Tag Archives: Power Rankings

Power Rankings: That ’70s Show

8 Aug

Considering the utter mediocrity of this show, it’s astounding how successful some of the cast members have been after its end.

  1. Ashton Kutcher (as Michael Kelso) – this choice was by no means obvious. I think the first two are pretty clearly the first two, but the order is not clear at all.  A couple of years ago, I think it would have been a runaway, but the second place finisher has made it a race.  Ashton Kutcher’s movie career, in which he’s starred in a number of movies, but has largely been more famous than successful, may or may not be enough.  However, the fact that he’s the new star of Two and Half Men, combined with his past, but still noteworthy work on Punk’d, and his other production work with Beauty at the Geek keeps him at the top (Actually, I looked again at how some his movies did, and they were more successful than I thought – While Killers kind of bombed, What Happens in Vegas and No Strings Attached, although tepidly reviewed at best, made a ton of money – Ashton is a clearer #1 than I realized).
  1. Mila Kunis (as Jackie Burkhart) – she came so close to taking the top spot for me, but I thought she didn’t quite have the body of work.  That said, she’s been on the rise the past couple of years, highlighted by her performance in The Black Swan.  While she wasn’t the lead, she was highly acclaimed as the second star in one of the most talked about films of the year.  She also appears this summer in Friends with Benefits, the direct copycat to Ashton Kutcher’s earlier-this-year No Strings Attached, which featured Kunis’ Black Swan co-star Natalie Portman,  so the first two spots have more in common than That ‘70s Show (their characters also dated on That ’70s Show for most of the first four seasons). Perhaps the relative success of the two films will give us a more concrete judgment.  Forgetting Sarah Marshall was her first big, successful movie role, and afterwards she had a couple of fallow years, but has rebounded in a big way.  Bonus points for being the voice of Meg Griffin (yes, I know, it’s Meg, but still) in Family Guy almost since its inception (replacing Lacey Chabert).
  1.  Topher Grace (as Eric Forman) – there’s a big of a dropoff after the first two.  Grace keeps trying to force his way into starring roles, but every time he makes progress, he seems to take a step back.  Way back during the run of That ’70s Show, he starred in the light Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! and the significantly darker In Good Company.  After that there was a break until he filmed his role as Venom in Spiderman 3, which came out after the last season of That 70s Show, in which he showed up only in the finale.  From there, he’s had one of the fifty bajillion roles in Valentine’s Day (alongside showmate Kutcher), and starred in the retro-’80s flop Take Me Home Tonight.  He’ll be costarring with Richard Gere in a political spy thriller as his next chance.
  1. Laura Prepon (as Donna Pinciotti) – Propon’s work has pretty much been relegated to the small screen, with guest star appearances here and there, including most notably for me, a three episode stint in How I Met Your Mother as Ted’s college ex-girlfriend.  She apparently starred as one of the main cast in the one season October Road, which I vaguely remember (but may just be thinking of space movie October Sky or one-hit wonder Blue October) and was about a 30-year old who went off to Europe for a trip, ended up staying there a decade, and is just coming home to deal with his old hood.  Prepon is getting her biggest opportunity in years with the starring role in the new sitcom based on Chelsea Handler’s life, named after her best-selling autobiography, Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea.
  1. Kurtwood Smith (as Red Forman)– the actor who came into the show with the most renown (a lot easier when you’ve had thirty or so more years to work with) has had a relatively decent amount of work, mostly in television.  He starred as the father in the American clone of British Worst Week, which actually lasted its whole one season run on the air.  He was a major character in 24’s second to last season as a liberal senator, and he starred in the short-lived 2011 series Chaos, as the director of a bunch of rogue CIA spies.  He also appeared in two of the best episodes of personal favorite Childrens Hospital.
  1. Wilmer Valderama (as Fez) – he’s had a little bit of work – in 2006, he was one of many characters in the not incredibly successful Richard Linklater attempt to make a fictionalized version of Eric Schlosser’s classic tale of the tragedy of our food system Fast Food Nation (right up there with Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma) .  For two years, he hosted MTV insult-fest Yo Momma! In 2008, he was in a crime drama called Columbus Day with Val Kilmer which did not actually make it to theaters, and sounds more like it should be the sixth sequel in the Valentine’s Day franchise.  In 2011, he was the fifth lead in Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts kind-of-flop-but-at-least-it-didn’t-cost-that-much Larry Crowne.  Yeah, we’ve fallen a long way from the top two.
  1. Deborah Jo Rupp (as Kitty Forman)– and the entries get shorter yet.  Rupp worked plenty in the years before That ‘70s Show, with key roles in Friends and Seinfeld in the ‘90s.  Afterwards?  Well, she was in an SVU episode (who wasn’t?), she played Jay Baruchel’s mom in She’s Out of My League, and she was the mom in Better Than You, a sitcom I don’t remember at all existing which ran this past television season on ABC before being cancelled.
  1. Danny Masterson (as Steven Hyde) – he was in Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man, and an episode of well-reviewed Fox sitcom Raising Hope.  He’s also way into DJing, and DJed sets at Lollapalooza the last three years.  That’s kind of cool.
  1. Josh Meyers (as Randy Pearson) – his older bro is SNL head writer Seth Meyers.  He appears in The Pee Wee Herman show on Broadway.  That’s also kind of cool.
  1. Don Stark (as Bob Pinciotti) – it’s pretty slim pickings here, and I consider it a courtesy for me just to list him.  He has been in single episodes of Supernatural and Dirty Sexy Money and a couple of episodes of Disney web series Cory and Lucas for the Win.

