Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series (Blu-ray Review)

• Reviewed by: Tim Salmons
• Review Date: Apr 14, 2025
• Format: Blu-ray Disc
• 

Director

Various

Release Date(s)

1972-1974 (January 28, 2025)

Studio(s)

Hanna-Barbera Productions (Warner Archive Collection)

• Film/Program Grade: B-
• Video Grade: A-
• Audio Grade: B+
• Extras Grade: F

Review

[Editor's Note: A replacement program for Disc 6 of this release is in progess. Simply email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your original purchase receipt, and you will receive instructions on how to order your replacement disc at no charge. Movie Zyng is working with Warner Bros. and AV Entertainment to facilitate the replacement, even if you’ve purchased this release elsewhere.]

With clear shades of All in the Family washing over it, the animated sitcom Wait Till Your Father Gets Home premiered in syndication in 1972 and lasted for three seasons before coming to an end. The show details the troubles of blue collar father Harry Boyle (Tom Bosley), whose family and friends challenge his traditional day-in, day-out existence with familial drama, societal issues and unorthodox counterculture concepts. His family is made up of his worrisome, put-upon wife Irma; his rebellious but well-meaning teenage daughter Alice; his lazy, directionless teenage son Chet, and his clever and resourceful younger son Jamie. Also causing chaos in his life is his next-door neighbor, Ralph, a paranoid, jingoistic nationalist who’s always on the lookout for any un-American activities in his neighborhood, often embarrassing Harry in the process.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home began its life as a short segment on the anthology comedy TV show Love, American Style (which is also where Happy Days was derived from, also featuring Tom Bosley). Two of the show’s producers, R.S. Allen and Harvey Bullock, took the concept to Hanna-Barbera, who was responsible for the only other animated sitcom at that time, The Flintstones. However, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home would be aimed squarely at adults, facing many issues of the day head-on within a “father knows best” type of comedic framework, but turned on its head. Familiar voices also turn up as guest stars, including Phyllis Diller, Don Adams, Don Knotts, Jonathan Winters, Monty Hall, Dick Van Patten, Isabel Sanford, Casey Kasem, and Rich Little, among others.

What’s unusual about the show is, like All in the Family, just how relevant much of its content still is, with subjects ranging from infidelity, women’s liberation, pregnancy, and political paranoia, among many other things. It’s also a show in which members of the Boyle household also challenge Harry’s skills as a father, either openly or in response to whatever new fad or activity they’re participating in that’s not considered the norm. The show’s look is pretty sparse, focusing more on characters than smooth, attractive animation. In fact, it looks more like a crude comic strip come to life, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but having much more story impact than something like Family Circus.

The only real problem that Wait Till Your Father Gets Home faces is just how much a viewer can take of this family, and how over the top they can be when it comes to driving Harry crazy. For a more modern reference, it’s a Bob’s Burgers situation wherein everybody but Bob is seemingly insane. Even if things all work out in the end of each episode, Bob is right back where he started the next time around, constantly tortured by his family, if that’s how you choose to view it. In truth, it’s not a show to binge watch as it tends to get repetitive after seeing several episodes in a row. However, just the fact that Wait Till Your Father Gets Home exists at all is fascinating. I first discovered it during late night re-runs on Cartoon Network in the late 1990s with no context whatsoever, baffled by its adult thematics. Today, not many folks remember it or know anything about it, but as with many shows of its type, it all comes back around again for another bite at the popular culture apple, so to speak.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was traditionally animated on 35mm and 16mm film, finished photochemically, and presented on television in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The first season of the show was released on DVD in 2007, but the remaining seasons never made it out of the Warner Bros. vaults until now. The Complete Series has been fully-remastered from new 4K scans of the original camera negatives. There are obvious variances between seasons and episodes of the show, which needs some explanation. Most of the season one’s animation was completed by Hanna-Barbera’s Australian facility on 35mm film. Conversely, season two was outsourced to a Canadian company, which was completed on 16mm instead. Because of this, there are noticeable changes in visual quality (as well as the animation itself) in the latter two seasons, but everything that can be done to mitigate issues with the 16mm scans has been done. Unfortunately, those less detail-oriented episodes can’t look any better. That said, the majority of the episodes of the show are super crisp and colorful with excellent grain retention and superior bitrates. Most of it is clean and clear with great definition, never sacrificing the integrity of the original animation. Those aforementioned latter season episodes with chunkier grain and softer detail are not deal-breakers, by any means. The show looks excellent, overall.

