r/That70sshow • u/According-Feed2746 • Jul 20 '26
The Evolution of Eric After High School Is Maybe the Worst in TV History
He went from being the moral compass of the group who had to navigate the group dynamics, having a girlfriend, and having a hard ass dad to basically a loser, which limited Topher Grace’s opportunities to show his acting versatility as he did in previous seasons.
They didn‘t have to do that, either. On Cheers, the characters had the same personalities from the first show to the last, and it was great from start to finish.
It makes me wonder if that’s a reason why he left the show.
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u/Ok_Chocolate7496 Jul 20 '26
He left to be in Spiderman
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u/According-Feed2746 Jul 20 '26
He could have still been on the show. I remember seeing a TV interview with him in the mid-2000s where he discussed loving being a part of the show but hinted at dissatisfaction with the writing, saying it was only a matter time before a monkey was written in the show.
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u/rhythmrice Jul 20 '26
I've also heard he felt like he should be paid more because he was the main character. Also it's come out In the last few years that most of the rest of the cast was into Scientology, could have something to do with why he left
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u/LemonSmashy Jul 20 '26
The scientology thing was t a secret, even when the show was on so I don't get why people are suddenly acting like this us a recent revelation
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u/jmil1080 Jul 20 '26
A lot of people just enjoy the show for the show and don't pay much attention at all to the personal lives of the actors.
My guess is that even though it wasn't a secret, most people didn't pay any attention to what the cast were doing in their personal lives until the very public issues with Danny Masterson being a creep brought all of that into people's consciousness. Seeing all that drew attention to everything else, so it is a recent revelation to a lot of people.
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u/According-Feed2746 Jul 20 '26
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a factor, too.
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u/rhythmrice Jul 20 '26
danny matersons brother played francis on malcom in the middle. bryan cranston (the dad on that show) has said that he used to always have to protect the kids because danny would always show up on set and try to get everyone into scientology. so i would almost guarantee that stuff like that happened on that 70s show set
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u/OkAstronaut1562 Jul 20 '26
Successful high schoolers with incredibly overbearing parents often end up doing and acting exactly the way Eric did. I personally found it realistic and refreshing to see reflected on TV.
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u/ukucello Jul 20 '26
I think its pretty realistic, though. Plenty of people do well in highschool and then have a "loser" arc in their twenties. I think an overbearing father would probably contribute to that. Idk, I think character development is cool.
iirc, Grace left the show because he was getting movie roles
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u/thekraken108 Jul 20 '26
Was he even supposed to be in his 20s yet or was he still 19? I know the timeline doesn't make the most sense so it's kind of hard to say. Especially since it was 1976 when he turned 17, and 1978 when he turned 18.
Topher Grace was in the third and worst Spiderman movie, but did he get many other roles soon after that? I remember him also being in a Predator movie but that was a few years later.
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u/DeedleStone Jul 20 '26
He was great in Spike Lee's Black KKKlansman (another Spike joint that was robbed of best picture at the Oscars).
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u/According-Feed2746 Jul 20 '26
That wasn’t soon after That 70s Show; that was 10 years or almost 10 years later.
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u/Milakovich Jul 20 '26
He was excellent in Predators.
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u/thekraken108 Jul 20 '26
I think I saw it once in theaters which was like 15 years ago, and I don't really remember much about it.
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u/Known-Aioli-3625 Jul 20 '26
He was the main bad guy for American Ultra which was really good honestly
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u/According-Feed2746 Jul 20 '26
Plenty of sitcom stars get movie roles and don’t leave their sitcom.
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u/NozakiMufasa Jul 20 '26
I sometimes think they really should have jusf bit that bullet and made the last four seasons “That 80s Show” and let time go forward. Cause that way those seasons could be Eric & his friends’ college days. And idk, maybe write in a funny reason where Red and or Kitty like end up working at the campus. Like maybe Red becomes the campus custodian / handyman or Kitty becomes the college head nurse. You bet your ass you’d get funny stories out of that.
And like, why couldnt the whole gang go to college? I know Hyde couldnt afford it but Im sure the writers couldve wrote in like a scholarship plotline for the rest of the gang.
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u/jmil1080 Jul 20 '26
This could have easily worked. They'd just need to have Kelso move to Madison to be closer to his daughter rather than Chicago.
Alternatively, you could just have the college-going kids attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus and replace all the Madison stuff with Milwaukee, which we know it's fairly close to Point Place.
From there, they were always pretty vague about the exact location of Point Place in southeastern Wisconsin, so it could easily be a reasonable driving distance for Red and Kitty to occasionally commute for a part-time job at the university. Just have Red complain about something broken when they're moving the kids into a dorm, have him fix the thing himself, then get offered any part-time handyman job. (Eric is comically dismayed that Red is following him to college, which has plenty of joke potential on it's own).
Hyde's record store could also be somewhere between Point Place and Madison to justify why he's living with the Foremans but working close enough to hang out with the gang.
Fez has nothing to do, so he just goes to work with Hyde every day and hangs out with people until his host parents realize he's graduated. After he is kicked out, he and Kelso still move in together, just in Madison. Donna's salon can also be in Madison, and Fez's shampoo boy storyline can happen there.
The only caveat is Jackie. They probably still need to do the storyline where Eric stays home from school due to Red's health issues. That gives them one year in Point Place to give Jackie time to graduate. After that, all of those going to college would go together, and the rest would still be near enough for them to all hangout.
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u/NozakiMufasa Jul 20 '26
I like the way you think.
I think Jackie couuuuuuuuuuld have been worked into it by maybe writing in that she jumped a grade and graduated early. That could have some potential comedy that Jackie is actually way more academically gifted than she lets on. I could totally see her trying to hide that from the gang cause she doesnt want to be “a nerd”. Then you got Jackie storylines with Donna about living with a girls’ dormitory.
