinosaur crane onto the hood of a company truck – the second one he’s wrecked this week. Fred has even bigger things on his mind, spending every lunch hour with Barney at the bowling alley, practicing for the championship game with the Rockland Rockets next week. But even Fred’s bowling score is suffering from his lapse in coordination. He can’t roll a strike, and his score doesn’t even reach 70. To top it off, he drops a bowling ball on his big toe, and wild-swings another ball into the air and down upon his own head.

As Fred returns to the quarry, a shout from Mr. Slate reveals that Slate is aware of the trucks he’s smashed, and of Fred’s returning late from lunch – but, surprisingly, isn’t that upset about it. He’s learned of Fred’s noontime practice sessions for the big game, and intends to make back the funds to pay for replacement trucks by betting on Fred’s team to win, instead of docking his pay. Slate further informs him that most of the boys in the quarry are also placing heavy bets upon him, and one of them demonstrates that they are sore losers, by venting his power in smashing a boulder to pebbles. By the time Fred goes home, he’s so down in the dumps, all he will speak to Wilma is unintelligible grumbles. But is there a ray of hope? A TV commercial for the Bedrock Dance Studio advertises dance lessons as a solution to improving rhythm and coordination – even for sporting activities such as – bowling! Fred races out of the house, ready to give anything a try.

Fred is quickly signed up for the style of dance most akin to bowling rhythms – ballet. Fred appears in black tights before an all-girl classroom of promising students, and a portly female Russian-accented instructor. The girls get the giggles observing Fred, who can’t even limber up his leg on a wall bar without getting it stuck in extended position in a muscle cramp. Fred mysteriously returns home in such condition, claiming to Wilma that he just happens to feel like going around hopping on one foot. Things get more mysterious, as Fred keeps calling in sick to work, yet either disappears from the house, or holes up in the basement, observed through the window by the girls in the act of spinning and prancing on his tiptoes. To rule out that another woman is involved, Betty volunteers Barney to shadow Fred the next time Fred leaves the house. Barney trails him to the dance studio, and finds not just another woman, but ten of them watching Fred spinning and leaping in his tights. The girls meet up with Barney upon receiving his phone call, and Wilma enters the studio. Fred doesn’t even recognize her, sending her into a twirling spin as if one of his classmates – but finally does a double-take, and collapses to the floor in a clumsy fall. Wilma gives him two minutes to get out of that black underwear and come home.

Back at the house, an embarrassed Fred tells Wilma the entire truth, but Wilma thinks the story preposterous. If ballet will really improve bowling, then Wilma insists, show me, as she and Betty plan to attend the bowl-off to see if Fred’s game really improves or not. Slate and the men from the gravel pit are also in the gallery. Despite Fred’s confidence that he has learned ballet adequately, he still has the jitters as to whether the courses will really have any effect upon his skill with the pins. There seems good reason to worry, as Fred throws the opening ball in his same old unique style of addressing the lane – and rolls a rebounding, off-angle shot right into the gutter. Fred is certain he is about to lose the match, his wife, his friends, and his job – until Barney comes up with a brainstorm. Fred must bowl in ballet style! Barney inserts a coin in the jukebox, pressing a button no one ever presses for a selection. The bird needle inside reacts to the selection: “A classic! My kinda music!” Trotting down the alley on tiptoes, Fred launches his next ball with a smooth graceful sweep – and clears all the pins. The game continues in this manner, Fred pouring on strike after strike. Even Barney gets into the act, with Fred helping him score the tournament-winning strike by carrying Barney in his arms like a dancing partner. Everyone is happy as the bowling trophy remains in Bedrock, and Wilma wonders on the way home if ballet might be her thing too. Fred tests her out, by flinging Wilma high into the air, then catching her in his arms nimbly on the way down. A slightly-dizzy Wilma resolves that she will remain the waltz type after all.

