The 70's: Part Two, By Hadley

First of all, I would like to say that I did not watch the first part of this series and had absolutely no intention of watching any part of it until I was roped in by my former best friend Hannah, who seemed to think it was worthy of comment. Prior to watching the second half of "The 70's" I didn't believe any movie could sweepingly distort history, ignore every opportunity to explore a single issue with any depth, and simultaneously lack entertainment value to a higher degree than Forest Gump. I was wrong.

Part II opens with Byron (the Brad Pitt look-alike) being served a subpoena for his involvement in Watergate on the same DC bridge where John Dean meets E Howard Hunt for hush money payments in "Nixon". Byron consults some mysterious figure in a parking garage with a trench coat and a lighter in a scene which contained much better dialogue when it was featured in "All the President's Men". Did people in the 70's really constantly refer to Watergate as "A Third Rate Burglary"? I doubt it. If we needed any further evidence for the theory that Byron is a moron, he apparently goes before the Senate Watergate committee without consulting his lawyer, forcing a very dramatic moment in which his Kent State friends urge him to do the right thing from afar. He does confess to his involvement, which seems to have included drawing some sort of map, but the whole affair leaves him a broken man. The bit about Watergate ends with Byron cleaning out his desk as Nixon boards Airforce One for the last time because everyone involved clearly would have wanted him on board for another year or so after he implicated the entire administration in criminal activity.

I never really figured out what happened with Dexter and Byron, but Dexter was getting out of the hospital and he now hates Byron, who used to be his friend- probably back at Kent State, but I'm not sure because no one talks about that anymore. Dexter seems to be some sort of community leader and when he returns, disillusioned and saying that Dexter Johnson is no more, all the neighborhood kids stand up one by one and say "I am Dexter Johnson". Is Spike Lee suing? Does anyone remember a film called "Malcolm X"?

The homely feminist, in the mean time, is designing a very clever ad campaign and presents it to her boss in a Samantha-saves-Darren's-ass scene. Unfornutately no one in this film is as entertaining as Aunt Clara or a genuinely cute as Tabitha. The thing about the feminist bull shit narrative that follows is that some writer who should not have a career believed that juxtoposing scenes of Barbie's washed out modeling career with ERA protesters was a poignant treatment of sensitive issues.

For some reason that is not adequately explained, Byron heads up to Alaska wearing the worst hair extensions I've ever seen. There he works on the Alaska Pipeline and we are led to believe he does some soul searching. Dexter sells the movie theater and Barbie moves to California to try every New Age therapy on the market.

Among the most difficult leaps of faith "The 70's" asks us to make is to believe Barbie is somehow complex enough to ask spiritual questions. Predictably, she ends up in a cult. The white robed hippie types embrace her into the fold singing (I'm not kidding) "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing", in a scene that, as Hannah pointed out, could have substituted shiny haired college girls singing "I'm so happy that I am a Kappa, Kappa, Kappa, Gamma" and it would've been completely indistinguishable from bid day on any number of college campuses. Unfortunately, this cult does not force Barbie to drink any poisoned Kool-Aid (which really would have been the only satisfactory ending) before her friends managed to kidnap her on her way to sell flowers on a street corner. The only other thing I'm going to say about this part is that she is deprogrammed and goes right back to normal, but I'm just not ready to talk about how it supposedly happened.

After some footage of the 1980 presidential campaign, the decade of torture comes to a close with the homely feminist marrying the Brad Pitt look-alike, sans hair extensions. Her father actually says to her before escorting her down the aisle "We've come a long way, baby!" [Is Virgina Slims owned by ABC? -Hannah]. Following the ceremony, the four friends get down to Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate", and I literally expected the newly released Iranian hostages to dance on-screen, to everyone's delight. Mercifully, it was all over before it came to that.

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