That 70s Show: Classic

Used to like the early seasons of Third Rock too, but thought it went downhill v. rapidly (Don character esp. irritating...)

Classic, especially Kurtwood Smith, though I'm waiting for the episode where he goes to Miguel Ferrer's house, shoots him in the knee, and blows him up with some grenades.

OTM, love it but can't remember it exists

Catching reruns of this show reminds me of:

a) how remarkable the chemistry between the actors in the cast was, both kids and parents
b) how consistently funny the show was, even after it jumped the shark (ie, Donna dyed her hair)
c) how successful many of the cast members have been since the show went off the air (obv Ashton is the big winner, but Topher, Mila, Wilmer* and Kurtwood all have had high profile projects since the show and Laura is about to be a recurring character on "How I Met Your Mother")
d) how many fucked-up first names this cast had

* I recognize that a terrible MTV show is pushing it as "high profile project" but dude appears to be omnipresent regardless

e) pretty much every episode alludes to weed smoking at some point

f) all episodes improved by you weed smoking at some point

dope show tho iirc

fave scene was when the mom sang "Bad Blood" in the car w/ Eric

is Ashton still 'the big winner'? until this month's SNL hosting gig and being one of like 80 stars in a new rom com the only things he's seemingly done in the last few years are camera commercials, post on Twitter and have candid pictures taken of him w/ his family and Bruce Willis

he's the only one married to Demi Moore

(also he's done the most high-profile movies out of all of them IIRC, although Topher is catching up)

mila kunis probably works the most consistently out of all of them but kutcher is inarguably the most famous out of all them. also i think he still produces a lot of junk for mtv et al

ugh, Demi Mannequin. I prefer to envision him playing tonsil hockey with Seann William Scott.

Frankly I thought T. Grace would get some Jack Lemmonlike film parts for awhile, but not much since that mediocre Dennis Quaid thing.

i dunno, 'having the most famous spouse' and 'being the most famous largely because of having the most famous spouse' don't scream big winner to me, definitely doesn't have as much career momentum to go on in the future than some of the others

it seems like the dude is spending most of time on his production/new media company - i mean its hard for me 2 say what his priorities are but i think being superrich and superfamous screams "big winner" to me

it is p lol that both he and topher grace are in that valentines thing

wow, she's 42 now?

quite a mug shot

Lisa Robin Kelly has died

http://i.imgur.com/Zh9ZWTu.png

Season 1-7 classic, season 8 avoid?

the expendibros

Dud: trying to figure out where exactly in Wisconsin Point Place is supposed to be. For a while I had it pegged in the Port Washington/Grafton area, but then there's an episode where they drive to Canada to get beer, which is like an 8 hour drive from there. Alas, it seems to float all over the state.

Ditto with Fez's country of origin...did they ever have something specific in mind? Was it Trinidad and Tobago??

For that matter it always irritated me that Bob had such a pitch-perfect Midwestern accent - pretty much every Wisconsin lifer I know who's around that age talks like that - but none of the other characters do

the whole point about Fez's country of origin was that they'd never reveal it to the viewers. I highly doubt they had a specific country in mind.

I always thought it was one of those things where they'd never reveal it but they'd give you enough clues to figure it out by the end of the series if you were paying attention.

For some reason this all came up during lunch a week ago, when I mentioned that I remembered the show trying to replace Eric with a character named Charlie, NOT the blonde wavy haired dude Randy, and that this was very funny to me because it's one of those weird "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU??" moments where there's just some random dude who suddenly starts hanging around the cast and getting a bunch of speaking parts. As I recall they killed him off by having him fall off the water tower and die. For some reason this was played for laughs, though maybe it was just the show lampshading how over the shark it had gotten with Topher and Ashton gone (see also Red constantly barking "Why are you people still here?" at the rest of the cast). Nobody else remembered this. Lesson learned...I read far too much into this show.

Mila Kunis = rowr!!
― AP, Tuesday, August 14, 2001 5:00 PM (fifteen years ago)

To me, this kind of sums up the show's basic appeal, except that different viewers responded most to whichever one of the boffable actors best fit their fantasies. The scripts and acting were consistently mediocre.

Dud: trying to figure out where exactly in Wisconsin Point Place is supposed to be. For a while I had it pegged in the Port Washington/Grafton area, but then there's an episode where they drive to Canada to get beer, which is like an 8 hour drive from there. Alas, it seems to float all over the state.

Figured there'd be an insanely detailed Wiki page and There Is!

Important bit:

Point Place is located within the fictional Greater Oshkosh Area of Wisconsin.[1] The "FAQ" on the program's official website says, "Point Place is a fictional suburb of Green Bay, Wisconsin. This is why many Wisconsinites may recognize names of towns such as Kenosha. In reality, Kenosha is more than two hours south of Green Bay, and the location of Point Place has no sensical basis in actual Wisconsin.[2] There is an episode where the gang travels "down" to Kenosha to go to a movie."[3] This seemed to be directly contradicted by concrete information given in several episodes,[4] such as the fact in one episode ("The Velvet Rope") it was possible to drive to Chicago, attend a party, and drive back in the course of a few hours; and in another Kelso explicitly states that Chicago is a two-hour drive from Point Place. Over the course of the series many local businesses and events were identified as being in or taking place in Kenosha (which is actually 155 miles from Green Bay). The name Point Place was chosen for the town because co-creator Bonnie Turner is from Toledo, Ohio where there is a section of town called Point Place.