Audio is included in English 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio with optional subtitles in English SDH. These are fairly narrow tracks but clean and supportive for dialogue, sound effects, score, and the show’s laugh track. The quality of the audio for the 16mm-sourced episodes drops a bit, but not enough to make them sound overly harsh, or entirely unlistenable, for that matter.

All 48 episodes of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series are spread across six 1080p Blu-ray discs with an insert featuring artwork that’s similar to the 2007 DVD release of the show’s first season. The following episodes are included on each disc:

DISC ONE: SEASON ONE – EPISODES 1-8

1. The Fling (23:47)
2. Alice’s Dress (23:41)
3. The Hippie (23:27)
4. The Beach Vacation (23:46)
5. Help Wanted (23:44)
6. Love Story (23:43)
7. The Victim (23:48)
8. Chet’s Job (23:48)

DISC TWO: SEASON ONE – EPISODES 9-16

9. Chet’s Fiancee (23:20)
10. The Mouse (23:53)
11. Duty Calls (23:46)
12. Expectant Papa (23:43)
13. The New Car (24:04)
14. The New House (23:56)
15. The Prowler (23:43)
16. Mama’s Identity (23:42)

DISC THREE: SEASON ONE – EPISODES 17-24

17. Papa, the Patient (23:48)
18. The Swimming Pool (23:49)
19. Sweet Sixteen (23:46)
20. The Commune (23:42)
21. The Music Tycoon (23:37)
22. Accidents Will Happen (24:09)
23. Papa in New York (24:18)
24. The Neighbors (23:54)

DISC FOUR: SEASON TWO – EPISODES 1-8

1. Bringing Up Jamie (23:27)
2. Lady Detective (23:46)
3. Permissive Papa (24:09)
4. Boyles on TV (23:57)
5. My Wife the Secretary (24:11)
6. Papa the Housewife (24:09)
7. Jamie’s Project (23:53)
8. Don for the Defense (23:46)

DISC FIVE: SEASON TWO – EPISODES 9-16

9. Alice’s Diet (23:54)
10. Mama Loves Monty (23:32)
11. Alice’s Crush (23:47)
12. Papa’s Big Check (23:49)
13. Mama’s Charity (23:48)
14. Chet’s Pad (23:53)
15. Papa the Coach (23:44)
16. Birdman Chet (23:48)

DISC SIX: SEASON TWO – EPISODES 17-20

17. Back to Nature (23:47)
18. Don Knotts, the Beekeeper (23:41)
19. Maude Loves Papa (23:52)
20. Alice’s Freedom (23:46)

DISC SIX: SEASON THREE – EPISODES 1-4

1. Rich Little, Super Sleuth (23:46)
2. Model Alice (23:54)
3. Marriage Counselor (23:45)
4. Car 54 (23:41)

A pair of featurettes that were included on the 2007 DVD release, Animation for the Nation and Illustrating the Times, are mentioned on the back of the Blu-ray insert as being included, but are absent altogether. As replication issues initially delayed this title, so too did quality control checks, which didn’t catch this before its release. A disc replacement program is in progress for the sixth disc, which will include these featurettes, and you can read more about in the Editor's Note at the top of the review. Regardless, long-time animation fans, and those who patiently awaited the show’s second and third seasons ever being released on DVD, should rejoice at the Blu-ray release of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home: The Complete Series.

- Tim Salmons

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