TVSquad

There aren't a lot of TV shows that I can watch with my kids and enjoy them. They love crap on the Disney Channel and I love The Daily Show. While we both love Spongebob, I can only see the same episode so many times.

One show that seems to hold up for all of us is The Flintstones. The kids especially like the later episodes with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.

I haven't seen an episode of The Flintstones in many years. It was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid, and I watched them as an adult, too, but it's just one of those shows that I haven't gone back to in the past five or ten years. I've been thinking about buying the season DVD sets (there are six seasons), but now it looks like I'm going to hold off on that because there's a complete series set coming later this year!

Warner is coming out with this cool-looking set that will house all six seasons in a special box that looks like a TV set (albeit one made of rocks with rock knobs). The DVDs themselves will slide into holders that are book-shaped and contain all of the info about what's on each DVD.

No word yet on extras, but the individual sets for each season contain extras such as rare, unseen footage, original storyboards, documentaries (including a guide to raising a child in the Stone Age), promo spots, and the original pilot (The Flagstones).

This seems to be a very active week for celebrity deaths, and it's sad to report that Carol Burnett Show veteran Harvey Korman has died at age 81. He died of a ruptured abdominal aneurysm at his UCLA Medical Center.

Besides The Carol Burnett Show, where Korman teamed for a ton of great sketches with Tim Conway (often cracking each other up), Korman appeared in many other shows since the early 60s, including ER, Ellen, Perry Mason, Route 66, The Red Skelton Show, Dennis the Menace, Hazel, Jack Benny, Gidget, The Lucy Show, The Munsters, The Wild, Wild West, F Troop, and many others. He was a regular on the sitcom Mama's Family and did the voice of The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones. Movies that Korman appeared in include History of the World, Part 1, High Anxiety, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Blazing Saddles, Son of Flubber, Gypsy, and others.

Do you ever get the feeling that all of the great classic stars and performers are dying and it's going to be a very different world in a couple of years? Rather depressing.

Let's talk about cereal commercials (again).

I thought of all of the cereal commercials we've had over the years after seeing the latest ads for Fiber One. Yes, to answer your question, that is Kate and Allie's Fred Koehler playing the store clerk who calls the manager over after the customer has a question about the lack of twigs in his cereal (that's Koehler with Johnathon Schaech). At first I thought to myself, "why is he doing cereal commercials instead of TV shows and movies?," but then I figured, hey, we all have to pay the bills, and Fiber One cereal is good! I just saw a sequel to the ad that features new Fiber One/Yoplait Yogurt and in it you see Kathryn Joosten, a great actress who played Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing and Mrs. McCluskey on Desperate Housewives and...well, a million other roles. So it's actually very cool to see them doing this stuff along with their many other roles.

Allan Melvin had so many roles on so many TV shows over the years that it's hard to know where to begin, but I guess the most logical spot would be The Brady Bunch, where he played Sam The Butcher, the guy Alice dated. He was also a regular on The Phil Silvers Show, played Archie Bunker's friend Barney on All in the Family, and also played Rob's army buddy on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He appeared on dozens of other shows over the years, from the Andy Griffith Show (he always played a crook - that's him on the right in the pic) and Gomer Pyle, USMC to Kung Fu and The Banana Splits (he was Drooper).

You would probably also recognize his voice in many cartoons, including Magilla Gorilla, The Flintstones, The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour, The Smurfs, Spider-Man and Friends, Foofur, Ducktales, Talespin, and others.

He died of cancer in Los Angeles.

So kudos to NBC for making a smart move by having its all-star gala on the roof of the Beverly Hilton's parking lot. It's an elevator ride away and the area is wide open. The party music isn't so loud that it's going to drown out any interviews. Nice.

Swag alert: guests received mini handheld fans upon arriving, but they weren't really needed because there was a nice evening breeze in the air.

That headline probably won't even make sense to many people. Boomerang? What the hell is that?

Boomerang is a cable network devoted to baby boomers. I don't get it on my cable system, though it certainly sounds like something I'd like to see if they have programming like this. The channel is going to show all 166 episodes of The Flintstones - in order and without commercials - starting on July 4. This is a show I've been meaning to buy on DVD. A lot of people thought it was lame for an animated series, but I didn't watch it for cool animation, it was really a sitcom in cartoon clothing and a lot of fun.

I wonder why they changed the name used in the pilot, The Flagstones? What made them say "let's get rid of the 'flag' and replace it with 'flint'?"

To a good portion of us both The Flintstones and The Jetsons were mainstays of our afterschool and Saturday morning television viewing. However, back in the 1960's both of these Hanna-Barbera creations were part of the ABC prime-time lineup. The Flintstones were a mainstay on the schedule from 1960 until 1966 while The Jetsons appeared in only the 1962-63 season.

Of course, being on the prime-time schedule there was bound to be some promotion of both shows. And, that's what you'll see after the jump: promotions for both The Flintstones and The Jetsons during their first run. Both of these clips are in black-and-white, even though both shows were produced in color. The Flintstones' promo is for the show's fourth season. The episode featuring Ann-Margret as Ann Margrock was the season premiere. Yes, Virginia, stars lent their voices to cartoons long before The Simpsons.

• The Abbott and Costello Show - 100th Anniversary Collection
• ALF - Season 4
• The Bob Newhart Show - Season 4
• Broken Trail
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Curse of the Hellmouth
• Charlie and Lola - Volumes 1 and 2
• Combat! Best of Espionage and Best of the Color Episodes
• Commander-In-Chief - Season 1, Volume 2
• Doctor Who - The Web Planet and Inferno
• Family - Seasons 1 and 2
• The Flintstones - Season 6
• Fraggle Rock - Season 2
• Hustle - Season 1
• Lost - Season 2
• Oz - Season 6
• Red Dwarf - The Complete Collection
• Silk Stalkings - Season 5
• Supernatural - Season 1

Even great shows can sometimes have a character or two that just doesn't work out...

1. Mandy Hampton (The West Wing): Boy, was I happy to see this character simply vanish after the first season. She just never seemed to fit in, and I mean that as a character (as a political consultant she was always at odds with the rest of the staff and they never quite got along) and as a cast member (Moira Kelly). As if to highlight how out of place she was, Aaron Sorkin and other writers seemed to push her further and further away as the first season progressed, always at odds with the other cast members, until she became a character who just seemed to "be there." Then the second season opened and she was gone with no explanation. Nobody cared.