As Homer Simpson once said, not long before That ’70s Show premiered: They have the internet on computers now! Nascent online culture makes its way to Point Place in “Step By Step,†which does not reference the weirdly smutty family sitcom from ABC that aired for a disturbing majority of the ’90s. Kitty is setting up the Forman family’s first computer, and she is (somewhat improbably, given the year and her age) focused primarily on using it to connect to the internet. Still, as forward-thinking as Kitty may be in this regard (the Simpsons didn’t even have a computer yet in 1995!), she needs Ozzie’s help setting the whole thing up. Ozzie agrees, hoping to use this opportunity to tell Kitty that he’s gay. Ozzie is straightforward about his sexuality among his friends but has a multi-step coming out plan to ease his way into the rest of the world. Learning about the internet while enacting one part of a coming-out plan: Is this Degrassi?!
Wanting to make sure Kitty will be receptive and supportive, Ozzie asks Leia to feel her out first; Kitty mistakes the ensuing discussion for an attempted heart-to-heart about sex and keeps her cool in front of Leia before placing a panicked call to Special Guest Star Laura Prepon. When Donna arrives on the scene, Ozzie still doesn’t feel quite ready, so Leia maintains the confusion. In an episode full of contrivances, the show actually spins something kind of sweet from the fact that Leia never confesses to her mom that she was just covering for her friend. Instead, she admits that sex was on her mind, at least in the abstract sense of feeling jealousy over Jay’s tight t-shirt and its proximity to his body — but that she’s nowhere near that particular step in their not-really-relationship yet.
Indeed, Leia’s just-friends gambit from the previous episode seems to be working; Gwen points out that she has “short-circuited [Jay’s] boy brain.†To clear his head, Jay heads out with Nate to look at a free hot tub advertised in the Pennysaver, which turns out to be a lure from an old woman hoping to seduce interested parties. Meanwhile, Gwen and Nikki get over their mutual supposed indifference to each other, bonding over feeling ditched by the boys — and not, somehow, their similarly amazing mops of curly hair. They smoke pot, call each other Funyons, and take the glamour shots that Nikki had arranged for herself and Nate (where they do at least take advantage of being almost hair-twins). It’s about two minutes total of screen time, switching Gwen from stealth romantic interest for Leia (I remain very convinced that this will happen) to cheekily coded flirtation for Nikki, who describes aforementioned glamour shots as “something I usually do with Nate but might be more fun with you.â€
Technically, these are C-stories, but can they be downgraded further? D-stories, perhaps, or maybe E? Both of these subplots have potential, especially Nikki and Gwen finding some common ground. But it’s awfully thin, the gags aren’t really there, and without stronger material, Ashley Aufderheide tends to default to a kind of exclamatory, kid-actor-y performance style that needs more time to really work up a meaningful contrast with the more Zendaya/Ghost World style of Sam Morelos.
That leaves Leia and Ozzie, whose stories are both more cute than truly compelling. Reyn Doi remains the most original presence on the show, and he’s funny flipping back and forth between an overly detailed coming-out plan and making up steps (like “steal a carâ€) to confuse his friends. There’s little comic tension, however, in his coming out to Kitty; his hesitancy doesn’t particularly scan, and the show doesn’t raise even the slightest doubt over whether Kitty will accept him. (Wouldn’t Red make for more of a challenge there? Of course, the show would likely pull a Man Called Otto: Simply imagine that a cantankerous white man of a certain age would be unusually accepting beneath his gruff exterior. But at least there’s some modicum of a story there.) Leia, too, finds instant acceptance and warmth as her coded-but-possibly-graphic sex talk with her mom turns into some bromides about her good heart (and a few digs about her dad’s teenage awkwardness).
It’s all a bunch of time-killing, really, until the episode’s fairly unearned final twist: Jay returns from the unsuccessful attempt to acquire a hot tub with a potential girlfriend as he takes the hot tub lady’s granddaughter out on a date. (Nate, for his part, returns with a free offscreen goat, also from the Pennysaver.) Naturally, they run into Leia just as she approaches Jay, hoping to clear the air and tell him how she feels (even though, as Gwen lampshades, he already knows how she feels). Here, I think, we’re seeing the consequences of the drastically shortened streaming seasons: ten episodes of That ’90s Show means that it has to hustle into its Ross-and-Rachel dynamic — they’re ironically name-checked here by Jay as an example of people who are just friends — which then makes every Julie-esque obstacle feel more arbitrary. This show needs a little more ’90s-style slack.
Hangin’ Out
• Kitty, upon hearing what is now a deeply nostalgic modem-connecting sound: “The internet is just two demons yelling at each other!†Ozzie’s response of “that’s actually pretty accurate, yeah†is a little prescient for 1995, but I’ll allow it.
• Kitty and Red finally get their computer working so they can use the internet for its purest purpose: Ogling pictures of Racquel Welch and Kirk Douglas.
• ’90s reference watch: Yes, Friends and America Online, but really, much of this episode could take place now, or at least some time in the late 2000s, without much updating beyond swapping out AOL for broadband. This is true to the spirit of the original series; if anything, That ’70s Show probably had more stories that wouldn’t be appreciably different set in 1976 or 1998.