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I Love the '70s (2003– )
5/10
Left something to be desired...
13 September 2003
VH1 scored a hit with "I Love The '80s." It was funny, accurate, covered a wide range of subjects, kept a good pace, and it had a lot of interesting comments from people who knew what they were talking about. The latter point is the very thing that I feel "I Love the '70s." was lacking.

The majority of the people making their comments on the 1970s were from people who were not even 10 years old by the time the 70s were over! Drew Barrymore, for instance, was only alive for 5 years of the 1970s. Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child wasn't even born until 1981! How do these people have any credibility what-so-ever when talking about the 1970s? And the worst part is that their lines, this time around, are clearly scripted and therefore totally unoriginal and not credible at all.

These children of the 80s are talking about the 70s in such a nostalgic manner that you'd think they were 20 years older than they actually are. Hal Sparks was born in 1971, and yet in the 1971 (I believe it was 71, perhaps 72, but that's all just semantics and completely besides the point) episode he was reminiscing about the introduction of the waterbed and talking about how it turned out to be such a miserable invention as if he were there and fully developed to remember it actually happening. The point is, the man was anywhere from not even born yet, to a maximum of 2 years old when these events were going on... And I'm supposed to think his opinion on the subject is credible? I may as well talk to a middle schooler about the 1960s.

In addition to these (in my opinion serious) quibbles, I would also say that the jokes were lackluster, the humor was minimal, the picture quality was annoying (all of the old commercials and ads were so grainy that it was almost intolerable to look at...only the clips of films here have held up the test of time in the visibility department, in my opinion), the pacing was just too rapid and there was far too much coverage of topics that I just personally did not find interesting. There should have been a far greater emphasis on the ways in which music evolved and all sorts of new genres were created throughout the course of the 1970s, and less emphasis on TV commercials, crappy consumer products, political BS, and little "Do you remember this?" garbage... Why not show the stuff that succeeded and is loved to this day, not what failed and is completely useless to speak of unless good, witty jokes are associated with them (which, I felt, were not, in this series). More music and film coverage and the ways that both media were revolutionized, expanded upon, and experimented with throughout the 70s would have been welcome.

Overall, I'd say that "I Love the 70's" left a lot to be desired. And that's a shame, because - dammit - I love the 70s!
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