The following contains minor spoilers for That ’90s Show.The long-anticipatedThat ’90s Showhas finally premiered on Netflix, and fans of the originalThat ’70s Showwere excited to see where the story of the Formans would go next.That ’90s Showis a continuation of the original show about a group of teenagers in 1970s Wisconsin (which, ironically, aired in the ’90s), following a new group of teenagers led by Leia Forman, the daughter of Eric and Donna from the original series. She’s staying with her grandparents Red and Kitty for the summer (in the iconic house fromThat ’70s Show), and gets into various misadventures with a brand new cast of characters that she makes friends with.
The idea is to have a similar formula to the original show, but with a different (and more diverse) group of kids so that it can stillfeel distinct from whatThat ’70s Showdid. This is a good way to go about a reboot, in theory, butThat ’90s Showfails to get its characters to connect in the same way that the original did. It’s not just the nostalgia for the original talking either; there’s something about the way the new characters are written that comes off a little flat.
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Part of the point of a first season is to introduce the setting and the characters to the audience, so it’s understandable that characters might not connect right away. Sometimes the audience needs a little bit of time to sit with them and become more familiar with their traits. In atraditional network TV sitcomseason that’s around 24 episodes, there is plenty of time to do this. However, the streaming model has led to much shorter seasons, which means thatThat ’90s Showonly has 10 episodes to work with to get its whole story across. This, in turn, means that they don’t have as much time to spend with each character, and some of them get left to the wayside.
In a sitcom like this with an ensemble cast, the characters will often fall into very basic archetypes in order to make their personalities easy to identify.That ’70s Showdid this well, withKelso as the lovable idiot, Eric as the nerd with a heart of gold, and Jackie as the self-obsessed girly-girl. The characters developed past these stereotypes as the seasons went on, but the audience understands what their roles in the group are pretty much from the get-go.
That ’90s Showmanages to do this to a certain extent, but only some characters have definable traits. Nate is the dumb jock, Gwen is into the riot grrrl movement, andLeia is the sheltered good girlwho learns to break out of her shell over the summer. However, other characters, like Nikki or Jay, never get explored that deeply and feel like they’re just kind of…there. Nikki is basically just “Nate’s girlfriend” over the course of the season (in a similar role to Jackie’s in the first season of the original show, just without as much personality). In a later episode, it seems as though she is being characterized as someone who is academic and loves school, which could have been a really interesting angle for her character as the person who’s dating Nate, but it takes too long for any of this information to be revealed.
Jay, on the other hand, has almost no personality at all other than being a bit of a dummy sometimes, and feels like a toned-down version of Nate. His lack of character is particularly troubling because he’s also the main love interest of the show, and it makes it difficult to get invested in his and Leia’s relationship when the audience knows nothing about him.
The show throws a lot of new faces at the audience, as well as cramming in a bunch of the old ones, so it can be difficult to keep track of who’s who and how these characters relate to each other when it feels like things are going at a break-neck pace.The character dynamicsare helped inThat ’70s Showby the fact that it’s established almost immediately that this is a friend group who has known each other for a while, and the audience is meeting them in the middle of their journey together.That ’90s Show, on the other hand, has Leia meet the new group (who appear to already be friends with each other, though it’s never clear how close they are) and have to form a relationship with them over the season.
In this way, the characters feel new to each other as well as the audience, which means that there’s no sense of familiarity, and the viewer is left wondering why these people hang out with each other when they don’t seem to be that close in the first place. None of the characters (aside from Jay and Nate) appear to have any sort of close friendships with each other outside of their friendship with Leia. It’s fine, and perhaps necessary, for this group to have atotally different relationshipwith each other than the original kids did, but it makes the whole group feel a little empty when the audience can’t feel that deep well of childhood friendship between them.
Again, it feels unfair to be critical of this aspect when they only had 10 episodes to work with, but that in itself is a good argument for bringing longer seasons back to streaming, to give the writers adequate time to develop the characters and endear them to the audience. It takes until the very end of the first season for the viewer to feel like they know these kids at all, and by then the show is already over. This is especially troubling when the group is naturally going to be compared to the original cast that they are an imitation of. When a reboot just leaves the audience wanting to sit with the old characters instead (who are some of the best parts of the show -Red and Kitty specifically), then something has gone wrong with the writing process.
It doesn’t matter how manynostalgic ’90s referencesor fun sitcom hijinks there are, a show is only as strong as its characters. This is one aspect whereThat ’90s Showfalls short, and it’s a shame because the characters had the potential to be interesting and provide a different dynamic to the one from the original show. If the show continues, this is something that could be improved with simply more time spent with the characters, as well as storylines that develop them as people rather than just putting them into crazy situations (though every sitcom needs a good dose of that as well).That ’90s Showcertainly had a lot to live up to, and hopefully it can manage to get on the same level as its parent show if it’s given the chance.
