That ’90s Show – Episode 2 Recap & Review

https://youtu.be/F36HBFGxWkg

Free Leia

Episode 2 of That ’90s Show starts with Leia debating about smoking weed with her friends. Ozzie is out of the picture and does not want anything to do with it. The kids get high and behave suspiciously. When they start to grow hungry, Leia offers to get some raisin bran.

Upstairs, Ozzie and Kitty are chatting when Red brings in the first harvest of his indoor garden and all it contains is one cherry tomato. Ozzie and Kitty make fun of him and Leia shows up looking for raisin bran for her friends. Kitty tells her that they were all out of raisin bran which makes Leia hysterical.

She starts acting up and the weed kicks in and she starts picturing her grandparents as video game characters. At the same time, the kids sneak into Red and Kitty’s room and start messing around with the clothes when Leia finds her friends there. Red is upset about it and kicks the children out while Kitty calls the kids back another time.

After her friends have left, Red warns Leia about her friends coming back to the house. Kitty, on the other hand, asks Leia to invite them over for a movie the following night. The next morning, Gwen and Nate’s mother, Sherri comes to the Forman house and familiarises herself with her next-door neighbours.

Since the is a single mother who moved in with her two kids in Donna’s old house, she introduces herself to Kitty and Red. Sherri claims that she is dating someone but can barely afford anything when she is raising two grown adults. She tells Kitty that her new boyfriend wants to move in with her after two weeks of dating.

After a while, Leia and Kitty make it to the movie parlour to rent a movie for her friends to watch and Leia prefers a dorkier movie like ‘Free Willy’. Coincidentally, Jay works at the movie parlour and states that Clerks is his favourite movie. Leia wants to rent that one but the records show that some guy had rented it for the last six weeks.

Leia takes the guy’s address and convinces her grandmother to go see the man in order to get the movie DVD from him. Red and Nate try to chat and bond while Sherri makes herself at home she invites herself to take a shower at the Forman house. Kitty and  Leia meet the man renting the movie and it turns out to be Leo, Eric’s older friend who has gotten even older now.

The chaotic conversation ends with Leia and Kitty convincing him to give the movie to them. Back at home, Red gets mad at Kitty for bringing so much chaos into their lives. Kitty tells him that she likes having kids over. She tries to cheer him up and they end up flirting around and eventually hook up in their bedroom.

Surprisingly Sherri was still in the bathroom taking a shower by the time Kitty and Red arrive. She claims that waiting in the bathroom gave her enough time to think. She was going to end things with her date and Kitty is glad the woman wants to change her life for the better.

At the movie night in the basement, things start to get awkward when the movie DVD turns out to be a videotape of Leo auditioning to be an MTV host. Leia is upset that her plans to hold a perfect movie night have failed and she storms off the room. Gwen follows her asking Leia what was wrong.

Leia claims that she feels like an outsider and wants to feel more like one with the group which is why she did not have them watch her favourite dorky movie. Gwen consoles Leia stating that she should feel confident about herself and that she should not care if the group thinks that she is a dork.

Leia decides to show her friends her favourite movie and her friends start getting emotional as the movie comes to an end. Nate tries to bond with Red again after the old man had loaned him one of his flannel shirts. Nate asks if he could call Red ‘Uncle Red’ and ends up doing so despite Red’s disapproval.

Kitty is shocked to see the dress Sherri is wearing to break up with her boyfriend. She gives Sherri a pep talk in order to dump that chump but as it turns out, the guy is none other than Fez, Eric’s teenage friend.

The Episode Review

This episode was a little better than the last when it comes to writing. The jokes were awfully painful at times but it is the special appearances in this show that take the cake. That ’90s Show is trying too hard and I hope the story – as well as the jokes – get better with time.

Sherri suddenly introducing herself and making herself at home was awkward but not uncanny for sitcoms. The conflict in the show does not seem high-stakes which is also common for shows like this. However, I wish that the writers would work on better stakes in the episodes to come.