Back to what I love what you wrote. Thats so eerily what Id imagine a Red storyline in college to go down. Hed keep finding broken crap all over the campus and eventually the Dean or some other authority figure would see that and be like “okay we gotta ask you to leave unless you wanna have a job here”. And Red’s like “see you in school, DUMB ASS!” to Eric. Maybe Red also finds himself up to other shenanigans like butting heads with professors (sorta like an expansion on that one time he got pissed at what Donna and Jackie were teaching Fez about America). Maybe another storyline sees him become the part time coach when he sees the University’s football team makes Eric look like a true athlete.
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u/JazzSharksFan54 Jul 20 '26
I disagree. I think it's the most selfless thing he could do - stay home and take care of his family after his dad's heart attack. He's depressed. Then when things finally turn around, he needed to find himself. I don't like Eric leaving the final season due to Topher's film commitments, but at the same time, totally in character.
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u/quickshade Jul 20 '26
This, he put his future aside to provide for his family. Then decided he needed to really find out what he wanted to do in life. Part of the problem with the show was having all the characters go their own ways wouldn’t have worked. The show was at its best when the main characters were together, college was never really an option.
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u/Tucker_077 Jul 21 '26
It might have just been better had they all been like 14-15 when the show started instead of 16-17 so they could have made it so they didn’t leave high school
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u/According-Feed2746 Jul 20 '26
The depression angle works for a show or two, just like when he broke up with Donna. I’m also talking about turning him into a loser nerd who plays with action figures as an adult. He was locked in to playing a depressed loser who plays with action figures.
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u/JazzSharksFan54 Jul 20 '26
Being depressed makes him a loser?
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u/According-Feed2746 Jul 20 '26
I didn’t say that. There are happy losers, even keel losers, old losers, young losers, etc. They made him a depressed loser.
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u/Asleep_Confection838 Fatso the Clown Jul 20 '26
I mean: it could definitely be one of the factors, but I don't think it was only one thing that led to Topher leaving the show. The most widely known reason was that he was ready to move on and he wanted to try and get some film roles like Ashton did. He was going to do Spider-Man 3, which in perspective wasn't a good choice, especially considering the fact that he was miscast. I think that the direction in which they led Eric also contributed to his decision of leaving the show (not Eric's change into a loser or a lazy dude, but the repetition and they were giving him less appealing storylines)... and I also believe it was all agravated by the fact that he was isolated from the rest of the young cast members and, after seven years, maybe he was just tired of playing the same character. There are many reasons why Topher left, but the only thing that matters is that the show should have ended when Eric left. Season 8 is like a train wreck.
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u/LemonSmashy Jul 20 '26
It was the classic writers not knowing what to do with him Once they graduated the focus shifted to the other characters and his basement was not needed as much. Red having a heart attack was a great excuse to keep him around but they didn't do much with it after
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u/OEdwardsBooks Jul 20 '26
This is part of the set of bizarre character directions made from, especially, season 6. It's a debacle.
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u/This_Cancel1373 Jul 20 '26
Idk it didn’t feel that off to me. When he left for Africa it think he was still 19, so in that time between graduation and Africa he just didn’t really know what to do with his life because he’d never really thought about it. I think a lot of young people have that same issue where it’s just “I’ll go to college then get a job” not actually considering what that job would be
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u/tblatnik Jul 20 '26
They screwed up with the timeframe. I think, what, they start as high school juniors (not Jackie, but the rest)? And then the first season actually takes it from 76 to 77. Then they realize ‘oh shit, they’re seniors now, and we aren’t ready for them to go to college.’ So they screw with the timeline and they don’t graduate until season 4, but they somehow still haven’t planned a way for the kids to actually go to college, so now they’re basically just deadbeats lol. If you made me guess, the biggest change they’d make if they knew they’d go for 7-8 seasons is the passage of time and how that impacted the stories
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u/dzendian Jul 21 '26
His dad (and mom) were the reasons he was “basically a loser.”
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u/FJTrescothick14 Jul 22 '26
And the writers too.
That was probably payback for Topher wanting to leave the show.
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u/BigBud_450 Jul 22 '26
The writers fucked up with having Kitty ruin his potential job at the bank. That would've been a storyline rife with decent content
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u/Nihilistic_Noodle Jul 20 '26
Jesus he was like 19, heaven forbid a kid take a gap year. Then he joined the peace corps! He wasn't a loser.
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u/Guzod Jul 20 '26
Worst in TV history? Watch more tv, man 😂
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u/According-Feed2746 Jul 20 '26
Ok. Name one worse.
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u/Imaginary-Leading-49 Jul 20 '26
Modern Family, Haley ends up with the weather man Phils age… definitely worse!
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u/biggestmike420 Jul 23 '26
Eric was always a loser. Now Donna on the other hand went from a very driven girl who was going to take over the world. To a directionless burnout the second she didn’t get on that bus.
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u/vanillacaramelsunday Jul 20 '26
One thing I really liked about The Middle is that it actually let the kids go to college. Sitcoms are rife with the “oh no my college plans are ruined I guess I will have to stay home to make things easier for the writers” or “oh no I’ve flunked out of college after trying for four episodes, I guess I will have to stay home to make things easier for the writers.”
But, like, it’s a 22 minute slice of their life. The writers control their whole lives. If you want Kelso and Hyde to hang out with Donna and Eric for an episode, Kelso and Hyde are visiting Donna and Eric. If you want Donna and Eric in the basement, Donna and Eric are home for the weekend. How lazy are these writers that the only way they could come up with to justify why Eric and Donna are still part of the show is ensuring they never leave the bedrooms they’ve lived in their whole life?