Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

A real family guy.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III January 19, 2025

Sandwiched between the dual cultural phenomena of The Flintstones and The Simpsons, Hanna-Barbera's short-lived but still groundbreaking animated series Wait Till Your Father Gets Home entertained audiences between 1972-74 with its unusual mix of sparse visuals, colorful characters, and razor-sharp scripts clearly inspired by the influential sitcom All in the Family. Unusually in-the-moment for a cartoon series presumably aimed at all ages, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was a few years before my time -- not that I'd have been allowed to watch it as a kid -- but can still be enjoyed more than 50 years later, and especially so on this thoughtful new Blu-ray collection from Warner Archive.

It's not often that a sitcom, animated or otherwise, can hold up with or without nostalgia value more than 50 years after its original run; usually, we're blinded by warm memories and thus forgive mediocre formulas and clichés found in childhood favorites. Well, I've got absolutely zero nostalgic baggage with Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: it was about a half-decade before my time, and I doubt I'd have been allowed to watch reruns as a kid either. My only real memories are intermittent episodes seen during my later years, via random deep-cut airings or possibly a spin of Warner Bros.' Season 1 DVD set released back in 2007. (Incidentally, Season 2 and the very abridged Season 3 are both debuting on disc here.) Either way I'm glad that Warner Archive saw fit to resurrect the series in HD, because even now the show holds up respectably well considering it still feels very much like a progressive product of its time.

The differences are in the characters and writing, both of which are good to outstanding and establish a fairly strong foundation from the first episode onward. Wait Till Your Father Gets Home revolves almost exclusively around patriarch Harry Boyle (Tom Bosley, who's generally best known for his role on Happy Days but might be better remembered by my generation as the Glad-Lock guy), a restaurant equipment dealer and perpetually put-upon head of a nuclear five-person family. He's clearly uptight yet generally level-headed, often the brunt of jokes but almost always ready with a good comeback. Harry's wife Irma (Joan Gerber) is the proverbial "dutiful wife" but, armed with women's magazines and the same generation gap disadvantage that her husband endures, offers a clear reminder that the squeaky-clean 1950s were fading fast. Freeloading adult hippie son Chet (David Hayward / Lennie Weinrib) and overweight feminist daughter Alice (Kristina Holland) both rebel against societal norms, but not quite enough to reject everything about them... or in Chet's case, get his own place. Lastly, Harry's sharp young son Jamie (Jackie Earle Haley / Willie Aames) isn't the focus of many plots -- at least early on -- but, like Dad, is usually ready with a well-placed quip.

Crackpot neighbor Ralph Kane (Jack Burns), an obvious precursor to characters like King of the Hill's Dale Gribble, is easily the show's biggest non-family character and gets his own sad little paragraph. Overtly racist and the leader of a neighborhood vigilante group, Ralph -- who's best taken (and usually presented in) small doses -- is used fantastically well and just one of many reasons why Wait Till Your Father Gets Home seems to smoothly "get away" with its brand of comedy. Ralph is routinely shut down but never really shut out of the Boyles' little world, with each of Harry's smooth dismissals rightly revealing him to be the judgmental jackass that he is. It's painfully obvious that the Ralphs of the world have multiplied in the last few decades, but it's nice to be reminded of how to properly handle them.

A few amusing guest stars even show up to play themselves (mostly during Season 2) with character models that highly resemble their counterparts in Hanna-Barbera's then-recent run of The New Scooby-Doo Movies; these familiar faces and voices include Phyllis Diller, Don Knotts, Don Adams, and Jonathan Winters. (Several "newcomers" also show up including Monty Hall, Rich Little, and of course Allan Melvin and Isabel Sanford, both of whom were neighboring supporting characters on All in the Family.) I'll admit that their appearances lightly reek of stunt casting in some respects, but in any case the "characters" feel like a natural fit for their respective stories and scenes.

As for these stories and subject matter, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home does a find job handling "family" topics from both young and mostly older perspectives; it also mixes in more than a few featherweight plots blended with traditional sitcom tropes, many of which involve accidental misunderstandings that are even occasionally stacked on top of each other. To the show's credit, things generally stay light despite several potentially contentious elements and dialogue exchanges, even if back in the day it was clearly aimed at older viewers rather than just the younger crowd. (Take a look at these two vintage magazine ads, one of which kind of disingenuously references Ulu Grosbard's then-recent R-rated comedy drama Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?.)