Must be that Sinbad Genie Movie thing in effect for me, because back in the day I swear I found Point Place in the Wisconsin map in this huge coffee table atlas book my grandma had.

in other fictional wisconsin locations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoa_City_(The_Young_and_the_Restless)

My mom was from the actual Genoa City. Not the same as depicted on the show, but there was merch at the local drugstore that proclaimed "The Home of the Young and the Restless!"

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/genoa_zpsaxargc8d.jpg

Well, that's where the drug store used to be anyway.

This & That Shoppe! It's the spelling of Shoppe that makes all the difference.

Ditto with Fez's country of origin...did they ever have something specific in mind? Was it Trinidad and Tobago??

Fez was a derived from FES - Foreign Exchange Student iirc

To me, this kind of sums up the show's basic appeal, except that different viewers responded most to whichever one of the boffable actors best fit their fantasies. The scripts and acting were consistently mediocre.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, January 18, 2017 6:25 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm i'd disagree i think the cast was pretty consistently elevating some of the weak material and had excellent chemistry. i mean it's actually probably a pretty prime example of a vv good sitcom cast.

In one episode they talk about a modeling agency in Sheboygan, which, as a resident of Sheboygan, was rather hilarious to me

true that the writing could be hacky sometimes but at the very least they deserve credit for not using the 70's as an easy punchline

also Red is pretty much the best sitcom dad of all-time

hmm i'd disagree i think the cast was pretty consistently elevating some of the weak material and had excellent chemistry. i mean it's actually probably a pretty prime example of a vv good sitcom cast.

I think it was specifically this show where I really started to notice how cast chemistry could make or break a show for me and started retroactively noticing it in previous faves

Mila Kunis was the sole reason i watched this show. the cast was pretty funny tho. the guy who plays Red was awesome in Robocop.

the man's name is kurtwood smith*

*i only remember this because literally no-one is called kurtwood other than this guy

lots of weird names in that cast - Wilmer, Ashton, Topher, Mila...

Literally none of those names are weird.

weird as in, I don't know anyone personally with any of those names

earlier posters on otm, this is probably the last really good ensemble of the three-camera era. Not exactly a great show, but every cast member was a good to very good sitcom actor.

did any Christophers actually call themselves "Topher" before Topher Grace?

Not exactly a great show, but every cast member was a good to very good sitcom actor.

yup, sums it up nicely

I knew a Topher prior to the show and everybody agreed that it was a weird name.

Like, the guy was intentionally being weird by going with that nickname.

Knew a guy named Chip, which isn't that weird, but it was short for Christopher.

Chip Walken
Chip Reeve
Chip Gaines

CHIP BITCOIN

Bringing Christ Back Into Christopher.

somehow fell into watching a few of these episodes because it's apparently the default show on IFC (?!?)

all I can say is that looking up what random cast members did post-show got weird when I was wondering why the sister, Laurie, was recast

the original actress did not fare well

on the bright side, she didn't live to be a scientologist Steve Aoki protege

also, calling back to the most recent posts, there was a dude at my magnet high school who went by Topher in, maybe, 1995ish? so it was a thing dudes did, but I have no idea where it originated

one of his peers was Dylan, pronounce die-lan

the other main thing I remember from this show was that I'd learned at some point that Wilmer Valderrama lived in Venezuela, met a coworker some years later, and nearly immediately tagged him as being from Venezuela from his accent

one of his peers was Dylan, pronounce die-lan

did he spit hot fi-yar?

the original actress for Laurie was so perfect for the part, recasting her was a dumb move. just write her out for Christ's sake

sheesh what was going on behind the scenes here

a lot of shady shit apparently

though my favourite thing from this recent drama was tangentially finding out that Topher Grace dealt with the discomfort of playing David Duke in BlacKkKlansman by making a 2-hour recut of The Hobbit trilogy (and apparently has made recuts of other trilogies like the Star Wars prequels)

Interesting that a few people have come out to clarify that Topher wasn’t involved, not sure what they’re trying to imply about the rest of the cast

I've never knowingly seeing Topher Grace in anything, but I've been a fan ever since he went on The Daily Show to plug the movie Traffic and instead spent the entire time telling Jon Stewart the plot of the movie Wild Wild West, which he'd rented the night before.

https://www.cc.com/video/ugplhl/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-topher-grace

just learned that fez is on NCIS

and has been for 10 years

lmao I keep seeing commercials for it and was wondering if that was him

at the very least you gotta wonder if he does the same voice

things i know about NCIS:

what is up with mark harmon's hair

but i've actually seen a few NCIS LAs, so:

i assume that when agents hook up, one of them is, in real life, married to the other's twin

nerdy girl unlocking every computer system + nerdy guy who wants in her pants (but is secretly gay)

the shadout mapes
the son of emperor shaddam iv

ladies love cool james

chris o'donnell is so boring but might be a russian plant or something

Thing I learned recently from wikipedia:

Mila Kunis lied about her age to get her role as Jackie Burkhart in the series. She was 14 years old, though the show required its actors to be 18.

that to me is wild, is there not some paperwork involved with getting cast on a TV show that might require actual proof of ID

Yeah it's very weird. Also I know the show wasn't exactly raunchy but still feel like there might be jokes in there that play different when directed at a 14 or 15 year old?

I guess the characters are all teens so maybe not...

I always thought the main cast was like 18-19 playing 15 year olds, maybe thats why the show worked because actual 15 year old actors don't tend to be very good. Mila was supposed to be a year younger than the others. I know this because I watched the first episode recently to cut up some samples for a Todd Rundgren project I was doing. It was surprisingly hard to even find more than a couple clips from it