That 70s Show: Not So Much (Revisited)

I wrote this up a while back and just never posted it. So, for what it is worth, here's my final take on that 70s show that I wrote back in April of this year.

I just finished watching the final season of That 70s Show. Well…what can I say? Not much had changed between season seven and season eight. Well, Kelso moved to Chicago and Eric went off to Africa. Big deal. And the new guy, Randy, was a total waste. He said nothing and did even less. The character of Randy just didn’t seem to have a point. True, the character was trying to fill the gap left by Eric and Kelso’s departures, but he just never really worked.

In the final season it was obvious that the writing had taken a nose dive. Yep. The show had jumped the shark. There was no two ways about it. In fact, the only positive thing to come out of season eight was the final episode. The writers did give the series a rather good send off. I was quite impressed with the final episode. It was funny, sweet and kind of sad. Eric and Kelso came back for the final show and it really tied everything together.

Looking back on all eight seasons of this show, I think that the first four or five seasons were the best. While I always had problems with the writing, the show did have something going for it. When the show stopped hitting the audience over the head with all of the 70s references, it did at times actually become very 70s. Perhaps if the writers had tried just a little bit harder in not trying to make it ‘so 70s’ then perhaps they might have been able to take was just an ok show and make it good. Face it. The show was never going to be great. Period sitcoms rarely, if ever, really work because they are based on one thing. Nostalgia. And by its nature, nostalgia is a flawed way to view anything with any kind of perspective. It’s all like, ‘let’s put on our rose colored glasses and make jokes about Three Mile Island or the hostage crisis.’ It just doesn’t work.

Had it not been for the characters of Red, Kitty and Hyde I don’t think I could have made it through all eight seasons of this stupid show. Oh, and Leo. Leo was just a hoot to watch. Tommy Chong stole just about every scene he was in. And Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith as Kitty and Red were a real joy to watch. I won’t even go into how fabulous Danny Masterson is at being Hyde. These three, ok four, characters were, at least for me, totally believable. The others, Eric, Kelso, Donna, Jackie, Fez, Bob, Midge, and Laurie just didn’t strike me as anyway believable. Most of the time they were just caricatures and rarely did they ever rise above that. Maybe Donna and Eric were believable characters in themselves, but I just never bought into the whole ‘Donna and Eric belong together’ thing. Eric would be lucky to get a girl like Donna and a girl like Donna wouldn’t give a guy like Eric a second glance.

After about the first five seasons I found myself paying less and less attention to the stories and spending more time looking at the sets. Once thing really started to hit me (actually I noticed it in the very first episode but didn’t pay much attention to it until later). In, oh let’s say 1972, did Red and Kitty go through and have their ENTIRE house remodeled? When the 60s were over did Red and Kitty simply throw out everything they owned and replace it with new 70s things? Including the furniture? I mean, if you really look around at everything, there is not one thing in that house that isn’t from the 70s. Seriously. Take the kitchen for example. Everything in that kitchen is either orange, yellow, brown or green. There is not one thing blue or red. Every little nick nack is from the 70s. In fact, most of the time the only things in that kitchen not from the 70s is the food. I guess the set designers could be bothered to find a vintage Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle. Even considering that the damn things are everywhere. In the second to last episode, Kitty is showing the house to a potential buyer and the director decided to shoot the scene with a hand held camera. So we got to see the set like it was a real house with four walls. It only reinforced the fact the everything in that set was from the 70s. While this is a 70s collector or fan’s dream home, it’s not realistic at all. Yes, people did have rooms in their homes in the 70s that did look like this, but it mostly happened in homes that were built in the 70s. Yes, people were doing a lot of remodeling and home improvements, but the set of the Forman home just went way beyond that. People like Kitty and Red, even with their combined incomes could not have afforded to do everything to their home that is shown on that show. It would have cost a fortune. Even by 1970s standards. I won’t even mention Bob and Midge’s home. That just defies all logic.

I do have to give a big high five to Barry Williams and Christopher Knight for their guest appearance in one episode of the final season. They played a Gay couple that moves in next door to Kitty and Red. Barry and Christopher were simply hilarious. In fact, the scenes involving them were perhaps the funniest of the entire series.

I still have several issues with That 70s Show, but in the end I did enjoy most of what I watched. The show tried too hard at times to be funny, clever and oh so 70s that it usually missed the mark. When it stopped trying so hard was when it was at its best. The sad things is, kids who did not grow up in the 70s will watch this show and think that that was how it really was in the 70s. It wasn’t. The dialogue continued to be a problem through out the whole series. 70s teens in the Midwest did not say things like ‘awesome’ or ‘totally’.

All in all, I have to take the series for what it is. A totally unrealistic, nostalgic peak into a decade that I feel was much more interesting than what was shown.