That '70s Show: Cast Photo - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

That '70s Show aired from August 1998 until August 2006 on FOX.

Set in rural Point Place, Wisconsin, in 1976, this bright sitcom lampooned the activities of high school junior Eric Forman ( Topher Grace) and his friends during the height of the disco era. The other featured teens were Donna ( Laura Prepon), the sexy redhead who lived next door and was sweet on Eric; hunky Kelso ( Ashton Kutcher), who was incredibly naive and gullible; Jackie ( Mila Kunis), Kelso's spoiled girlfriend; Hyde ( Danny Masterson), a counter-culture conspiracy theorist; and Fez ( Wilmer Valderrama), a wide-eyed foreign exchange student. Signs of the times were everywhere: leisure suits, platform shoes, acid rock, long hair, and streaking. Eric's mother Kitty ( Debra Jo Rupp), was a slightly flighty nurse, and his dad Red ( Kurtwood Smith), who was always threatening to kick his ass, had recently been reduced to part-time work at the plant. His sister Laurie ( Lisa Robin Kelly ), was a college freshman who, in February, was flunking out of the University of Wisconsin. Donna's pudgy, gross father, Bob ( Don Stark), owned an appliance store and hired Red to work for him over the Christmas holidays. Midge ( played by former Charlie's Angels, Tanya Roberts) was Donna's mother, and Leo ( Tommy Chong) was a spaced out hippie who was also Hyde's boss at a garage. Much of the action took place in the Forman basement, where the kids hung out.

In the fall of 1999 Hyde moved in with the Formans because his parents had gone on a long trip ( they had abandoned him), and Laurie, living at home since flunking out of college, was having recreational sex with dumb Kelso. When the plant closed down, Red got a job as a supervisor at the new Price Mart discount store. After the first of the year Eric and Donna finally made love and soon after, their disapproving parents found out. Bob and Midge were so upset about it that they broke up their friendship with Red and Kitty. Jackie and Kelso broke up again after she found out he had been cheating on her with Laurie and they continued to fight.

In September 2000, Jackie decided she was in love with Hyde, who could barely stand her. In December Bob's appliance store went bankrupt because he couldn't compete with Price Mart. After the first of the year Kelso tried to get Jackie back but, to the relief of Fez who had the hots for her, he failed. Laurie decided to go to beauty school and was dropped from the credits early in 2001 ( Lisa Robin Kelly had developed a drug problem and was fired from the show). Then Jackie made up with Kelso and they started dating again, while Fez was involved with psychotic , possessive Caroline ( Allison Munn), and Eric broke up with Donna because she had doubts about their long-term future.

Early in the 2001-2002 season Donna and Eric decided to be friends. In November Midge, who had not been seen since the start of the season, deserted her family and moved to California; Bob, when his initial depression lifted started dating beefy Joanne ( Mo Gaffney). When her father found out that Jackie and Kelso were back together, he cut her off financially and she took a job at a cheese store to make money. In May Bob's divorce became final, Big Rhonda ( Cynthia LaMontagne) dumped Fez and Jackie tricked Kelso into asking her to marry him. At the end of the season Donna ran away to California to be with her mother, and Kelso who didn't want to get married went with her.

In the fall of 2002 Donna and Kelso came back home and Jackie was dating Hyde, who apparently had had a change of heart about her. Kitty announced she was pregnant ( she later found out she was actually starting menopause) and started to have wild mood swings, none of which made Red very happy. When Kelso found out that Jackie was dating Hyde he got jealous and tried to break them up. Fez had a short-lived affair with Nina ( Joanna Canton), his boss at the DMV, but she dumped him because he was too "needy." When Eric told his parents that he and Donna were engaged, Red was upset but he eventually gave him his blessing. After graduation, which the gang had missed because they overslept on a camping trip the night before, Donna and Eric were moving to Madison where they would be starting college in the fall,Jackie was undecided about whether to comit to Hyde or Kelso, and Laurie ,who had moved back home a few weeks earlier, married Fez so he could avoid being deported to his homeland-wherever that was.

The 2003-2004 season began with Jackie choosing Hyde over the phalandering Kelso; Eric still living at home to help out while Red recovered from a heart attack; and Donna deciding not to start school because she wouldn't leave Eric. She got a job as the disc jockey "Hot Donna" on a local FM station, WFPP. Fez's sham marriage to Laurie (who was now played by Christina Moore ) fizzled and she left the show permanently. With the gang's help, he got his green card. Kelso, who was training to become a cop, found out that Brooke ( Shannon Elizabeth) was pregnant from her one-night stand with him and was excited about the prospects of becoming a father. It took a while for him to establish a working relationship with her and late in the season she moved to Chicago with the baby, Betsy. In March Jackie's sexy mother, Pam ( Brooke Shields), unexpectedly returned from Mexico and started dating Bob. At season's end Eric and Donna were about to get married but he got cold feet and they called it off. Hyde found out his real father was W.B. ( Tim Reid ), a successful black Milwaukee businessman who owned a chain of record stores.

In the fall of 2004 Eric and Donna, who had dyed her red hair blond, were still on good terms while Bob was trying to decide whether to be with Pam or his ex, Midge. Pam told him to get back together with Midge but it didn't work out and she went back to California in November. Meanwhile Eric decided to take a year off to think about his future and Red, who hadn't worked since his heart attack bought a bankruped muffler shop. After Hyde had problems adjusting to work at W.B.'s corporate office, his father made him comanager of a local record store with his ambitious stepsister, Angie (Megalyn Echikunwoke), who had an affair with Kelso. She broke up with him when she left town and W.B. put Hyde, who had hired spaced out hippie Leo, in charge of the record store. In April Kelso and Fez moved into their own apartment and Eric decided to take a job teaching in Africa, to raise money for college, since Red had spent his college fund on the muffler shop ( Topher Grace had decided to leave the series).

