Talk About A Throwback to the Old Days...

I guess I'll be honest. Instead of working on the massive amounts of homework I had, I chose to procrastinate and watch one of my favorite TV shows on DVD. And the one I picked over the weekend was one of my childhood favorites, Dinosaurs, the sitcom starring none other than dinosaurs.

Courtesy of Sharetv.org

Because I was only a year old at the time Dinosaurs premiered, I'm guessing that I just always caught the reruns. But I can remember watching the show and always spouting off the trademark line, "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" (For the longest time, though, I could never remember the name of the show and could only call it "that show with the dinosaur family and the baby with the big purple eyes.")

Now, however, I can watch it and see and/or appreciate so many things I hadn't when I was younger. For instance, little me probably never would have cared that the Sinclair family and all their friends existed only thanks to the Jim Henson Creature Shop, which had also been responsible for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (another of my childhood favorites). In recent years, though, it completely blows my mind how awesome those dinosaurs looked in the days before CGI took total control over the industry.

And I know for a fact that little me also never would have gotten any of the very-grown-up references or morals. At five or six, there is no way I would have understood the jokes about the mating dance or even the drug abuse episode where dad Earl and siblings Robbie and Charlene go a little overboard eating a plant with side effects similar to those of marijuana. But, like so many of my childhood favorites, I can laugh at all those jokes I'd never gotten when I was little.

Not to mention I now remember exactly how hysterical the family baby -- fondly named Baby Sinclair -- was. In case you don't have any idea, you can check the Youtube video below of some of Baby's best moments from the first and second season:



Considering how much I loved this show growing up, I was so excited when I found all four seasons on DVD (on sale here from Amazon). And given that I've actually never seen the series finale for the show, I was a little devastated to find out that it had nabbed the number 6 spot on Cracked.com's List of Most Soul-Crushing Series Finales in TV History. But I guess a TV show starring dinosaurs couldn't be guaranteed a happy ending.