Chris ForanMilwaukee Journal Sentinel
Nearly 17 years after "That '70s Show" went off the air (and into endless reruns), a long-in-coming sequel, "That '90s Show," debuts this month on Netflix.
The original series, which first aired from 1998 to 2006, followed a group of 1970s teenagers who lived in the fictional Point Place, Wisconsin, spending most of their time together in the basem*nt of the parents of one of their friends, Eric (Topher Grace), who's in love with his neighbor, Donna (Laura Prepon).
The new series is set in 1995, when Eric and Donna's teenage daughter Leia (Eric now teaches a college course on "Star Wars") decides to spend the summer with her grandparents — dad's parents Red (New Lisbon native Kurtwood Smith and Debra Jo Rupp, reprising their roles from the original) — and hang out in the same basem*nt her dad's gang used to, with a new group of friends from the neighborhood.
Nearly all of the original show's cast — Grace, Prepon, Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Wilmer Valderrama and even Tommy Chong — are back as their older selves in the sequel. And so are the references to the Wisconsin-ness of the show's made-up locale.
But is Point Place where we thought it was?
Here are some of the Wisconsin shout-outs in "That '90s Show," which begins streaming on Netflix Jan. 19. Warning: Some minor spoilers follow.
'That '90s Show' loves the Green Bay Packers
The green and gold turn up once in a while in the original series, chiefly through Red's obsession with the Pack during the not-so-great 1970s years. But "That '90s Show" goes all in: Four of the season's 10 episodes name-check the team, which of course had a little better time of it during the later decade. Among the new show's Pack-is-back references:
In an early scene in the first episode, Nate (Maxwell Acee Donovan), who lives next door to Red and Kitty with his sister Gwen (Ashley Aufderheide), wears a No. 30 Packers jersey with the name "Henderson" across the back. William Henderson wore that number from the day he joined the Packers in 1995 through the 1997 season. (The next year, he switched to No. 33, the number he wore for the rest of his career in Green Bay.)
In a later episode, Nikki (Sam Morelos), Nate's girlfriend, brags about her family's status: “I’m from a famous family. My cousin did Brett Favre’s bathroom.”
Sherri (DeForest native Andrea Anders), the single mother of Nate and Leia's BFF Gwen, shares this bit of family green-and-gold devotion: “I had an uncle that was buried in a Packers helmet, but that was just because we couldn’t get it off.”
Point Place is small-town Wisconsin, where there's not a lot to do
Ozzie (Reyn Doi), another of Leia's new friends, peruses the entertainment listings in a tabloid called What’s Up Wisconsin: “Cheese festival, cheese festival, another cheese festival." He stops when he finds a "warehouse rave in Milwaukee.”
Later, talking about Point Place's old-fashioned ways, Ozzie complains: “I’m a gay kid living in small-town Wisconsin. There are still parking spots for horses at the courthouse.”
But it's Wisconsin, so at least there's beer
When the teenagers are accidentally given a keg of beer, Leia goes into a liquor store to collect a tapper. To cover up for having no fake ID, she pretends she's an adult by making it look like she's pregnant. When the store owner says it's not good for her to drink in her condition, Leia counters that her husband “got a keg for the baby shower” (a dead Wisconsin giveaway).
According to 'That '90s Show,' Point Place is actually near …
The exact location in Wisconsin of Point Place has been an obsession for fans for decades, with contenders ranging from Stevens Point to Green Bay to Pleasant Prairie. (When Kurtwood Smith campaigned in Wisconsin for President Barack Obama in 2012, he told a crowd in Fond du Lac that he believed the show's setting was based on Fond du Lac.)
But one episode in "That '90s Show" makes a seemingly definitive case for another location. After a depressed Leia binge-watches (or the '90s equivalent) episodes of "Beverly Hills, 90210," she imagines that she and her friends are in their own version of the then-popular prime-time soap opera. The logo for the spoof show: "Point Place, 53140."
53140 is the ZIP Code for Kenosha.
So that settles that. Or does it?
A few episodes later, Kitty, touting the qualities of living in Point Place, declares “George Harrison’s sister lived here.” The former Beatle's sister, Louise Harrison, did in fact live in the American Midwest — in Benton, Illinois, more than five hours south of the Wisconsin state line. (She later lived near Branson, Missouri, before moving to California.)
So maybe we'll never know where Point Place is. Although that might be part of the, well, point.
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