At the start of the last season Hyde who had taken a trip to Las Vegas after his latest breakup with Jackie, returned with Sam (Judy Tylor), a stripper he had married during a drinking binge. After they got back, he hired Randy ( Josh Myers) to work at the record store with Leo, who had run it into the ground in his absence. Randy started dating Donna in February after Eric sent her a "Dear Joan" letter from Africa. When Kelso moved to Chicago to take his dream job as a security guard at the Playboy Club ( Ashton Kutcher left the show) , Jackie moved into his room at the apartment he had shared with Fez. Later in the spring Jackie realized she had a crush on Fez; Sam went back to Vegas after Hyde found out she was already married ( but it was an amicable separation); and Red retired.

In the series finale everyone gathered together for the last New Year's Eve of the '70s. Kelso returned to be with the gang, Jackie and Fez had their first kiss, Kitty and Red decided to stay in Point Place rather than move to Florida with Bob, W.B. gave Hyde the record store after selling the rest of the chain and-at midnight-Eric showed up and passionately made up with Donna.

The executive producers were Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner.

A Review from The New York Times

TELEVISION REVIEW; Discovering a Bit of Heart in the Sitcom Cupboard

By RON WERTHEIMER
Published: August 22, 1998

The trappings of ''That 70's Show'' are specific. The decade is invoked through leisure suits and bell bottoms; lava lamps, smiley faces and the Hustle, and references to Todd Rundgren and the gasoline shortage. But the appeal of this new sitcom, which Fox is unveiling tomorrow night, is its universal heart. Peering out from beneath the laugh track is the coming-of-age story of a 17-year-old boy and the girl next door, his lifelong pal who has unsettlingly become the object of his hormone-soaked reverie.

If neither the decade nor the adolescent yearnings were ever this sweet, the nostalgia is appealingly packaged by a bunch of seasoned pros. The executive producers include Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach (''The Cosby Show,'' ''Roseanne'' et al.), as well as Bonnie and Terry Turner, creators of ''Third Rock From the Sun,'' who wrote tomorrow's episode.

No one is blazing bold trails. Here is a white suburban family, the Foremans, living in Point Place, Wis., in 1976. Mom (Debra Jo Rupp) is a nurse; Dad (Kurtwood Smith) has some kind of job at which his hours have been cut back. The economy, you know. They have just taken a big step and bought a Toyota. ''The last time I was that close to a Japanese machine, it was shootin' at me,'' says Dad. (Wait a minute. He's in his late 40's in 1976? How old was he in, say, '43? Oh, never mind.) Under their polyester clothes, they are stock parents from television's eternity, a little dim but basically good folks.

When first glimpsed, their son, Eric (Topher Grace), is sitting in the basement rec room with his goofy guy friends, also out of the sitcom cupboard, and that neighbor, the red-haired Donna (Laura Prepon). There is immediate chemistry between these adorable young people. Something is happening that they clearly don't understand. The look in Eric's eye, a mixture of fear, excitement and resignation, is both more eloquent and more funny than the words he speaks. (This show wins higher marks for sit than for com.) As for Donna -- well, if more guys had girls like her next door, a lot of them would never leave home.

Eric and his friends are a bit more rebellious than Richie Cunningham's gang on ''Happy Days,'' a decade-clinging show this series inevitably calls to mind. The 70's teen-agers swipe some beer and smoke some pot. But Eric's guilty pleasure comes from taking the family car all the way to Milwaukee against Dad's orders. The sweetness here is never saccharine, but it might seem rather mild to viewers just coming off a half-hour of ''The Simpsons.''

The second episode, to be shown next week (written by the Turners and Mark Brazil), has more laughs. When Eric and his friends are having an unsupervised (though tame) party at home, his mother imagines the worst: they're recklessly endangering her furniture by -- gasp! -- not using coasters.

Despite the joke count, this show will rise or fall on the quiet adventures of Eric and Donna. Clunky heels or not, you've been in their shoes. And you know that some day she's going to break his heart.

THAT 70'S SHOW
Fox, tomorrow night at 8:30
(Channel 5 in New York)

Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner and Mark Brazill, creators and executive producers; Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach, executive producers; produced by Franco E. Bario; pilot written by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner and Mark Brazill; directed by Terry Hughes; music by Ben Vaughn; ''That 70's Song'' based on ''In the Street'' by ALex Chilton and Chris Bell; sung by Todd Griffin. A Carsey-Werner Production.

WITH: Topher Grace, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson, Laura Prepon, Wilmer Valderrama, Debra Jo Rupp, Kurtwood Smith, Tanya Roberts and Don Stark.

Correction: August 25, 1998, Tuesday A picture caption on Saturday with a television review of ''That 70's Show'' misidentified one cast member. The actor at the left was Topher Grace. (Wilmer Valderrama also appeared in the show.)

A Review from Time Magazine

That 70's Show
Monday, Aug. 24, 1998
By JAMES COLLINS

Among the first network debuts of the fall season, this series began to create controversy months ago because a scene in the pilot suggests that the teenage characters have been smoking pot. In fact, their stoned conversation is the funniest thing in the whole episode. Produced by the teams that created Roseanne, The Cosby Show and 3rd Rock from the Sun, That 70's Show is otherwise a typical teen comedy, only with '70s artifacts pasted into it. Satirizing smiley faces and leisure suits is hardly fresh, although there's a sweetness and likability to the cast, led by Eric Foreman. The show may be more sophisticated than its '70s equivalent, Happy Days (also set 20 years before its own time), but that's not saying much.

