I Love the '70s

As somebody who actually lived through the '70s, VH1's special "I Love the '70s" is fun, but not all that it could have been. The show is profoundly lacking in research, playing fast and loose with dates (for example, Nadia Comaneci would have been a "fox" for 1976, NOT 1972). It also spotlights porn -- which was NOT mainstream, as it now pretends to be -- at the expense of bigger '70s phenomena. How can you present the disco decade without the Six Million Dollar Man, the Bay City Rollers, and the death of Elvis? Where are the Dittos jeans, chucka boots, and peasant blouses? The commentators are mostly holdovers from "I Love the '80s" -- while I loved Hal Sparks and Michael Ian Black in "'80s", their commentary is often forced in "70s", and Mo Rocca -- who is about as entertaining as a dose of heat rash -- is especially lacking. Should the producers choose to "strike back" with the '70s, I would advise them to choose more commentators that actually remember the decade. But even then, choose carefully:

this was really really good but lacks some of the magic i love the 80s produced,i think they made hard decisions cutting off some of those guys,but the new guys are very funny,Luis is a good add,i don't like the red haired chick,Dee,Michael Ian Black,Hal,and Mo are all keepers and i can see how they didn't keep all of them,like the other Mo and carrot top. my vote 9 1/10 - 2

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!

I Love the 70s, which has in the years following its first on-air release, spawned off I Love the 80s, 90's, and their decade's sequels, is a show that is not immediately accessible, or at least wasn't for me. But the more I watched it the more I got into it. Especially because, well, I do love the 70's, however in the sense of the films, (some of the) music, the pop-culture stuff at times. It takes a little getting used to, perhaps, because the commentators on the shows can be a little much at times, or maybe just not too funny. But there are just some comedians or lesser-than-A-celebrities that need some time to grow on a viewer. A prime example of this is Michael Ian Black, who started out with the crew from the funny show the State, and also did Wet Hot American Summer. Here is is without a doubt the most deadpan sarcastic of the commentators, and at first it's sort of not funny. Then the more times I've watched him since, on this and the spin-offs, he's become pretty amusing. The same goes for a lot of the others on the show, which include dozens of celebrities from the period to comment on the shows, the music, the fashion, the toys, movies, and news stories that changed the decade from Vietnam to Watergate to disco and Jimmy Carter and onward. It's not Ken Burns type documentary stuff, it's just goofy entertainment that becomes good, watchable junk food TV. But that being said, it's probably one of my favorite kinds of junk-food TV on now, and is certainly one of the only things worth checking out (at least once) on the VH1 station.

Not as good as "I Love the 80s" but it was still pretty good. But they didn't mention the nixon thing or elvis dying... hmm still good though. I love Hal Spark, Michael Ian Black and all the comedians, it was funny. kinda funny that all the years (practically) mentioned porn... neways can't wait for "80s Strike Back"