So I am an avid watcher of Tubi, the last remaining ethical streaming service.
Lately it has been recommending me sitcoms of the 1960s, and so far I’ve really been finding myself surprisingly enjoying this look into the past. Gilligan’s island, The Jetsons, and bewitched.
I was watching The Jetsons today before work just to have Some Noise playing whilst I ingested my ramen noodles before work. Given that this is a sitcom about the future and how American society as pictured in the 1960s would adapt if the Space Age Promises of Tomorrow held true.
Not that kind of got me thinking, the Jetsons is very much in the ballpark of flintstones, it’s a modern family, in a time period that people of the 1960s would not consider modern. Now Flintstones doesn’t really need to be updated, because it’s set in a fictionalized stone age. You would not have to do much to update it if you wanted to do a modern take on that setting.
But what about the Jetsons? Now let’s say you were put in charge of making this reboot happen? How would you do it?
Would you be overly self aware and make jokes about a lot of future predictions that didn’t come true? Would you try to make it a sitcom version of Star Trek, like lower decks, but featuring a family instead of the D Squad?
Or maybe do something a bit more serious?
I want to hear from you, this is a message board for movies and TV shows, so let’s Flex those creative muscles, how would you make a new movie or TV show about the Jetsons?
I feel like I’d be compelled to go fairly dark with it. When The Jetsons was made, it was largely a period of optimism and prosperity in the US. That is most certainly no longer the case, with the middle class pretty much having evaporated, and so many people struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
I think I’d probably focus on the company store construct, that has become the foundation of capitalist society. Where everything you earn is due to the good will of those you’re obligated to give it back to. In a world with all sorts of wonderful technology, for most, it exists solely to make your toils for the sake of others more efficient.
I don’t see how the optimism of The Jetsons can exist today, at least not without mocking the hell out of it.
Then you are not making the Jetsons, just relying on name recognition. This is not an attack on you or the idea but the post WW2 optimism is central to the show.
You would be making another Velma: Taking a light-hearted comedy from decades ago and tossing out everything but the character names.
You’re right. I don’t think it can be successfully made, today. The best you can do is just barely peak through the facade.
This was my first thought…
Maybe just have the Jetsons encounter things from 2023, keeping their retro-futuristic technology. It would underscore the dystopian hell we all live in. Like, they’re constantly served spam and advertisements, Rosie’s subscription-based, their flying car is remotely disabled for a missed payment, everyone is low-level depressed because they never see grass or natural environments…
This is an incredibly pessimistic outlook and one I’m glad that, for instance, the makers of Star Trek The Next Generation didn’t share.
When TNG was coming out, the world was reeling from the stagflation of the 1970s and the economic shocks of Reaganomics and Thatcherism.
And still TNG is a very optimistic show, that still managed to touch on the issues of its day in a realistic and non-naive manner.
The brilliance of TNG’s utopia is that it is built on the premise that we had to go through a literal hell and near rural self-destruction to get to it. I don’t recall if TOS established WW3 first or not, but TNG really leans heavily into the notion that we came within inches of destroying everything.
But the moment we learned we weren’t alone in the universe, we turned it around and started building the future we could have had all along.
TOS introduced the Eugenics Wars, a global conflict which took place in the far-flung future of the 1990s. It was never really clear in that series whether or not it was synonymous with WW3, but they did talk about tens of millions dead.
I think the difference is, Star Trek has always been very detached from our own lives. It’s not placing the average day in modern times into a futuristic setting, like The Jetsons is.