--By James Collins

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on September 11. 1998

Cover Story
High Anxiety
Has THAT '70S SHOW gone one toke over the line in its bell-bottomed trip down memory lane?

By Dan Snierson

It's not like they haven't tried this before. In fact, 12 short months ago, Fox was ballyhooing the return of the '70s with its wacky new retro-com, Rewind. Viewers dutifully plugged in the lava lamps and braced themselves for perhaps the scariest artifact of them all: Scott Baio. But then, in one of those mellow-harshing TV-biz moves, the creatively troubled Rewind was canceled on the eve of its debut.

Well, choke us on a cloud of pot smoke if the smiley face isn't back. And this time (just so you won't go mistaking it for some '80s series) it's conveniently titled That '70s Show, a throwback sitcom about kids stuck in rural Wisconsin with nothing to do but sit around a cruddy basement and wear tight clothes. ''It's teenage life told in the most honest way imaginable,'' says Fox Entertainment president Peter Roth. ''We want to do for the '70s what Happy Days did for the '50s.''

Funny, we don't remember Richie waking from an erotically charged dream to find Joanie remarking ''Nice tent.'' But that's the kind of funky stroll down memory lane nostalgia buffs can expect. And far be it from Fox to sneak it past the squeamish. Not only did the show land the network's primo slot (between compatibly edgy Simpsons and X-Files), its audaciously early debut, on Aug. 23, showcased beer-stealing and doobie-smoking scenes. Based on the ratings so far (averaging a healthy 11.8 million viewers its first two times out), Fox has a modest hit on its hands. Then again, there was enough offense taken to the pilot's drug taking at this summer's critics press tour to foreshadow some potential backlash. ''We were surprised by the criticism, because that was never what the series was about,'' says Roth. ''But we took it very seriously and have had discussions at length with the producers.'' (Don't worry, Mom and Pop, the net also aired an antidrug PSA right after the offending pot scene.)

''We were severely warned,'' admits exec producer Terry Turner, who created the show with wife Bonnie. ''We had to be true to the decade -- otherwise I'm doing a show about bell-bottoms and strange hairstyles.... But that's as far as the envelope will go in terms of any drug references.''

The Turners are the time-warp titans behind Wayne's World, The Brady Bunch Movie, and NBC's 3rd Rock From the Sun (also for Carsey-Werner). Their latest idea was aided by the book Stuck in the '70s, which, jokes Terry, ''blamed Wayne's World, Wayne's World 2, and The Brady Bunch Movie for bringing the decade back. We went, 'Well, we never thought about doing [a '70s series], but since we're already being blamed...' ''

Along with 3rd Rock producer Mark Brazill, the trio crafted a premise about two neighboring families: the rigidly stuck-in-the-'50s Foremans, featuring earnest Eric (Topher Grace, 20), and the free-swinging, fad-embracing Pinciottis, including tomboy Donna (Laura Prepon, 18). Eric and Donna's budding romance is complicated by the misfits they hang with: dim bulb Kelso (Calvin Klein model Ashton Kutcher, 20), his spoiled girlfriend, Jackie (Mila Kunis, 15), naive exchange student Fez (Wilmer Valderrama, 18), and snarky Hyde (Danny Masterson, 22). It's Romeo and Juliet through a Dazed and Confused lens.

Of course, given that the oldest of these six was born in 1976, the year the show is set, a few history lessons were necessary, courtesy of The Brady Bunch and back issues of Newsweek. (''I knew you didn't talk back to your parents then,'' notes Kutcher. ''They could beat their kids without going to jail.'') Not that everyone needed the crash course. Laid-back Mrs. Pinciotti happens to be Tanya Roberts, a veteran of quintessential '70s hair-fest Charlie's Angels. And Valderrama, whose heavy TV accent is no act, comes from a place where Me Decade fashion never really went away. ''When I moved here from Venezuela [at 13], people made fun of my tight pants,'' he says. ''I've always worn pants that show the butt. Now I get to wear them in the show.'' Adds Grace: ''I play an awkward teenage boy who gets rejected. I've done so much research in that department, I can't even begin to tell you.''

Ultimately, the producers hope to do with live action what their animated lead-in has been accomplishing for nearly a decade. ''TV families are always so unrealistic, so sanitary, so stupid,'' says producer Brazill. ''We don't want to do safe family issues. There are things about this show that'll have a little controversy, and if we can get away with it, we will.'' Adds Masterson, ''There's no sitcommy bulls--- here.''

Fine, but may we suggest one sweeps stunt? Scott Baio, as a time-warping Chachi, sneaks the gang into an all-night disco. Hey, Fox owes him that much. --DS

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
That '70s Show (That '70s Show)

B+By Ken Tucker

The bouncingly animated, bright yellow smiley-face buttons that serve as between-scenes punctuation for That '70s Show are a signal to us that this new sitcom will treat the decade of the title with the same campy mock reverence as, say, the recent Brady Bunch feature films did. (And by scant coincidence, the first flick was cooked up by the same people, writer-producers Bonnie and Terry Turner.) In order to parody them, the '70s are positioned as the last gasp of pop-culture innocence, a prelude to the deluge of slick, debilitating irony that would grease our way into the '80s. This is a willed misunderstanding of the period.

