64 years after George Jetson uttered it on The Jetsons, the best line in the series feels even further divorced from reality. The Jetsons premiered in 1962 as a Space Age evolution of Hanna-Barbera’s other animated hit, The Flintstones, and was another success story for the fledgling animation studio.

The series centers on the Jetson family, your classic nuclear family consisting of father George, homemaker mother Jane, teenage daughter Judy, and young son Elroy. The only difference between the Jetsons and every other sitcom family is that the Jetsons live in 2062, 100 years after the show aired.

Orbit City, where the Jetsons live, is your classic Space Age utopia. People live in homes atop tall columns to avoid pollution; they travel in flying cars with transparent bubble tops; and their lives are made easy by wacky, Rube Goldberg-esque advancements. For example, the Jetsons have a robot maid named Rosie.

The Jetsons have since become the go-to example of “the future”. The look of Orbit City and the general ease of life thanks to advancements in technology are now the textbook example of the wonderful world that the future is sure to provide us. That doesn’t ring quite as true now in 2026, when we’re closer to the time of The Jetsons than we are to the time it was made in.

In some ways, The Jetsons did predict our future. For all the sci-fi gadgetry and impossible ways to improve life, the Jetsons seemed to have all the usual problems and ups-and-downs of life. Even Hanna-Barbera seemed to know that all the promises of the Space Age won’t solve the daily malaise of life.

On the other hand, The Jetsons was very wrong about some things. The jokes they make and the issues they confront often reveal where the showrunners thought the world was headed. In one particular case, and in one of the best lines in the show, they were particularly wrong.

The Best Line In The Jetsons Predicted The Future Working Day

The best line in The Jetsons has to be George’s to Jane in season 1, episode 2, “A Date with Jet Screamer”. Jane asks George if he had a bad day at the office, and George replies, “Yeah. Those three-hour workdays are killing me“. The joke is that in the future, people work much less, yet still have the same complaints as we do.

In the 1960s, the United States was only 22 years from the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which made the 40-hour workweek federal law (via History). As the century went on, more and more labor protection acts would be passed, and The Jetsons showrunners could probably easily envision a future where the workday was as short as three hours.

We’re Now Further Away Than The Jetsons’ 15-Hour Work Week Than Ever

Credit: MovieStillsDB

In 2026, when hustle culture is in full effect, and we are bombarded with ways to earn money when we’re not working, or seeing people “grinding” in their off-hours, or mocking those who don’t have as much money or work as hard, that 3-hour workday of The Jetsons seems further off than ever.

The Jetsons supposed that our lives would get easier and more manageable, but the joke would be that, as humans, we still won’t stop complaining. That doesn’t appear to be what’s happening. While technology is advancing, it seems like people are working more than ever, with the entire world in a state of precarity that seems to be holding much longer than it should.

Release Date

1962 – 1963-00-00

Showrunner

William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, Alex Lovy

Directors

William Hanna

Writers

Barry Blitzer, Tony Benedict, Mark Young, George Atkins, Harvey Bullock, Glenn Leopold, Haskell Barkin, Walter Black, Larry Markes, R.S. Allen, Ali Marie Matheson, David N. Gottlieb, Evelyn Gabai, Jeff Hall, John Semper Jr., Kerry Ehrin, Mark Seidenberg, Warren Foster, Bob Smith, Barry O’Brien, Lane Raichert, Bruce Howard, Herb Engelhardt, Pamela Burton

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  Barry Gordon

  Mechanic (voice)

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  Didi Conn

  Cousin Melissa (voice)