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That 70's Show is without a doubt one of the best sitcoms from the early aughts. All though the final season may be seen as the worst collection of episodes throughout the shows run, this singular episode of That 70's Show is worse than anything in the 8th season. Even for marking the achievement of their 100th episode, this storyline fell flat in more ways that one. But what exactly made this the worst episode of That 70's Show ever to be produced?
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This concert's tonight
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Yes, it's tonight. And we're talking about it for weeks. Don't you listen to me
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Fezz, I don't know why you're getting so upset about it. You know we don't listen to you
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At the end of the seventh season of That 70s Show, Topher Grace, who played Eric Foreman
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asked to be written off the sitcom. And Ashton Kutcher, who played Michael Kelso
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reduced his involvement to that of a recurring guest star. Without them, the subsequent eighth and final season
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turned out to be something of a disaster, and it is widely considered the low point of the whole run
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But as fans likely recall, there had already been one episode of That 70s Show
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that was way worse than anything in season eight. He doesn't seem to like you at all
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Debuting on Fox in 1998, That 70s Show followed the lives of a group of teenagers
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growing up in the fictional town of Point Place, Wisconsin during the last four years of the 1970s
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And by the time it was all said and done, the series had run for 200 episodes over eight seasons
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But as we alluded to, not all of those seasons are held in equal regard
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Lacking two of its most important stars and characters, the eighth season tanked in ratings
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and today it is considered skippable by even some of the series' most diehard fans
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That being said, it's hard to think of anything in season eight that's quite as difficult to sit through as season four, episode 24, that 70s musical
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Do, re, mi, paso, lat, y, do. Perfecto. The installment finds Wilmer Valderrama's Fez
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inviting Eric, Donna, Michael, Jackie, Hyde, Red, and Kitty to come see him perform at their school's Spring Sing
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The Spring Sing is a talent show organized by Fez's chorus teacher, Mr. Wilkinson
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who just happens to be played by Roger Daltrey, the lead vocalist of the iconic classic rock band, The Who
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Eric's parents, Red and Kitty, agree to come, but the gang show little to no outward interest in the event
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causing Fez to question whether or not they are indeed really his friends
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When they fail to arrive on time, Fez assumes they're not coming at all, but to his great relief, the other five eventually show up and reveal they were only late
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because they stopped to play a prank on Mr. Wilkinson due to the generally crappy way he treats Fez
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For me? Yeah and then we had to go get some dog poop because we looked at his porch and realized hey not enough dog poop Fez realizes his friends really do care about him after all and then the episode ends with a big dance number
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That's because, as the title implies, that 70s musical is a musical
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More specifically, it's a jukebox musical that finds the cast singing popular songs from the 1960s and 70s
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during fantasy sequences loosely prompted by events in the story. For example, when Fez predicts his spring sing will be a lovely evening filled with music
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Just like life should be. The show immediately segues into a fantasy sequence of the character leading the rest of the ensemble
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in a performance of Earth, Wind & Fire's 1975 hit, Sing a Song
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This is my favorite part. Other tunes that are worked into the episode include Happy Together by the Turtles
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The Joker by the Steve Miller Band, Shake Your Groove Thing by Peaches & Herb
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and Love Hurts, which was made famous by Nazareth. Like Sing a Song, they're all included via fantasy sequences that take place in Fez's imagination
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and they're almost all rendered in a trinicated form. Nonetheless, fitting all of those songs into the show's already brief 22-minute runtime
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doesn't leave much room for storytelling. As a result, the whole pace of the episode and its humor feels off
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We don't get to spend all that much quality time hanging out down the street with the charismatic crew the series is built around
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Are you people singing again? Even worse is that the time we do have with them is spent completely in service of a meager plot driven solely by Fez's anxieties over his friend's loyalty
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In a thinly contrived conflict that requires Eric, Donna, Michael, Jackie, and Hyde to act like jerks pretty much the whole time
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And in the end, the whole problem turns out to be completely imagined before resolving itself
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So watching Fez navigate the situation isn't particularly compelling. But maybe I'm not their friend
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Maybe I'm just a goofy foreign kid. Well, can't you be both
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As far as the series' ongoing storyline goes, Fez's problem is introduced at the beginning of the episode and wrapped up by the end
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so it doesn't affect the arc of the season at all. Conversely, the arc of the season, which mainly deals with the fallout of Eric and Donna's breakup