The particular year in which the series is set, 1976, was, to be sure, the year of Barry Manilow's ''I Write the Songs'' and Frampton Comes Alive! (and, is it therefore any wonder, the year Phil Ochs hanged himself). But it was also a year of self-conscious gestures: Bob Dylan hymning the imprisoned boxer Rubin ''Hurricane'' Carter in the hope of sparking a retrial; Bruce Springsteen hopping the fence at Graceland in the hope of powwowing with Elvis Presley only to be thwarted by cops who weren't impressed that the nascent Boss had recently appeared on simultaneous covers of TIME and Newsweek. And the very next year, both Saturday Night Fever and punk rock in the form of the Sex Pistols would officially arrive, at which point all rock-cultural hell would break loose.

That '70s Show is best when the volatility that truly characterized this period — the sense that the times they were a-changin', to a funky beat — seeps into its golden aura of fun. In the suburb of Point Place, Wis., we find 17-year-old Eric Forman (the wonderfully deadpan Topher Grace) using his family's basement rec room to watch TV, guzzle smuggled beer, and smoke the rare joint in the company of pals. These include the handsome goofball Kelso (Ashton Kutcher); a blissfully baffled exchange student, Fez (Wilmer Valderrama); and Eric's next-door neighbor and lifelong pal, Donna (the if possible even more wonderfully deadpan Laura Prepon), a lanky redhead whose charms have suddenly, confusingly, been made manifold now that Eric's hormones have kicked in. Eric and Donna are, as a consequence, conducting the most touchingly awkward yet funny courtship on current television.

Eric also comes equipped with a pair of prickly parents — a nervous, giggly mom played by Debra Jo Rupp (Friends) and a cranky, cynical dad played by Robocop's Kurtwood Smith. Their cartoonishness — the way they fuss and snipe and worry over their son — would be excessive were it not being played against Eric's poker-faced incredulity (really, I cannot praise enough the deftness of Grace; this is his first series, and so far, he's uncorrupted by the snarky school of sneery-teen TV acting).

The show was cocreated by the people who brought us 3rd Rock From the Sun, the Turners, but '70s is, mercifully, more grounded than that silly silly-alien sitcom. As in the ''Wayne's World'' sketches the Turners wrote for Saturday Night Live, the basement rec room becomes a breeding ground for adolescent rebellion, a dank dream factory where the kids plot to sneak out and drive all the way to Milwaukee to see a Todd Rundgren concert because they're so into ''Hello It's Me.''

That their car, of course, breaks down and their petty infraction is endangered is a plot turn that could have come out of an episode of the original Brady Bunch show. In subsequent weeks, Eric has tried in vain to forestall a surprise birthday party, and grapples with mixed masculine feelings when Donna beats him repeatedly at one-on-one basketball. What '70s possesses that 3rd Rock never will is a heart; it is unafraid to venture into sentimental territory and emerge with something more solid than cheap-shot jokes and sniggering slapstick.

If the show sometimes gets things a tad wrong (as my colleague Chris Willman points out, Todd Rundgren was by this time a few years past his pure-pop phase and well into more insufferable experimental rock with his band Utopia), well, the season is still young, and so is 1976. Isn't there an entire episode to be written about the kids' discovery of Rick Dees' ''Disco Duck''? And will Eric and Donna do their first slow dance to Rod Stewart's ''Tonight's the Night'' or to something from Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees? On Sunday nights as a pre-X-Files pleasure, That '70s Show is out of this world. B+

An Article from The New York Times

TELEVISION/RADIO; Clothes and Hairstyles Do Not a Decade Make

By ANDY MEISLER
Published: October 10, 1999

THINK smiley faces, perky rust-and-umber polyester sweater vests, Gerald Ford, John Travolta, Carl Bernstein, Chevy Chase, Werner Erhard. When the topic of the 1970's comes up, as it seems to so often these days, thoughts may drift to those obvious icons of the Me Decade. That's one reason that Mark Brazill, a 37-year-old former stand-up comedian turned sitcom writer, is an executive producer and co-creator of the hit Fox series ''That 70's Show.''

And you're not.

When Mr. Brazill is asked about the 1970's, as he was one recent afternoon during an interview in his office, he reaches for his 1977 Fredonia High School yearbook.

Fredonia, N.Y., where Mr. Brazill grew up, is a working-class town about an hour's drive from Buffalo. Inside the yearbook is a freshman photograph of him: a freckle-faced 14-year-old wearing long hair parted in the middle, a shirt with a collar the size of elephant ears, a bone necklace and a slightly stunned expression.

After a knee-jerk chuckle from his visitor, Mr. Brazill puts down the book. He picks up the senior yearbook from nearby Dunkirk High School (where he was sent after being expelled from Fredonia for ''just never going to class''), opens it, leans back and narrates.

''This guy,'' he says, pointing to a photograph, ''was a good friend of mine. We used to drive around in his '68 Dodge Dart and listen to Cheap Trick. Remember how you used to have just one tape and it'd stay in the car? And every song on it was good and you'd just listened to it?''

Mr. Brazill turns the page. Here's the boy, he says, with whom he had a falling out after a heated discussion over the disappearance of his marijuana stash. Here's the girl whose father owned a Buick dealership and had a big house on the lake. Here's the classmate who was stabbed 17 times during a fight over borrowed record albums. Here's the fellow whom he met while working as a cook at the local Holiday Inn and who announced his homosexuality by kissing a male friend on the lips.

''Here's this girl I worked with at the restaurant. I spent the night at her house and nothing happened. She gave me a kiss the next morning and later went on to marry my best friend.''

