To say that my childhood would have been complete without Dinosaurs the TV show would have been nothing short of a really bad lie. It wasn’t a part of my childhood, it was an integral part. To this day if you utter “Not the Momma” in earshot of my mother she’ll probably spit out her tea laughing; Dinosaurs being one of those things that she put on initially to keep me quiet before being drawn into it herself. It was a kind of running joke in my house for the better part of twenty years. The ultimate curse of parenthood and the single explanation for grown adults unknowingly humming Dora The Explorer music in their places of work. Almost like a form of Stockholm syndrome. A survival mechanism. Fortunately, Dinosaurs was a show with slightly broader appeal than the age bracket I resided in.
One of my most potent memories of the show was when I was sick, I was in an armchair, wrapped up in blankets and I was laughing so much I’d blown giant snot bubbles; my parents staring in abject horror as I wheezed and laughed and coughed and snorted my way through the episode. It was always there, taped and waiting to comfort me through the various illnesses I seemed to invite. Laughter does seem to be a fantastic medication.
Dinosaurs was a show that came along in the years after Jim Henson’s death. It was a sitcom he’d originally penned the idea for, one that most people thought was too ridiculous to ever see made but ABC chose to bring it to our screens in 1991 and it ran for a few glorious years. For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, Dinosaurs was a basic, by the numbers, run of the mill sitcom, complete with an ornery elderly live-in mother-in-law, home working mother, the three kids and wisecracking father.
But with a simple difference. They were all dinosaurs, people. All of them. Giant puppet dinosaurs. Often times requiring two or more people to operate on screen. The glory of it all. In it you get a glimpse into the Sinclair family. Who happen to be a family of giant, walking dinosaurs dealing with things like the terrible twos and vegetarianism.
Now
It saddens me to say that watching this show now sometimes makes me cringe, a lot. The voice acting is generally terrible. I mean sometimes you need to pause it, go make tea, take a deep breath so you can process how terrible and then come back. Combining that with the most underwhelming delivery imaginable and the majority of the jokes seem to fall flatter than a pancake. Personally, after years of TV, I’ve found that the by-the-numbers sitcom formula really drives me utterly demented on top of everything. That’s without mentioning the storyline. Oh boy, I don’t have enough energy to go on a mad one about that. They meant well. Let’s leave it there.
But there is one giant, glaring positive in the show. Baby.
Yes, that is its name, and it is in fact the baby in the family. Baby is demanding, demented, hilarious and a mirror to all the utterly nightmarish and crazy things actual toddlers do. If a toddler could talk like an adult I would wager they would sound like this character. In fact, sometimes when I’m around toddlers I hear Baby’s voice in my head talking to me. (Totally not crazy!)Baby coined the phrase “Not the momma” in the show when referring to the father who gets hit with frying pans and bitten and generally abused by his offspring at every chance. Really, it’s so accurate it’s hilarious. I remember watching my younger sister break one of the connecting bars out of the kitchen stools and hit my sleeping father in the face with it. Toddlers are mental.
Dinosaurs remains one of my favorite guilty pleasures. It has so many problems and more but despite them all it brings me comfort when I’m ill and to this day is still entertaining while simultaneously being cringe worthy. For the same reason I think I watch b-movies Dinosaurs has an appeal that can’t be beaten. It really just screams “Gotta love me”.
