That '70s Show: Season 4

Let's try another That '70s Show post made using the Q&A style format I came up with last time.

How familiar was I with the season's various episodes?

Again, very familiar. There were 27 episodes in Season 4 (wow) and while I didn't keep a specific count, I think only three or four seemed entirely new to me. We're now at 103 episodes through four seasons, and I think I'd already seen 80 or 85 of them. This stands in stark contrast to when I was watching every season of Seinfeld a few years back, where I thought I'd seen a few dozen episodes but could only specifically remember ten or so.

Were there any key ways in which this season was different from previous seasons?

The season's big ongoing arc was the aftermath of Eric and Dona's break-up, one of those "game-changing" moves a show tends to pull after three seasons. It worked pretty well. There was a predictable five-episode stretch of break-up angst/depression/grief to kick things off, and the season also ended with a predictable five-episode stretch of Eric desperately trying to win Donna back from her new boyfriend (Luke Wilson, everyone!) but that left seventeen episodes for each character to explore new territory; without Donna by his side, Eric turns out to be kind of a pathetic and desperate guy who resorts to hijinks to pick up girls. And when the formerly confident and mellow Donna dates an older guy, she turns into a fawning and giggly teenage girl, at times nearly flipping the dynamic between her and the show's other female lead, Mila Kunis's Jackie. That character, by the way, undergoes some growth by taking up a job at the mall when her father cuts her off financially. Kelso, who spent most of the first two seasons cheating on Jackie, goes through some emotional maturity of his own when they deal with a few bumps in their relationship. Hyde becomes a bit less of an asshole and Fez enjoyed a brief fling with his own first girlfriend. Depth, all around. Plus, the two least enjoyable main characters from seasons past - Donna's mom Midge and Eric's sister Laurie - left during or after the third season. And Tommy Chong's Leo was back again, stealing every scene he was in.

Any particular highlights or lowlights worth singling out?

Yes. The less is said of the show's 100th episode, "That '70s Musical," the better. I watched that one all alone after midnight last night, and still I was just cringing in embarrassment. It felt so utterly misguided. None of the actors on the show can really sing, and the episode didn't contain new original songs, but '70s hits instead. (And one '60s hit, for some reason.) Blech. In general, the back third of the season (with the exception of that awful episode) was loaded with great episodes and moments. There was a class picture episode that sevred mostly as a framing device for a bunch of "how did the gang all meet?" flashbacks, and those are always interesting. Ah, and the season led off with a Wonderful Life-style episode where Eric got to see what his life would have been like, and will one day be like, had he never dated Donna at all. I bring it up only because it offers a gimmicky 1980s alternative future that worked on a lot of levels, which makes me wonder two things. One, how did Fox screw up a spin-off That '80s Show so badly? And two, why did this show refuse to advance the calendar into the early '80s as it wore on? We're four seasons deep and the timeline has gone a grand total of two years, even though every season has had a Christmas or Thanksgiving episode. Eh, whatever. It works.

Final thoughts on anything else relating to the season or series as a whole?

The fourth season breathed new life into the series in my mind. I wasn't bored sick of it after three seasons or anything, but there did appear to be a creative resurgence going on here. The loss of those aforementioned tertiary characters didn't hurt the show in the least, and a lot of that character growth and development I was talking about helped drive - or maybe were driven by? - a surge of creativity.

I liked Season 4 more than I liked Season 3. I may have liked it more than Seasons 1 and 2 as well, but it's tough to say for sure since the whole series kind of blurs together the way long-running sitcoms tend to do. I recently purchased Seasons 5 and 6, so I'll be back soon enough with more, I'm sure.