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Juras­sic Lark: The satir­i­cal genius of Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs

28 Jan 2021

Words by Aimee Knight

Two anthropomorphised green and pink monster characters with exaggerated features and expressions, wearing checked and yellow shirts against a textured brown background.
Two anthropomorphised green and pink monster characters with exaggerated features and expressions, wearing checked and yellow shirts against a textured brown background.
Ani­ma­tron­ic pup­pets, sear­ing social com­men­tary, this short-lived ear­ly 90s sit­com had it all.

Rep­til­ian news­read­er Howard Handupme looks to cam­era: A mete­or, three times the size of Earth, is head­ing towards us in a col­li­sion course that will result in the extinc­tion of all life on this planet.”

Left of frame, a rub­bery green hand slides a sheet of paper across the desk. This just in,” Handupme reports. No, it’s not.”

Oh, good,” says Earl Sin­clair – a sim­ple, worka­day Mega­losaurus – who prompt­ly changes the channel.

So opens the first episode of the irrev­er­ent sit­com Dinosaurs, in which the dys­func­tion­al Sin­clair fam­i­ly con­tends with the stric­tures of mod­ern life (dinos, in this time­line, hav­ing only evolved from being wild, swamp-dwelling brutes about a mil­lion years earlier).

A Jim Hen­son Tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion, the series starred a cast of expres­sive – and expen­sive – ani­ma­tron­ic pup­pets, the most mem­o­rable being Baby Sin­clair (per­formed by Kevin Clash, who also pop­u­larised Elmo). Back in the show’s orig­i­nal run from 1991 – 94, Baby’s wily slap­stick and week­ly catch­cry Not the Mama!’ eclipsed the show’s more sub­ver­sive quirks. But in the 30 years since Dinosaurs’ debut, its bit­ing satire and sly com­men­tary on gen­der, labour, pol­i­tics, racism, the econ­o­my and cli­mate change – not to men­tion tele­vi­sion itself – has only grown more savage.

With its four idio­syn­crat­ic sea­sons hit­ting Dis­ney+ on 29 Jan­u­ary, now is the per­fect time to recon­sid­er this curi­ous ana­logue arte­fact. From its pre­his­toric Pan­gaea set­ting (rough­ly 60 mil­lion years BC through to its reflec­tion in the Anthro­pocene, with­er­ing under late cap­i­tal­ism, the prophe­cy of Dinosaurs is any­thing but obsolete.

Dinosaurs charged onto the US net­work ABC (plus ITV and Dis­ney Chan­nel in the UK, among oth­er ter­ri­to­ries) care of co-cre­ators Bob Young and Michael Jacobs. Their pre­vi­ous writ­ing and pro­duc­ing cred­its includ­ed such all-Amer­i­can can­dy floss as The Facts of Life and Charles in Charge, but this new beast sac­ri­ficed the sweet acces­si­bil­i­ty of cook­ie-cut­ter sit­coms, favour­ing the play­ful par­o­dy and con­tained chaos vital to much of Jim Henson’s work, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Muppets.

Three fantasy creatures wearing colourful, patterned clothing surrounding a large spotted egg on a plush surface.

That said, Dinosaurs was the first major Jim Hen­son Com­pa­ny work pro­duced with­out super­vi­sion from the Crea­ture Shop’s found­ing leader, who passed away in May 1990. Hen­son is said to have con­ceived the series, which shares the­mat­ic DNA with his unpro­duced screen­play for The Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Project – a fan­ta­sy fea­ture à la The Dark Crys­tal and Labyrinth. Sad­ly it was scrapped due to its appar­ent sim­i­lar­i­ties to The Land Before Time, at a time when Juras­sic antics were just start­ing to peak on the pop cul­tur­al landscape.

Anoth­er way in which Dinosaurs tapped the ear­ly 90s zeit­geist was by gut­ting the whole­some 50s father’ arche­type. Upstand­ing dads had dom­i­nat­ed sit­coms (sub­genus: come­die domes­ti­cus, or dom coms’) from Father Knows Best to The Cos­by Show. Full of beer nuts and hot air, Earl (voiced by Stu­art Pankin) inher­it­ed the bad dad’ man­tle from Alf Gar­nett (Till Death Us Do Part) and Archie Bunker (All in the Fam­i­ly), whose par­ent­ing deficits were hon­oured such dumb dad’ renais­sance texts as Mar­ried… with Chil­dren, The Simp­sons and Home Improve­ment. Dinosaurs even skew­ered the trend with this face­tious week­night line-up:

ABC TV schedule showing episode titles including "Father Knows Nothing", "Dad's A Big Moron", "Simpleton Father", and "Brain Dead Dad".

This is why TV stinks,” groans Earl. One show’s a hit, they make 50 more like it,” to which Baby replies, Don’t have a cow, man!”

But Earl is more cyn­i­cal than his bum­bling brethren like Homer Simp­son and Fred Flint­stone. What’s more, his wil­ful­ly shit behav­iour isn’t typ­i­cal­ly framed as endear­ing, so we don’t laugh with him – the chuck­les come when he gets his come­up­pance. (Notably, Dinosaurs’ pro­duc­ers chose to can the ini­tial laugh track, which means no one implic­it­ly con­dones Earl’s buffoonery.)

