Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is an American adultanimated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera that aired in first-run syndication in the United States from 1972 to 1974. The show originated as a one-time segment on Love, American Style called "Love and the Old-Fashioned Father". The same pilot was later produced with a live cast, but with no success. The show was the first primetime animated sitcom to run for more than a single season since The Flintstones more than ten years earlier and would be the only one until The Simpsonsseventeen years later. The show was inspired by All in the Family.
Premise
The 48 episodes feature Tom Bosley as Harry Boyle, a long-suffering suburban everyman dad and restaurant equipment dealer. The Boyle family consists of father Harry; wife Irma ; overweight teen feminist yet boy-crazy daughter Alice; lazy and perpetually unemployed long-haired post-adolescent son Chet who, like his sister, does not want to follow in the morals and values of his parents; and precocious, if rather mercenary, younger son Jamie. Harry often bickers with the more liberal Alice and Chet over various social issues of the day, with Irma endeavoring to remain neutral while Jamie is more sympathetic to his father's beliefs. Despite it all, Harry loves his family, and usually tries to support them. Many of the stories revolve around the generation gap between Harry and his children, in which the series' sympathy is typically on his side, leading the character to usually win his arguments. Despite Harry's conservatism, it pales against that of his neighbor Ralph Kane, who is a John Birch–like ultra-right-wing, fanatically anti-Communist who is obsessed with every absurd conspiracy theory and ridiculous urban legend. Following Ralph with his cause is senior citizen Sara Whittaker, whom he addresses as "Sergeant". They have both turned one end of the block into, basically, an armed camp. Although Harry considers Ralph a close friend, he is annoyed at Ralph's extreme attitudes and rarely hesitates to dispute his opinions or preempt his more threatening ambitions. Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a laugh track created by the studio. For this show, the studio added a third belly laugh to add a little more "variety". In addition, the laugh track was also slowed considerably. During the 1972–73 season, the DePatie–Freleng studio had an animated Saturday morning series called The Barkleys with a very similar family, only they were all dogs. Joan Gerber was also the voice of the "mom" on that show, Agnes. The Barkleys had married couple Arnie and Agnes, teenage kids Terry and Roger, and pre-teen Chester.
Other "guests" on the series included thinly disguised versions of celebrities who did not provide their own voices, such as guruMaharishi Mahesh Yogi. When a crooked car dealer on another episode was perceived by real-life Los Angelescar salesmanCal Worthington as being a send-up of him, he sued the studio, the sponsors and the five NBC-owned stations that carried the show.
