... and the series lets you forget all that. I am about three years older than the kids portrayed in the series. Born in 1958, I learned to drive during the first gas shortage, and got my first post-college graduation job during the second gas shortage in 1979. The 70's were a truly dreadful time to be young - inflation, competing for after-school minimum-wage jobs with laid-off thirty-somethings, dreadful music, worse clothes.
The funny thing is, this series doesn't ignore any of that and still manages to make the 70's look fun, even for those of us old enough to know better. It manages to look the 70's directly in the face - complete with time-authentic clothing - and yet fill the show with the hopefulness of youth and the things that make the high school and college years both the best of times and the worst of times. Then there are the parents. The two young lovers in the show - Eric Forman and Donna Pinciotti - truly have dreadful parents with the best of intentions. Eric's parents, Red and Kitty, are not exactly June and Ward although they are conventional for the decade. They represent what happened when the 60's finally reached the suburbs during the 1970's. Donna's parents are two people who have been waiting for the 1960's to show up their whole lives in order to give their weirdness legitimacy. Eric's friends Fez, Kelso, and Jackie round out the group representing nerdiness, well-meaning incompetence, and snobbishness respectively. Hyde is an unusual teenager for a show about the suburbs, but he largely represents someone who has to play the cards he was dealt even when those cards are dealt by largely absentee and negligent parents. I highly recommend all eight seasons even though season eight does lag a bit due to the absence of Eric.
The funny thing is, this series doesn't ignore any of that and still manages to make the 70's look fun, even for those of us old enough to know better. It manages to look the 70's directly in the face - complete with time-authentic clothing - and yet fill the show with the hopefulness of youth and the things that make the high school and college years both the best of times and the worst of times. Then there are the parents. The two young lovers in the show - Eric Forman and Donna Pinciotti - truly have dreadful parents with the best of intentions. Eric's parents, Red and Kitty, are not exactly June and Ward although they are conventional for the decade. They represent what happened when the 60's finally reached the suburbs during the 1970's. Donna's parents are two people who have been waiting for the 1960's to show up their whole lives in order to give their weirdness legitimacy. Eric's friends Fez, Kelso, and Jackie round out the group representing nerdiness, well-meaning incompetence, and snobbishness respectively. Hyde is an unusual teenager for a show about the suburbs, but he largely represents someone who has to play the cards he was dealt even when those cards are dealt by largely absentee and negligent parents. I highly recommend all eight seasons even though season eight does lag a bit due to the absence of Eric.