That '70s Show

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That '70s Show
Image:That '70s Show logo.png That '70s Show logo
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Writen by
Starring
Music by
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Release Date(s)
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Running Time
Preceded by
Followed by

That '70s Show is a Fox Network television sitcom centered around the lives of a group of teenagers living in the fictional town of Point Place, Wisconsin during the late 1970s. It debuted on August 23, 1998.

Although the show has been on for seven years, the timeline has been noticeably slowed. When the show first began in 1998, the show was set in May 1976, and in the past seven seasons, only three years have gone by. The series was set in 1977 from the middle of its first season to the end of the third, and then in 1978 until the sixth season. Currently, the show is vaguely set in "1979," but new holiday-themed episodes run every year so the sense of time on That '70s Show is loose at best.

1 About the show
2 Theme song
3 Trivia
4 8th Season changes
5 Parallels with Happy Days
6 Special guests
7 Crew
8 See also
9 External links

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About the show

The first working title for the Fox Network series was called Teenage Wasteland, before being changed to That '70s Show. Other names were The Kids Are Alright, Feelin' All Right, and Reeling in the Years. That '70s Show is one of the longest continuous running sitcoms for Fox in the US.

The show was remade by the British ITV network as Days Like These using almost verbatim scripts with minor changes to cultural references. The show failed to attract an audience and was removed from the schedules after 10 of the 13 episodes had been broadcast. The remaining three episodes were shown in a later run of repeats.

The show follows the life of geeky Everyman Eric Forman (Topher Grace) and his five teenaged friends: next-door neighbor Donna Pinciotti (Laura Prepon), his feminist girlfriend; Steven Hyde (Danny Masterson), a disillusioned hard-rocking stoner; Michael Kelso (Ashton Kutcher), an unintelligent narcissistic ladies man; Jackie Burkhart (Mila Kunis), a self-involved high school cheerleader extremely concerned with wealth and status; and Fez (Wilmer Valderrama), the nicknamed goofy foreigner whose country of origin is ambiguous, whose real name is unknown to all but him, and whose hormones are out of control. Eric drives a 1969 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, a station wagon given to him by his father. Image:That 70s Show Cast.jpg Other main characters include Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith), Eric's overbearing veteran father, obsessed with making "...him a man, which he's not" (Red Forman: episode 421: Prank Day)and using the word "dumbass" frequently ; his overprotective menopausal mother, Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp), who is caught up in trying to be a fulltime mom and housewife, while maintaining a job as a nurse in a local hospital; and Laurie Forman (Lisa Robin Kelly, 1998-2001, 2002-2003; Christina Moore, 2004-2005), the promiscuous older sister who can do no wrong in the eyes of their father. The show also follows the relationship of Bob and Midge Pinciotti (Don Stark, Tanya Roberts), Donna's parents, both of whom are slow witted and easily influenced by the movements and fads of the '70s, which sometimes places stress on their marriage. Tommy Chong also appears as the recurring character of Leo, the stoner owner of the Foto Hut [sic].

The show has gained recognition for providing a bold retrospective to a decade full of political events and technological milestones that have dramatically shaped the world today. The show manages to use smart humor in tackling all significant characteristics of 1970s America, dealing with major political movements such as feminism, new attitudes towards sexuality, economic hardships of recession, a developing lack of trust from blue collar workers in American government, as well as the use of marijuana among teenagers and impact of new technology on entertainment, from the TV remote (or "the clicker"), to Pong.

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Theme song

The show usually opens with the theme song, "In the Street," by Alex Chilton and Chris Bell of the band Big Star. Beginning with the second season, the song was performed by the band Cheap Trick. The lyrics are as follows:

Hanging out, down the street
The same old thing we did last week
Not a thing to do, but talk to you
We're all alright! We're all alright!

The final part ("We're All Alright!") is from the Cheap Trick song "Surrender". Robin Zander (the lead singer of Cheap Trick) yells "Hello Wisconsin!" at the end of the complete single (heard during the show's first season). In subsequent seasons, the line is yelled by Ashton Kutcher ("Michael Kelso"). In earlier episodes, the lyrics were the same except for "We're all alright!" being shouted twice, they said "Whoa yeah!"