Unlike many TV patri­archs, Earl is rarely hand­ed a free pass to fail upwards, which makes it all the more mean­ing­ful when, in the third sea­son episode Hon­ey, I Miss the Kids’, the flac­cid anti­hero sin­cere­ly bonds with his prog­e­ny. Mean­while, his wife Fran (Arrest­ed Development’s Jes­si­ca Wal­ter) returns to work full time, itch­ing to escape the cycli­cal tedi­um of domes­tic drudge work.

A pro­to­typ­i­cal nuclear fam­i­ly, the Sin­clairs live in a ver­sion of sub­ur­bia that mar­ries pre­his­toric aes­thet­ics and post­war social val­ues. Every rel­e­vant stereo­type gets evis­cer­at­ed, along with the ide­alised virtues of het­ero­nor­ma­tive par­ent­hood (both adults express resent­ment toward each oth­er and their kids), organ­ised reli­gion (teenage son Rob­bie rejects many cul­tur­al cus­toms, like eat­ing oth­er ani­mals and hurl­ing old folk into tarpits), and soul­less con­sumerism (when Baby demands the leg smoother’ he saw on TV, he’s told he can’t have it because he’s a boy. Oh, then I want a machine gun!”).

Tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles receive con­stant rib­bing, with clichéd traits invert­ed. Man of the house Earl is behold­en to the whims of his – to bor­row a Sesame Street term – big feel­ings, where­as Fran is most­ly mod­er­ate. Though she begins an oblig­ing house­wife, one part Step­ford to two parts Bedrock, she becomes dis­il­lu­sioned with her lot and devel­ops the voice to say so.

This is large­ly due the influ­ence of her friend Mon­i­ca Dev­er­te­brae (Suzie Plak­son), a fem­i­nist Bron­tosaurus who takes her employ­er – the ubiq­ui­tous cor­po­rate giant WESAYSO – to court in What Sex­u­al Har­ris” Meant’. The episode aired in late 1991, just two months after Ani­ta Hill’s wide­ly tele­vised sex­u­al harass­ment case, and it fea­tures one of Dinosaurs’ most sear­ing jokes.

Two construction workers, one wearing a yellow hardhat, chatting on a worksite.

The igno­bil­i­ty of work reg­u­lar­ly comes under fire, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regard to Earl’s blue-col­lar job as a tree push­er’ at WESAYSO Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. Man­aged by a tyran­ni­cal Styra­cosaurus called BP Rich­field (sit­com stal­wart Sher­man Hem­s­ley, All in the Fam­i­ly and The Jef­fer­sons) who’s slick by name, if not by nature.

The com­pa­ny mot­to is We’ll do what’s right if you leave us alone”, which, in prac­tice, means raz­ing a red­wood for­est to make way for 10,000 tract hous­es, and build­ing a wax fruit fac­to­ry that pre­cip­i­tates an ice age. (Howard Handupme’s news report was right: it’s not a mete­or that ends all life on Earth in the series’ breath­tak­ing­ly bleak finale.)

Dinosaurs leaves few sociopo­lit­i­cal stones unturned, illus­trat­ing how gen­der per­for­mance, class, work and the envi­ron­ment are all inex­tri­ca­bly linked. In some ways, it’s a spir­i­tu­al suc­ces­sor to anoth­er Hen­son series about ecol­o­gy, Frag­gle Rock, which also depicts nature’s pre­car­i­ous­ness and the dan­gers of xeno­pho­bia. (Earl’s opin­ions of the ear­ly hominid folk who cohab­it this revi­sion­ist his­to­ry echo the Frag­gles’ view of Sil­ly Crea­tures’ aka the human race.) This begs the ques­tion, was Dinosaurs intend­ed for adults or chil­dren? Like most Jim Hen­son Com­pa­ny work, it’s both, and the writ­ers clar­i­fy this with a know­ing wink.

The Sin­clairs’ tele­vi­sion set is their home’s focal point, and some of the show’s best roasts con­cern TV’s hyp­not­ic allure. (‘Net­work Genius’ is a work of genius.) But Dinosaurs’ drollest run­ning gag involves a pup­pet show that delights Earl and Baby equal­ly. When Fran dis­miss­es the show as kid’s stuff, Earl retorts, You’d think that, because they’re pup­pets – so the show seems to have a children’s aes­thet­ic.” He turns to eye­ball the cam­era. Yet the dia­logue is unques­tion­ably sharp-edged, wit­ty, and the­mat­i­cal­ly skewed to adults.” The mighty Mega­losaurus flex­es his dex­ter­ous brow.

Pup­pets mim­ic the human con­di­tion with an uncan­ny like­ness. They’re not peo­ple, clear­ly, but an eerie approx­i­ma­tion. When cam­ou­flaged in the soft pow­er of a sit­com, they have a unique capac­i­ty to point fin­gers at society’s trick­i­est home truths. Slap­stick and catch­phras­es are just a handy dis­trac­tion. All these years lat­er, Dinosaurs still goes for the throat.

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