That '70s Show
| That '70s Show | |
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| Genre | Period sitcom |
| Created by | |
| Directed by |
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| Starring | |
| Theme music composer | |
| Opening theme |
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| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 8 |
| No. of episodes | 200 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | |
| Running time | 22 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Carsey-Werner Productions |
| Distributor | Carsey-Werner Distribution 20th Century Fox (DVD) |
| Release | |
| Original network | Fox |
| Picture format | 480i, 1080p |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original release | August 23, 1998 – May 18, 2006 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | |
| External links | |
| Website | |
The main teenage cast members were Topher Grace, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson, Laura Prepon and Wilmer Valderrama. The main adult cast members were Debra Jo Rupp, Kurtwood Smith, Don Stark, Tommy Chong and Tanya Roberts.
Contents
Cast
Teens
- Topher Grace as Eric Forman (seasons 1–7; uncredited guest season 8): Eric is a nice guy, geeky, physically slight and somewhat clumsy. He is a smart-aleck with a fast wit and a deadpan sense of humor. He convinces his parents to let his best friend Steven Hyde move in with them, making Hyde like a brother. His father, Red, is always hard on him. For seven seasons Eric is in a relationship with his longtime love and neighbor Donna Pinciotti. He decides to become a teacher after high school and he leaves the series at the end of the seventh season to teach in Africa. Although mentioned in every episode, he does not appear during the final season until the end of the series finale.
- Mila Kunis as Jackie Burkhart: The youngest member of the group, Jackie starts the series as the pretty, spoiled rich, selfish, often times annoying immature girl. She likes to give thoughtless and superficial advice, which occasionally turns out to be correct. As the series progresses she becomes more genuine, after her father, a crooked politician, goes to jail and her fortunes take a reversal. Partly as a result of these changes, Donna and she become better friends. By the end of the series, Jackie had dated three of the four males of the group: Kelso, Hyde and Fez.
- Ashton Kutcher as Michael Kelso (seasons 1–7; special guest season 8): The dumb pretty boy of the group wants to coast through life on his good looks. Often referred to as "The King" in many episodes, he spends the first half of the series in a relationship with the equally vapid Jackie, but their relationship comes to an end when Laurie (Eric's older sister) reveals their affairs to Jackie. He fathers a baby girl named Betsy from a librarian named Brooke during the seventh season. He becomes a police officer but gets kicked off the force because he does just about everything wrong. He gets a job as a security guard at a Playboy Club in Chicago and leaves the series during the eighth and final season. Kelso, along with Eric, returns for the series finale.
- Danny Masterson as Steven Hyde: Eric's best friend and the anti-establishment member of the group. By the end of season one, the Formans allow Hyde to move in after he was abandoned by his mother, making him a foster brother to Eric. Hyde has a witty, blunt and sarcastic sense of humor and a rebellious personality. He is also smart and the other group members often ask for his advice. Although Hyde dates Jackie for three seasons, in the final season he marries an exotic dancer named Samantha. Hyde later discovers Samantha was married to another man when she married him. As Donna points out in "My Fairy King", that means Hyde and Samantha are not legally married. In the seventh season, Hyde meets his biological father (William Barnett, played by Tim Reid), a wealthy black businessman (making Hyde, who was presumed white, biracial). Barnett, who owns a chain of record stores, makes Hyde first an office worker, then a manager and later the owner of the Point Place record store. He also previously worked for Leo in a Photo Hut earlier in the series.
- Laura Prepon as Donna Pinciotti: Eric's longtime girlfriend (and briefly fiancée). Donna is tall, intelligent, good-looking. Although she does not agree with what Jackie represents in the beginning of the series, they become friends. Donna is in a relationship with Eric for seven seasons (despite their break-up during season 4). She has brief romances with Casey, Michael's brother and Randy during the final season and quickly ends it. She rekindles her relationship with Eric at the end of the show's finale.
- Wilmer Valderrama as Fez: The horny foreign exchange student of the group whose hormones are usually out of control. His country of origin is never named. He enjoys eating candy, drinking beer and looking at pornography. He constantly flirts with Jackie and Donna and often makes romantic advances toward them. Initially, he has trouble getting attention from girls, but during the eighth season he becomes a ladies' man. He is in love with Jackie throughout the series but his love is not reciprocated until the eighth season when they become a couple.