Here, in fact, are prototypes for the lower-middle-class teen-agers -- cleaned up a bit and handed more than their real-world share of zingers and setup lines -- who form the core of Mr. Brazill's current consuming passion. ''That 70's Show,'' first broadcast in the summer of 1998, is the Fox network's first real live-action comedy success since ''Married . . . With Children.'' Rated only 54th among prime-time series overall last season, it was 6th among teen-agers and 12th among adults 18 to 34.

''It's doing surprisingly well demographically,'' says Bill Croasdale, executive vice president of Western International Media, a Los Angeles media management company. Teen-agers and young adults are, of course, advertisers' favorite viewers.

The series began its second full season two weeks ago, handily winning its new time slot (Tuesdays at 8:30 P.M.). Best described as a cross between ''Happy Days'' and ''The Ice Storm'' (the arid 1997 film about Nixon-era families starring Kevin Kline and Christina Ricci), the series depicts decidedly non-Gap-ad-quality individuals only sporadically in touch with events going on in the outside world.

''It's not just about clothes and hair,'' says Terry Turner, who with his wife and writing partner, Bonnie Turner, and Mr. Brazill form the ruling troika at ''That 70's Show.'' The Turners did the screenplays for the films ''Wayne's World'' and ''The Brady Bunch Movie'' and supervise ''Third Rock From the Sun'' for NBC.

''It's personal,'' says Mr. Brazill. ''We sometimes use conceits and do things that are outside the realm of real life, but it's reality-based, definitely.'' It's also frequently very funny.

THE action of ''That 70's Show'' began in 1976 -- this season it's 1977 -- and is set in the fictional suburb of Point Place, Wis. It is focused (as much as any sitcom with the alarmingly large number of 11 regular characters can be) on 17-year old Eric Foreman (played by Topher Grace, 21), a solid B-minus student with a flip attitude that doesn't quite mask his hormone-driven desperation.

''Eric is basically me,'' says Mr. Brazill, who adds that his alter ego's hangout -- the junk-furniture-filled basement of his house -- is essentially the attic of his boyhood home in Fredonia. The light of Eric's life is Donna Pinciotti (Laura Prepon), an intelligent, attractive redhead who alternates maddeningly between treating him like a friend and like a boyfriend. During their more intense conversations they talk a lot about having sex, but so far that magic moment has eluded the simultaneously frustrated and terrified Eric.

Surrounding Eric and Donna is a tight circle of friends: the handsome, empty-headed Michael (''I could so be a model'') played by Ashton Kutcher; Michael's pushy, status-seeking girlfriend, Jackie (''You're going on the pill? You're going to be so popular!''), played by Mila Kunis; the studiedly disaffected ''rebel'' Kelso (''There is no gas shortage, man! It's all a fake!''), played by Danny Masterson, and Fez, a lascivious, politically incorrect exchange student (''These after-school specials are thrilling. Imagine! One glass of beer can turn a cheerleader into a whore!''), played by Wilmer Valderrama, who was born in Venezuela.

Unlike many modern television teen-agers, Eric actually has visible parents -- the uptight frequent-layoff victim Red (Kurtwood Smith) and the patiently and painfully understanding Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp) -- whom he both fears and respects. Rounding out the cast are Donna's parents, the proto-New Agers Bob and Midge (Don Stark and the ex-''Charlie's Angel'' Tanya Roberts), and Eric's older sister, the evil Farrah Fawcett-haired Laurie (Lisa Robin Kelly).

The show's plot lines mix a certain sweetness and naivete with considerations of larger personal issues reminiscent of the Norman Lear sitcoms of the actual 1970's. In one episode, for example, the gang decides to paint a cannabis leaf on the town's water tower and realizes that what they've inadvertently produced is a huge green hand with middle finger extended. In another, Jackie reports to Donna that she thinks she's pregnant. The new rich kid in town, who drives a red Trans Am so loaded that it has electric windows, discloses that he's gay to his new best friend, Eric. Kelso reluctantly tells Eric that he has been abandoned without a cent by his single mother, who has run off with yet another passing truck driver. Red gets a part-time sales job at Bob's appliance store, and sternly lectures prospective refrigerator buyers not to come back until they've figured out exactly what they're looking for. Fez propositions his high school English teacher. Eric reserves a post-prom motel room with Donna but changes his mind, deciding the surroundings are too tawdry.

Apparently these slices of sitcom life -- from a supposedly kinder and gentler era that teen-age viewers have never actually experienced -- are what attracts the bulk of the show's young audience. ''What you've got to understand,'' Topher Grace says earnestly, ''is that most people our age don't look like the ones on the WB shows or wherever. And the stuff on our show didn't just happen to teen-agers in the 1970's. The issues are really, really timeless.''

Viewers seem to agree. ''I love the relationship between Eric and his dad,'' says Mariel Foster, a 19-year-old Gainesville, Fla., fan who has started her own ''That 70's Show'' Web site. ''All the other sitcoms have smart-alecky kids always talking back to their parents.'' Her on-line friend Heather Logan, a 21-year-old student at Youngstown State University in Ohio, says: ''The 1970's appeal to me because they were very free. They had free love and fewer STD's, and you could do pretty much whatever you wanted.''

WHATEVER the charms of that era, it seems that the audience doesn't much care what's going on outside Point Place. ''We don't do Gerald Ford jokes. We don't do Nixon jokes. We don't do Watergate jokes,'' says Bonnie Turner. ''We tried a couple of times, and it just didn't work. It seems to us that history and politics sucks the fun out of everything, unless it's recent politics and history, unless you're in the middle of it.''

In this respect ''That 70's Show'' seems to have avoided the black hole that swallowed up several well-reviewed but unprofitable projects. The recent movie ''Dick,'' also set in the 1970's, springs to mind. In many other respects, the series has been shaped and buffeted by forces that are very much of the late 1990's.