My Fair Freddy (3/25/66), the second-to-last show in the series, forgets virtually everything about the three episodes above. For reasons unknown, Fred has submitted an application for membership to the Stonyside Country Club (a place catering only to the better-than-you-are rich, so an unlikely place for Fred to show an interest in – or could it be because the club also has its own pro-level golf course, and private bowling lanes with automatic octopus pin setter?) The membership committee can’t take any chances on accidentally admitting any low class riff raff, so pays a visit to the Flintstone residence to investigate the unknown applicant (thinking the house to be either a mere Summer cottage or the servants’ quarters). They eaves-drop at the window, and overhear the end of a conversation between the girls, about papers coming in from a vet showing Dino has a royal pedigree. (The writers also forgot the episode “The Snorkasaurus Hunter”, where Dino was merely captured in the wild.) Presuming Wilma is talking about Fred being descended from royalty, the membership zoom to the front door, handing Wilma a membership card and snapping the Flintstones up before some rival club gets their hands on them. Wilma has no time to explain or figure out the mix-up, and the Flintstones are invited by the committee to attend the annual club ball.

Fred is having a bad day in traffic, rivaling George Jetson. Gazoo shows up, still looking to perform good deeds to earn points to be returned to the planet Zetox. Zapping a helicopter blade atop Fred’s car only succeeds in getting Fred a ticket for being an unlicensed pilot. Fred and Barney ask Gazoo to do them a favor, by not doing them any more favors. But when Fred learns from Wilma about the membership approval, and Wilma’s ultimate figuring out of the mixup about royal pedigree, Fred seeks a solution to get them past the ball commitment without becoming laughing stocks. After knocking heads together with Barney for an idea, the subject of charm school comes up. Gazoo reappears, declaring he has centuries of knowledge on charm and culture. The boys at first want no part of it, until Gazoo promises to do it all without the aid of magic. Thus Fred begins transformation lessons under Gazoo to become a polished gentleman. Like Champ under the tutelage of Doc, or Wilma in training for her commercial, Fred learns to walk with heavy book balanced atop his head (but crashes into the garage door in the process). A few “My Fair Lady” style speech lessons are also provided as with Wilma, closely resembling the “Rain in Spain” speech exercise. But Gazoo’s main training is to teach Fred ballet (as if Fred forgot his previous one-week mastery of the subject entirely!) This leads to typical embarrassment when a redesigned Joe Rockhead spots Fred in practice through a peephole in the garage door. Though the townsfolk should also all remember Fred’s ballet-step bowling victory, word spreads all over town like wildfire, and a long line of Fred’s friends and lodge brothers forms to stare through Fred’s garage door. When Fred finally concludes his lesson, he opens the door, to be caught in his tights and laughed at by half the town. Fred repeats a gag from the first season “The Drive-In” episode, feeling mighty small, literally, by shrinking down to a height of about six inches.

Wilma apologizes to Fred for not being able to keep the onlookers away. Fred resolves that they are still going to attend the ball – but be themselves (society be damned). They appear on Saturday night, finding a function that even the membership recognizes as even more boring that last year, and from which most of the members seek the first opportunity to fashionably depart. Fred and Wilma arrives in fairly boisterous fashion, and suggest that someone play some lively music, Fred asking the string orchestra if they know any rock. Reaching into his pocket for a Beatle wig (as do the other members of the orchestra), the conductor indicates they’ve just been waiting their chance to rock out. Fred and Wilma break into an original dance number they call “The Duck Walk”, and soon have the whole membership doing something they can’t recall having done in years – enjoying themselves. After a grand night of partying, the Flintstones invite the rest of the members over for coffee. Gazoo appears to Fred, apologizing at learning how Fred was laughed at in his ballet outfit. But Fred credits Gazoo with finally doing something right, as he and Wilma had a good time and made so many new friends. In as close to a resolution of the Gazoo subplotline as the show got, Gazoo lets out with a cheer of “Yabba Dabba Doo” at finally accomplishing a good deed, and waves a goodbye to Fred – potentially suggesting that this finally earned him the right to go home – though leaving things little-enough explained that perhaps they could have written Gazoo back into the show had there ever been a seventh season). The show ends with the moral, “If you can’t be yourself, you’re no one”, as Fred and Wilma lead a duck-quacking caravan of cars back to their place along the night road.

Speaking of gentleman’s clubs, Barney once briefly found himself in a similar incident of awkwardness, in Fred’s New Boss (9/21/62). Barney’s company has lost a large contract, and issues temporary lay-off slips. Fred tries to put in a good word to Slate about Barney for a position at the quarry, but Slate isn’t interested in his recommendations. Nevertheless, Barney shows up for an interview, thinking Fred has paved the way for him to get in good with Slate. Before Slate can boot him out, names are dropped about home towns and family ties, that link Barney with Slate’s sister, leading to Slate creating a position of vice-president for Barney, in direct supervision of, of all employees, Fred. The social embarrassment comes when Slate invites Betty and Barney to visit his favorite gentleman’s club. In tuxedo and tails, Barney is allowed to visit the club’s “game room”, where the membership engages, in stoney silence, in its favorite sport – chess. Barney looks around at all the silent, motionless members pondering their chess pieces, then breaks the silence by boldly asking if anyone wants to shoot a game of pool. The sound waves hit like shock waves, jostling the rest of the membership out of their seats and to the floor, with all of the chess tables overturned.

