I want to tell you a story. It’s of a young girl. She’s beautiful, rich, popular, and hip to the latest trends. Decked out in the most fashionable outfits money can buy, her goal in life is to live a fairy tale. But one by one, the cornerstones of her life crumble under her. Her wealthy family falls apart, her handsome boyfriend cheats on her, and as she leaves high school to enter the real world, she faces the inescapable truth that what she wanted is impossible.
Thus, she settles for what she has.
That is the tale of Jackie Burkhart, the cheerleader girlfriend of hot-boy himbo loser Michael Kelso from ‘That 70s Show’ (1998-2006). Part of the core gang only by her romantic relationship initially, she blossoms into just as important a member as any of them. But in her story, I don’t see any true arc, but a repeating cycle.
Stepping back, let’s discuss what show we’re actually talking about today. ‘That 70s Show’ is one of the true great sitcoms of the 2000s. Premiering in 1998, it’s a period piece about a group of teens who do weed, do minor crime, and think constantly about sex. As the years go on, they mature into absolutely terrible adults, and as the 1970s close out, they’re ready to take on the real world.
This is actually one of my favourite sitcoms to ever exist. That is 100% nostalgia bias, but it’s also based on quality. On all levels, ‘That 70s Show’ should be considered part of the late 1990s/early 2000s television boom in quality that laid the foundation for the 2010s “golden age”. While the genre and subject might differentiate it from something like ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘The Wire’, this is an A-grade program.
Comparing it to sitcoms both before and after, what I have to give the show is its attention to detail. Not just in the period accurate clothing, which is lovely, or the great chemistry-based casting, but the general aesthetic. This is a show that did more than the multi-cam, without sacrificing style. We get dynamic sets, fun cutaway sequences, and thoughtful homages throughout. But even in the more standard scenes, it’s a warm, inviting aesthetic for a show that could easily have given into sterility. Plenty of shows from that era cheaped out on the mise-en-scene and cinematography, but not ‘That 70s Show’.
But at its core, this is a show that relied upon the cast to sell the concept. Nobody on that set gives a bad performance, but I want to give Mila Kunis the attention here. Not just because she’s the actress portraying the subject of this article, but because she does a lot with, often, very little. Jackie is an incredibly shallow person and character. I say that not to by derogatory, but to describe her accurately. There are exactly 5 main female cast members within the show, and she is often given the least room to grow out of all of them.
For some, like Donna or Kitty, it makes sense. Both are close to Eric and thus require attention. Donna is the main female protagonist throughout the show and take the lead when Eric Foreman leaves for Africa in the weird final season of the show. Her position is such that it makes sense to focus attention on her. And Kitty, even if a secondary cast member in theory, is both extremely charismatic from the jump, and close enough to Eric to also take up a lot of space in the script. Not expanding her role would have been a wasted opportunity.
But that leaves Midge.
Midge is Donna’s mother and, in many ways, similarly drawn to Jackie. She’s a beautiful, rich housewife who has spent her life up until the show’s beginning in a very happy state of stasis. That’s the life Jackie ostensibly wants. But now, in her 40s, Midge is discovering herself. Her turn towards women’s liberation gives her a surprising amount of room for growth, and when she leaves her husband, it’s in line with the culture ‘That 70s Show’ is pulling from.
Jackie, meanwhile, exists on another plane from Midge. Granted, she’s younger, but we never get a real “growth” arc for her. Or rather, we see her growth often get sidelined because she’s granted the least importance within the cast. But we do get some, shown in subtle ways.
Costumes, for instance!
In many ways, Jackie is the coin opposite of Donna’s 1970s optimism. While the tall, slim redhead is indicative of the same feminism her mother leans towards, Jackie is enamoured with a more conservative vision of the future. Her season one fashion is often both on trend for the 1970s and oddly costume-y compared to the rest of the cast. She dresses like the television of the time. When styling herself and Kelso, they take on a 1970s Sears aesthetic. Even her most casual outfits are brightly coloured and likely to have juvenile designs. She’s a child, and dresses like she’s being dressed.
