‘That '90s Show' Is a Cynical Trainwreck: Everything That Annoyed Me About It

Posted By TheNewsCommenter: From Thedailybeast.com: “Everything That Annoyed Me About the ‘That ’90s Show’”. Below is an excerpt from the article.

There’s a moment in That ’90s Show when Bob Pinciotti—father to Laura Prepon’s That ’70s Show character, Donna—serenades his granddaughter with an incredibly inappropriate ballad. It’s the kind of moment that would have felt right at home in the original series, but sadly, it doesn’t quite hit the same now. The scene, like much of the show that contains it, feels more akin to taking a puff of desperation from a moldy old joint.

There was no familiar high as I watched a jerry-curled Don Stark bleat out Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” to his granddaughter, Leia Forman. Instead, I felt a strange moment of synchronicity with that poor, mortified teenager. Like her, I was witnessing a complete collapse of media comprehension. That ’90s Show is a failure to read the room on par with Crystal Pepsi—a transparent, poorly branded failure that leaves a depressing taste in the mouth.

The most instantly noticeable mistakes in That ’90s Show come down to casting and writing. The original That ’70s teens had the kind of chemistry that most casting agents only dream about. One would have thought that in this go-around, painstaking efforts would have been made to ensure that the new kids of Point Place, Wisconsin would have the same rapport. Sadly, Netflix did not bother to do this; in place of a hodge-podge of complementary misfits, we get a roomful of teens whose reasons for hanging out together are borderline impossible to fathom.

Consider, for instance, the way Leia Forman—Eric and Donna’s dorky daughter, predictably named after a certain Star Wars princess—meets her first friend in Point Place. When she and her parents stop by for a visit ahead of a father-daughter trip to space camp, Leia wanders off to spy on a Cool Girl™ next door, whom she hears jamming out to Alanis Morissette. When said neighbor—Gwen, played by Ashley Aufderheide—catches her, they become friends without incident because despite being a voyeur and a dork, Leia happens to have a bootlegged CD from Chicago. How does that work?

While we’re asking questions: Why is the driven and studious Nikki (Sam Morelos) actually interested in her blandly rendered jock boyfriend, Nate (Maxwell Acee Donovan)? That ’90s Show seems to believe that if viewers see them make out enough, they’ll believe the relationship—but as Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis’ Michael and Jackie from the original can tell you, the key to a good TV relationship is all about the romantic tension, and these two simply do not have it.

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