''That 70's Show'' was created by the Carsey-Werner Company (''Roseanne,'' ''Cybill,'' ''The Cosby Show''), the last independent sitcom producer in Hollywood. Its principals, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, having noted the proliferation of movie projects like ''The Ice Storm'' and ''Boogie Nights'' set in the 70's, asked the Turners if anything of that ilk was in their own pipeline. The Turners set about developing the show with Mr. Brazill, who had worked for them on the writing staff of ''Third Rock From the Sun.'' The new show was purchased and championed by Peter Roth, then Fox Entertainment's president.

''That 70's Show's'' pilot episode contained a pivotal, and arguably hilarious, marijuana smoking scene that set off a frenzy of shocked protests after it was previewed to television critics in the summer of 1998. The Turners, declaring themselves severely chastened, promised not to push that particular envelope again. The controversy all but forgotten, the series now faces the potentially knottier problem of competing against ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' the teen-age dynamo from WB.

Mr. Brazill, however, shrugs when asked about his show's prospects. All he knows, he says, is that if the show survives, it will advance one year for each season and that the prospect of reaching the 1980's does not daunt him. The 80's, after all, gave us shoulder pads and the Cadillac Cimarron.

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on February 20, 2002

On the Air
Boogie Fever
''That '70s Show'' celebrates 100 episodes. And the cast marks the ocassion by breaking into song

By Dan Snierson

Don't expect to see the same old song and dance on the 100th episode of ''That '70s Show.'' Producers of the Fox Me-Decade comedy plan to mark the occasion this April by creating a full-on musical episode. ''It's really not too much of a departure for us because we've had a lot of musical fantasies and choreographed numbers in the past,'' says '''70s'' exec producer Jackie Filgo, who believes there's ample room for a different take on the genre beyond the recent offerings from ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' and ''The Drew Carey Show.'' The '70s riff will take us inside the brain of Fez (Wilmer Valderrama) just before his performance in the school's Spring Sing concert. The Who's Roger Daltrey will guest-star as an overbearing music teacher, and there'll be revamped covers of retro classics, including ''Love Hurts'' and ''Happy Together.'' Does that mean all of the actors will be showing off their vocal range? ''They're a really game cast -- they'll do anything,'' assures Jeff Filgo, Jackie's husband and fellow exec producer. ''If we have some cast members that aren't comfortable singing, we'll figure out a way to dub them.... But we'll make a joke out of it and own [up to] it, instead of trying to trick people.''

An Article from USA TODAY
Published on August 22, 2004

'That '70s' guy Valderrama is hot property
By William Keck, USA TODAY

HOLLYWOOD — Several dark-tinted paparazzi vans circle That '70s Show's Wilmer Valderrama as he tries to enjoy his caprese salad on the Sunset Strip. After lunch, a photographer ambushes him in the parking lot; then three vans chase him over Laurel Canyon on his drive home to the valley.

Suddenly, Valderrama, 24, is the hot new catch of the day, thanks to his high-profile relationship with Hollywood "It" girl Lindsay Lohan.

"I'm getting so much free attention lately," he says, his eyes peeking out from beneath the beanie cap he always wears to conceal the goofy '70s hairstyle he's required to sport for the show.

During six years playing oversexed foreign exchange student Fez on Fox's retro sitcom, Valderrama managed to dodge this sort of uncomfortable scrutiny — the kind co-star Ashton Kutcher has endured non-stop ever since he began dating Brittany Murphy and then Demi Moore.

Valderrama first met Lohan at the 2003 Teen Choice Awards, when she was still 17. They began dating this year but didn't acknowledge a relationship until she turned 18 on July 2, amid rumors of breast implants and reports of her father's brushes with the law.

"At the time, I was mostly her best friend being there for her when she needed me," he says. "When we read some of those things, we just laughed. She's had to deal with a lot, and I think she's handled it the best way she can.

"She's a lot more mature than people might assume her to be. She's just a young girl who's having a lot of fun."

Fun, by the way, that will not soon find Lohan charging out of an all-night Las Vegas wedding chapel proclaiming herself the new Lindsay Valderrama. Though they have met each other's families, he denies reports that he gave Lohan a diamond "promise" ring for her 18th birthday.

Despite their almost nightly appearances at movie premieres, award shows and paparazzi-packed parties in L.A., Vegas and Miami, the couple say they wish to keep their romance private.

"No matter who I'm dating, that's not going to get me my next movie," says Valderrama, who previously dated actress/singer Mandy Moore, 20, from 2000-02. Past reports also have linked the Us Weekly-dubbed "Babe Magnet" to Jessica Alba, 23, and serial-dater Jennifer Love Hewitt, 25. He neither confirms nor denies the latter two, hinting only that "you can't help who you're going to be intrigued by or fall in love with."

The Venezuelan-American shouldn't be surprised by the public's interest in his personal life. His sitcom co-stars' dating habits have long provided tabloid fodder.

A recent taping for That '70s Show's seventh-season opener attracted Lohan, Moore and her kids and co-star Mila Kunis' boyfriend, Macaulay Culkin. (Valderrama introduced Kunis to Culkin when he played Culkin's boyfriend in last year's Party Monster.) The new season starts Sept. 8 (8 p.m. ET/PT).

"We have a very close, supportive group," he says of his extended TV family. "All these cats are super real."

More surreal is his more than $100,000 salary per episode — more free-flowing cash than he ever could have imagined earning during his early teens, which were spent struggling with money and English in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley.

He recently upgraded his parents, two sisters and 4-year-old brother to a grander house in the valley, and he purchased his own five-bedroom mansion nearby, complete with guest house, screening room, double-sided shark tank and secret passageways.

