TeeVee Casualty: That ‘90s Show proves Red Forman was the true protagonist of That ‘70s Show

Roll over, Eric Forman! And tell Hyde and Kelso the news! Plus: Billy Childish makes a country record!

Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith) searches for new asses up which he can put his boot. (pic courtesy Netflix)

Greetings, O Reader! Another week, another batch of culture to chew up and spit out for your edification!  Sorry I’m getting a late start in the week, Changes in work habits to keep up with some demands created a problem in getting this week’s Substack posts off the ground. In fact, it wrecked my sleep two nights ago, resulting in me saying “fuck it,” throwing in the towel, and alternating napping with watching the worst TV show since the Watergate hearings.

I mean, seriously. Why, if the arrest and arraignment of criminal presidential candidate Cheetoh Mussolini was going to be so seriously lacking in televisuality, was it afforded such blanket coverage? At ABC (the one place I could tune in, given my streaming options), we got two hours of cops stationed in front of the inner courthouse doors as whoever this nonentity now manning the anchor desk finds infinite ways to say, “And Donald Trump should be walking through these doors any moment now.” Or, “This is historic. Donald Trump is now the first ex-president to be indicted on criminal charges.” Or, “We hear he is being fingerprinted now.” Then Cheetoh finally walks out, scowls at the TV camera, and then enters the courtroom. Which we are not allowed to see. Then two hours later, he leaves, enters the motorcade, then trucks across Manhattan, boards his private jet, and flies back to Florida, to walk into Mar A Lago preceded by his family and Mattel's new Redneck Lunatic Barbie and spend the next two hours turning his day into a campaign speech about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Which ABC even turned down the sound on after about the fifth piece of misinformation about President Biden “stealing the election.”

Surely, you can hear my eyeballs rolling viciously from wherever you are reading this.

I mean, really – I wanted to see Alvin Bragg slam down on the table in front of Cheetoh the printouts of his tweets about Bragg and the judge, just to see him squirm as they slapped the gag order upon him. But better yet, they should have scheduled this to be the Super Bowl Half-Time Show this year. The perp walk alone would have been far more entertaining than that travesty, this year and the last several.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about some good TV I’ve been watching….

Don’t Red and Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp) look like they should be standing in front of their house, a pitchfork between them? (pic courtesy of Netflix)

That ‘90s Show (Comedy, 30 mins., 1 season,  Netflix, 2023)

It felt like it snuck onto the airwaves initially, premiering on a Sunday night – August 23, 1998, to be exact. But so many of us fell in love with That ‘70s Show, centered around the wacky hijinks of six late ‘70s teenagers, it put flesh on the non-existent bones of Point Place, Wisconsin and made stars out of the young actors, especially Ashton Kutcher (as himbo Michael Kelso) and Mila Kunis (as spoiled rich girl Jackie Burkhart). Then it caught on so rapidly, Fox moved it to Thursday nights, where it lasted on the air until 2006 and took the gang from May 17, 1976 to December 31, 1979 – roughly from Boston’s first album to Cheap Trick’s Dream Police. 

So when Netflix announced That ‘90s Show, placing a new group of Point Place teens – led by Leia Forman (Callie Haverda), daughter of Eric Forman (Topher Grace) and Donna Pinciotti Forman (Laura Prepon) – in the basement of Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith) and his wife Kitty Forman (Debra Jo Rupp) 16 years later, many thought it necessary for the showrunners run some sorta gauntlet to recapture the same magic in moving it to the Clinton and grunge years.

In some ways, original show creators Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner, teaming with another Turner (Lindsey) and Gregg Mettler, remain faithful to the original That ‘70s Show. In others, they’ve amplified upon – and somewhat shifted focus onto – other characters. Which works, at least for this viewer: Some of the old show’s best bits involved gruff, somewhat conservative Red Forman threatening to put his boot up everyone’s ass. Now he feels like the star of the reboot.

Essentially, the Turners and Mettler’ve replaced every original That ‘70s Show teen character with their offspring, be they literal (Leia standing in for Eric, who – yes – named his daughter for Princess Leia, good Star Wars nerd that he was; and Jay Kelso [Mace Coronel], Leia’s love interest and Michael and Jackie’s child, much to Red’s hilarious consternation) or spiritual (sarcastic gay teen Ozzie, played by Reyn Doi, clearly intended to be the new Fez; Riot Grrl next door Gwen Runck, portrayed by Ashley Aufderheide, who is so obviously the new Donna, she lives in Donna’s old room). The kids even get injected into the old Weed Smoking Circle bit, via the discovery of an ancient bag of herb found by Gwen inside Eric’s old Candyland game set Kitty hands over to the kids when they assume control of the basement. 

