Plot: The Flintstones and the Rubbles are preparing for Christmas. They’re especially excited because Bamm-Bamm, Pebbles, and their two young twins, Roxy and Chip, are coming back to Bedrock to visit. As Fred and Barney go out to prepare, they’re robbed by a guy with a gun who turns out to be two troublemaking kids with a gun-shaped stick.
The cops catch one half of the duo – Stony, who turns out to be an orphan known for causing trouble. A social worker is about to take him away to juvie, but Wilma feels so bad about the boy’s situation that she invites Stony to come with them. Will Stony win over the Flintstones and become a permanent member of the family or is he really nothing but a hopeless criminal?
Breakdown: Boy, later entries of The Flintstones are a trip, huh? It’s so weird to be reminded that the series got this far.
Most people remember and recognize the Flintstones with little baby Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. A fair amount of people remember that Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm got a spin-off, became teenagers, and started dating each other. Some people remember that they showed them as adults and getting married. A few people remember that they eventually had twins.
How many people remember that, after becoming grandparents, Fred and Wilma Flintstone adopted a kid?
I wouldn’t blame people for not knowing because this is literally the only thing Stony appears in.
By the way, just to get this off my chest, I’ll be spelling his name ‘Stony’ because, despite the fact that his name keeps being spelled “Stoney” in Wikis and online material, his name is spelled in this very special as “Stony” on his crib.
And in the book adaptation of this special, A Very Special Flintstones’ Family Christmas, his name is also spelled “Stony.”
So I feel like his name has to be, canonically, Stony. And it makes more sense anyway because I think it’s meant to be a play off of “Tony.”
In the Flintstones’ Fandom page trivia section for the book adaptation, they said that Stony’s name is constantly misspelled as “Stony” when they believe it’s “Stoney” but, again, they show it as “Stony” in the special. I have no clue where people are getting “Stoney” from or why they think that’s the more proper spelling, but I’m calling him ‘Stony’…..
….Anyhoo….
Yeah, this special and the book version, of which I also read and will discuss, are the only times Stony has ever appeared in the franchise outside of the odd appearance in some boxes of Pebbles cereal.
I think, by this point, they realized they were stretching a bit far. I commend the showrunners for having Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm grow up, get married, have kids, show the original parents as grandparents, especially in an era where so many shows just didn’t want to show aging in characters that often. Granted, they didn’t show aging in the parents. Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty look exactly the same despite probably 20 years passing from the original series. But still, it was pretty impressive for them to show the passage of the time in their characters.
However, there’s only so far you can go in a family cartoon once your original main characters become grandparents. I guess you could just focus on Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm’s adventures as parents as the focus slowly shifts to Roxy and Chip, but then you’re just cycling through the same concept over and over.
In comes Stony, who I guess was meant to be a replacement for Pebbles and/or Bamm-Bamm just slightly older. Being fair, it’s not like Stony is a rip-off of either character…although, he did make me think quite a bit about Bamm-Bamm. Stony’s more about scamming and crime than just being a general source of chaos, though.
Stony is an orphan, like Bamm-Bamm is, but instead of being brought up in the wild, he grew up in an orphanage and is ‘caveless’. As noted by the rather cold social worker, Stony is an infamous child criminal who has been in and out of juvenile hall despite being like, I dunno, seven?
Wilma wants to take Stony in, and it’s here where I need to note how unreasonable Wilma is being in this special. Usually, Fred is the one being difficult and Wilma is the voice of reason, but here Wilma is just asking for a lot while Fred just has to agree. Yes, it’s sad that Stony is caveless and an orphan, but he just robbed Fred and Barney at ‘gun’ point. Yeah, it was just a stick, but is it any less traumatic to be mugged by a weapon that turned out to be fake if you thought it was real in the moment? Fred didn’t even get his stuff back.
And Wilma’s just like “Freeed, where’s your Christmas spirit?” Wilma, you’re talking about adopting a child that just robbed your husband and his best friend at Christmas and has been in and out of juvie since he was born. Heck, even if you were just talking about adopting a kid in general, that’s a huge ask.
