(courtesy IMP Awards)
Sitcoms are funny things.
And we don’t mean in the obvious sense; yes, done well, they should be laughfests that lift the heavy burden of the everyday and leave you feeling like, yes, life’s great dilemmas and problems can be easily solved in just 20 or so minutes. (What a deliciously seductive prospect, huh?)
No, we mean “funny” in that ruminative way by which many things in life can be judged – not so much funny haha as funny hmmmm, a lot of thoughtfulness chucked into the comedy where you end up a lot more serious than comedically inclined – where you end up leaning back and realising that something you think was light and frothy actually has a lot else going on.
On the surface, sitcoms are supposed to be funny; but dig down, and the really good ones actually have something to say, their easy jokes and whimsical moment harbouring some great life truths that easily end up digging their way deep inside you, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down approach that really works when the writing is good and the performances are sharp.
You laugh a lot sure but then you end up realising that that joke or that quip actually harbours a penetrating insight; humour and therapy? Done right, it can be wonderfully diverting and strangely comforting.
The thing about That ’90s Show is that it never really manages to find that sweet spot between comedy and thoughtful meditation, and while it’s lots of fun, you end up not so much impacted as slightly glanced off.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s perfectly fine for sitcoms to just offer some escapist entertainment and move on and in that respect, That ’90s Show performs perfectly well.
The thing about the first half of the second season – for god knows what reason, Netflix has split the season into two parts with part three coming sometime in October – is that it doesn’t feel quite as fresh as the first.
In that gleeful return to Point Place, Wisconsin, the show deftly wove together familiar faces from That ’70s Show, most notably Kitty and Red Forman (Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith) and took them two decades forward where the kids of the first show are all grown up and parents themselves.
Rather enjoyably, we got to to see Fez (Wilmer Valderrama), Michael Kelso and Jackie Burkhart (Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis), Bob Pinciotti (Don Stark) and, crucially for the purposes of That ’90s Show, Eric Forman and Donna Pinciotti (Topher Grace and Laura Prepon) who are the parents of Red and Kitty’s doted-on granddaughter, Leia (Callie Harveda) who comes to stay one fateful summer and who reignites Kitty’s sadly empty nester house with life, fun and lots and lots of pot.
It’s a heady mix of nostalgia and the present day and it works pretty well, updating things to a cusp of the internet age moment while taking us back to the witty, wise creation that was That ’70s Show.
But while That ’90s Show is sweet and enjoyable, and cosy in that undemanding ways non-top tier sitcoms often are, it often feel way too clunky for its own good.
Too many of the lines are delivered as if they are waiting for the other dialogue shoe to drop, and while there are some gloriously over-the-top moments, many of them are only as strong as the performer delivering them.
The stand out here, as in the That ’70s Show, Debra Jo Rupp who manages to, once again, make Kitty an endearingly appealing mix of oddball and caring, a mother and grandmother who loves her family but perhaps just a little too much?
Smith is a perfect foil for her but while he is reduced much of the time to being a one-dimensional curmudgeon, he does get some sweetly tender moments which establish Red and Kitty as the beating heart of the show.
Among the new crop of teens, the actor who really makes great work of his snarky and sagely insightful lines is Reyn Doi as gay computer whiz Ozzie Takada whose sexuality is treated with respect, and who is able to get away with some outrageous lines purely because his comic delivery is pitch perfect pretty much all the time.
The others in the case including Leia, her goofily sweet but idiotically handsome boyfriend Jay Kelso (Mace Coronel), sister and brother, gothically smart Gwen Ashley Aufderheide) and Nate (Maxwell Acee Donovan) and Nate’s girlfriend, the fiercely ambitious and tightly-wound Nikki (Sam Morelos) have fun with their lines and do a good job of making the various storylines zing along with just the right amount of wacky hilarity, but overall, the cast is not as strong as it was in That ’70s Show.
For all that, there’s enough vivacity and fun to That ’90s Show to keep you entertained.
The pot smoking circles in the basement may not be quite as smartly hilarious as they once were, and the plots may feel a little recycled but it’s easy to keep pressing “next episode” and settle in for 22 minutes of undemanding sitcom hilarity.
And honestly, while we might demand a lot of our sitcoms in these new age of super-polished cinematic TV, there’s something comforting about disappearing into a show where, while mistakes are made, the extended found family that coalesces around the Formans will always be there to fix things up and make all the consequences not land too heavily on any one character.
That’s likely what makes these kinds of sitcoms enjoyable enough to watch – they offer us a sense that life can be sorted out in bite-sized chunks, that all those existential wounds can be easily cauterised and healed, and that the characters we’re watching are going to be just fine which is not something that can be said about sh*t falling from a great and impactful height in life, right?
That ’90s Show is a sweet and lowkey funny sitcom that won’t trouble the lofty heights of shows like Frasier and Loot, but which has enough appealing characters, surreal silliness and low-impact heartfelt moments to keep you watching and make you care enough to laugh along at all the right places.
That ’90s Show is streaming on Netflix; part three premieres on 24 October.