His growing collection of cars now includes a twin-turbo Mercedes CL 600, a "seriously decked-out" black Escalade and a 1951 Mercury.

But other than these indulgences, Valderrama says, he lives a comparatively simple Hollywood life, free of cigarettes, drugs and strip joints. He says he talks to God every day and skips '70s co-star Danny Masterson's weekly poker nights, explaining, "I hate giving money to my (already wealthy) co-stars."

But the '70s gang might find it tough staying together now that their show is entering what may be its final season, what with the whole cast's contracts up for renewal in May 2005.

To prepare for an uncertain future, Valderrama has started his own production company and has a cameo in November's Beauty Shop as a fast-talking sports agent. The role mirrors what's in store for his '70s Show character later in the new season when Fez goes to work at a salon as a Warren Beatty-type shampooist, where he'll become popular with the ladies for his sensual massages and fall for a much older woman, à la the Kutcher/Moore pairing.

But don't even think about asking Valderrama to comment on how the show might mirror that taboo topic. Waving his heavily blinged finger, he says, "Let's not even go there."

An Article from USA TODAY
Published on August 25, 2005

Moore to guest-star on 'That '70s Show'

NEW YORK (AP) — Mary Tyler Moore will return to the soundstage where The Mary Tyler Moore Show was filmed in the 1970s when she guest-stars in three episodes of That '70s Show.

Moore will play a local newscaster who hires Jackie (Mila Kunis) as her personal assistant. Beloved by her audience, Moore's character isn't so charming when the TV cameras are off, as Jackie discovers.

The episodes will air next year, the Fox network said Wednesday.

Moore starred as TV producer Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s.

The new season of That '70s Show will premiere Nov. 2.

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on October 20, 2005

Television News
Masterson Plan
Danny Masterson on life outside ''That 70s Show'' -- EW talks with the sitcom funnyman about his upcoming projects

By Paul Katz

Danny Masterson's not a slacker, but he plays one on TV. For seven seasons, he's been resident pothead Steve Hyde on Fox's That '70s Show, but when the show returns this week (Nov. 2 at 8 p.m.) it'll be without his buds Eric (Topher Grace) and Kelso (Ashton Kutcher, who will appear in four eps), who've bolted for other work. While Masterson is sticking around the Point Place, Wis., basement for another year, he's got enough going on that he won't forever be known only as TV's most loved stoner (''I don't even smoke pot,'' he says. ''I've just gotten paid a lot to pretend I do''). He spins records once a week for L.A.'s Indie 103.1 FM, he's starring in next year's comedy Easier, Softer Way (directed by and costarring ER's Mekhi Phifer), and he's gearing up for his own directorial debut next spring with the indie black comedy Bunny Wiggins, which takes place — where else? — in a high school. Oh, and did we mention he's a restaurateur? He co-owns two hot L.A. eateries, Dolce and Geisha House, with '70s costars Kutcher and Wilmer Valderrama. Masterson took a break from his 15,000 jobs to tell EW how he's built Masterson, Inc.

Know what makes you marketable. Or, don't pull a Felicity. I kinda like the power in the white-man 'fro. In the bouffant. The hair will have to get a little bit shorter after [That '70s Show ends] — and then it won't be as powerful. See, my strumpf is in my hair. Now, I don't know what strumpf means. It's just a term some brothas gave me.

Career path to emulate: P. Diddy!On the radio I use my real name, but at nightclubs it started as Donkey Punch. Then Puffy changed his to P. Diddy, and I had to change from Punch to Pizzle. And now he's just Diddy. So I'm gonna have to change mine again at some point. Maybe Donkey Piznatch?

Don't think about doing a spin-off—even if they beg (Hi, Joey). Spin-offs were never really my thing. I like [Hyde], and he's fun to play, but it would have more chances of flopping. You never know.... I'm thinking performance art. Short films on the Internet. Shot on Super-16 film? Sort of Warholian. Very arty.

If all else fails, make sure you can get a free meal. I play in a basketball league with one of the owners [of Dolce], and he asked if I wanted in. I mentioned it to Kutch and Wil and they thought it'd be really Frank Sinatra-esque.

Never forget what got you there. The best thing ever is when some guy in his 50s taps me on the shoulder and says, ''I just want to let you know I hate my job, I hate my wife, and I come home and I watch reruns of your show and it's the only half hour of the day when I laugh and I forget how miserable life is.'' And I'm like, ''Geez, I'm sorry you're miserable, but thank you for the compliment.''

An Article from The New York Times

Television
Even Those 70's Kids Should Have Seen It Coming

By DAVID HOCHMAN
Published: February 12, 2006

IN the end, all the smiley-face buttons on earth couldn't prevent it: after eight seasons of blasting Cheap Trick and testing the limits of polyester leisurewear, the kids from "That 70's Show" will soon have their trippiest encounter yet — with 1980.

The New Year's party, the series finale, which will be broadcast in May, brings to a close 200 episodes of freaky good times among Wisconsin teenagers in the Jimmy Carter era. Although it rarely cracked the Nielsen Top 20, the series has been one of television's longest-running live-action comedies (second on Fox only to "Married With Children"). Along the way, it has introduced a corps of popular young actors, including Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace.

