That 70’s Show: Season Five DVD Credits:

Region: 1

That 70’s Show: Season Five DVD Release Date: 16th October 2006

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That 70’s Show: Season Five DVD Review:

After the cliffhanger of season four with Donna and Kelso on their way to California and Eric and Jackie left behind, season five gives the audiences a perfect episode. It isn’t perfect in the sense that the episode is perfectly done, but it is an episode in which everything works out to the strictest classic of romantic conclusions, complete with a slow motion running sequence on the beach. It feels as though it were the end of the show, but after that episode things quickly go back to normal. Kelso ends a relationship with guest star Jessica Simpson and returns to find that Jackie and Hyde have started a relationship while he was gone. Although Eric and Donna are reunited, Donna is forced to go to a different school and Eric’s family is turned around when Kitty tells them she’s pregnant, which is short-lived as she is actually just going through menopause.

Season five seems to be when the show just started to pass its peak. The scenarios that the gang find themselves in are humorous enough, but this is mostly because the writers seem to have figured out what made the show work and started to play into those specific points as much as possible. In this season it is still entertaining and fun, but you can see the characters slowly shifting into caricatures. Most of the actors don’t survive this shift, often given lines that are written just to fit into the character quirks which now been made the whole of the character. Jackie is superficial, Hyde is a conspiracy theory tough guy, Kelso is an idiot, Donna is feminist tomboy, and Red wants to put his foot in every dumb-ass’s ass. Only Topher Grace manages to survive the show’s shift into maturity with moments of awareness that actually made me think of Michael J. Fox at the beginning of his career.

A perfect example is the circle. Anyone who watches That 70’s Show knows that once they get in a circle and the camera swivels around to hear what each have to say, this means that they just smoked weed. In the earlier seasons whenever this happened there were consequences. Eric would be talking to his parents and the wall would start to move, or he would eat fast and say stupid things. Into season five the circle is just used because fans liked it, and there are no consequences. It will cut to the circle just so we can get a break from the story and hear everyone’s humorous stoned comments about what is going on, but just as quickly as it comes we are back to the regular action and often they are no longer stoned. There is also a sudden increase in who is in the circle in season five. It had started to get out of hand in season four, but season five admits nearly any character into the circle on the mere whim that it would be funny.

The DVD has all of the 25 episodes from season five on a four disc set. Each episode comes with a promo spot which can be watched before the episode. There is also the Season 5 in 5 Minutes feature and A 70’s Flashback with Wilmer Valderrama and Danny Masterson.

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That 70’s Show: Season Five DVD review written by: Ryan Izay