Comedian Uncovers Highly Disturbing Facts About ‘The Jetsons’
At least according to its theme song, there’s not much controversy baked into the plot of space-age cartoon The Jetsons:
Meet George Jetson
His boy Elroy
Daughter Judy
Jane his wife
Yep, somebody got paid to write those lyrics. And it’s as basic a description of a traditional family as one can imagine. Nothing to see here, right?
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Well, we’ve been wrong all along, according to comedian Adam Newman — and he’s got the receipts to prove it:
In his stand-up special Fuzzies, Newman describes taking a break from online porn to fall down a Jetsons rabbit hole on Wikipedia. To be clear, he didn’t start out looking for scandal. “It’s fun to look at a futuristic show, see where you’re at now compared to then,” he said about a cartoon created in 1962 depicting a family living in 2060.
We still don’t have flying cars. But 40 pages into his Jetsons research, Newman made a different dark discovery. Under character descriptions, he learned about Jane Jetson. Occupation? Homemaker. “Fine,” he says, “but kind of conservative for 2060.” Age? 33. So far, nothing too weird.
Next up, though, was daughter Judy. Age? Sixteen. “Anybody want to do that math real quick?” asks Newman. “Mother is 33, daughter’s 16." He's right – go back to 2044 when Judy was born. "Jane is 17 years old, right? Which means we've apparently learned nothing from Teen Mom, which is in Season 34 at that point.”
But wait, it gets worse. The character description for George Jetson puts his 2060 age at 40. Punch those numbers into the calculator. “Cut back to 2044 when Judy's born. George is 24. Now let’s say Jane is hopefully 17 years old, right? There’s a nine-month out of 12-month chance that she’s 16 because that's how a pregnancy works.”
That’s some dark Jetsons shit, Newman concludes.
It’s also the likely reason why they keep the character ages a little loosey-goosey on The Simpsons.