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Trivia

This show is linked with its spinoff, That '80s Show, via the character of Eric Forman (whose cousin is the lead character in the 80s version). That '80s Show, however, only aired for half a season before being cancelled.
Laura Prepon genuinely hated the Catholic school girl uniform she was forced to wear during the fifth season.
Donna has a younger sister, Tina, who appears in one episode. Valerie is an elder sister of Donna's who is also mentioned. Neither are ever seen again (at the end of one episode, an announcer showed a picture of Midge thinking at a table, with the announcer intoning "What happened to Midge's daughter Tina?"). This phenomenon is often referred to as Chuck Cunningham syndrome. Donna's mom (Midge Pinciotti) leaves her family for California but returns at a later time.
The gang lives in a fictional Wisconsin town called "Point Place." It does not have a specific location, but speculation has come from various trips they have taken that Point Place is a pseudonym for Racine, WI. or Stevens Point In the wrestling episode, in which The Rock is the guest star, they talk about going down to Kenosha. In another episode, they talk about going up to Milwaukee. Racine is located between these two cities. According to the official homepage though, Point Place is a suburb of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The original title was "Teenage Wasteland" and later "The Kids Are Alright", both of which are popular lyrics by the rock band The Who("The Kids Are Alright" is the title of a song, "Teenage Wasteland" is commonly mistaken as the title for the song "Baba O'Reilly"), but these titles could not be used due to legal rights. Another title that couldn't be used due to legal rights was "Reelin' in the Years". The show was announced as "Feelin' Alright" but the name had few supporters. They settled on calling it "That '70s Show" because people who came out of the test audiences would say "I like that 70s show" or "I like that show about the 70s."
Red Forman's real, full name is Reginald Albert Forman.
Mila Kunis and Laura Prepon are often filmed sitting down due to the 7 inch height difference. At 5'3", Mila does not fit into the frame with Laura, who is 5'10".
Numerous stars of the 1970s have appeared on the show in guest roles, including Danny Bonaduce and Eve Plumb.
The Rock appeared as his own father, Rocky Johnson.
The bride and the bridesmaids in the episode "The First Time" are all former Bond Girls. Tanya Roberts, who played Midge, is also a former Bond girl.
In the episode where we see Fez's first day at school, Hyde asks him what his name is. As he is saying his name, the school bell rings the whole time and Hyde says, "We'll never be able to remember that. I'll just call you Fez." Fez was actually stating the first names of all the actors on the show, with "Ashton Kutcher" as the first name he states.
There are repeated references to Ashton Kutcher's role in Dude, Where's My Car? (2000). In the Hitchcock episode, Kelso (played by Kutcher) tells the paper boy, "This is a case of mistaken identity", a phrase he used many times in "Dude...". In the episode "It's a Wonderful Life", Kelso's future wife says she'll be waiting in the LeCar. Kutcher's character in "Dude..." also drove a LeCar. Ashton also uses the line, "LeCar for LeZak," in Just Married (2003).
The fifth season episode titles are all Led Zeppelin song titles, the sixth season are all The Who songs, the seventh season are all Rolling Stones songs and the eighth season's titles are all Queen songs.
Mila Kunis was only 14 years old when she auditioned for the role of Jackie. She lied about her age. The show has made a couple references to this, In a scene in the FotoHut Leo says "You're 18? You look like you're 14".
The music and rhythm of the opening theme song changed from the first season to the second season, but the lyrics did not change. Although the music of the show's opening theme has not changed since season 2, the actions and cast members in the car in the opening have changed several times over the course of the show's run.
Jackie and Kitty are the only characters who address Kelso by his first name, Michael. Kitty, Red and later Jackie are the only characters who address Hyde by his first name, Steven (after Jackie starts dating him in the 5th season).
Hyde almost always addresses Eric by his surname of Forman. The only two times Hyde addresses Eric by his first name is in the opening of the pilot, when Hyde, Kelso and Donna are pressuring Eric to steal beer from the party his parents are throwing on the main floor and on the episode 'Donna dates a Kelso' during Eric's fantasy dream sequence 'Pick a Chick'.
Leo's full first name is Leonard. He drove a supply truck in World War II and received a medal that "was shaped like a purple heart."
One of the shows running gags includes the gang going up to the local water tower to paint some symbol of teenage or stoner culture, or something offensive (i.e. a pot leaf, the finger, etc.) or just to drink beer, and every time, someone falls off of the water tower (usually Hyde or Kelso, and at one point, Fez). This gag was highlighted in the 8th season premiere when Kitty and Donna were making an audio tape to send to Eric, and they remember when the gang found a new friend to hang out with named Charlie. In the flashback, Charlie falls off of the water tower, while his new friends wonder if he's OK. Kelso dismisses this, saying that no one dies falling off of the water tower. Kitty then tells Eric the water tower was renamed "The Charlie Robertson Memorial Water Tower".

