Ashton Kutcher

Ashton Kutcher plays Michael Kelso on That ’70s Show, the 1990s catalog dummy in a Forman-house circle of future film stars. Shag carpet, hello Wisconsin, a generation minted in a basement: Kutcher is the pretty punchline with timing. He makes stupidity look like a sport.

That '70s Show is the lede on this card because Ashton Kutcher as Michael Kelso makes the 1990s stop feel inhabited. Start with s01e01: That '70s Pilot: Wisconsin teens killing time downstairs, parents upstairs, hello Wisconsin already a catchphrase drop. Fox dated it 1998–2006; the desk dates it by the temperature Kutcher brings.

Two and a Half Men later dropped him into Chuck Lorre’s money printer after the public implosion — hedonist weather, a kid on the couch, multi-cam as a machine. On TV Flash Kutcher is 1990s/2000s craft — Kelso as the lede, Malibu sitcom as the second grin, still the reason a basement idiot could inherit a beach house joke.

Two and a Half Men is why this card is a route, not a souvenir still as Walden Schmidt. Start that title at s01e01 — Pilot installs the Malibu joke engine: Charlie Sheen's hedonist, Jon Cryer's sad-sack, a kid on the couch — multi-cam purring before the tabloids ate. s12e16 still shows a later grip: Of Course He's Dead - Part Two is the closer after the most public sitcom implosion of the decade — the machine taking a bow it once seemed unable to. Kutcher does not visit this floor; he works it. s03e01 on That '70s Show remains a useful hour: Reefer Madness: the basement circle as appointment ritual, Kutcher to Kunis still the Forman house star pipeline.