Even if the subject matter was adults-only (which it isn't), Wait Till Your Father Gets Home wraps everything up in a colorfully unusual animated bow whose visual design simply can't be ignored, for better or worse. On the surface the show looks almost unfinished and even impossibly cheap, with expressive but extremely simple character designs set against backgrounds that often only suggest where the action is happening while surrounded by lots of negative space. Flat colors establish mood, of course, while often just serving to break up what might otherwise be an endless sea of white and creamy beige, turning Harry's garage an oddly alluring pink or an afternoon outing into golden yellow haze. Nonetheless, first-timers may discover that this visual design might take several episodes to get used to. It apparently wasn't Hanna-Barbera's focus during production; instead, the studio leaned more into scripts and vocal performances, as Wait Till Your Father Gets Home's animation was farmed out to two different countries during its run. (One was decidedly better than the other, but more on that momentarily in the "Video Quality" section.)

All things considered, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is both a valuable time capsule of then-progressive early 1970s entertainment and a not-so-subtle reminder that certain social mores haven't really changed much in 50 years. Warner Archive does their part by neatly dividing all 48 original episodes onto six Blu-ray discs, and most of them sparkle like new. (More on that soon enough.) For a complete list of episodes and brief descriptions, please click here.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The majority of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home (and by that I mean roughly 3/4 of the included 48 episodes) looks almost flawless, as their original 35mm negatives were scanned in 4K and treated to a round of the boutique label's careful manual cleanup, with basically all dirt and debris removed but not at the expense of film grain. As such, most of these direct-from-disc screenshots reveal plenty of highlights including terrific color representation, respectable fine detail (for what it is, considering the show's visual style), and decent disc encoding that doesn't show any obvious compression issues in motion -- perhaps a touch of macro blocking here and there, but nothing major.

Seasons 2 and 3, which combine for 24 episodes total (or basically half of the series) are a little more hit-and-miss, though I'd like to stress that any perceived drawbacks here can be traced back to the source material. Unlike Season 1, whose animation was farmed out to an Australian affiliate, a reliable source has informed me that most of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home's remaining episodes were delegated to a Canadian company and some ended up being finished to a 16mm camera negative. Though still clean and damage-free, this means there's usually less perceived detail and much chunkier (and often less consistent) film grain with varying levels of softness, not to mention some rather odd coloring mistakes and even inconsistent characters and backgrounds. Does this affect those episodes' watchability? Well, I'd be lying if I said no, and the worst-looking of the bunch -- the Season 2 premiere "Bringing Up Jamie", which can be seen in screenshot #22 -- looks to have some native focus issues as well... but either way, it looks about as rough as some of the lesser entries in 2024's Hanna-Barbera's Superstars 10 (again, due to similar source material issues). The good news is that even most of these "inferior" Season 2 and 3 episodes don't look nearly as bad as that, and if nothing else will make fans appreciate just how great all of the others came out. For obvious reasons, this collection makes me wish that Warner Archive handled all of Warner Bros.' animation library from start to finish.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio mix is similarly supportive, again occasionally dipping in quality due to that sporadic 16mm source material but never into troublesome territory. Instead, dialogue is generally clean and crisp throughout while its familiar slate of sound effects comes through clearly as well. The traditional H-B laugh track -- which wasn't mentioned earlier -- is present every step of the way and usually at least a little intrusive, but likewise has its place in the mix, as do the music cues credited to Richard Bowden and, of course, the title song. Outside of those sporadic source issues (which occasionally just come through a bit more flat and narrow), it's pretty smooth sailing.

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included during all 48 episodes.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This six-disc set ships in a slightly thicker-than-average keepcase with familiar cover art and multiple hinges to hold each individual disc, which are all printed with the names of their included episodes. Two brief DVD-era retrospective featurettes -- "Animation for the Nation" and "Illustrating the Times" -- were planned to be included and are even listed on the package, but were unfortunately left off due to an unforeseen error. Word has it that a replacement program is already in the works for an updated Disc 6 with those two missing bonus features reinstated. More information will be posted here and in the forum once that program is officially finalized in the coming weeks.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

R.S. Allen and Harvey Bullock's Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, a lesser-known but decently popular early 1970s primetime animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera, still feels very in-the-moment but holds up well thanks to its enduring characters and sharp dialogue. (It's similarly been a long time coming to Blu-ray, yet still felt like a surprise release when originally announced months ago.) Warner Archive's compact six-disc collection features rock-solid A/V merits, and its two extras are missing for now but will be reinstated by an upcoming replacement program (see above). Needless to say, die-hard fans still clinging to their Season 1 DVD sets will be very happy to finally get this full-series set, and of course total newcomers are invited into the family as well. Firmly Recommended.