When they get home with Stony, he steals cable for Fred, and that’s the one crime he seems to welcome. However, they butt heads again when Stony points out that he hates Christmas. Fred loves Christmas, especially now that the holidays are a special time when he’s reunited with Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm and his grandkids, but Stony never had a family or a home to celebrate the holidays, so it makes sense that he doesn’t like Christmas.
Stopping myself again, while you can easily make the argument that Stony’s creation was an attempt to jump a shark….whatever shark was left considering The Flintstones ended in 1966, The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm show lasted 16 episodes and ended in 1972, and Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm’s wedding and the birth of their children both happened in the year this was released (1993) Stony is, admittedly, not a poorly written or annoying character.
Sure, he gets into trouble and he can be a bit of a brat, but it’s understandable why he is this way. They seem to be very careful about not making Stony too unlikable, and they do a good job. Many of the things Stony does after he gets with the Flintstones is for them. It’s just as Wilma says, he’s just doing things the only way he knows how.
It’s also a vicious cycle. He starts doing bad things, he has no caring course correction, and people just treat him like a bad kid, so he keeps doing what’s expected of him. Throughout the special, Stony learns from Fred and the others why doing things in such a conniving way is bad, he finally has people seeing the better side of him, and he even learns to appreciate the Christmas spirit.
Likewise, Fred is also being incredibly likable in this special when he tends to be a bit abrasive otherwise. Maybe becoming a grandparent has mellowed him out. They act like he’s still sometimes his old grumpy self, but any time I saw him being that way it was completely justified.
His dynamic with Stony is pretty sweet. Despite Stony doing shady things over and over, Fred still gives the kid more chances to learn and get better, even if he is initially irritated. He keeps trying to teach him and help him out.
Wilma tries to diffuse the situation by saying Stony can help them get a Christmas tree. Fred argues against it because they were going to wait until Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, Roxy and Chip arrived, but Wilma insists. Stony says he can get a tree for them for a really low price, so Wilma tells Fred to give him the money to go get one. Again, being pretty unreasonable. You wear Fred down from getting a Christmas tree with his kids and grandkids to giving a noted thief money to get a tree himself.
Surprisingly, Stony seems to come through with a massive beautifully decorated tree, only for them to reveal that he stole it from the Rubbles. Later, Wilma’s just like ‘Fred, he returned the tree, doesn’t that count for anything?’ He returned the tree because he got caught by Barney. He doesn’t get points for that.
After a song break where we keep getting examples of Stony being a little scammer and Fred trying to keep him in line, ending with a couple sweet shots where Fred picks Stony up after he falls while skating and later picking him to be a part of a Christmas photo, we get to them selecting a Christmas tree. They find a great one, but it’s way too expensive. Stony tries to help by earning money for the tree by running a shell game.
He earns quite a bit of a money, but a huge brute insists he’s being scammed by Stony. When Fred enters, Stony asserts that his game is honest and fair. Fred believes him and stands up for Stony. The man grabs the Christmas tree and smacks Fred over the head with it.
Fred actually winds up in the hospital for this, and to make matters worse, Mr. Slate tells Fred that he’s being replaced as the Santa in their parade because of his injury. Fred was really looking forward to being in the parade because he wanted Roxy and Chip to see him as Santa.
Stony wants to make it up to him, so he pretends to be Mr. Slate’s chauffeur and drives him to the Flintstone’s house to retrieve the Santa outfit. When he returns with the Santa outfit saying he got the role back for Fred, he immediately figures out that Stony did something to Mr. Slate. And he did – he trapped him in the bathroom so he wouldn’t be able to protest Fred being Santa in the parade.
Fred rushes to the house to free Mr. Slate, but the cops have already been called thanks to their neighbor hearing Mr. Slate’s screams.
Fred and Stony are both arrested for kidnapping and sent to prison. Fred’s had enough of Stony and marks a line down their cell to divide them, but Stony once again extends an olive branch by offering Fred some of Wilma’s crumble cake that he snuck in. They patch things up just in time for both of them to be heralded away – Stony by the social worker who figures his placement with the Flintstones failed, and Fred by Mr. Slate who realizes Stony was the real kidnapping culprit, assumes Fred must now be healed enough to play Santa in the parade for some reason, and quickly starts dressing him for it.
