WAIT TILL YOUR FATHER GETS HOME: The Complete Series
Hanna-Barbera 1972-1974m
1175 min. / Color / 1.37:1 / 1080p / DTS-HD MA English 2.0 Mono
While Hanna-Barbera TV fans clamor for more Baby Boomer classics like Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear, Warner Archive has thrown us a 1970s curveball, one of the two “for mature audiences” prime time cartoon series H-B gave us in the early 1970s that I wasn’t sure anyone besides me even remembered, that being my formative years and all. The other one is a sports cartoon called Where’s Huddles? that came and went quickly, but Wait Till Your Father Gets Home stuck around for three seasons, although the third season was nearly all reruns with only a handful of new episodes. All 48 episodes of Father are gathered together in a lovely new package, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to get its horrible catchy theme song stuck in your head. I haven’t seen this show since 1973 and I still had the theme stuck in my head before I even slapped in the first disc. I’m not kidding.
Obviously inspired by – well, to be more accurate, given the green light because of the success of the not-too-similar – the Bunkers of All in the Family, meet the Boyles. Dad Harry owns a company that makes restaurant supply equipment, is voiced by soon to be a much better-known TV dad, Tom Bosley of Happy Days, and every episode I watched revolved around him and his reactions to his family without exception. I wonder if that was in his contract. Wife Irma (Joanie Gerber, one of the busiest voice actors of her day, so much so that when somebody doesn’t know who voiced a female and they know it wasn’t June Foray or Bea Benaderet, they slap Joanie’s voice on their credit). The two sons, an older one named Chet who won’t work because he can’t find anything “meaningful” (leading to some pointed criticisms from dad, many repeated verbatim throughout the length of the series) and precocious younger son Jamie, seem to have been voiced by various actors through the episodes we previewed. There’s also a chubby feminist, overly annoying daughter named Alice, voiced by Kristina Holland. The requisite TV sitcom wacky neighbor, Ralph, is played by Jack Burns, who like Paul Lynde and Hans Conried pretty much only had one cartoon voice but we never cared, they’re all funny. Ralph, who 30 years later would be the type of character who would be the star of a TV show and not a supporting character, is a man of great prejudices and fears and of little sense. Various voices are performed by comic actor Lennie Weinrib and as the series wore on, several guest stars popped up, notably Don Knotts, Joe E. Ross, and Jonathan Winters.
As would be expected, the humor is early 1970s topical; jokes about feminism, ethnic differences, the battle of the sexes, and the generation gap are the lifeblood of the series, but all presented so good-naturedly that it is hard to imagine anyone getting offended, then or now. Artwise, the backgrounds are presented simply and without a definitive style; the characters are better animated than you’d think although as the show went along, it appears other animators (from other countries, based on the credits) were brought in and Harry and company sometimes seem a bit off guide and the quality of the animation fluctuates, particularly in season 2 – one can imagine that Hanna-Barbera was trying to get enough episodes in the can to ensure a healthy run in syndication. Not sure if 48 episodes achieved the goal, or perhaps it’s just that the show seemed dated, but it has rarely appeared on TV since it ran its course in 1974.
All 48 episodes are presented, complete and uncut of course, across six discs, and the box boasts of two featurettes as bonus material but I couldn’t find ‘em and Internet research suggests they were omitted at the last minute. That aside, it’s another TV obscurity from the folks at Warner Archive and rewatching it, perhaps on a night with The Bob Newhart Show and Mary Tyler Moore reruns, can give off a groovy 1970s vibe.
