Dinosaurs - The Complete First and Second Seasons (1991)

 

 Originally Reviewed

Wednesday May 24, 2006

It's been a long time coming waiting for one of my favorite shows as a youngster to finally arrive on DVD, at first I thought maybe my enjoyment and fascination with this show was because of my youthful days and that maybe watching this show again for the first time in about 11-12 years I might not find it as enjoyable as I once did... well I was wrong.

Dinosaurs, was a show that was far ahead of its time, so much so that nothing like it has ever been done or attempted since. What made the show totally original and unique was that it took humans in animatronics suits combined with some puppet characters and made a sitcom which on many occasions touched on topics in the real world but like most sitcoms, did so with humor, essentially a regular sitcom format but with dinosaurs substituted for humans. Included in this four disc set are the five episodes of season one and the twenty-four episodes of season two.

Like every sitcom family show there is a cast of kooky characters. First off we have the father, Earl Sinclair. Earl is pretty laid back, lazy and a little empty in the head, which probably explains why he pushes trees down for a living. His wife Fran is the only sane one in the family and is always the voice of reason, you could say she wears the pants in the family. Next is oldest child Robbie, who goes around questioning all the traditions of their culture and making Earl's life way too complicated. Charlene, the daughter, is your typical teenage valley girl, concerned with only money, clothes, boys and popularity. 

Finally, and my personal favorite, is Baby Sinclair. The Baby is the main comic relief of the show, without the Baby this show wouldn't be that great, he's the icing on the cake. He's the reason I love this show so much, and quite frankly I think he's one of the greatest TV characters of all-time. The Baby is totally animatronic, there's no one inside of him, yet it's amazing how life like he is and the types of expressions he makes are hilarious; not to mention he's basically the originator of all the catch phrases on the show such as: "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" "Not the mama!" "Again!", and many other great ones. His laugh, his voice, hitting Earl upside the head with a frying pan, everything about him is marvelously done, and it's not surprising that some of the most enjoyable episodes surround him.

My favorite episode of the first two seasons is episode one of Season 2 entitled The Golden Child, this is where Baby Sinclair consumes large amounts of sugar and grows a golden horn, signifying him as king of the dinosaurs. Some other great episodes are: Endangered Species, Switched At Birth (the Sinclair?s discover their egg had been switched and that The Baby wasn't their baby), Refrigerator Day, Nuts To War Parts 1 & 2 (Robbie goes off to war to fight the four legged dinosaurs over nuts), And The Winner Is... (Earl runs for chief elder when the current elder dies while naming their baby); those are just a few of the great episodes during the first two seasons.

Overall, Dinosaurs is a gem of a television show, great for the whole family, hilarious, extremely well made and executed from the great life like characters all the way to the TV shows that they watch.  There's ask Mr. Lizard, a science show where a small dinosaur named Timmy asks Mr. Lizard scientific questions and usually gets dismembered in the process of finding out the answer, leading to the well known phrase, "We're gonna need another Timmy!" 

If you haven't seen Dinosaurs before check it out, more than likely you won't be disappointed, the first episode of season one is pretty boring and mainly setting up the cast of characters, but after that the show gets rolling and especially in season two the episodes get really good. My overall rating is an average of each episode which ranged between 7's, 8's and 9's, season one and two are not the best seasons of the show but definitely solid and entertaining. I can't wait for the remainder of the seasons and some of my all time favorite episodes still to come!

 8/10