- Josh Meyers as Randy Pearson (season 8): Hyde's employee at the record store. He is introduced in the final season. Randy appears laid back, gentle, polite and a ladies' man, although many of his flaws surface later, encompassing parts of the departed Kelso and Eric's personalities and other attributes. Tall (like Kelso), he tends to spout witty one-liners (like Eric), and makes silly voices. He forms a friendship with Red after showing Red how good he is at fixing things. While Hyde, Jackie, Donna and Kelso embrace him as a new member of their group, Fez initially does not, but soon warms up to him. Randy dates Donna for the majority of season eight, but she later breaks up with him. The two end on good terms and remain friends. He makes a brief appearance in the series finale.
Adults
- Debra Jo Rupp as Kitty Forman: Red's wife and mother of Eric and Laurie, and Hyde's informally adoptive mother, Kitty is a cheerful, doting mother, but can also be assertive when pushed. A nurse by profession, she drinks heavily and is a former smoker. Her major mood swings are usually attributed to menopause, although the lack of affection and attention from her daughter (Laurie) and her mother (Bea) is also partly to blame. She is also a nurturing mother figure to Eric's rather dysfunctional friends, especially Fez.
- Kurtwood Smith as Red Forman: Kitty's husband, father of Eric and Laurie, and Hyde's adoptive father. A conservative Navy combat veteran, he served in World War II and the Korean War. Despite his mean exterior, Red also displays a soft side. His hobbies include working with his power tools, drinking beer, watching television, reading the newspaper, hunting and fishing.
- Lisa Robin Kelly (seasons 2–3; recurring season 1; special appearance 5), Christina Moore (recurring, season 6) as Laurie Forman: Eric's attractive but promiscuous, manipulative and dishonest older sister. She flunked out of college during the first season and moves back home with her parents. Laurie enjoys tormenting Eric and manipulating her parents. She is promiscuous, often seen with various men, mainly Eric's friend Kelso, who cheats on his girlfriend Jackie. Eric, Hyde and Donna often mock her promiscuity. She also has a strained relationship with her mother who thinks of her as a freeloader. She leaves the series during the third season, but returns in a recurring role during the fifth. In season five, she marries Fez to prevent him from getting deported. She leaves the series again during season 6 and is never seen again. During the seventh season, she is mentioned as having moved to Canada, where, as Eric puts it drolly, "bottomless dancing is legal".
- Tanya Roberts as Midge Pinciotti (seasons 1–3; special guest appearance seasons 6–7): Bob's wife, Donna's mother, and Kitty's best friend, Midge is the sexy neighborhood mom about whom Eric and his male friends fantasized when coming of age. Although often dim-witted, she later adopts some feminist ideals. She is written out of the series in 2001 after the third season after leaving Bob and moving to California. She returns during the sixth and seventh seasons in a limited recurring role. She is temporarily replaced in Bob's heart by the aggressive, assertive Joanne (played by Mo Gaffney), tall like Midge but not as pretty. She and Bob meet in a supermarket. Red and Joanne almost immediately take a mutual dislike to each other.
- Don Stark as Bob Pinciotti: Midge's husband and Donna's father. Bob often brags about his service in the National Guard, which invariably irritates Red, a veteran of foreign wars. Bob is known for walking around his house with his robe wide open and no underwear. He eats constantly, even in bed. Bob is almost always in a good mood and is a ladies' man. His best friend is Red, who usually considers him to be a nuisance. He usually takes the brunt of Red's abuse in a jolly manner.
- Tommy Chong as Leo Chingkwake (seasons 4 & 8; special guest seasons 2–3 & 7): A hippie, and the owner of a Foto Hut at which Hyde once worked, Leo is an Army veteran who served in World War II, where he was awarded a Purple Heart. Leo often puts play before work and maintains an easy-going attitude in most things, business included. He disappears from the series after season four, but is later referenced in season five's "The Battle of Evermore" when the gang goes on a mission to find him, but with no luck. He returns in season seven and remains on the series until the show's end. In Season 8, he gets a new job working for Hyde at Grooves.