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Power Rankings: Arrested Development Edition

1 Aug

Here’s a feature which will be regularly displayed weekly which we (the royal we, mostly) call Power Rankings.  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well.  And with that, I present:

POWER RANKINGS:  Arrested Development Edition:

  1. Jason Bateman – two years ago this spot would have surely been taken by Michael Cera, but oh, how times have changed.  I submit that no single person benefited more from Arrested Development – outside of an appearance in The Sweetest Thing, Bateman’s career was more or less moribund until the appearance of AD, and while the show failed to crack the commercial mainstream while it was on, the critical buzz combined with the cult formed as the show was ending and after it was over, Bateman’s career was born anew.  Important supporting roles in The Break Up, Juno, Hancock and Up in the Air have led to starring roles in a series of largely mediocre films, such as The Switch, Couples Retreat, The Change Up (which should also be called The Switch, really) and Horrible Bosses.  It’s hard to say where Bateman’s career is headed, if he keeps doing such fare, but right now, he’s starring in movies, some of which are successful, which is more than anyone but the next person on this list can even say, and hey, maybe he can still be the next Paul Rudd.
  1. Michael Cera – how times have changed, part 2.  Just two years ago, Cera was still the clear breakout star of Arrested Development, having leveraged an extremely successful role in the critical and commercial smash Superbad (the beginning, with Knocked Up, of Apatow-mania) and as a supporting character in critical and commercial darling Juno into a position of top billing in movies like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Year One, Youth in Revolt and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  The last three were more or less flops, though the last two received some positive notice.  Still, it doesn’t seem as if Cera is quite in the position of strength he once was.
  1. Will Arnett – well, his successful turn as G.O.B. Bluth hasn’t quite made him a movie star, but people at least keep trying to make him a television star.  He played supporting roles in a number of movies that weren’t particularly successful, from Let’s Go To Prison, to Blades of Glory, to Hot Rod, to the Brothers Solomon, most of which were tepidly reviewed at best, and not financially successful.  He’s had a little more luck in television, where he’s had a recurring role as Alec Baldwin’s rival, Devan Banks, on 30 Rock, and got his own show written by Mitch Hurwitz, Running Wilde, which was cancelled fairly quickly, but which individually earned him decent enough reviews.  He’s get another shot at it this upcoming fall as one of the stars of Up All Night, working aside Christina Applegate and Maya Rudolph.
  1. Jessica Walter – older actors and actresses are at a disadvantage, compared to their younger brethren, and actresses in particular.  Walter, however, has managed to buck the trend, a little bit anyway, starring in TV Land sitcom Retired at 35 (yes, TV Land has original shows – I can’t imagine how many people actually watched this, but it got picked up for a second season, so that has to say something) and she is a voice regular on FX’s Archer as intelligence agency ISIS’s head, which is only a voice role, but is quite culturally relevant.  Really not bad at all, especially compared to those that come after.
  1. David Cross – unlike the other cast members, Cross has his primary career in stand up comedy to fall back on, even without any acting.  That said, he’s done a bit of acting as well, currently starting in his own sitcom The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a mildly well reviewed show, co-produced by IFC and the BBC.  He also helped fill the coffers of his bank account with roles in both of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies and both of the Kung Fu Panda movies.  In between, he wrote and produced a pilot for Adult Swim called Paid Programming which wasn’t picked up.  He also appeared as a reoccurring character in Will Arnett’s now-cancelled Running Wilde.
  1. Jeffery Tambor – he hasn’t had anything close to a starring role in anything, except for the extremely short-lived sitcom Twenty Good Years (which aired four episodes in the fall of 2006).  That said, he’s gotten relatively steady work, which counts for something.  He’s had voice work in Tangled and Monsters vs. Aliens, and non-voice work in The Invention of Lying, Paul and both Hangovers, as well as a couple of spots in Entourage as a crazy version of himself.
  1. Tony Hale – he’s appeared in a couple of relatively well-known movies, such as Stranger Than Fiction and The Informant!, and a lot more less well-known movies.  In television, he was a series regular in Andy Richter’s second of three attempts at a successful network sitcom, Andy Barker PI, was a reoccurring character on Chuck and on the last season of Numb3rs (I wasn’t initially sure where the 3 went) and an NBC-backed web series called CTRL which I had never heard of before.
  1. Portia de Rossi – she was in 10 episodes of Nip/Tuck and starred in the one season of surprisingly decently reviewed Better Off Ted.  That’s about it.
  1. Alia Shawkat – more projects than de Rossi, but less prominent in those projects.  Her most relevant was probably her role in Whip It, and she had a decent role in The Runaways and in Cedar Rapids.  Then she appeared as a one off in a bunch of TV shows.

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