Rooms For Rent (3/31/61) attempts in mild form to again cash in upon the popular beatnik craze, with Wilma and Betty seeking to rent out spare rooms of their houses to earn extra money to balance the family checkbooks. Unfortunately, the two students who respond to their rooms for rent sign (who at least do not wear standard beatnik outfits or goatees) have no extra dough beyond their college tuition, money to keep their instruments in shape, and a little extra cash to buy the latest records. One plays bongos, while the other plays progressive jazz piano. They offer to share their musical knowledge in return for room and board for two weeks. The girls decide to let the teens coach their musical act for a Loyal Order of Dinosaurs talent show, seeking a first prize of $500 which they’ve never won. However, they pretend to Fred and Barney that the $500 will be paid at the end of the two-weeks tenancy, not informing the boys that the “string” to it is they must win the contest to get it. The boys put up with two aggravating weeks of unwanted music, and of intrusions at the dinner table where the kids turn out to have bigger appetites than the husbands. The episode cheats us some, as we never actually see Wilma’s and Betty’s new act – as the boys sulk outside the lodge without watching it when they learn that no rent was actually paid by the boarders. But they hear the announcement from the Poobah that Wilma and Betty have actually won. Fred and Barney speed off to make some purchases, leaving the frustrated girls to walk home. When the girls arrive, they find Fred with a new set of bongo drums, accompanying Barney on piano, with the boys claiming that if the girls could win this year, think of what an act the boys can whip up to win the prize next year.

Fred’s Flying Lesson (1/1/65) – Fred claims no one ever wins the Water Buffalo raffles (even though even he feels compelled to buy tickets), because he believes the drawings are rigged. He is proven wrong, as his ticket is chosen, winning him an unexpected prize – a free flying lesson at the Bedrock Flying School. Fred is sure you’d never find him up in one of those crates, and decides to see if he can trade in the lesson for cash value. But one sight of the school’s owner and instructor, the lovely Kitty Rockhawk, leaves Fred babbling and ready to sign up for a complete five-lesson course. Fred attempts to justify to Barney his inability to say no, claiming the lessons are an investment for the future, which will allow him to apply for a position with Prehistoric Airlines as flight captain once he obtains his license. And he believes Wilma won’t be objectionable to the plan – if he can show up to her in a Captain’s outfit before she finds out.

Dodging a commitment for a picnic the next day on a pretense of needing to attend a bowling practice or be drummed off the team, Fred takes all five lessons in one day. Lesson 1 finds him learning about ejector seats the hard way – by being thrown out of the plane while still on the ground. Other lessons almost throw him equally, including the mid-air stall and the acrobatic barrel-roll. But, in a bumpy ride, he manages to bring the craft back in for a landing at the conclusion of lesson 5. Fred thinks his license has just been earned, but Kitty (who refers to him by the nickname “Wings”) deflates his dream by informing him he must first make a solo flight before attaining the license, tomorrow morning.

