Stream It Or Skip It: ‘That ‘90s Show’ Season 2 On Netflix, Where Leia Spends Another Summer With Her Point Place Buddies

The first season of That ’90s Show didn’t work for a couple of reasons: One, the shoehorning in of a lot of the main cast of That ’70s Show felt awkward. But when they were on screen, the laughs we got watching them reminded us of how flat the current teenage characters hanging out in Kitty and Red Forman’s basement were. In the second season, labeled “Part 2” by Netflix, most of those characters aren’t going to appear. Will giving the new characters some space help the show improve?

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Opening Shot: “Point Place, Wisconsin. June 8, 1996. 11:47 AM. Location: Kitty Forman’s Kitchen.” Kitty Forman (Debra Jo Rupp) is folding clothes while bopping to the “Macarena.” Gwen (Ashley Aufderheide) and Jay (Mace Coronel) are also there.

The Gist: Gwen and Jay are in the Forman kitchen because Leia (Callie Haverda) is returning to Point Place to spend the summer and they want to give her a huge hug. Of course, as her grandmother, Kitty wants to be the first to embrace her teenage granddaughter, so she makes a dash for the door, throwing powder in Jay’s face and tossing Readers Digests in both teens’ path to get to the door first. But the first hug goes to the person who picked her up: Her grandfather Red (Kurtwood Smith).

The Formans don’t get to hug their son Eric (Topher Grace); he’s back in Chicago because, according to his wife Donna (Laura Prepon), “he got carsick backing out of the driveway.” Kitty finds an opening to tell Donna that the neighbor across the street died and the house is on the market; it’s the perfect opportunity for Eric, Donna and Leia to move back to Point Place so Kitty can have her family nearby. Donna has to remind Kitty that moving was Eric’s idea, which is why moving back may not be in the cards. But Kitty doesn’t ever take “no” for an answer.

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Meanwhile, Leia has to figure out whether or not she should tell Jay about how she and Nate (Maxwell Acee Donovan) almost hooked up during spring break. Gwen doesn’t think she should, and Ozzie (Reyn Doi), who’s in the basement as well, is busy listening on the radio for his shot at winning Spice Girls tickets. When Nate comes in with his girlfriend Nikki (Sam Morelos), things are inevitably uncomfortable between him and Leia, mostly because he doesn’t want Nikki to get wind of what happened.

In a weed-induced haze, minus Nikki and Jay, Leia and Nate first vow to not tell their SOs about the hook-up, then immediately change their minds, which shocked neither Gwen nor Ozzie. But when Leia later chickens out, Nate tells her that he left his admission on Nikki’s answering machine, causing Leia to scramble to erase the message — with her mother Donna’s help.

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Kitty keeps pressing Donna to see the house; it almost seems like she might soften on her stance when she sees Red’s huge model train setup and he admits that his group of beer-drinking retirees have either moved or been eaten by bears. But, when Kitty thinks she overhears Donna talking to Eric about moving back to Point Place, she’s actually talking to her father Bob (Don Stark).

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? That ’90s Show is, of course, the sequel series to That ’70s Show .

Our Take: The main complaint we had about the first season of That ’90s Show remains: When the characters from That ’70s Show are on screen, especially without any of the teens, the show is funny. When the teens are on screen, especially in scenes without the grownups, the show feels like a slightly naughty, largely unfunny Disney-style sitcom.

We’re not sure if this is going to get any better, mainly because, as far as we can tell, Prepon is one of the few ’70s main cast members to appear in Season 2. We’ll see Stark as Bob, Tommy Chong’s local burnout Leo and Andrea Anders as Gwen’s mom Sherri (not an original series character, but a veteran sitcom actor, so she counts), but that’s about it. All of them are side characters that are good in small does. This means that showrunner Greg Mettler and his writing staff had decided to let the kids carry the show. That’s a big, big mistake.

Normally, we would think that giving the show over to the newer characters instead of clinging to the past would be a good idea. But there is a decided lack of personality in most of the teen characters.

In some cases, they’re faded photocopies of the old characters, like Jay Kelso being a more sensitive version of his father Michael (an absent Ashton Kutcher), or Ozzie being an openly gay version of Wilmer Valderrama’s Fez. In other cases, it’s hard to put a finger on just what the characters’ likes, dislikes, motivations, fears, etc. are, which is where character-based comedy comes from.

Perhaps, as we dive deeper into the summer with Leia and her friends, and the show embraces some fun ’90s situations, the personalities we’re so desperately seeking will emerge. But we’re not convinced they ever will.

Sex and Skin: Nothing, really. Mostly just talk.

Parting Shot: After Leia accidentally spills the details about her and Nate on a local radio show — remember, Ozzie was calling in for Spice Girls tickets — we cut to Jay, Nate and Nikki on the water tower. Nate jumps off to save himself, and Jay jumps down after him.

Sleeper Star: Even though we cited Reyn Doi’s character Ozzie as a faded copy of Fez, we do like what he does with the material he’s given.

Most Pilot-y Line: Having Kitty try to incorporate ’90s high schoolers’ slang in her everyday conversation was funny once or twice, but not for the entire episode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re really reluctant to give “Part 2” of That ’90s Show a recommendation, but what we’re hoping is that the teen characters blossom now that most of the That ’70s Show ‘s main cast isn’t going to suck up screen time this season.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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