Kyle MacLachlan could have done anything after Twin Peaks.

He chose to do Showgirls and The Flintstones movie.

He also refused to have his character get together with Audrey in Twin Peaks, forcing the writers to come up with the bland Heather Graham character for the awful 2nd season.

Dude's kind of a dick.

HOW THE HELL DO THEY HAVE TVS?!!!

I found the concept of stone-age televisions so wildly offputting as a child that I hated this show on that fact alone. I could accept the idea of Bullwinkle and Rocky talking and Bullwinkle inexplicably having fingers instead of hooves, but Fred Flintstone's television was the line drawn in the hand.

OH MY GOD thank you at least I'm not the only person whos into Flintstones expanded universe

I just assumed an Adventure Time-style apocalypse that imbued animals with powers of speech, forced animals to adapt to forms more similar to the dinosaurs, and made humanity restart civilization. Much of their plant life is gone, which is why they use stone instead of wood, and why predators are large and more common than herbivores. Some old blueprints and tomes survived, which is why they have some advanced technologies like television and concrete, but they only repeat the discoveries since the scientific method is lost to them and they can't advance significantly or apply the insights to other areas.

It is possible the reason for humanities survival and opportunity for a fresh beginning in which we don't destroy ourselves (as in the Jetson's future) was provided by the powerful alien conservationist known as The Great Gazoo.

sorry, whiskey, but i like the flintstone-mormon jesus

The Jetsons came first, and after their society collapses The Flintstones rebuild. The Time Machine in "The Flintstones Meet The Jetsons" is accidentally built with a reversed chronometer which shows them going Back in time instead of Forward.

You're all wrong. The Jetsons are the rarefied, pampered elite, living in high rises in the sky, so decadent that they don't even walk within their own houses, relying on conveyor belts to go from room to room.

In order to support their wicked lifestyle of excess and wanton disregard for their fellow man, the futuristic world of the Jetsons relies on a backward underclass on the surface, mining the precious minerals that Trade Princes Spacely and Cogswell depend on in their capitalistic fervor. While the Flintstones and Rubbles toil for the pleasure of the Jetsons, they themselves have forgotten that they are the victims. They use furs, stone and bones to ape the lifestyle of their technological superiors in the skies, even enslaving the genetically altered animals and cloned dinosaurs that were developed to serve as amusement for the Jetsonian children above.

This is, of course, why the older slaves still use Anglo-American names, like "Fred" and "Barney". As they slowly come to terms with their place on the surface of the planet they've been abandoned on, they are adopting names that reflect their depreciated status for their own children... names like "Pebbles" and "Bamm-Bamm". Within a few generations, they will have no words with which to relate to their Eloi-like overlords, and will start on an alternate evolutionary path, becoming cannibalistic subhumans that nevertheless maintain the privileged lifestyle of their betters. Soon, the Flintstones will become the Morlocks.

I am really disappointed in you guys dedication to Flintstiones EU material. I hate to split hairs here, but after Gazoo betrayed fred and threw him in the orbital space detetion facility at the end of Flintstones: First Contact, Barney and future Dino (affectionately known by fans as mechaDino) made an alliance with Space Jesus, whom they had originally contacted using the Monolith beacon in Flintstones: Dying of the Light.

I have so much to learn.

Christ is just the Greek term for a holy person, it's not Jesus' name. There were actually several groups of "Christians" around in the first century. So as long as the Flintstones spoke Greek, it's plausible.