Knowing the girls won’t sit for two cancellations of the picnic in a row, Fred and Barney take the family on their picnic outing – at the airport. Carefully plotting their timing, the boys calculate a spare fifteen minutes while the girls cook and the kids are occupied with Hoppy, in which the boys will never be missed, and Fred can complete his solo. The control tower sarcastically clears Fred for takeoff on five runways at once, and Kitty reminds him to circle the field twice and land, but stay out of restricted military air space nearby. Fred gets the craft up with ease, then finds an unexpected passenger – Barney, in the rear seat, along to help him solo. Fred can use all the help he can get, as a slow dodo bird decides to take a siesta – right on top of the plane’s wing. The plane begins to fall, but Barney reminds Fred to use the acrobatic roll, temporarily dumping the bird off. But the fall has placed the plane way off course, over the restricted air space. A general radios for the unidentified aircraft to identify itself. But Fred doesn’t hear, preoccupied with the fact that the dodo has returned. Barney tries to scare off the bird with a big rock used for the plane’s brake, but accidentally drops the rock overboard, right onto the general’s control center. The general shouts orders to fire on the plane. Three mammoths begin flinging boulders of equal size into the skies. Then, the prehistoric equivalent of an anti-aircraft missile is launched – a streamlined, needle-nosed bird, propelled from a slingshot strung between the necks of two giraffes emerging from a silo. Fred has to take some fancy evasive measures to narrowly miss impact by the bird, but pulls one lever too many, ejecting himself from the plane. Fred at least has the good sense to operate a parachute correctly, and comes in for a soft landing near Wilma and Betty. But Barney is still up in the plane, with no idea how to control it. Fred races for the control tower, grabs the controller’s mike, and manages to talk Barney down, using the mid-air stall to bring the craft down on its tail before running out of runway. Fred doesn’t get his license, but is hailed by Kitty as a hero for talking his friend down. Explanations are made by Kitty to Wilma and Betty of Fred’s aspirations for a new career to make Wilma proud of Fred, but Wilma states she’s proud of Fred as is – something Fred s glad to hear, as he’s decided it’s safer to keep his feet on the ground. The same feeling might not be shared by the kids, however, as Bamm Bamm circles Pebbles with arms outstretched, playing he is a plane, for the fade out.

Fred would also experience three instances of “double trouble”, placing him in situations for which he might otherwise be the last person in the world to select. In “The Tycoon” (2/24/61), wealthy industrialist J. L. Gotrocks is a perfect twin to Fred in appearance, but not quite in personality. Gotrocks is virtually tied to his desk, answering phones all day to make decisions upon mergers, acquisitions, sales of stock, and memorizing the daily grocery list from his “battle-axe” wife. Reaching the breaking point, J. L. shoves his bank of telephones off his desk. Looking out the window, he realizes he knows nothing of life “out there”, having no knowledge of common pleasures he has heard about, such as pinball machines and juke boxes. He decides to do what no one would expect him to do – slip out the back exit, and disappear amidst the common people, while everyone looks for him in the wrong places, such as the country clubs or the French Riveria. J. L. makes good on his plan, leaving his two right-hand executives holding the bag for a scheduled big business meeting needed to keep the company afloat – and their own cinchy jobs secure. Before beginning a search for J. L. in all the wrong places as J. L. expected, one of them glances out of the office window, and spots at a distance what appears to be J. L. operating a dinosaur crane in the rock quarry. Of course, it is really Fred, but the physical and voice resemblance between Fred and J. L. has the two executives momentarily fooled completely. Fred thinks they’re daffy, until the executives fill him in on their dilemma, and beg Fred to take J. L.’s place at the meeting – an emergency of possible national consequence, and of even more immediate consequence to their own personal jobs. Fred, knowing Wilma is taking a few days away from home to visit her mother, arranges for his own two-day leave of absence from the quarry.

Of course, things don’t go according to plan. While Fred proves a reliable substitute for Gotrocks (instructed to merely repeat J. L.’s three favorite expressions: “Whose baby is that?”, “What’s your angle?”, and “I’ll buy that”), Wilma’s trip gets cancelled, causing Wilma to discover Fred’s request for leave of absence. Meanwhile, J. L., unaware of Fred’s existence, is making his presence known among Fred’s own regular haunts, acting like he doesn’t know anyone, flashing a wad of bills you could choke a horse with, and insisting on having his own way (even buying a pinball machine just so he can tilt it). He ultimately passes Barney, Wilma and Betty without giving them the time of day. Barney approaches him for explanation, and gets the runaround, causing Barney to drag him to Wilma by putting an armlock on J. L. behind his back. J. L. walks out on Wilma without explaining a thing, then exerts his own military maneuver upon Barney by throwing him for a body slam on the pavement. The girls and Barney give chase. Back in J. L.’s office, Fred is now enduring J. L.’s headaches on the bank of telephones, and reacts in the same manner as J. L., shoving the phones off the desk, and announcing he quits. The executives, still having no clue as to the real J. L.’s whereabouts, vow not to let Fred get away, and a second chase is on. The two runaway look-alikes almost meet under the same bridge, but finally do intercept one another when Fred seeks to hide in a trash can, only to find it already occupied by Gotrocks. Fred runs to escape the executives, but the two catch sight of the head descending back into the trash can, and grab the whole can and its occupant by mistake. They carry the can and its screaming resident back to the office, only to raise the lid to find the real J. L., and a shout of “You’re fired!” that almost reaches the decibel level of Cosmo Spacely. Fred, finally free of his pursuers, returns home, and is surprised to find Wilma, Barney and Betty waiting for him. Wilma wants to know why he didn’t greet her with the nickname “Battle-axe”, and Barney extends a hand of “friendship” to him, only to judo-flip Fred for a return body-slam onto the floor. A three-way interrogation of the helpless Fred begins, for which Fred will never have any clear answers, leading to the fade out.

