Dinosaurs (TV Series) - Topical Issues

Topical Issues

Topical issues featured in Dinosaurs include environmentalism, endangered species, women's rights, sexual harassment, objectification of women, censorship, civil rights, body image, steroid use, allusions to masturbation (in the form of Robbie getting caught doing a mating dance by himself), drug abuse, racism (in the form of problems between the two-legged dinosaurs and the four-legged dinosaurs), peer pressure, rights of indigenous peoples, corporate crime, government interference of parenting, and allusions to homosexuality (in the guise of herbivorism).

The two-part episode "Nuts to War," in which the two-legged dinosaurs go to war with the four-legged dinosaurs over rights to pistachio trees, aired in February and March 1992, and was almost certainly in response to the Persian Gulf War. Dialogue in the episode addresses war profiteering (by the Wesayso Corporation of B.P. Richfield, Earl's boss, which sells weaponry to both sides), the casualties of war (limited to one two-legger, which the Sinclair family thought for a time was Robbie), the war's use as a distraction from domestic issues during an election year, government suppression of information, and the harassment of the antiwar movement. The (politically) hawkish dinosaurs created a catchphrase for their political party: "We Are Right" (W.A.R.). Earl, originally a hawk but later disillusioned, takes to protesting the war with a sign reading "Pistachio Eaters Against the Chief Elder" (P.E.A.C.E.), a backronym.

In the episode "I Never Ate For My Father," in lieu of carnivorism, Robbie chooses to eat vegetables, and the other characters liken this to homosexuality, irreverence, vegetarianism, communism, and drug abuse.

In the final season, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" (a take off of The Greatest Story Ever Told) even references religion when the Sinclair family becomes eager to learn the meaning of their existence. The Elders dictate a new system of beliefs, and the entire cast (with the exception of Robbie) abandons science to blindly following the newly popular "Potato-ism." The religion arbitrarily brings about a set of strange and pointless rules that they decree all dinosaurs must adhere to, possibly a parody of the Ten Commandments. Robbie and a reluctant Earl refuse to follow the rules leading to their punishment of being burned at the stake. Just as they are about to be executed, the fire mysteriously goes out. The dinosaurs realize they have been lied to, and the two are allowed to go free. The episode ends with Robbie asking where stars come from and Earl replies he had never thought about it but that he would now. Another religious-themed episode was "The Last Temptation of Ethyl," in which Ethyl willingly allows a televangelist to exploit her near-death experience to extort money from followers; she backs out after having a second such experience, where instead of heaven, she experiences a "place not so nice:" an existence surrounded by nothing but multiple Earl Sinclairs.

In another episode, Earl switches bodies with a tree and raises the issue of conservation. This is more dramatically explored in the series finale.