Scott Meyer

How to Complain with Flair

Added 2025-03-17 08:00:03 +0000 UTC

I didn’t really watch That ’70s Show. I have nothing against it. I wasn’t really watching sitcoms at the time it was on, so I’ve never seen an entire episode. I did see a few scenes here and there later, as its reruns would be on in the breakrooms at various locations I worked back in my theme park days. My main memory is that it always weirded me out that the father figure of the show was Clarence Boddicker from Robocop, a gang leader so badass that his crew included Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks! And Dr. Romano from ER, the man it took two helicopters to kill!

Finding out that the show has been off the air about the same amount of time as passed between when it took place and when it aired was a real jolt. What makes it worse is that researching this comic sent me down a rabbit hole of nostalgia-based sitcoms. It turns out the roughly twenty-year lag between when a show takes place and when it airs is fairly common. Two other shows with a twenty-year gap were Happy Days and MASH, shows that were on when I was a kid, and felt like they might as well have taken place in the old west or the Regency period.

When I was young, I thought older people were always grumpy and obsessed with the past. Now I am older, and I understand why we seem that way. BECAUSE WE ARE!!