Just because Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show aren’t enough, Seth MacFarlane is going to bring The Flintstones back to Fox in 2013, likely to fit into their Animation Domination Sunday night block.

MacFarlane is definitely funny and certainly knows his kitsch cultural references, but can he make Flintstones work for today? Well, he’s got the love for the source material, as he said one of his first drawings at 2 yrs old was Fred Flintstone. (I’m gonna kind of call b.s. on that claim, because what 2 yr old can actually draw anything, and who can remember what they drew when they were 2? I’m betting it was more that his parents told him he drew The Flintstones as they plopped him in front of the TV to absorb hours and hours of Flintstones, along with I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, etc).

However, what i do like is his interest in updating the franchise, asking what “an ipod” would be like in their world?  Touche. But this also could quickly turn into that Family Guy sketch where they’re joking about a thinly-plotted starring Julia Louis Dreyfus married to an elephant.  It gets old very quickly.

So, I’m kind of morbidly obese on what MacFarlane is going to do on this.

Did I say obese? I meant curious.

It was a Fruedian slip where I was writing about one thing and thinking about your mother.

Another slice of this crap sandwich is I have to question the rapidly diminishing returns on MacFarlane’s creative juices. Family Guy > American Dad > (most other mediocre to passable television on these days) > The Cleveland Show.  Is adding The Flintstones into this mix really going to be any good? I also really have to ask this in the context of last Sunday’s Family Guy, 5 minutes of which was the David Bowie/Mick Jagger abomination “Dancing in the Streets” music video, and another portion was Joe in the place of Stan Smith aping the opening credits for American Dad.  Which, I believe, makes the third time someone on either show has mentioned the similarities between Joe Swanson and Stan Smith.  It really seems like they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, and unless they either want to do Star Wars prequels or Indiana Jones or Lord of the Rings, just how much is there left to harvest for good ideas?

Regardless of my concerns, one reason to hope is that Daniel Palladino will be Executive Producer for the project.  Palladino wrote/directed many of my favorite Family Guy episodes from the period before it was canceled by Fox the first/second time around. His sensibilities strayed away from some of the more arbitrary comedic gags (like the time when we met Richard Greico on a spaceship. . .) and the potty humor for the sake of potty humor/cheap laughs.  So I think he could work in this area.

This is the most recent in a string of recent animation acquisitions, including Napoleon Dynamite (which I’m more than a little excited for) and Allen Gregory, which i know zero about.  Given that Bob’s Burgers is sticking around, where does Fox think it is putting all of these shows? Does it just expect a few of them to die before 2012?  Or perhaps they’re hoping to be saved by The Rapture.

Either way, I have reservations about this reboot, as I do with all reboots, but think this one might turn out ok. What say the rest of you robots?