That ‘90s Show sees a new generation of teenagers, some of them the children of That ‘70s Show’s original group, spend their summer hanging out in the basement of Red and Kitty Foreman. Like with any sequel to a popular sitcom of yore, there are those who are only watching to see what their favorite characters are up to 15 years later. However, the show is also trying to appeal to a new generation, and it fills a niche that has been lacking in the zeitgeist lately: the in-between sitcom.
The sitcom has been a staple of television since the medium’s early days. It began with squeaky clean shows broadcast in black-and-white like I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver. It currently consists mostly of shows that ditch the sound stages and classic laugh track (and often break the fourth wall) like Abbott Elementary.
Sitcoms used to be geared toward a general viewing audience; entertaining for all ages with nothing that would be objectionable to parents of young children. As the scope of TV widened, with more channels and more creators could “get away with” on the platform, sitcoms geared towards more narrow and specific age demographics emerged in addition to the ones families could enjoy together.
Nowadays, that “in addition to” isn’t really a thing anymore. You’ve got the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon sitcoms for kids, and the network TV ones for adults. The last time there was a strong middle ground was the 1990s, the age of sitcom programming blocks like ABC’s TGIF lineup with sitcoms aimed at families, but particularly older kids and younger teens. Some of these programs, like Full House, skewed more towards the younger kids in the family, while others tackled subject matter that was a bit more grown-up but in a way that kids would understand and parents (probably) wouldn’t freak out (not taking things to the same level as adult-oriented sitcoms as Murphy Brown did). The two biggest examples of this on the aforementioned TGIF lineup were Dinosaurs and Boy Meets World, but there were others on various networks, like NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, that also fell into this camp.
However, starting around the 2000s, the gap between sitcoms for kids and sitcoms for adults grew wider and wider. There were two distinct categories: one in which sex, drugs, and the ills of the world didn’t exist, and one in which they were all anyone talked about (mostly the sex though). There was Hannah Montana and there was Two and a Half Men, with kids essentially being forced to jump from one extreme to the other. Even now, there isn’t a lot of sitcom-style programming that is truly targeted at the entire family anymore, and the shows aimed at teens are mostly dramas in which the aforementioned taboo topics are, well…over-dramatized.
All the shows above have their place, but it’s not realistic for most young people in the real world to suddenly go from living in a squeaky-clean environment to one in which everything deemed “not for kids” is suddenly a major part of their daily lives. Unfortunately, most television at the time didn’t reflect this transitionary period. Some of the only TV programming that was set in a world where teens knew about and discussed a lot of these things without constantly partaking in them were animated sitcoms like Daria and 6teen.
These shows discussed things like sexuality and used more risque language, but that’s not where most of the storylines and conflict actually came from. They were mostly just acknowledged as being part of life, and when characters did engage in mature activities it wasn’t presented as being the be-all, end-all of their lives. Unfortunately, these shows were on cable channels, meaning fewer people actually had access to them (and in the case of the Canadian 6teen, was sanitized and had episodes removed from its rotation when airing in America).
That ‘90s Show may be geared toward a younger audience than That ‘70s Show as the demographic they’re aiming for with this one seems to skew a bit younger than the one the original series was after. As such, that may make it a miss for some people who loved the original. However, as a show on its own merits, it fills a gap that a lot of producers don’t seem to be thinking about nowadays, even though it does so a little differently than the aforementioned examples from prior eras.
That ‘90s Show has the bright color grading and some of the hammy-ness of the kidcoms you might find on a children-specific channel, but it’s balanced out by some of the subject matter. It’s clear there are some virgins and some non-virgins in the main friend group, but none of them freak out or judge anyone for whether they’ve had sex or not. And while you definitely wouldn’t see the Boy Meets World characters casually smoking pot in a circle – at least, not without someone delivering a big speech telling them off for it – but the relatively more relaxed societal attitudes to it nowadays compared to 30 years ago and fact that it was a big part of the original series makes it work for That ‘90s Show.
It can be jarring for young people to suddenly be dropped into a media landscape that goes hard on the “mature” topics after being sheltered from it by other shows for so long, so it’s nice for them to have the option to watch something that acknowledges the existence of a big, complicated world but doesn’t shove them headfirst into it, instead allowing them to experience bits and pieces of it in a relaxing, comforting way (complete with the classic laugh track).