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8th Season changes

Several changes were made to the Red Forman and Leo characters in the 8th season. Red revealed that he is a veteran of World War II (though this does not preclude him from serving in the Korean War, too, as was claimed earlier in the series). However, in the third season episode "Backstage Pass" Red said that he was in Korea in 1952 and 1953, and he when he met Kitty at a USO dance, he was far too young to have served in WWII. Leo, the aging hippie, was reintroduced as Leonard, a supply truck driver in WWII. Neither character mentioned military service in WWII in earlier episodes.

Both Eric Forman and Michael Kelso were written out the series following the seventh season finale, due to the actors' opting to pursue interests outside That's 70's Show. Kelso's Slang- Tales of strange "cold lights" is not new. Father Evariste-Regis Huc (1813-1860) traveled extensively in Asia and left a description of an ever-burning lamp that he had seen in Tibet.

In 1963, at a conference on street lighting and traffic in Pretoria, South Africa, C.S. Downey talked about a village in the jungle near Mount Wilhelmina in the western part of New Guinea (which had been cut off from civilization) with "a system of artificial illumination equal, if not superior, to the 20th century." Traders who had penetrated this remote area lost amid high mountains said they "were terrified to see many moons suspended in the air and shining with great brightness all night long." These artificial moons were large stone balls mounted on pillars. After sunset, they would glow a strange neonlike light.

Ion Idriessa, a well known Australian writer who lived among the Torres Strait islanders, wrote in his Drums of Mer a story about booyas, a term he got from the old aborigines. A booya is a round stone set in a large bamboo socket. When the chief pointed the stone toward the sky, a thunderbolt flashed. This "cold light" was so brilliant it enveloped all near it.

On the other side of the Pacific, Barco Centenera, a memoirist of the conquistadors, wrote about the discovery of a strange source of illumination in South America. In 1601, he wrote about the island city of Gran Moxo, near the source of the Paraquay River in the Matto Grosso, stating: "On the summit of a 7.75 meter pillar was a great moon, which illuminated all the lake, dispelling darkness."

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Parallels with Happy Days

That '70s Show lifted the basic template from the classic sitcom Happy Days, both in the time period being two decades prior to filming, and the protagonist (Eric/Richie) and his parents giving a roof to the streetwise cool kid (Hyde/Fonzie). The characters of That '70s Show frequently watch Happy Days on TV, whilst direct homages include an episode where Kelso wears a new leather jacket and is mocked by his friends for trying to impersonate the Fonz, until he throws the jacket away and it is worn by Hyde whom everyone immediately accepts in this look. In another episode Fez imagines a tribute scene where he water skis over a shark.

Warped inversions of the Happy Days style include Eric's sister Laurie, a slutty evil girl a million miles from Richie's sister, the innocent Joanie.

An unintentional yet close mirror is in the departure of the protagonist (Eric/Richie) and the joker (Kelso/Ralph) toward the end of the series run.

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