MovieChat Forums > The Jetsons (1962) Discussion > The surface of the Earth in The Jetsons

The surface of the Earth in The Jetsons

posted 19 years ago by New-World-Man
29 replies | jump to latest

In "The Jetsons", people of the future are depicted as living high in the sky, in buildings mounted on huge pillars. The people are shown moving around through the clouds in flying cars, and we never get to see what's down on the ground where those pillars start from.

When I used to watch "The Jetsons", I always used to wonder what was down there on the surface of the Earth. It was probably completely deserted, now that all the people had moved up to the sky. I thought that maybe the forests and the wildlife had reclaimed the planet, what with there being no more humans there. Or maybe the world had become completely paved over with concrete and steel?

One thing I thought about what was down there, that depressed me, was that it was a barren wasteland that had been rendered completely unlivable because of humankind's damaging ways. That might have been why everyone had to move up into the sky, cause they had completely destroyed the world below them.

What's everyone else think's down there?

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] New-World-Man 19 years ago

Well fortunately, the ground has been seen in a few classic episodes and all it basically is is ground to support the sky buildings. No wastelands or anything depressing.

Did they really show the ground in a few episodes? What's down there? Was there grass? Trees? Had everything been paved over with concrete? Were there people down there? Were there any roads or buildings?

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[–] marjcbs 19 years ago

Another time was in the Flying Suit episode, where a bum was taking a stroll ("Ah, life on the open road!"), and the flying suit fell on him from the sky...well, I'm sure you know the rest!

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[–] cooperzombie-1 18 years ago

In the jetsons movie the lower areas were all smog. Rosie hit a button and all the buildings rised above. So prehaps the entire earth is covered in smog. From all the poloution and such. And every few years they have to raise the buildings above the smog level

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] leovan 18 years ago

There is a website that has a complete Jestsons episode on it avaliable for download. The very fisrt sene of this episode [Rosies Boyfriend] shows the ground with all the buildings rising from it. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search=jetsons&search_type=search_videos

[–] HyperPup 18 years ago

Wikipedia says in the trivia section for this show that George has a second cousin named Phil Richbourg who grew up on the surface. Supposedly there is a dense layer of Smog and Pollution between the sky dwellings and the surface. I also seem to recall Jane rasing the builing up higher because of a high smog index in one of the episodes. My brother used to think that the planet was destroyed because of the crazy graphics explosion in the opening after they show the Earth.

[–] superdude882 18 years ago

i also wondered what was down there, and does anyone know how how they really were? i mean personally i'm afraid of heights, i don't know what i'd do if i were like a thousand feet in the air and slipped =/

[–] New-World-Man 18 years ago

It just occurred to me, at that elevation, wouldn't the air be too thin for people to breathe?

[–] bananabry 18 years ago

Many episodes feature the "surface." Spacely Space Sprockets is located "down there." The restaurant in "Elroy's TV Show," had a nice view of a park "on the surface."

However, by the time of the Jetsons, Global Warming had made the air so dense, that only a thousand stories up was it breathable.

[–] New-World-Man 16 years ago

It just occurred to me, at that elevation, wouldn't the air be too thin for people to breathe?

Hang on, now that I think about it, it isn't really too clear on the show just how high above the ground that the buildings are. They might be at an elevation of several kilometres, which would place them above the clouds, but they could also just be at a level of a few hundred metres, which wouldn't be that much higher than today's skyscrapers. I kind of think it's closer to the second alternative. Otherwise, the air would definitely be too thin for people to breathe and the temperature would be way too cold.

[–] mrdorfy 17 years ago

I often wondered the same thing. I thought that there would be a different human civilization on the surface. I would imagine that the Earth would repair itself slowly without as many human living on surface.

And yes, I do remember an episode where they showed what I suspect is the surface. It was an episode where Astro was returned to his first owner.

[–] HyperPup 16 years ago

"And yes, I do remember an episode where they showed what I suspect is the surface. It was an episode where Astro was returned to his first owner."

Well, you have to remember that they also put Parks, Golf courses and homes with lawns on pedestals in the sky just like the apartments and other buildings. The grounds you were seeing were not actually on Earth's surface.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] Evolution-X 15 years ago

You mean a jetpack? Anyway, I never even thought of that. I don't know if this canon or not, but maybe it was from "The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones" or from the episode of "The Flintstones" when Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty traveled to the future in a time not to different from "The Jetsons", but somehow, met Mr. Slate's descendant, who I thought was Cogswell at first, but it turned out to be a descendant of Mr. Slate (It's been too long since I've seen the episode, so correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, the part I am thinking of was when Barney fell off the edge of one of the sky buildings but came back up. How he survived is beyond me, unless he landed on something floating.

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

[–] xdrewitdajx 16 years ago

it's in the beginning of season 1 episode 8 ('Rosey's boyfriend), as already mentioned

http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jetsonsgroundag6.jpg

i used to think, as a kid,that the buildings were reeeaaallly high up... so high that the ground cant even be seen from there... this kinda ruins the fun

[–] andrewwjohnson 16 years ago

...I haven't watched this series since I was tweleve years old, but I do remember an episode where George Jetson was testing out some sort of indestructible clothing (body armor?). The tests were being reported on the news around the world including London, where the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and some futuristic building where shown, and Moscow, where the Kremlin was shown as it looks today, so some people were living at ground level...In another episode an antropomorphic bird was walking by the stilts of the sky city complaining about it was not safe to fly because of all the air traffic. There was no evidence of ground level buildings, grass or trees. Maybe the location was supposed to be a desert or tundra or maybe the cartoonist who drew it was lazy that day. Frank Lloyd Wright once proposed a mile high skyscraper which would operate as a self contained city, but insisted it should be surrounded by park land. Even the mega cities, in the "Star Wars" universe, which seem to be inspired by the "Jetsons", have ground building and traffic...As for smog an eighties antipollution PSA did have a scene where Rosey pushed a button to raise the building to get away from it. In the 1961-62 series, that I remember in one of it's rerun incarnations, there were no smokestacks or smoke trailing from the flying cars. In one episode, where the Jetsons were in the market for a new car (aircraft?) the dealer showed them a old car from a hundred years ago (the 1960s). When he started it up the characters were shocked and disgusted by the smoke pouring from the tail pipe. Eighties Hollywood enviormental activism not withstanding smog does not seem to part of the "Jetsons" universe.
People are just getting dumber, but more opinionated-Ernestine (Silks) in "The Human Stain"

[–] silverose1209 15 years ago

I guess I was not a very smart kid! LOL.
I always though they were in space. Never even thought about a surface.. Hmm.. I did not think things out much.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] GunHillTrain 14 years ago

There's one thing that has to be on the surface: farmland. I can't imagine all the agriculture being up on stilts. Maybe there's some poor people living down there too, but the assumption seems to be that everybody in the future will be at least middle class.

I never saw the '80s episodes: did they finally have some people of color as characters?

[–] andrewwjohnson 14 years ago

........As I noted in a earlier post the cities are apparently still there, in the two thousand sixties and they would need farmland, more of it with a larger population, and with the flying cars they could commute to a job on another continent in less time then it would take drive a few miles today. It's possible new construction has been zoned on to non-productive land. Or maybe I'm thinking to hard about an early sixties TV cartoon series.
TAG LINE: True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.

[–] Radiofan15 11 years ago

This post from Cracked actually have a very good theory about the Jetsons earth's surface:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19496_6-classic-kids-shows-secretly-set-in-nightmarish-universes.html

[–] [email protected] 9 years ago

One episode has a bird walking on the ground saying that with all the cars in the air, the birds have no where else to go.