Meanwhile, virtually every T’70sS character reappears, if only once, save for Danny Masterson’s Steven Hyde, which would be problematic given Masterson’s post-#MeToo profile. Disappointing that Grace returns only once as Eric, in the pilot/premiere episode, while Wilmer Valderrama as Fez (now a philandering hairdresser), Prepon as Donna and Tommy Chong’s Leo manage several hilarious cameos. But for that matter, Donna’s father Bob Pinciotti (Don Stark) and Jackie Burkhart-Kelso get one apiece, while Michael Kelso gets two. But T’90sS was never meant to be an actual T’70sS reboot, was it?

In many ways, T’90sS seems to work best retrofitting T’70sS’s humor surrounding nostalgic signposts, down to Smashing Pumpkins  guitarist James Iha’s pop punk remake of the old theme song (i.e. – Big Star’s “In The Street”) with vocals by The Donnas’ Brett Anderson. A good example comes from Episode 5’s cold open, with Ozzie setting up the Formans’ new computer.

KITTY: [holding up a mouse] Oh, look – it comes with a little foot pedal, like my sewing machine!

OZZIE: No, that’s the mouse.

KITTY: Oh! What does a mouse do?

RED: It craps in your attic!

KITTY:  Lighten up, Red! America is going online. Let’s do our part. Now we can read about current events, sports, politics….

RED: I do that already! It’s called a newspaper! And you know what I love about this? No wires connected to the government!

Something tells me that if Red makes it to That ‘10s Show, he’ll be a huge Alex Jones/QAnon person….

Ultimately, That ‘90s Show is entertaining, and there’s enough parity with the parent show to not upset holdover That ‘70s Show fans without chasing away viewers fresh to this universe. And Netflix just announced they’ve ordered a second season. Maybe the new gang is heading to Lollapalooza, or take Ozzie to see Pansy Division?! That would rule!

Standing Over By The Record Machine: Billy Childish cuts a country album!

And it sounds more like a Lee Hazlewood record than anything by Webb Pierce.

THE WILLIAM LOVEDAY INTENTION – Cowboys Are SQ (Liberation Hall) CD

Billy Childish is a British garage punk polymath of the first order. He’s a dyslexic poet and author with 88 titles to his name, mostly self-published via his own Hangman Books imprint. Additionally, he’s a wildly prolific fine artist, producing thousands of paintings, drawings and woodcuts in a primitivist style that might likely be best described as “punk Van Gough.” But what God’s green universe might likely know of him best is his music. By This Substack’s count, he has released 143 LPs since 1979, with outfits like The Pop Rivets, Thee Milkshakes, Thee Mighty Caesars, Thee Headcoats, and onward. And forget singles! In the ‘90s alone, if you got Childish’s phone number, you could put out one of his 45s! The most diligent of record collectors absolutely could not keep up with the torrent of Billy Childish vinyl through the 20th Century’s final decade!

Still, it should hardly surprise that the former Steven John Hamper spent lockdown fleshing out a 20-year-old idea of orchestrating some of his more “poetic” songs. Nor that the end result may be rougher-hewn than that. Nor that this is the seventh full-length release in two years (with a discography now 11 releases deep) by The William Loveday Intention, named for “my Grandmother, Ivy Loveday,” Childish explained in a bio for the Damaged Goods Records website. 

“When registering my birth it was mistakenly recorded as William Ivy Loveday, William being my great grandfather’s name,” he continued.

This more “subtle” approach is considerably less dependent on loud, distorted guitars and bashed-out drums, taking in instrumentation like harmonica, Hammond B-3 organ and violin. With the expanded musical palette, Childish classics like the title track, “Girl From 62” and “It Ain’t Mine” less resemble The Pretty Things ca. ‘64 covering The Clash ca. 1977 – his usual mode. Rather, this sonically parallels the gothic chamber pop take on country music that was Lee Hazlewood’s specialty, right down to the Duane Eddy-esque six-string bass hooks decorating this disc’s version of Thee Headcoats’ “Pocahontas Was Her Name.” Yet The Intention is fully capable of straight-up honky tonkin’, such as in the set-closing rendition of “You Make Me Die,” setting the lyrics to the music from Hank Williams’ “Lost Highway.”

Three of TWLI’s releases are a cheeky series entitled The New Improved Bob Dylan. So it should not be surprising that two of Cowboys Are SQ’s tracks include a tune called “Cave (blues)” that just sounds like a Billy Childish lyric applied to a rendition of “The Ballad Of Hollis Brown,” and a “Like A Rolling Stone” that could be Childish singing to the original backing track, albeit with that singing-through-a-guitar-amp vocal sound that’s a Childish production hallmark.

All in all, Cowboys Are SQ will not replace your Milkshakes or Headcoats records. That ‘65-meets-’77 bash-em-up is the reason we dig Billy Childish. (NOTE: A Headcoats reunion album is forthcoming on Damaged Goods! And it ROCKS! Review coming soon!) But The William Loveday Intention is a worthy wrinkle on The Medway Sound, a deepening and maturation, if you will. Totally worth it, brethren and sistren.

TOMORROW: MONTE A. MELNICK, PART 2! COMING SOON: CAPTAIN SENSIBLE!!!

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