More than a third of the way through this season of That ’90s Show, it increasingly feels as if the younger cast is divided into the haves and the have-nots: those who have clearly defined personalities and those who don’t have much to do. The opening scene of “Rave” divides these two groups neatly and fwooshes the frame back and forth between them. On the “haves” side, there’s the anxious, lovesick, dorky Leia receiving advice again from Gwen and Ozzie; on the “have-nots,” Jay discusses the same topic — his non-relationship with Leia — with his semi-interchangeable bro Nate and Nate’s girlfriend, Nikki, whose sardonic reactions are only differentiated from Gwen’s by a slight degree of cynicism. (In That ’70s Show terms, she really does read like Chill Jackie, though it’s hard to see exactly what she sees in Nate besides his pliability and willingness to carry a pager in case she needs “emergency gum.”) Both factions actually wind up on the same page, culminating in a cute split screen during which both Leia and Jay are simultaneously told to wait for the other to make the first real move.
This is easier said than done on both sides of the split screen — and Leia’s lack of confidence in what exactly Jay is feeling is echoed in the show’s lack of confidence in who exactly Jay is. For now, he seems to have landed on ’90s-style player, which means a more faux-sensitive, guitar-playing, smoothly manipulative operator than his louder, doofier dad played by Ashton Kutcher. That’s a potentially neat idea, exploring the ways this archetype had shifted its aesthetics by 1995. But the show deployed Jay’s possibly genuine sensitivity so early, and kept his seedier tendencies so light, that his secret-softie side only registers as a deepening of his character if you think of him as an extension of Kutcher’s Kelso. These kids shouldn’t really be making that connection, even if Nikki does describe Jay as “of the Point Place Kelsos? The horniest family in town?”
It also doesn’t do Mace Coronel many favors as a performer. He gamely engages in some Kutcher-esque himbo slapstick when he covers himself in oil and attempts to entice Leia, slipping on the hood of a car and barely able to hang on to his guitar. But it’s not virtuosic enough to make a real mark, and Jay winds up seeming realistic in all the wrong ways: He’s not especially interesting, even as a comic dope.
The rest of the episode features Leia and Jay attempting to gain what Seinfeld referred to as “hand” in their pre-relationship, goaded on by their respective teams. Here, too, the imbalance reveals itself: Gwen wants to help Leia because she’s her newfound bestie, and Ozzie seems genuinely indifferent, while Nikki wants to help Jay so he’ll stop hanging out with her and Nate. But doesn’t Jay get tons of girls? Why is this a problem now? It’s not as if Nate and Jay will stop being best bros if Jay gets yet another girlfriend. Sam Morelos plays her scenes of cool manipulation well enough, but no one seems very invested — and not in a disaffected ’90s slacker sort of way.
It’s also maybe a little early for some teenagers from Wisconsin to be into the rave scene, but just go with it — in order to rebuff Nikki’s offer of date-night tickets to Batman Forever, Leia and Gwen agree that they have other plans: to hit up the Milwaukee warehouse rave that Ozzie has been dying to attend. Leia even lies to Red and Kitty to make it happen. Sadly, Ozzie gets Home Alone’d, and rather than contending with burglars, he has to face a good-cop, bad-cop interrogation from Kitty and Red. Kitty’s bond with Leia over celebrity pasta names (Marky Markaroni, Rigatoni Danza, and so on) has (somewhat nonsensically) convinced her that her granddaughter would never lie to her, so she’s incensed to find out this isn’t the case.
At the rave, Leia and Jay agree to stop their game-playing and reveal their feelings on the count of three — but it’s a trick, so she gives up her “I like you” without him doing the same, and it’s back to the game-playing, which is to say really goofy dancing as Leia attempts to make Jay jealous. Before the two of them can reunite, Red intercepts Leia and brings her home. Kitty gets the pleasure of reading a teenager the riot act, while Red gets to be the “I’m just glad you’re safe” (grand)parent for once.
Later, seemingly chastened by Leia’s semi-rejection, Jay offers a makeup count-of-three, during which they will both speak their true feelings. But this time, Leia says they should just be friends just as Jay confesses his attraction. Afterward, she confides in Gwen, “I Kelso’d the Kelso.” It was a sneaky move and a satisfyingly farcical ending to an episode that, for all of its wan characterization of half the cast, at least is strong in the sitcom bona fides. The game is fine; it’s the players that could use a little fine-tuning.
Hangin’ Out
• On behalf of your favorite middle-aged media types, please swoon at Ozzie learning about local cultural events through what appears to be an alt-weekly — even if the majority of those events are cheese festivals.
• Although it’s used largely to hand-wave the question of whether Leia believes in Gwen’s riot-grrrl ideals (which she later reveals to have just skimmed), Leia’s statement “I wanna be a feminist … in college” is a pretty authentic ’90s-youth sentiment.
• It’s funny to consider how some of this dialogue would play in the single-camera format that we’ve become more accustomed to since the days of That ’70s Show. Some of the lines related to Jay Kelso’s experiences have a nice, non-shticky specificity, such as Gwen’s comparison between Leia and Jay (“You just had your first kiss; Jay’s had sex in a lake”) and a recounting of the previous year’s Jay-related end-of-summer heartbreaks (“I’ve never seen so many Jennifers crying in the same driveway”). Nate’s runner about Nikki’s dad’s old pager forcing him to give medical advice is in a sillier register, but it made me laugh.
• ’90s-reference watch: The cultural references are pretty broad in this installment: the not-particularly-’90s Law & Order (original recipe, but still — already about to enter its sixth season!); Batman Forever, the biggest movie of the summer of 1995; and the murderous Menendez brothers (whose mom was nicknamed Kitty!), which, frankly, was not that current of an event in ’95.
• Assuming at least a week or two is meant to have passed since the pilot, other movies Jay and Leia could have been tricked by their friends into seeing on a date include Apollo 13 (presumably Eric already dragged his daughter in excitement over Space Camp), Species (if Nate and Jay were left to their own devices), or Nine Months (the compromise choice no one would be happy with). Then again, Leia gives off more Indian in the Cupboard vibes.