At the parade, Fred shares the bad news about Stony with the others, and he spots Stony in a car with the social worker. He decides to rush after him in the sleigh, pulled by pterodactyls. He grabs Stony, tells Stella that they’ll be adopting him, and they leave.
That night, Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, Roxy and Chip have finally arrived. Stony’s immediately taken to being an uncle to them, and Fred tells Stony of one more Christmas tradition – the newest member of the family puts the star on the tree. Stony thinks he means the twins, but he actually means Stony. Bamm-Bamm picks up Stony to put the star on the tree, and we fade out as they sing a Flintstone-ized Christmas carol.
The end.
Before I wrap this up, there are a few more things I want to go over.
First of all, I was really surprised at some of the jokes they made in this special. I didn’t remember The Flintstones making such….iffy jokes when I watched the classic series.
I know, I know, blah blah the things you could get away with that you can’t today, blah blah it doesn’t matter because kids wouldn’t get the jokes anyway, but…for real. Some of them made me double-take.
The first was when Barney mentioned “another drive-by stoning” which is like a dual horrible thing because not only is it a reference to drive-by shootings, but also stoning is an actual method of horrifically killing people. Are people getting randomly stoned to death in Bedrock?
The next was when Stony stole cable for Fred. The first thing he sees is the ‘All Cave-Girl Network’ where they ask the lonely cavemen at home to turn them on….
Then they make a reference to serial killer Charles Manson, although he’s called Charlie Mansonstone here.
Lastly, but most bafflingly, when Stony and Fred walk into their prison cell, Stony tells Fred some tips about surviving while locked up. The two tips we hear are “Don’t call a prisoner a ‘dirty number’” and “Never slow dance with anyone named Bubba.”
……I can’t be alone in thinking that the only joke they could be making with those lines….is sexual assault….which is bad enough on its own……but, again, a LITTLE KID is giving this advice. So….are they implying…..ya know?
Because my brain literally cannot process imagining what kind of screwed up person has to come up with that in the first place, let alone as a joke.
Secondly, but much less bafflingly, they reference religion in this special. They show a priest, a rabbi, Ghandi, and the Pope…..How does religion work in The Flintstones universe? I mean, them having a Christmas in the first place is already confusing, but they just straight up show religious figures.
Finally, the book adaptation. Not much to note about it, really. They pretty much took the special verbatim and just cut out a bunch of stuff. Oddly, however, there were a couple of notable things they did remove – literally every iffy joke/reference and Roxy and Chip.
Yup, Roxy and Chip just aren’t in the book at all – they aren’t even mentioned. It’s an illustrated book, but they’re never shown. I don’t understand why. I feel like either they didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were parents now or they didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that Fred and the others were grandparents or something.
This special is seen by fans as marking the series finale of The Flintstones as a continuous franchise. After this point, Hanna-Barbera did make more Flintstones stuff, of course, but they would always revert back to showing the days when Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were babies or little kids. Stony, the adult versions of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, and Roxy and Chip have not made appearances in the franchise since this was made.
So, maybe Stony wasn’t really made as a desperate attempt to revive the series by giving Fred and Wilma a new kid. Maybe he was just made to help close out the long-running story of the franchise before they soft-rebooted. I mean, how else can you do it? I guess they could have just left it with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm becoming parents, but that doesn’t really close out Fred and Wilma’s story.
However, even with Stony, it also doesn’t close out Betty and Barney’s story.
I dunno.
In the end, though, this is a pretty solid Flintstones Christmas special. Fred is much more likable than he normally is, Stony isn’t nearly as annoying as I thought he’d be, their dynamic and development together was sweet and realistic, the voice acting was pretty well done – and Stony is voiced by the late great Christine Cavanaugh, voice of Dexter from Dexter’s Lab and Chuckie from Rugrats. That was a nice surprise.
There are certainly problems with it, the music in particular is not memorable at all and there aren’t many particularly good jokes, but it’s a fairly sweet and sincere Christmas special that I’d recommend to a Flintstones fan. Probably won’t make anyone’s annual must-watch Christmas special list, but it’s still worth a look.
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