How to Pick a Fight with Your Wife Without Really Trying

How to Pick a Fight With Your Wife Without Really Trying
Details
Show	The Flintstones
Season	6
Episode number	155
Original airdate	January 7, 1966
Crew
Animated by	Hugh Fraser Carlo Vinci John Sparey Michael Webster
Written by	Herbert Finn Alan Dinehart
Chronology
Previous	"Seeing Doubles"
Next	"Fred Goes Ape"

"How to Pick a Fight With Your Wife Without Really Trying" is the fifteenth episode of the sixth season and the one hundred and fifty-fifth overall episode of the original series, The Flintstones. It aired on January 7, 1966.

Synopsis

Spats between spouses escalate to such a degree that the couples split: Fred and Barney are thrown together as roommates, while Wilma and Betty are bunking together at the other house.

Plot

The cause of Flintstone marital problems is, as usual, Fred's crabbiness and Wilma's annoyed, taken-for-granted feeling. Gazoo advises Fred that throughout the galaxies, the humanoid male always has the superior mind and ought to regard his wife as though she were a little girl. Meanwhile, Wilma and Betty affirm woman to be more mentally mature than man, and Wilma thus chooses to be motherly to Fred.

Fred acts the loving father to Wilma when she complains about household travails, and Wilma "babies" Fred during Fred's tantrum at not having his evening newspaper available to read. Each believes the other to be condescending and declares the treat-spouse-like-a-child experiment a failure. Gazoo next recommends that Fred buy something to foster a sense of togetherness with Wilma, and Fred goes to a games and novelties shop, where he rejects a pool table that converts into a love-seat and a two-rider skateboard and purchases a Rockopoly board game.

Wilma is anything but pleased when Fred arrives at home with the game and fails to acknowledge her new, more attractive dress and hairstyle. The Rubbles join Fred and Wilma for an unpleasant evening of Rockopoly, during which Fred's poor gamesmanship alienates Wilma, who scolds Fred for his deficient, childish personality. Fred replies that his mind is superior to hers and that he will be living with Barney henceforth- and Betty stays with Wilma at the house of Flintstone. Fred is miserable without his wife, but Gazoo urges him to wait for Wilma to act first in a reconciliation.

By night, Fred dreams that he and Barney are at the Club Vulture, at which all of the dancing girls look like Wilma, and Wilma has a nightmare that she is abducted in a desert by a maverick Arab and needs to be rescued by Sheik Ali Fred Flintstone. When Wilma, in her sleep, screams Fred's name, Fred hears her and literally crashes through the door of his house to come to her aid. Fred and Wilma resolve their differences- for the time being.

Characters

• Fred Flintstone
• Wilma Flintstone
• Barney Rubble
• Betty Rubble
• Pebbles Flintstone
• Bamm-Bamm Rubble
• Dino
• The Great Gazoo
• Harem Girls (last appearance in a dream)
• Sheik (only appearance in a dream)
• Game store clerk (only appearance)

Locations

Bedrock

• Flintstone home
• Rubble home
• Games and Novelties store (only appearance)

Other

• Club Vulture (only appearance in a dream)

Objects

• Cuckoo clock
• Rake
• Pie
• Brontosaurus burger
• Rockopoly game (only appearance)

Animals

• Turtlesaurus (as a game table)
• Snorkasaurus
• Pterodactyl (as a cuckoo clock, a hard-boiled egg and a rake)
• Mammoth (as a shower and a vacuum)
• Brontosaurus (as a Bronto-Bridge and a Bronto Burger)
• Rabbitsauruses
• Monkeysaurus (as a lamp)
• Camelsaurus (in a dream)

Vehicles

• Flintmobile

Cast

Alan Reed	Fred Flintstone
Jean Vander Pyl	Wilma Flintstone Pebbles Flintstone
Mel Blanc	Barney Rubble Dino Turtlesaurus
Gerry Johnson	Betty Rubble Store Clerk Cuckoo
Don Messick	Bamm-Bamm Rubble Mammoth
Harvey Korman	The Great Gazoo

Notes/Trivia

• Rockopoly is a spoof of the iconic board game, Monopoly.
• In Fred's dream of seeing a line of dancing girls who all appear as Wilma dressed in pink, the music played was used in the episode, "Pebbles' Birthday Party".

Allusions

• Peytonrock Place was a reference to the mid-1960s nighttime soap opera. Peyton Place, which introduced Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neal.
• The title is a take-off of the Broadway musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Errors

• When Wilma asked Fred, "What is that supposed to mean?", Betty's eyebrows quickly disappeared.
• Usually when Fred is shown shirtless, his chest is hairless, but this time you see a few strands of hair.