Different TV shows have different ways in which they pace themselves. Some shows pick up right where they left off episode to episode and season to season while others don’t. Other series have time pass between episodes and don’t always make it clear how much time has passed –- you’re just stuck in a limbo of assuming it’s been a week, or maybe even a month.
The TV classic “That ’70s Show” is one of those series. There are times when the show tells us what day it is, but you still don’t know exactly just how much time passes between episodes and seasons. It’s not really that important to know how much time has passed, however, when you take a closer look, it can throw you off. Most of the time you’re passively watching the show, but when you begin to analyze its timeline, things start to make less and less sense. Here’s one primary reason why the timeline in “That ’70s Show” can be a bit confusing.
There are eight Christmases between 1976 and 1979
The 1st season of “That ’70s Show” takes place in 1976, and there are eight seasons of the show. So, if the show wished to stay purely in the ’70s, the writers only had three more years to work with until the ’80s would creep up on them. The simple fix? Each season covers only six months of time, allowing the series to cover four years in eight seasons. Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
The first confusing continuity problem on “That ’70s Show” is there is a Christmas episode every season. The gang celebrates eight Christmases in total, but the confusion comes in because as mentioned above, the writers seemed to want to stay in the ’70s and the show’s last season takes place in 1979 So, how can there be eight Christmases in the span of four years? That’s four too many.
To make matters even worse, the last three seasons all take place in 1979. Going back to the Christmas fiasco, not only are there eight Christmases in four years; there are also three Christmases happening in 1979. Now, you could argue that this is a TV series and it’s typical of these shows to have a Christmas episode in each of its seasons for holiday cheer in December, but that still doesn’t make the timeline any less confusing. Maybe the Christmas episodes exist in some limbo that viewers are just unaware of? No official comment has been made by the writers or actors, so viewers are just stuck in the never-ending timeline nightmare.
