- Laura Leighton ("Melrose Place"), Vanessa Marcil ("General Hospital") and Daniel Cosgrove ("All My Children") will join the cast of "Beverly Hills, 90210."
- "Ally McBeal" will add cast member Portia de Rossi ("Scream 2").
- Kim Basinger, Alec Bald win, Jerry Springer, Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford will be heard but not seen on "The Simpsons." "King of the Hill" will feature the guest voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Billy Bob Thornton and Matthew McConaughey.
Wisconsin setting fit for teen sitcom
'That 70's Show' puts rebellious kids in a boring, peaceful suburb in 1976
By Joanne Weintraub
Journal Sentinel TV critic
July 22, 1998
Pasadena, Calif. -- Despite the worst efforts of Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer and other miscreants, Wisconsin can't shake its pasteurized image.
"It's definitely a normal, ordinary place," producer Bonnie Turner told critics Tuesday, explaining why Fox's new "That 70's Show," which centers on a group of all-American teens in 1976, will be set in the fictional town of Point Place, Wis. (The show's name was changed from "Feelin' All Right").
Point Place, as depicted in the pilot, is safe, suburban and every bit as exciting as mild cheddar. It's close enough to Milwaukee for young Eric Foreman (Topher Grace) and his friends to go to a Todd Rundgren concert there, but far enough away for them to have serious car trouble en route.
Turner ("3rd Rock from the Sun," "The Brady Bunch Movie") is from Toledo; her husband and creative partner, Terry, grew up in Montgomery, Ala.; and co-creator Mark Brazill is from Buffalo. All three said their hometowns were the kind of places where adolescents always felt as if everything interesting went on somewhere else, a feeling they want Point Place to embody.
The sitcom, which will be filmed in and around Los Angeles, will keep Wisconsin viewers busy spotting Green Bay memorabilia, America's Dairyland license plates and other state markers.
But the rest of the audience is more likely to be struck by a scene in the pilot that shows Eric happily smoking marijuana down in the rec room with his pals, then going up to talk to his parents in the kitchen, where the walls are doing psychedelic tricks.
Fox executives want the writers to add a scene that makes a statement about the danger and illegality of the characters' drug use. Bonnie Turner said carefully that the creators and the network "are discussing it, (but) the last thing we want to do is to contrive a situation."
Her husband added that to do a show about rebellious teenagers in 1976 without talking about marijuana "would be like doing 'The Untouchables' but not mentioning Prohibition."
Other highlights of Fox's presentation to critics:
