‘Dinosaurs’ Ending Defined: How the Ice Age Finale Was Developed

As a journalist, I’m at all times uncomfortable turning into a part of the story. However I used to be met with an abnormally excessive quantity of on-line dissent a number of days in the past, after contributing to a Selection listing detailing “The Worst Series Finales of All Time.”

My sole contribution was the 1991-1994 sitcom “Dinosaurs,” a present I watched religiously as a toddler. The collection finale — titled “Altering Nature” — aired months earlier than my ninth birthday, and I used to be not outfitted to deal with the tonal shift in comparison with earlier episodes. What I wrote for the listing:

“Dinosaurs” was an fascinating ABC sitcom experiment: What when you replicated the household vibes of “Step by Step” or “Household Issues,” however the entire forged is made up of massive Jim Henson dinosaur puppets? Excellent for a kid demo that might quickly be scared to dying by “Jurassic Park,” the four-season, 65-episode run of “Dinosaurs” delivered saccharine hijinks that might have been photocopied from “Full Home.” Maybe that’s why it was so distressing that within the 1994 collection finale, the entire household dies. That’s proper — all your favourite characters, together with the catchphrase-spouting Child Sinclair, freeze to dying because of the looming Ice Age. Whereas traditionally correct, it was maybe the dourest episode of tv to ever air. In spite of everything, there was no precedent — “Rising Pains” didn’t finish with the slaughter of the Seaver household. So when patriarch Earl Sinclair tells his skeptical household, as snow is falling, that “Dinosaurs have been on this earth for 150 million years. And it’s not like we’re simply going to … disappear …”, the music swells as we go away their involved faces and lower to a information broadcast. The dino anchor, delivering a wintery climate forecast whereas shrouded in gray tones and sporting a thick coat, seems down the barrel of the digicam and says, mournfully, “Good night time. Goodbye,” earlier than fading to black. Nonetheless don’t suppose this ending traumatized a era of sitcom-loving Millennials? Think about a prime touch upon the YouTube rip of the ending: “What’s worse is that, realistically, the infant would most likely be the primary to die, adopted by the opposite relations one after the other till Earl (the one with most physique fats) was the one one left, his closing moments stuffed with guilt over what he did to the world and his household.” Thanks for the nightmare gasoline, “Dinosaurs!” 

As I realized, many individuals thought I used to be lifeless mistaken. I acquired dozens of messages on social, aghast on the present’s inclusion on the listing. However given the tone of the correspondence, I knew I struck a unique chord, another private and emotional than different instances I divided fan bases with opinions:

*”I might say among the best endings, even when it was uncomfortable and sort of heartbreaking. Identical to life itself.”

*”I by no means remark and this absurd and clueless tweet pressured me. That’s how completely mistaken you’re.”

*”Counterpoint: If it wasn’t for individuals who watched ‘Dinosaurs’ as children steadily asking one another as adults ‘Was the ultimate episode actual? Or did I dream it?,’ the present can be talked about lots much less these days.”

*”Proud to have co-written this clarion name for environmental consciousness. Those that watched it by no means forgot the expertise.”

*”Sorry, @BeautifulBill, ‘Dinosaurs’ was by no means saccharine kiddie fodder like ‘Step By Step’ or ‘Full Home.’ It was a darkish satire cloaked in household comedy tropes, taking up many environmental matters, plus immigration, race, the Gulf Battle, the Clarence Thomas hearings, science denialism…”

The ultimate two messages particularly caught my consideration, as I regretted alienating who I rapidly realized have been members of the inventive group behind the present — and so they’d felt proud sufficient to talk out.

I spotted that maybe I had been blinded by youth, and missed the satire fully. I requested my mom whether or not she remembered my fondness for the present or my psychological state whereas watching it, but she might solely communicate to my relationship to dinos within the macro sense: “Once you have been little, you have been obsessive about dinosaurs, all the things was dinosaurs,” she stated. “You knew all the names of them, and liked them, till you dropped them for ‘Ninja Turtles.’”

So I began rewatching episodes of the present (now collected on Disney+) and reached out to a few of the creatives who’d dropped me a line. I used to be fortunate sufficient to hop on a Zoom with veteran producer Tim Doyle, whose first large gig was writing on “Dinosaurs,” and Kirk Thatcher, who has labored on initiatives starting from “Return of the Jedi” to “Muppets Haunted Mansion,” and was the credited author on the “Dinosaurs” collection finale.

The pair kindly accepted my digital olive department, and spoke concerning the complicated themes they included all through the collection run, how ABC reacted once they realized concerning the daring finale and why they suppose it made such a long-lasting affect on followers.

