So you would think being a program that aired during a 2 hour family television block (TGIF) would be enough to make the writers of Dinosaurs show a little sensitivity when creating the series finale episode, right? Wrong. The show ended with not so much as a glimmer of hope for the characters we had grown emotionally attached to over 4 seasons and 65 episodes. It left us crying in our dinner on an emotionally draining Friday evening in 1994. Throughout those episodes we saw the loveable family of dinosaurs deal with issues such as women’s rights, peer pressure, environmentalism, and civil rights. Anyway, the ending began when…
1.) The irresponsible dinosaurs constructed a wax fruit factory on some beetles’ swampland habitat, forcing the species into extinction. As a result, cider poppy vines that the beetles would normally devour rapidly grew out of control.
2.) Earl was put in charge of getting rid of the massive amounts of vines and he decided to spay the planet with defoliant. Problem solved, right? Wrong again. 3.) The spraying caused all plant life on the planet to die.
4.) In one final act of stupidity, the dinosaurs decide that dropping bombs in the planets volcanoes will cause them to erupt, creating clouds, causing it to rain and reviving their plants. Instead, the dark clouds cause global cooling due to massive cloud cover and scientists guesstimate that it would take “tens of thousands of years” to stop.
Realizing that his entire species is completely F’d, Earl simply apologizes to his family for ending the world. The series ends with newsman Howard Handupme delivering a disturbing broadcast that ends eerily with the delivery of the phrase “Goodnight” and “Goodbye” to the audience. Now I personally was about six years old when this aired and aside from Mufasa falling off a cliff & getting crushed by a “Wal-Mart on Black Friday-esque” stampede, the ending of Dinosaurs was the most gut wrenching thing I had to watch.
HERE’S THE LAST HALF OF THE DINOSAURS SERIES FINALE. Watch at your own risk, 90s lovers.
