The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party
Details
Show	The Flintstones
Season	3
Episode number	88
Production number	P-77
Original airdate	April 5, 1963 (ABC)
Recording Date	August 10, 1962
Crew
Animated by	Ed Love
Layout	Dick Bickenbach
Background	Richard H. Thomas
Written by	Joanna Lee (teleplay)
Chronology
Previous	"Swedish Visitors"
Next	"Ann-Margrock Presents"

"The Birthday Party" is the twenty-eighth episode of the third season and the eighty-eighth overall episode of the original series, The Flintstones. It aired on April 5, 1963.

Synopsis

Wilma plans a big surprise birthday party for Fred and tells Barney to take him away from the cave as they make preparations - but both of them go missing.

Plot

Groundhog Day is also Fred's birthday! Every year, Fred says that he does not want the day to be celebrated with a party in his honor but silently desires exactly this; Wilma complies with his unspoken wish, and there is a many-guest surprise birthday party at the Flintstones' house, a surprise in only a nominal sense because Fred expects the party and just pretends otherwise. Wilma and the Rubbles cooperate in organizing the Yabba-Dabba-Doo, a worthy annual festivity, but Wilma intends that Fred be genuinely surprised this year. So, the venue for the party is Cave Rubble, while Wilma feigns disinterest in a birthday celebration for her husband.

To ensure that Fred is away from the Flintstone-Rubble neighborhood so that Wilma and Betty can arrange the particulars of the merriment and to bring Fred to the party when it is fully attended and ready, Barney invites Fred to a leisurely afternoon on a golf green and in a spa. Fred, suspecting that his best friend has an ulterior motive for this, perhaps because the birthday party is planned for a location other than the Flintstones' home, happily "plays along" with Barney's ruse. On the assumption that the clubhouse at the golf course is the designated place for the party, Fred bursts through its door, shouting, "Ah-ha! I'm here."

Two blase cavemen seated at a table, the only other occupants of the clubhouse, are perplexed by Fred's self-importance. At the spa, where Fred is again disappointed to uncover no trace of his birthday party, Barney coaxes him to lift heavy weights and submit himself to a blubber-reduction machine and unstoppable vigor on a treadmill, all of which exhaust fat Freddie. Fred and Barney both fall asleep in the spa's steam room and are soon overdue at the birthday party.

When Barney awakes from late-afternoon slumber and notices from his wristwatch that he and Fred are more than an hour late for the mirth, he carries a still-dozing Fred to his car for swift transport to the birthday party. However, Fred, scarcely anymore awake when Barney escorts him to the Rubble house front door, refuses to wait there while Barney goes to the back door for the unstated purpose of alerting Wilma, Betty, and the other celebrants that their birthday man has arrived.

Fred is prevented from immediately retiring to bed in his empty house by visiting new neighbor Stanley Slag, who invites Flintstone to join him and Mrs. Slag in a bridge game. Fred's energy perks with his suspicion that Slag is hosting the birthday party, and he accepts Slag's hospitality so that he can ransack Slag's house in a futile search for the birthday party, thus angering Slag's vicious guard dog, which attacks Fred! Battered and fatigued beyond measure, Fred returns home and finds Wilma crying on the living room sofa. She bemoans his birthday gone awry before the revelers appear at the Flintstones' door, birthday cake and all, to re-situate the festivity for Fred's glee and Wilma's relief.

Characters

• Fred Flintstone
• Wilma Flintstone
• Barney Rubble
• Betty Rubble
• Dino
• Mr. Slate
• Mrs. Slate
• Joe Rockhead (known as Rockhard)
• Rita Rockhead (last appearance)
• Stanley Slag (only appearance)
• Mrs. Slag (only appearance)
• Rocko Hotrod (only appearance)
• Esther and Hester (only appearance)

Locations

Bedrock

• Flintstone home
• Bedrock Golf Club
• Bedrock Health Center (only appearance)
• Rocko Hotrod's Used Cars (only appearance)
• The Club (only appearance)
• Slag home (only appearance)

Objects

• Fred's birthday cake (only appearance)
• Golf ball
• Golf club
• Barbell
• Rock Bell Phone

Animals

• Lizardsaurus (as a saw and vibrating belt motor)
• Snorkasaurus
• Brontosaurus (as a Bronto-Steak)
• Duckasaurus (as a horn)
• Brontosaurus
• Triceratops
• Ten-Legged Armadillosaurus (as a treadmill)

Vehicles

• Loggin Continental

Cast

Alan Reed	Fred Flintstone
Jean Vander Pyl	Wilma Flintstone Hester Mrs. Slate
Mel Blanc	Barney Rubble Dino Lizardsaurus Duck Bird
Bea Benaderet	Betty Rubble Esther Mrs. Slag
Howard Morris	Bird Animal Card Player #2 Joe Rockhead Stanley Slag
Doug Young	Rocko Hotrod Construction Foreman
John Stephenson	Mr. Slate Card Player #1

Notes/Trivia

• The show talks about "Little Old Ladies from Pasadenarock," and it was made in 1962. However, Jan & Dean didn't release the song "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" until 1964.
• This episode is about Fred's 35th birthday, which is Groundhog Day, February 2nd.
• While this episode was recorded much earlier in the season, before the Birth of Pebbles story arc, it was aired on ABC as the spring 1963 season finale and usually aired in a similar order in syndication. That's why there's no sign of Pebbles, even though numerous episodes centering around her birth and infancy aired prior to this episode.
• Fred says to the guests when he's in the wrong house "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" This references the Munchkinland scene in MGM's The Wizard of Oz. Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, originally said this line.

Errors

• The dial on the pay phone disappears.