Compared to the end of the show, there is a difference, but not one as stark as Donna in her blonde hair and depression-chic. By the finale, Jackie has stopped always presenting herself at peak “perfection”. Her hair in particular has taken on a new form. Gone are the Fawcett waves and in is a more loose, natural style. There’s still a huge amount of effort in her look, but it’s decidedly more comfortable.
Season one Jackie was a beret and ascot girl, but season eight Jackie as likely to accessorise as not.
This is in line with the deglamourizing of Jackie in later seasons. Following the beginning of her relationship with Hyde, there’s a concerted effort to reframe the character as a young woman, rather than a girl. Part of what is sacrificed is her glitter. ‘That 70s Show’ is standard for much of the media about the 1970s made in its wake, in that it does not appreciate the rampant consumerism and falseness of the trend cycle. Nostalgia laughs at the pinks and plaids, it does not celebrate them. Jackie is, throughout the first few seasons, dressed very similarly to Marcia Brady in ‘The Brady Bunch Movie’ (1995). Her artifice is part of the charm, but it is replaced by a wannabe cool girl approach that the show is self-aware of.
It is subtle, and she’s never completely grunged up. But the shift is obvious.
Jackie’s major and explicitly told arcs are both romantic. With Kelso, she’s the one that got away. Her job is to be too attainable, and then finally unattainable. His maturity is contingent on her ability to walk away, and when she does, they chose to do nothing with him. And with Hyde, she’s also the one that got away. She represents his ability to love, and be loved. When they break up, it’s bittersweet, because she made him “better”. He then has a bunch of luck fall into his lap and remains the same throughout the show. Maybe he even gets worse.
Frustrating, right?
Because this is a sitcom, it regresses her (and everyone) quite regularly. The berets continue to pop up irregularly in the middle seasons, as will her bratty, childish behaviour. Jackie is a prop for many of the other characters in the show; she’s window dressing for their big moments. Red is drawn to her when his daughter is out of the picture, as is Kitty. Eric bonds with her when they try on suits, in one of the only scenes they share in the whole show of this nature.
And Fez is there.
Fez and Jackie being an endgame couple of the original series makes sense on paper. If the loosely drawn-out arc of Jackie is rejecting the conservative values that encompassed her season one characterisation is the obvious conclusion. She’s not curling her hair every day, she’s not wearing pastels so much, she’s dating a non-white man. The only way she could have gotten further from her original goal is if she dated a non-white woman.
But the trouble is that they’re both kind of nothing characters. Pairing them off is a direct result of needing to tie off two loose ends. Fez is a sex-crazed weirdo with a latent bisexual attraction to Kelso, Jackie is single and spent the majority of her runtime in love, about to be in love, or recently out of love. It was easier to put them together then to pretend to care about two new characters right at the end. They weren’t that important to the show.
Unless you were me, and thought Jackie was actually interesting and underserved.
That’s the issue with the later seasons, and the issue I foresee with ‘That 90s Show’. Characters like Jackie aren’t necessarily important outside of their dynamic in the core group. She’s a romantic foil to the secondary leads, and returns to the show in that role yet again. In early seasons, that didn’t matter, because the show was detail focused enough to build upon minor moments and characters towards larger goals. Jackie is important, not just because she offers a minor amount of conflict in the group, but because she herself has value. She’s part of the 1970s, and part of ‘That 70s Show’.
The new program doesn’t look like it has the same zest to it of the original. It’s a stock standard Netflix digital production, too crisp and bland for its own good. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, but everything about this show screams “lazy” to me. From the way it looks, to the news that Jackie is back with Kelso. In a cameo that suggests that they started a cycle of marriage and divorce almost directly after the final credits. Why? Because the actors got married.
Jackie is often treated as one of many pieces that need to be shuffled around in later seasons of the show, and here, it’s obvious that dynamic is continuing. She was never the most important element, but I think how she is treated is indicative of the slipping quality we saw in the show.
Her life is unfabulous because it’s not cared for. Jackie Burkhart starts the show as a beautiful, rich, spoiled little girl with dreams and a boyfriend. She ends the show as the girlfriend of a walking, vaguely racist punchline, and returns a cameo at odds with herself. Harsh.
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