Episodes
| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | ||||
| 1 | 25 | August 23, 1998 | July 26, 1999 | ||
| 2 | 26 | September 28, 1999 | May 22, 2000 | ||
| 3 | 25 | October 3, 2000 | May 22, 2001 | ||
| 4 | 27 | September 25, 2001 | May 21, 2002 | ||
| 5 | 25 | September 17, 2002 | May 14, 2003 | ||
| 6 | 25 | October 29, 2003 | May 19, 2004 | ||
| 7 | 25 | September 8, 2004 | May 18, 2005 | ||
| 8 | 22 | November 2, 2005 | May 18, 2006 | ||
Timeline
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Throughout the first two seasons, episodes opened with title cards showing the season/month and year (example: Late Spring, 1977 or June 1977). These, however, were largely abandoned after season 2, with few subsequent episodes using them. However, they were used again in the final episode, showing "December 31, 1979 10:45 a.m." From the premiere onward, the episode's year could be determined by the registration tags on Eric's Vista Cruiser at the end of the opening and closing credits. The final episode's closing credits showed an "80" year tag.
The show was set in May 1976 in the August 23, 1998 premiere. After 12 episodes, the series transitioned to 1977. The 23rd episode, "Grandma's Dead", was also set in 1976, because it was supposed to be the season finale of season 1. The show remained in 1977 for the next two seasons. Near the end of the third season, the series transitioned to 1978 until early in the sixth season. The remaining episodes took place in 1979, and the series finale abruptly ends during a New Year's Eve party as the characters reach "one" during a countdown to January 1, 1980.
The show's unexpected longevity (it was the only series to debut on Fox in 1998 to survive cancellation) combined with the first season jump to 1977 necessitated a slow-down of the series' timeline. Over time, this proved problematic from a narrative standpoint, as nearly every year featured a Thanksgiving and/or Christmas episode, and the teen-aged actors playing high-school student characters all aged into their mid-20s by the time their characters graduated from high school after five seasons (except Mila Kunis, who was not quite 20). As the series timeline sped up and slowed down with more rapidity near the series' climax, the timeline necessitated that several major events depicted as having occurred months apart would have in fact happened within weeks or even days of one another.
The timeline issues experienced on the show were not unprecedented, as other period-specific TV series have had similar issues. Most notably, M*A*S*H aired for 11 seasons despite the Korean War only lasting three years. Additionally, many TV series over the years that take place in the present time have characters age faster than normal while other characters age naturally.
Eighth season and series finale
The character of Eric Forman was written out of the series at the end of the seventh season, as Topher Grace wanted to move on with his career.[2] Ashton Kutcher switched to a recurring guest role when he also chose to depart following the seventh season.[2] However, Kelso had not been written out yet, so to give better closure to the character, Kutcher appeared in the first four episodes of the eighth season (credited as a special guest star) and later returned for the finale. Tommy Chong (who began reappearing by late season 7 after a long absence) became a regular again to help fill Kelso's role as the dimwit of the group. Eric was originally supposed to be replaced by his new friend Charlie, played by Bret Harrison, as an "innocent character", who proved fairly popular with audiences, but the character was killed off after Harrison was offered a lead role in the series The Loop.[3] Another new character named Randy Pearson, played by Josh Meyers, was introduced to take the place of both Eric and, to a lesser extent, Charlie.[4] Another new character, Samantha, a stripper played by Judy Tylor, was added as Hyde's wife for nine episodes. The location of the show's introductory theme song was changed from the Vista Cruiser to the circle. Both Eric and Kelso returned for the series' final episode, although Topher Grace was uncredited.The eighth season was announced as the final season of the show on January 17, 2006,[5] and "That '70s Finale" was filmed a month later on February 17, 2006, first airing on May 18, 2006.[6]
Production
Title
The working titles for the show were Teenage Wasteland (named after the lyric from The Who's "Baba O'Riley"), The Kids Are Alright (named after The Who's song of the same name), Feelin' All Right, and Reeling in the Years (named after Steely Dan's song of the same name). However, due to the denials of these three songs from the 1970s (including Pete Townshend's denial of using his two songs for each of the two titles), and Fox Network's decision that Feelin' All Right was not too memorable, co-creator Bonnie Turner suggested that the show should be titled That '70s Show, which became the official title.[7]Opening
Theme song
The show usually opens with the theme song, "In the Street", written by Alex Chilton and Chris Bell of the band Big Star. The original version of the song appeared on Big Star's 1972 debut album #1 Record. In 2000, Chilton confirmed that he was paid $70 in royalties each time the show aired, an amount he thought ironic, given the show's title.[8]Big Star's original version of the song was not used on the show. Instead, a cover version sung by Todd Griffin was used as the theme song for the show's first season. Beginning in the second season, the theme song was performed by the band Cheap Trick. Unlike previous versions of the song, Cheap Trick ended the song with the repeated phrase "We're all alright!" quoting the ending of their 1978 hit song "Surrender".[9]
Both versions of the song (Todd Griffin and Cheap Trick) used on the show end with somebody yelling "Hello, Wisconsin!" In Griffin's version, Masterson is the one yelling "Hello, Wisconsin!"[10] while it is unknown who yells it in Cheap Trick's version during the opening. On the soundtrack, That '70s Album (Rockin'), Cheap Trick's lead singer Robin Zander yells "Hello, Wisconsin!"[11] Alternate holiday versions of the theme song were arranged for Halloween and Christmas specials, using organ music and bells, respectively.
