Television: From Sweet Memories To A Bonfire Of Inanities

Fox tries to cash in on an '80s update of That '70s Show's nostalgia. But sometimes greed isn't good

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On the plus side, the sound track revives some pleasures, including the theme song, Killing Joke's Eighties, which captured the decade better in a few minutes than the pilot does in half an hour. That '80s Show buys into the pop-historical arc, familiar from movies like Boogie Nights and Blow, in which the relatively innocuous, goofy '70s (pot, disco, TM) sour into the cold, aggressive '80s (coke, heavy metal, M.B.A.s). It's hard to cultivate warmth for a decade that you're portraying as soulless and lame, especially if your characters are equally empty. There's easy nostalgia (remember Dynasty? remember "Where's the beef"?), and there's getting a decade's spirit (remember the awkward attempts to combine the social liberties of the '70s with the social conservatism of the '50s?). That '70s Show meets both goals; with its lower-middle-class teens coming of age in a decade of lowered expectations, it's a good-hearted remembrance of people. That '80s Show is so far a superficial remembrance of stuff. How totally '80s of it.

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