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is only briefly mentioned in passing during the installment, so it has no real effect on the episode either
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In other words it pretty much the platonic ideal of a skippable episode Now in all fairness back when the average TV show produced 20 episodes a season it wasn unusual for a handful of those episodes to be little more than filler material
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designed to string the audience along until the following week, when the plot would begin to move forward again
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And that 70s musical definitely feels like that kind of throwaway episode
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which is why it's fairly surprising to learn that far from being filler
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it was actually the series' 100th episode and was intended to be a big special celebration of that milestone
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Wow, I just caught the end, but that was nice. Historically speaking, special musical episodes of otherwise non-musical shows
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are something of a tradition on TV. I Love Lucy did a musical number in 1952
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The Dick Van Show did a whole musical episode in 1963, and The Brady Bunch did one in 1973
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More recent examples include outings on Scrubs, The Flash, Riverdale, and Community
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and we would be remiss not to mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Once More with Feeling
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widely regarded as the best musical episode of any non-musical show ever
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And according to That 70s Show executive producer Jackie Filgo, the idea of doing a musical episode to mark the show's centennial didn't seem like too much of a departure
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because it had a lot of musical fantasies and choreographed numbers in the past, which is true
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but producing the occasional musical sequence isn't the same as keeping it up for an entire episode
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especially when a show doesn't have a lot of strong singers in its cast
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which is sadly the case with that 70s show. Well, honey, you know, at least they're singing like you'll be doing real soon
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Happy song, happy song. Now, to their credit, with the exception of Love Hurts
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where the voices of Laura Prepon and Mila Kunis were replaced by professional singers
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the cast do sing their own songs. That being said, none of them have particularly powerful voices
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and several of them are downright awful. We feel a little bad naming names because, as executive producer Jeff Vilgo said of the group's decision to do their own singing
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they're a really game cast. They'll do anything. And they do at least appear to be having a great time with it
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But if we're being perfectly honest, Valderrama, Kutcher, Denny Masterson, and Kurtwood Smith clearly don't count singing among their major talents
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And while Grace does a relatively better job than the others we not exactly surprised that he didn go on to headline on Broadway either Well the butts are in the seats And not one butt is the butt of a friend Given that state of affairs it no wonder that producers brought in a heavy vocal hitter
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like Roger Daltrey to guest star, or so you would think. Except that in a move that is nothing short of baffling
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Daltrey, who is one of the greatest rock and roll singers of all time, doesn't sing a single note in the entirety of that 70s musical
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Instead, all of the numbers are all performed by relatively large groups of the cast
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singing together or trading off lyrics line by line. This approach means that none of the songs
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are specifically tailored to the characters who sing them, so they don't reveal anything about those characters
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And given that the songs are really just used to punctuate whatever bit of dialogue
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kicked off their respective fantasy sequences, they don't move the plot forward at all either
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You know, last night they went to a party without me. A topless party
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What? Where? Those fantasy sequences, for the record, include some cringe-inducingly unfunny bits
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For example, the one that kicks off Happy Together, where Eric, Hyde, and Fez all sleep in the same bed like children
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The atonally cheesy vibe is intended to represent the work of Fez's childishly sunny imagination
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And the fantasy sequences are likely why the episode was nominated for Emmys
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recognizing outstanding costumes and art direction. But after a whole episode's worth of such imagining
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the cumulative effect is grating rather than fun or funny. All right, sleep tight
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And don't let the bedbugs put their foot in your ass. The bottom line is that while we definitely respect the creatives behind the show for taking a big swing
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the simple fact is that that 70s musical doesn't work. It doesn't work as a regular episode of the show
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It doesn't work as part of the season. It doesn't work as a musical. It was a random fever dream worth watching
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neither for its flimsy, inconsequential plot, nor its musical moments. And instead of a big joyous celebration of all the show had accomplished in its first 99 episodes
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it came off feeling more like a lazy way to exploit a handful of songs
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that were popular during the era depicted on the show. By our reckoning, that makes it worse than anything season 8 had to offer
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And seriously, how do you bring in Daltrey and not have him sing? Wow, this cheeseburger is bloody brilliant