But with both those stars now absent from the regular cast and the others looking a bit too mature still to be partying in dad's basement, the program has lately experienced its own sort of energy crisis. Mark Hudis, an executive producer, said, "One of our writers came in at the beginning of this season with pencils embossed 'That 70's Show — We already did that.' "

For a good stretch, though, the series took unexpected risks, at least by the standards of prime-time comedy. The premiere episode showed Eric (Topher Grace), a high school sophomore with Tom Snyder hair, and his buddies sitting in a circle philosophizing in a haze of pot smoke, a gag featured in nearly every show. "The trick was to stay one ahead of the pass so you wouldn't see the joint on TV," said Dean Batali, an executive producer. And frequent fantasy sequences had the kids doing twisted interpretations of "Star Wars," "Grease," "Charlie's Angels" and, inevitably, "Reefer Madness."

In capturing the absurdity of suburban adolescence, the closest parallels are probably "Wayne's World" and "The Brady Bunch Movie"; Terry and Bonnie Turner, the married team who created "That 70's Show" with Mark Brazill, were both writers on those films.

"I remember looking at 'Friends' and not relating," Ms. Turner said. "It was so clean and not what growing up was like for me. We said, 'Why not write something different?' "

The show has never had the high profile of "Friends," "Frasier" or "Seinfeld," but that may have prolonged its lifespan: the series never had mammoth pay demands from cast members, and its young fans embraced it as a shaggier alternative to middle-of-the-road network fare.

"The show was a secret pleasure for Fox's core audience, the 18-to-34-year-old concentration of viewers," said Jim Kraus, president of domestic distribution for Carsey-Werner Productions, which produced the series. "No matter what night it aired — and it moved constantly — viewers found it and followed it." And since that audience was young and had an almost-unheard-of balance of male and female viewers, the show sold quickly and continues to perform well in syndication, Mr. Kraus added.

It helped that "That 70's Show" was pretty amusing. In one classic episode, Eric's lab partner is continually flirting with him, which doesn't bother his tomboy girlfriend, Donna (Laura Prepon); that is, until Donna discovers another woman's underwear in Eric's Vista Cruiser. The offending garment turns out to belong to Donna's mom, who cops to engaging in some backseat disco there with dad.

"If you lived through the 1970's or even just survived being a teenager, one of these characters could be you," said Mr. Grace, who, like Mr. Kutcher, left the series last season for movies. (With Eric written out of the script, another love interest, Randy, played by Josh Meyers, had to be found for Donna.) Mr. Grace got good reviews in 2004 for "In Good Company" and is playing a platinum-haired villain in "Spider-Man 3." Mr. Kutcher is now shooting opposite Kevin Costner in "The Guardian," an action movie.

Like "Happy Days," "That 70's Show" blends smart comedy with light social commentary. The decade provided endless fodder, whether it was jokes about Luke Skywalker, crooked Republicans or buying an economy car during the oil crisis. In one episode, Eric's dad, Red, a grumpy World War II vet played with perfect pitch by Kurtwood Smith, says of his new Toyota, "The last time I was that close to a Japanese machine, it was shooting at me."

"The 70's was the last era where TV was the hearth," said David Trainer, who has directed every episode but the pilot. "Without personal computers or video games or VCR's, the kids lived according to the opening theme song," which goes,

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.

One well-known critic of the modern condition recently discovered "That 70's Show" in reruns and became a fan. Edward Albee said in an e-mail message, "The characters are outrageous stereotypes and yet sweet and believable at the same time, and, oddly, the expected always surprises us."

Among the surprises was the show's unusual take on love. "Unlike many sitcoms that play on love triangles or whether the main stars will or will not sleep together, we looked at the nuances of a relationship between two neighbors — Eric and Donna — who had been in love since childhood," Mr. Grace said. And the writing was unusually sharp. When Eric accidentally tears Donna's gown on the eve of their scheduled wedding, Donna deadpans, "Please tell me that sound was a rip in the space-time continuum."

As knowing as the writing could be, the series was sometimes criticized for its white-bread view of a decade of supposed racial harmony. "I like to say, 'That 70's Show' gave white America its 'Roots,' " said Tommy Chong, who played Leo, an aging hippie, before and after his real-life incarceration for selling marijuana pipes two years ago. "If you came out of white suburbia, you can probably trace your lineage to people like Red and Kitty" (she's Red's wife).

In one episode, Billy Dee Williams played a minister and was starting to preach in a revivalist mode when Mr. Trainer, the director, stepped in. "I said: 'Billy, look around this church. Look at these people. Do you think a revivalist minister would have a chance in hell here? He looked at me and said, 'Gotcha.' Whereupon he became a sedate Wisconsin Episcopalian."

Peter Roth, the executive who first put "That 70's Show" on the schedule at Fox, said he would never forget the lunch at which he heard the pitch. "Topher Grace had literally never worked in television or film before," said Mr. Roth, who is now president of Warner Brothers Television. "Bonnie Turner described him as a friend of their daughter's who acted in a school production." The show "was a risk," Mr. Roth said, "but we knew Fox viewers would respond to something daring and distinctive."

From an industry standpoint, the series finale is another landmark of sorts. "That 70's Show" is the last sitcom that is being produced by Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, two former ABC executives who started their own production company in the early 1980's and whose hits included "The Cosby Show" and "Roseanne."

Of course, even though "That 70's Show" is ending, the gags about streaking and Farrah Fawcett-Majors will play on in syndication. "Thanks to Nickelodeon and the international market, these shows can live for 10 or 20 more years," Mr. Trainer said. "After that, who knows what anyone will think of the 70's?"

Correction: Feb. 19, 2006, Sunday:

An article last Sunday about the television series "That 70's Show" referred imprecisely to the war record of the character Red. In addition to having served in World War II, he was a veteran of the Korean War.

For more on That '70s Show go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_'70s_Show

For a Review of That '70s Show go to http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/70show.htm