How About That Thing?

I have been looking for this for ages. I went in knowing for a fact it probably wasn’t going to be any good, but when I saw a YouTube essay on this obscure show from the 1970s, I just had to locate it. And thus began a search that, no joke, took three years to accomplish.

Then, in February of 2026, the thought occurred to me I could try archive.org. And suddenly, I feel like an idiot for searching as long as I did. I really need to look around that place more often for the super obscure shit. But I digress.

The show in question is an animated sitcom known simply as Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.

Hanna-Barberia are known for many, many things throughout the decades.

• They’re known for their collective of anthropamorphic animals like Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and El Kabong.
• They’re known for running the mystery solving teenagers genre into the fucking pavement, with smash hits like Scooby Doo, and Josie and the Pussycats, as well as embarrassments to society like Jabberjaw and Funky Phantom.
• They’re known for superhero shows like Space Ghost, Birdman, and The Galaxy Trio. Most of which got spun off decades later into Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

Frankly, you could write a book on everything they accomplished, and everything they sucked at. Hell, I’d be shocked if someone hasn’t already, it’s such a fertile topic for animation junkies.

However, one of the things that they’d probably like their audiences to forget is Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.

On one hand, you could say this was the show that beat everybody else in the animated sitcom game to the punch. You thought The Simpsons were TV’s first ever prime time animated sitcom family? Think again, bud. These guys got here first. Whether or not they did it BETTER is definitely up for debate… Oh, who am I kidding? This show gets stomped into the pavement once any other animated sitcom shows up. But they all probably wouldn’t be here if this show never existed. Just Wait Till Your Father Gets Home faceplanted so King of the Hill, or The Simpsons, or god forbid, Family Guy, could walk.

The series overall follows the standard sitcom formula. IE, dimwit dad, stay-at-home-mom, two-point-three kids (genders and ages may vary), maybe a pet… I’d say it’s cliche, but in 1972, it was probably still relatively fresh, for all I know and care.

For this go-around, the dimwit dad is this guy right here.

Meet Harry Boil. No, seriously, that’s his name. He’s your stereotypical 1950s man, dealing with the fact the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of all those lazy, obnoxious baby boomers with their neon colors, and their crazy ideas about peace and inclusivity.

Yeah, remember when boomers were the rebellious young persons who threatened the establishment of capitalist greed and government corruption perpetuated by our true lords and masters in Big Oil? Good times. Too bad all the FUN boomers died from acid overdoses and the like, and the ones left over moved on to become “the generation that pulled the ladder up behind them.”

But here and now, it’s all about The Silent Generation, and their inability to understand those wacky kids and their messages of peace, love, smoking weed, and insisting material possessions are all part of the machine. Including…

This is Chet. He’s the oldest of Harry’s three kids, and the stereotypical hippy. He’s in his twenties, has no job, sponges off his parents, won’t get a haircut… You know the drill.

And if it isn’t Chet making Harry lose his marbles, it’s probably his daughter.

This is Alice. In keeping with the times, Alice is the radical feminist character. Also, in the episodes I’ve watched so far, she seems to be the butt of a lot of fat jokes. Which, okay, maybe she’s not exactly rail-thin, but come on, man. She’s not THAT bad.

Also, to my crappy, defective eye, she kind of looks like someone ripped off Velma from Scooby Doo. Maybe this is what Velma was doing before Fred and Dafney convinced her to go on super groovy mysteries. Now THERE’S a fan theory.

There’s plenty of characters out there to ruin Harry’s life and challenge his perspective on every single little issue… But I bet that the few people who genuinely remember this show remember it more for this guy right here.

This is Ralph. I was originally going to liken him to a 1970’s Dale Gribble, what with him being the neighborhood conspiracy nut and all… Except he’s a little too racist for that comparison to work. Every time you see Ralph, he’s on some tangent about how the communists are invading their town, or how the jews blackballed him from leadership at the local lodge, or how the Chinese are secretly invading the country because the local bingo game used ping pong balls instead of flashcards… And those are just a couple examples.

It’s interesting to think how this guy was the butt of a lot of jokes within this show. Because that was how it was back then. The Ralphs of the world had no power, no influence, and they were mocked and ridiculed for their lack of grip on reality. Then, in typical fashion, the 2010s happened. Now one of them is currently in his second term as president, and we regularly have to convince people that no, Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, or no, vaccines don’t contain snake venom and Satan jizz, or no, Bill Gates is not sitting on a super virus that he’ll be unleashing any day now because y’all had the audacity to vote for the gameshow host in 2024 instead of a candidate whose platform consisted entirely of “I’m black and I’m female. Vote for me, or you’re a bigot.” It’s actually kind of depressing upon retrospect how we all just let the Ralphs take the country over. But hey, at least we’re getting some dank memes out of it, right? Right? RIGHT? FUCKING RIGHT?!

Sorry, I think I lost track there for a moment. Let’s refocus, shall we?

Not going to lie, the show overall is pretty… Hoaky. Not surprising, in the long run. It is, after all, a Hanna-Barbera production.

That, and I imagine sitcoms like All in the Family hadn’t come out, and made the mothers clutch their pearls in outrage and what not, so yeah, they definitely played it pretty safe. I did hear Harry refer to someone as a jackass once, but that was about as edgy as this show has gotten so far in my bingewatching of it. Furthermore, I’m guessing that hadn’t become a common profanity yet. Nor had it become a way to refer to idiots recording themselves getting injured doing stupid shit for basically no reason like it did in 2000. But I digress.

Also unsurprising, it’s very topical . I’ve already poked fun at its various commentaries on hippies and other cultural milestones of the early 70s. Never mind Gen-Z or Gen-Alpha, I’m pretty sure most Millennials, and maybe even a few Gen-Xers wouldn’t understand a lot of what’s going on here today.

But aside from all of this, the show is… Fine. At best, it’s nothing to write home about. At worst, it’s absolutely a product of its time.

Would I recommend watching it? Maybe. If you’re genuinely curious about it. In the grand scheme of things, there are FAR better sitcoms, animated or otherwise, you could be watching from this very decade. But, for what it’s worth, I’ve seen worse.