That 70s Show (FOX)
1998-2006

I couldn't have been more deeply skeptical of That 70s Show when it debuted – here was another chance for lame jokes making fun of the 70s, at least ten years after that was actually funny or potentially clever. Yet, much to my amazement, upon actually seeing the show, I was hooked. The cast was appealing, the jokes were unexpected, and the whole "70s" thing was used more as window-dressing for what was really an emotionally honest comedy about teens growing up. At its best, That 70s Show was the Welcome Back, Kotter of the 90s.

Flash-forward six years, and the show is, unbelievably, still on. I gave it a run of one season when it initially appeared, but apparently the cast is "hot" enough to keep people tuning in. Certainly Ashton Kutcher's young-Travolta-like stardom doesn't hurt, at least for ratings, and the ensemble overall remains as strong as it ever was, anchored, oddly enough, by Danny Masterson as the scheming but vulnerable Hyde. So why do the recent years of That 70s Show feel so hollow?

Well, like Kotter, this was really a one-joke show to begin with: ha, ha, 70s teens stumbling through high school in a fog of pot smoke and raging hormones! Yet even the pot smoking was dealt with honestly (and hilariously) at the beginning … now it just seems like a tried-and-true convention for the writers to rely on. There is no way to reinvent the characters or provide any real dramatic thrust. Hyde grows a beard. Fez gets a girlfriend. Kelso gets a girl pregnant. Hm. Makes me long for late-period Blossom.

The downfall to a one-note show is always that its characters go from being archetypes that you can identify with to caricatures of what made you like them in the first place. Kelso is "dumb," so he gets dumber. Jackie is "shallow," so she gets shallower. Red is "mean," so he gets meaner. Eric is "dweeby," so he gets dweebier. At this point, there's no opportunity to actually care about these folks, any more than you would actually care about the characters in "Beetle Bailey." My apologies to anyone who really resonates with "Beetle Bailey."

The acting is still good, but the "70s" jokes are played, and the writing has gotten super lazy. You can count on Kelso to use malapropisms, and Fez to employ language laced with double entendre, and Red to threaten to stick his foot up someone's ass. Ho-hum.

The 2003-05 season will be the show's last, and thank God for that. It's three seasons too late.

Review by La Fée © 2004