Much in the same vein, and perhaps closer to the literary roots of the classic “doubles” story by Mark Twain, “The Prince and the Pauper”, is King For a Night (12/3/64). Fred’s double is the king of Stonesylvania, in Bedrock with his prime ministers to obtain a loan to his kingdom of ten million dollars. His voice bears a mittel-European mock-accent, but he is identical in looks to Fred except for a luxurious black beard. He too is tired of being cooped up in castles and hotels, and wants to see how the peasants live. A simple shave of his beard, and he is all ready to fly the coop. Again, his prime ministers wish to save their cushy jobs with the loan money, as well as make back payments on the royal yacht and wall-to-wall carpets, so recruit Fred to substitute at the royal ball to collect the money, promising Fred to pay him a cool 3,000. Fred, although missing a bowling match, reacts to the figure with the remark, “Who wants to buy a bowling ball?”

The usual mistaken identities occur, as Wilma and Betty spot Fred in a fake beard at the hotel royal ball, dancing with the wife of the man who will provide the needed loan funds. (Fred even has to memorize a foreign acceptance speech, again paraphrasing “The Rain In Spain”, as “The rotskin spotskin is motskin in the plotskin.”) Barney meanwhile spots the real king driving a royal sports car (which he assumes Fred stole), and passing Barney like a stranger in the doorway of the bowling alley. Barney’s chase leads him to find the king at the drive-in, and at a night club dancing the twist with a lovely girl. Barney gets bopped over the head with a stop sign by the king, then returns the favor on the wrong man, bashing Fred at the hotel with the same sign. A prolonged merry chase in and out the doors and elevators of the hotel leads to the entire cast crashing into one another, and the mystery of two Freds is revealed. The king returns to finish his business, finding peasant life a little too complicated to endure on a regular basis. And Flintstone receives his cool 3,000 – in Stonesylvanian currency, having an exchange rate of $3.95! All Fred can grumble is “The rotskin spotskin is motskin in the plotskin.”

Even Barney gets into the doubles act, in the rarely seen Royal Rubble (12/10/65) – Barney is taken by a pair of Arabian royal assistants, as the believed heir to the princedom of Stoney Arabia. Everyone is ordered to bow to the prince, including Fred, Wilma, and even Betty, who is left behind as Barney is taken to a hotel leased for the occasion by the royal authorities for Barney’s coronation. Fred tries to get inside to save his pal, but finds Barney seems to need no saving, as he dines and basks in the lap of luxury. Things get out of hand when Barney learns that he is to choose 100 or so wives for his royal harem – and Wilma and Betty learn of this development. Fred tries his best to get Barney out of the hotel, but every means of escape is blocked, and abdication is punishable by death. Luckily, the real heir to the throne is discovered in the nick of time to stop the coronation – a double to Barney, but with a slightly higher voice, and a royal scarab to prove his lineage. The boys are set free, and end up bowing to their wives as queens of their humble roost. Pebbles, Bamm Bamm, and Dino, however, direct their bows to Fred and Barney as their kings.