From the start, regardless of the lovable puppets and humorous moments, the inventive group was capable of make a present that might enable them to the touch on modern points they have been enthusiastic about, like LGBTQ acceptance, consumerism and, paradoxically, the significance of not watching an excessive amount of TV.

“[The show] was by no means one factor,” Doyle says. “Baked into it from the start was this component of social satire, political satire. The entire idea began with that famous Gary Larson cartoon that confirmed a bunch of dinosaurs sitting round smoking and stated, ‘Why the dinosaurs are extinct.’ That was the germ of this factor: To make a complete present concerning the dinosaurs being consumerist, to poke a stick at a society like ours.”

“The whole lot unhealthy about humanity, as Jim [Henson, who developed the show] put it, dinosaurs are pondering, ‘Oh, we’re the apex predator. We will do regardless of the hell we would like and the planet will adapt to us as a result of we’re the largest, meanest, baddest mofos on the planet,’” says Thatcher, who additionally designed the characters. “The thought was that sort of blinkered pondering and to satirize the ‘Ugly American’ or ‘Ugly Western’ tradition the place you’re not dwelling to your descendants: ‘Our ancestors constructed us up right here, we are able to do regardless of the hell we would like.’”

Regardless of the satire, ABC largely left the group alone.

“There was specific amount of pushback initially, after which, as a result of we have been a youngsters’s present, each Disney and ABC sort of misplaced curiosity in bothering us,” Doyle says. “The third-tier executives have been those who have been giving us notes on the scripts, and no person was actually giving us too onerous a time.”

Moreover, they’d make sure that to incorporate a couple of episodes every season about Child Sinclair or teen daughter Charlene to be able to appease all audiences.

When it got here to the collection finale, the group wasn’t given a lot time, as they needed to rapidly convert their plan from a standard episode to a finale as soon as ABC out of the blue introduced that they have been canceled.

“[The writers’ room] determined to escalate all of it the best way to creating [bumbling patriarch] Earl in control of fixing the issue,” Thatcher says. “And naturally he finally ends up destroying the planet, or at the least making a nuclear winter.”

Surprisingly, ABC didn’t have many notes for the unprecedented finale.

“They have been like, ‘Nice, you discovered find out how to wrap [the series] up,’” deadpans Thatcher. “I don’t keep in mind any eyebrows raised or anybody going, ‘Properly, you may’t.’”

“There may need been somewhat little bit of pushback from any individual saying, ‘Properly, what if we are able to maneuver one other season or one thing?’” Doyle remembers. “However I believe certainly one of us stated, ‘Properly, they received frozen after which they get thawed.’”

Regardless of the darkish themes of the finale — and its potential results on the youthful section of the present’s viewers — the pair factors to earlier generations’ struggles in relation to environmental safety.

“We grew up with the specter of nuclear annihilation,” Thatcher says. “I very clearly keep in mind that as a child. That existential angst about, ‘We’re all going to die.’ I keep in mind my dad saying World Battle II, earlier than the nuclear bomb, they simply thought this was the battle to finish all wars. The planet was going to be simply devastated, significantly Europe. Each era sees its imminent demise — and we had enjoyable with it.”

Whereas Thatcher does disagree with one generally said critique — “I do take exception when folks say, ‘You killed them.’ I say, ‘Nope, they have been nonetheless alive within the final body.’” — he has met individuals who react strongly about it to today.

“[Fans say] it devastated them, and the way it was so ballsy,” Thatcher says. “They often say ‘They ruined it!’ after which they’re smiling and laughing… ‘Oh my God, I can’t consider you probably did that.’ And I at all times reply with, ‘Properly, we didn’t kill them. They’re simply chilly, you understand? We didn’t truly present them dying, we let the opposite shoe drop in your thoughts.’”

“It’s a robust message,” Doyle continues. “We did simply a dozen episodes concerning the surroundings in a single type or one other, and so they have been all sort of toothless as a result of by the top of twenty-two minutes we sort of mounted it. And right here is one the place the results are usually not fixable, we’ve fucked up the surroundings and we’re going to need to take care of the fallout of that. I wish to suppose six- or seven-year-olds may need been upset, but it surely additionally may need made an impression on them.”

Whereas there have been discussions about doing a spin-off film or revival collection — which each Doyle and Thatcher can be joyful to take part in — the below-the-line prices of the collection’ costumes and puppets, in addition to sophisticated rights possession, makes it powerful to get off the bottom. However the duo says that “Dinosaurs” has a mighty group of dedicated followers who like to repeatedly go to the Sinclair household.

“I’ve been concerned in 25, 30 reveals over time, and this is among the ones that has caught probably the most within the tradition,” Doyle says.