Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jellystone!’ On HBO Max, Where Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo And Classic Hanna-Barbera Characters Return For Weird Adventures

Lately, when classic cartoon characters are appearing in rebooted shows, the cartoons usually follow the classic templates. Think Bugs Bunny and his friends, or Tom & Jerry. But when someone comes along and rethinks not only the context the characters are in but also how they’re drawn, it can be inspiring. That’s the case with Jellystone!, which takes classic Hanna-Barbera characters — especially Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo and Cindy Bear — and puts them in an entirely new light.

JELLYSTONE!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: At Jellystone Hospital, an old lady is greeted by Doggie Daddy (C.H. Greenblatt), who says, “today is your lucky day!” When the lady asks if her heart transplant came through, Doggie Daddy says she’ll get a command performance from his daughter Augie Doggie (Georgie Kidder).

The Gist: Jellystone is a town that’s populated with all sorts of weird creatures (all of which are classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters), not the least of which are Yogi Bear (Jeff Bergman), Boo-Boo (Greenblatt) and Cindy Bear (Grace Helbig). They’re doctors at the hospital, and they jump in to save the old lady when she flatlines while hearing Augie Doggie’s off-key rendition of “Kitten Around.”

After that incident, the three bears go to the cafeteria, and Yogi can’t decide which entree to eat. So Cindy comes up with a good solution; she knocks Yogi out with a pan and installs a nuclear stomach in him. One problem: He never gets full. So Yogi goes on a rampage around town, eating everything in sight, including Boo-Boo. The Mayor, Huckleberry Hound (Jim Conroy), is at a loss, Cindy says she was “pooping” when this went down, and Top Cat (Thomas Lennon) tries to sell people ordinary spray paint cans as protection — until Yogi eats him.

In the second adventure, a furry purple disaster has befallen the town — Grape Ape has passed out due to a food coma. He’s so huge that even his drool is a natural disaster. Huckleberry Hound dispatches Touché Turtle (Dana Snyder) and his crew to brainstorm ideas. During that time, the medical team arrives; Cindy comes up with a plan to see what’s in Grape’s belly, and Boo-Boo “volunteers” to take the plunge. When he sees a giant meatball, there’s only one person with the eating skills to cut that baby down to size: Yogi.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take pretty much all the classic Hanna-Barbera characters from the ’50s through the ’70s that aren’t Scooby-Doo, Tom & Jerry or The Flintstones, put them in one town and give that town the anarchic energy that Greenblatt has given his previous shows, like Harvey Beaks, and you get Jellystone!

Our Take: Greenblatt’s trying to achieve dual goals with Jellystone!: He wants to refresh all of these classic characters, some of whom are almost 70 years old, for a new generation of kids, but remind their parents (or, more likely, grandparents) why those characters were so enjoyable in the first place. He generally succeeds with the first goal, but the jury is still out on the second.

This isn’t the first time that all of these H-B characters have been collected in one place, as Gen Xers could tell you: The 1977-78 series Laff-A-Lympics had most of these characters, along with Scooby and some others, compete in various sports around the world (and in space!). Of course, if you’re a fan of a particular character, you likely got very little of that character to enjoy, and that’s the issue we have with Jellystone!

You may get episodes that feature Snagglepuss or Jabberjaw (now a female shark instead of one that sounds like Curly from The Three Stooges) or Captain Caveman, but for the most part you’re going to get a few seconds of dialogue or a 1-second sight gag at most. Luckily, Yogi, Boo-Boo and Cindy are prominently featured, so if you’ve been missing Yogi on your screens, you’re in luck.

To people (mostly kids) who have no idea who these characters are, the flurry of them might be a bit confusing and overwhelming to them, but the show strikes such a nutty and slapsticky tone — and a modern one, at that, with overlapping dialogue and people who talk less like cartoons and more like humans — that it might not matter. To the kids, it’s just a town full of interesting looking characters, and hopefully the show’s silly tone will be more than enough to rope the little ones in.

What Age Group Is This For?: The series is rated TV-G, and we think kids 8 and up will like it.

Parting Shot: After Grape Ape burps and gets up from his food coma, a frozen Augie Doggie (long story) asks where her father is. We then see Doggie Daddy still stuck in Grape’s purple fur.

Sleeper Star: Thomas Lennon is an inspired choice for Top Cat, who in his original ’60s incarnation was a huckster of the highest order.

Most Pilot-y Line: Not really a complaint, but wondered what process Greenblatt and his writers went through to decide which characters will get re-gendered. We’re surprised to see a female Augie and Jabberjaw, for instance.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Jellystone! is definitely going to be a weird show for fans of classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but it’ll still be funny. For kids, it’ll just be funny.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Jellystone! On HBO Max