Fred’s golden-age career would end with the feature-length The Man Called Flintstone (Columbia, 8/3/66), which again was another “doubles” plot, very-much padded out to achieve feature length instead of merely presenting its storyline in an allotted 25 minutes or as a 50 minute prime-time special. Its angle was to capitalize on the current craze of secret agent pictures represented by the successful James Bond franchise (a subject also touched upon in the regular series installment Dr. Sinister (11/5/64)), casting Fred as the double to international secret agent Rock Slag, who seems to have a habit of ending up in traction just when the world is depending upon him for the vanquishing of evil. Fred is of course recruited to play his substitute, in a battle of wits against master of disguise and of evil schemes, the Green Goose. A complicated series of agent and counter-agent meetings, double agents in disguise, and a devastating missile disguised as an amusement park ride attempt to enliven the story, but in my estimation, never quite succeeded in doing so. I missed the film in its theatrical debut, not even knowing of its existence, but was introduced to the storyline in comic book form as a Gold Key special adaptation. I found the comic to be legitimately entertaining and well-paced, but could never say the same for the film when I finally saw it on TV, and still have never warmed to it. (Also never liked Wilma’s purple dress!) Whoever adapted the comic did so with the eye of an expert film editor, and reduced the tale to its proper essentials and key sequences without fat (except for Fred’s girth). Ah, were there a film adaptation that could digest the animated version to the same sequences and running time, the project might have for me become watchable. And perhaps this film emphasized more than any that sometimes a not-overdone laugh track seemed necessary to put certain material over without too many lapses in a row of gags falling flat without a titter (a phenomenon which has also adversely affected some regular-season episodes of the series and of The Jetsons and Top Cat in those instances where episodes have been screened removing the laugh track).

• “The Man Called Flintstone” is complete on ok.ru and with original Columbia main title. Click HERE!

A few additional episodes deserve brief honorable mention. Latin Lover (4/20/62) displays Wilma and Betty’s love for Italian romance pictures on TV, where they swoon over moustached Latin leading men. With a little flattery, Wilma persuades Fred to try to adopt some cultured tones and grow a moustache. Fred’s ego grows faster than his moustache does, and in no time, he is transformed into the romantic Frederico, charming the Rubbles with his debonair poise and accented vocal tones. But Betty points out that this transformation might also be appealing to other women, leading Wilma to imagine Fred as sought after by all females who chance his way. “I’ve created a monster”, she concludes, and thinks the worst when she overhears a phone call between Fred and Mrs. Slate, merely following the boss’s instruction to take Mrs. Slate to the airport, but leading Wilma to believe Fred is running away to Rockapulco with another woman. The whole thing is of course finally straightened out, with Fred vowing to shave off the facial hair and go back to being good old Fred.

The Big Move (3/22/63) finds Fred again attempting to move upwards socially, worried about the effect environment will have on Pebbles’ future if she is raised among common folk such as the Rubbles. He signs the family into a long-term lease for a swank apartment, relocating the family to a ritzy part of town, and leaving the Rubbles behind. Even Dino gets left behind with the Rubbles, due to a strict no pets rule in the lease. But eventually, Fred begins to miss Barney, Wilma longs for Betty’s company, and neither can stand their snooty landlord and the other unfriendly company of the new neighborhood. An elaborate charade is devised between the Flintstones and Rubbles to break the lease, with the Rubbles and Dino showing up disguised as hillbilly “kinfolk” of Fred and determined to stay after catching up with the Flintstones, according to the unbreakable “law of the hills”. Their uncouth ways are enough to make the landlord happy to smash the lease and demand everyone’s immediate eviction, allowing Fred to buy back their old home next door to the Rubbles – the best neighbors anyone could ever ask for.

There was Boss For a Day (3/4/66) in which Gazoo allows Fred to experience one day of switching places with Mr. Slate. Of course, Fred finds that being a boss isn’t the easy lot its cracked up to be, and can’t stand up to the pressures, leaving him happy to return to the frustrations of his old job at story’s end. Finally, there was The Long, Long, Long Weekend (1/21/66), in which Fred attempts to adapt to a Jetsons’-style future Bedrock, via magical transportation through time by Gazoo. Some of the changes are unexpected – like teenagers’ dancing crazes having turned full circle, and returned to the waltz, and future television that only runs episodes of Peyrock Place (pun on “Peyton Place”) 24/7, on all channels. But the most personal challenge to Fred is a visit to future Slate Construction, where a descendant of Fred’s boss looks up company records on past employee Fred Flintstone, and discovers that an unrepaid loan of a few dollars received by Fred has, with accumulating interest, escalated to a debt of millions of dollars. Fred barely escapes future Slate’s wrath in seeking repayment from the descendent of the “deadbeat”, and is returned to the Stone Age, where Fred resolves to pay Slate back his loan immediately on Monday.

The Flintstones would actually meet the Jetsons in a TV movie decades later, but this is outside the scope of the original show. Maybe another time.

NEXT WEEK: We’ll begin a look at post Roger-Rabbit TV series.