A day or two ago, I learned about That '90s Show: unlike That '80s Show, it’s a direct spin-off of That '70s Show – including many of the same characters/cast members – and will focus on the teenage daughter of Eric and Donna Forman. It’s set to premiere on Netflix on 1/19/23.
Apparently this show has been in the works since October 2021, but I hadn’t heard about it before now.
Anyone else planning to watch? 
Had not heard about it until just now, but with Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith bringing back their characters, I’ll certainly want to take a look.
Here’s the trailer for it:
I plan to try it. Hopefully they can recapture the magic of the early years of the 70s show.
It’s driving me a little nuts, I swore there was a thread on this already but I can’t find it.
I did a couple of searches before starting this thread, and was surprised that I didn’t find an existing one!
Who is the target market for this? The teens in the cast don’t seem particularly compelling. I can’t tell what any of their stories are or why I should care. There’s a snippet suggesting Leia’s in trouble but none of the other kids seems to get a name, a relationship to Leia, or any semblance of a personality. But maybe this is supposed to captivate middle-agers. I watched That 70’s Show in its original run but it lost its magic after a few seasons or I outgrew it. I don’t want to relive those days and I don’t particularly care if whiny kid Eric has grown into whiny adult Eric.
I think the primary target is those who enjoyed the original show.
It will be 10 episodes on Netflix and no one really know much about the show except that there will be a lot of guest appearances by the original cast and of course Red & Kitty will be a big part of it.
Are you basing that all off the trailer?
I’m guessing it’s directed at the current crop of high school/college kids. However, that’s just based on watching the trailer a few days ago and thinking it seemed a lot like Girl Meets World. Girl Meets World wasn’t aimed at the people that grew up watching Boy Meets World, it was meant for the kids of people that grew up watching it. Right down to some episodes of GMW having nearly identical story lines as BMW.
I get the feeling that’s going to be the case with this as well. I’m not sure about the story lines, but many of the core group of friends appear to be facsimiles of characters from the first show.
Yes, I’m basing it off the trailer, which seemed to focus on the adults. Although That '70s Show had interesting adults, the kids were the core of the show. I can’t tell from the trailer who is at the heart of this show. It probably shouldn’t be the grandparents but it looks like it will be.
I think it’s safe to assume that Danny Masterson won’t be dropping by for any guest appearances.
WAG, it’s going to focus on the kids with the parents as secondary characters and Red/Kitty appearing as often as Eric/Donna (or close to it), since it appears they all still live in the same house) and cameos from other members as it works into their schedules.
OTOH, IMDB has Kitty, Red and the kids in 10 episodes and everyone else, including Eric and Donna only in 1. So maybe it’ll go that way instead.
Correct, but Kelso, Jackie, Donna and Bob are confirmed. I think Fez & Eric also. Even Leo (Tommy Chong). That is a lot of guest appearance from the original cast.
Eric & Donna live in Chicago apparently and won’t be regulars.
Leila is visiting her Grandparents for the summer apparently.
Fez was in the trailer. He was doing Kitty’s hair. Looks like he opened up a salon called Chez Fez.
If the trailer for a comedy doesn’t make me laugh a single time I am just going to assume it is absolutely horrible.
okay.
There was… But it seems to have vanished.
I wasn’t impressed either. That 70’s show was one of the most rewatched I had on Netflix. I think I was around #6 of watching every episode when they pulled it.
The fact that the daughter looks like Topher Grace and is named Leia (playing into Eric’s Star Wars obsession) means I’ll at least give the pilot a try. It sounds like they live in Chicago and they’re having Leia stay with her grandparents for the summer.
Holy time passage! I was thinking “'That ‘70s Show’ only ended what, like 5 years ago? They must have really sped up the timeline, with the original actors now playing even older than their actual age than the first time around!”
It just seems like too drastic of a time jump- I think of the 70s as the past and the 90s as the ‘present-ish’. The fact that the original actors all still look great, like they haven’t aged a day, makes this seem more so.
Then I checked IMDB- it ended in 2006, so assuming the fictional show ended around 1979, that’s actual real time for Eric and Donna to have a teenage daughter in the mid-90s.
Damn, time is going by fast 
I’ll give it a look. Bonnie and Terry Turner really hit the jackpot with the original cast, I think. How many shows have you seen where you can so easily identify with both the goofball teenage protagonist as well as his gruff but lovable father who threatens to stick his boot up his son’s ass? Later seasons didn’t hold together as well because replacement characters didn’t do as well as the people they were replacing. In the trailer, it looked like they were trying a little too hard to make goofy and differently identifiable characters but we’ll see how that shakes out on the actual show.
For the original run, I was young enough to identify with the kids. Watching the trailer, I think I’ll identify more with Red in thinking that these kids are a bunch of dumbasses who need a boot in the pants. But watching a bunch of annoyingly stupid kids isn’t much of a lure to actually… watch it.
I am a little curious about the setting. Mostly because everyone always seems to insist that there’s just no major cultural changes since the 90s and everything then is indistinguishable from today, etc (not saying I agree but this comes up regularly in Cafe Society) so whether they’ll be able to create a show that feels distinctly 90s past “Look at my beeper” and “lol the internet will never work”