It really gets off to a rough start, especially with its new characters, a carousel of archetypal 90’s personalities: dumb jock, closeted gay kid, athletic kid dating the genius girl, a Kelso child… you know what to expect here. It does this to an extreme in its first two episodes, where one can almost taste the network notes to make sure people remember That 70’s Show as it cycles through a handful of obligatory returning characters. As it introduces us to Leia Forman (Eric and Donna’s child, played wonderfully by Callie Haverda), it is also laying out a world familiar to only a certain group of people, those who will recognize the locales and quirky characters (and remember the water tower is named after Charlie when he died in the 8th season premiere). But for millions of us, these syndicated stories of teenagers (neatly telling the stories of our parent’s teenage years of the late 1970’s) hold a lot of intrinsic emotional power which, of course, a streaming network wanted to try and exploit, alongside the dozens of other remakes, resequels, and reboots littering today’s television landscape.Īnd at first, That 90’s Show (developed by original creators Bonnie and Terry Turner, alongside daughter Lindsey Turner and original series writer Gregg Mettler) is clearly attached to that nostalgic gravity: it knows its power, teasing us with images of the water tower and The Hub as it begins to reintroduce us to the Forman family and the rest of Point Place, Wisconsin, twenty-something years after we last saw them in “That 70’s Finale” (which… let’s just not talk about the last few seasons of That 70’s Show, ok?). Kelso, Foreman, Donna, Hyde… these names were iconic for an entire generation of kids like myself though that legacy, like the sitcom format, has faded a bit over time. When That 70’s Show first premiered in 1998, I was 11 years old – and when its series finale aired, I was near the end of my freshman year of college, my formative years quickly becoming a blip in the rearview mirror.
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