Overclocked On Caffeine v.1.1

That 70s Show Season 1-6

153 24-minute episodes

When I was in high school, there were two shows I used to follow religiously. One was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the other was That 70s Show. The timing of both was uncanny, since they were both lined up with my own high school experiences. Okay, so I wasn't fighting vampires and demons on a nightly basis, and I didn't exactly live next door to a hot redheaded neighbour girl, but everything else? Spot on.

The show centres around Eric Foreman, resident of the town of Point Place, Wisconsin, and the, generally dumb things he and his friends get up to in (wait for it) the 1970s. As set-ups go, that's all you need, and placing it in the 1970s ensures you don't get any unfortunate dated pop culture references, the bane of any show that trys to be 'modern'. Sure, you're looking smart by talking about the latest big band now, but give it six months, and you'reprobably going to look just a little bit silly.

The first two seasons are as sharp as you could hope for. The dialogue is often hilarious and the cast deliver it with spot-on timing. It's hard not to like the cast, from Kelso's idiocy, to Hyde's repeated manifestos about his distrust of The Man, a trait that sadly gets phased out as the series progresses. If the show doesn't remind you of someone you knew as a kid, or something you did, you probably should've done more.

THe one failing of the show is the same one that all sitcoms go through - complacency. Eric and Donna remain much the same from the first to the last, but all the other characters wind up being identified by their character traits more than anything: Red threatens to put his foot in someone's ass roughly three times a second, to the point where they start to throw it in if they can't think of a punchline. Kelso, prone to moments of insight and actual intelligence at times, is made the living avatar of Derp pretty swiftly, amd Jackie... well, she was always meant to be annoying, abrasive and irritating, so it'd be hard to have her devolve into a one-note character.

On the whole, though, the series is still damn funny - it must be, or I wouldn't have watched six seasons of it back to back over the course of about 5 days. Watching it reminded me of all the stupid crap we used to get up to in school, sitting around, talking absolute bollocks while listening to music, deciding we were going to conquer the world before the age of 21. The show manages to capture that feeling perfectly, even though half the cast are over the age of 25 by the third season. Yeah, the show's trading on nostalgia in a way, but sometimes, that's a good thing. Watch the first season at the very least, try to pretend the last season didn't happen. Blonde Donna... what the hell were they thinking?!