Opening credits
Opening credits for seasons 1–7 showed members of the cast driving in Eric's car singing the theme song together. At the conclusion of the opening, a shot of a 1970s-style Wisconsin license plate (black letters/numbers on a yellow background) is seen, showing the year in which the episode was taking place in the bottom right corner. During the first season's opening, a single shot of the group is used; beginning with season 2, numerous alternating shots were used of the cast in various groupings (including the adult cast members, who had not appeared in the first season's opening).After Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher left the series, the opening credits were reworked for season 8 to feature close-up shots of each of the actors singing (or mouthing) a line of the theme song in the Circle (for example, Mila Kunis "Hanging Out...;" Danny Masterson "Down the Street"). The only actors to not say or do anything in the new opening credits were Kurtwood Smith and Tommy Chong, with the exception of the first episode of season 8, when Chong sings the last "We're all alright". Smith looks at the camera frowning and rolls his eyes. Chong looks around the room, confused as he hears "Hello, Wisconsin!" The final episode omits most of the opening sequence and instead only shows the license plate shot.
Elements of the show
The 1970s
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Beginning with the second season, the show focused less on the sociopolitical aspects of the story. For example, the dynamic of the relationship between Eric and Donna was altered in later seasons to more closely resemble the relationships of other "power couples" on teen dramas. Likewise, the first season of the show featured a recurring, more dramatic storyline in which the Formans were in danger of losing their home due to Red's hours being cut back at the auto parts plant where he worked. Storylines in later seasons were generally presented more comically and less dramatically.
The show also featured guest-starring actors from 1970s TV shows, such as Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper and Betty White (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Tom Poston and Jack Riley (The Bob Newhart Show), Pamela Sue Martin (The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries), Tim Reid and Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinnati), Eve Plumb, Barry Williams and Christopher Knight (The Brady Bunch), Tom Bosley and Marion Ross (Happy Days), Monty Hall (Let's Make A Deal), Gavin MacLeod (The Love Boat and The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Don Knotts, Richard Kline and Jenilee Harrison (Three's Company), and Danny Bonaduce and Shirley Jones (The Partridge Family). Series recurring cast member Tanya Roberts also starred in a popular show in the 1970s (Charlie's Angels).
Beginning with season 5, each episode in the series is named after a song by a rock band that was famous in the 1970s: Led Zeppelin (season 5), The Who (Season 6), The Rolling Stones (season 7), and Queen (season 8, except for the finale, titled "That '70s Finale").[14]
Split screens
One device in the show is to present a split screen in which two pairs of characters speak. One character is usually seeking advice on a problem with a character in the second pairing and the other character advises them. Although the conversations appear to mirror each other, notable differences often occur. It is most often used by the couples of the show, with each member of the couple being advised on the relationship. For example, in the episode "Who Wants It More?", Donna and Eric tell Jackie and Hyde that they have been holding out on each other sexually for three days and that maybe they should cave. Both Jackie and Hyde tell Donna and Eric not to cave or the "caver" will be owned by the other.Dream sequences
The show includes character daydream sequences, some of which refer to or parody fads and films of the time, such as Star Wars, Rocky, and Grease.The character picturing the dream sometimes also narrates it, but regardless, the other characters present see the same dream. In the episode "Stone Cold Crazy", Jackie mentioned she liked the song playing in Fez's dream sequence. The sequences are usually introduced by a wobbling screen transition. Sometimes, the transition is absent when the characters who imagine the scene believe they are real (for example, Eric's dream about Donna in "Eric's Birthday" or Jackie's dream about Hyde proposing in "It's All Over Now").
In the 100th episode, "That '70s Musical", all singing scenes were Fez's dream sequences.
The circle
The circle illustrated the teens' marijuana use, usually in Eric's basement. The picture is of the final scene of the series.
In the circle, a group of characters, usually the teenagers, sit in a circle (generally in Eric's basement, though occasionally el
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