#t70show

The seasons core storylines largely revolve around recidivism, particularly of the male characters. That's well and good. They are at an age, right before venturing out into the world, where regressing often happens. It's somewhat typical. You spend your childhood wanting to be an adult but when you get there, it's a bit scary and you want to keep things simple. So while storylines where the guys are back to doing juvenile things like trenching lawns and stealing toys don't necessarily excite me, I get it. Though I do think they suffer from the actors being well past the age of the characters. It's hard to say kids'll be kids'll when the guy looks 25. With this possible writing space in mind, I view things like this...

To a good extent this all seems like the plan, particularly for Eric. He spends the season drifting until being confronted with the fact that he's wasting his life. Eric, IMO, probably has the most well-done arc of the guys in S7. He starts off borderline unlikeable but starts to cleans up his act at the turn to the third act. Given his life up to that point, I think this is rather organic. At that point, he realizes... OK, I've got to do something or I am going to be stuck here forever. It's probably too much credit to say this could call back to Kitty saying as much about the bank job back in Season 5. All in all, I think it was OK. Again, I think this is because, dumbass Africa storyline aside, the writing planned all along for Eric to leave and stay gone. There was no need to alter it much outside of creating a reason him not not show up in S8. Hence, Africa.

Kelso on the other hand seems to relapse quite hard to his old habits after growing a lot in S6. The difference between his and Eric's storyline is we really aren't given a good reason for it, so we're left with the impression he never really changed, that it was all for Brooke. This doesn't reflect well on him and makes it a little tough to watch sometimes. That's not to say he doesn't have good moments, particularly with Betsy but the whole storyline with Hyde's sister... I mean, I know it wasn't a Laurie retread, but it felt like one. It felt like he went nowhere.

Hyde is probably the biggest example stymying growth to create drama. Hyde certainly did throughout the show have issues expressing emotions, so while it's not completely out of nowhere, it's never dealt with throughout the whole season and only seems to get worse. It appeared to be planned as a slow-burn arc, ultimately culminating with him getting over it in the last act. It's known that the showrunners had S7 planned to be the last, then seemingly had to throw together some dangling threads for the S8 (hacks) writers to have something to go with. So Hyde's arc ultimately fails and reeks of dashed expectations because the epic conclusion had to be dropped.

Sure, everyone *else* tells us how he feels. Leo tells us. Donna tells us. Eric tells us. Fez tells us. His sister tells us. This keeps us waiting for the big moment when he finally tells us outright outside of not objecting. More importantly we’re left waiting for him to tell Jackie, who during S7 understandably doesn't know given that he's regressed back his "I don't love people" mindset, how he feels. Without that, the story feels unsatisfying and incomplete because the writers were banking wholesale on the dramatic final moment that, thanks to a late renewal by Fox, wasn't allowed to come.

Hyde comforting Jackie pre-relationship & a cute lil kiss

S1x13

S2x20