The ’90s were a terrible decade. What other era in history gave us so much useless, soon-to-be-forgotten trash, including Beanie Babies, Crystal Pepsi and, perhaps worst of all, Justin Bieber?
And the world of movies and TV didn’t fare much better. “Dharma & Greg” and “Blossom” were hits, and “Forrest Gump” was somehow allowed to win an Oscar.
Taste back then was in shorter supply than low-waisted jeans.
So it’s a little surprising that the hottest thing going in entertainment right now is ’90s nostalgia.
“Boy Meets World,” from 1993, got a sequel nobody asked for in the form of “Girl Meets World,” and “The X-Files” has also returned to the boob tube. The truth may still be out there, but we stopped caring back when Pauly Shore was still a thing.
We’re once again talking about that famous Bronco chase thanks to FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” and, for some reason, actor Topher Grace made his own “Seinfeld” reunion by cutting together scenes and outtakes from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to create a faux “new” episode of the beloved ’90s sitcom.
Some guy in Chicago is opening a “Saved by the Bell”-themed store. This is not a drill. It’s happening.
The most terrifying product of this 1990s retread has to be “Fuller House,” Netflix’s sequel to the corny ’80s-’90s sitcom starring Bob Saget, John Stamos and an assortment of adorable kids who we’re assuming grew up to have various substance-abuse problems.
This has to be the first show in TV history whose entertainment value is rooted almost completely in irony.
“Oh, my God,” viewers are supposed to say. “I remember this show. It was so bad! Hilarious!”
And guess what? The new version ain’t any better, but that won’t stop people who grew up with the series from returning to check it out once more just so they can feel like their 12-year-old selves once again — with jokes that would please that age group to match.
Nostalgia is nothing new, of course, and in the world of pop culture at least, it seems to go in 20-year cycles.
But the difference between that burst of nostalgia and what we’re suffering through now with the ’90s throwback is that the 1960s were a great decade for culture. (So were the ’80s, to a lesser extent.) The ’90s weren’t.
I’ll take the Supremes or the Rolling Stones over Sugar Ray and Limp Bizkit any day.
But that’s often a problem with nostalgia. Quality doesn’t enter into it. The age of the person experiencing it does.
Things a person experienced during childhood tend to take on a warm, fuzzy glow, their importance and relative quality getting elevated in hindsight.
Even as adults, it becomes impossible to objectively evaluate something we loved as a kid.
That lack of judgment really becomes a problem when coupled with that 20-year cycle of nostalgia, because, you know all those people who loved “Full House” back when they were 12? Well, they’re now in their 30s, and actually in positions of power where they can do something about their childhood crushes.
Right now, in some generic office complex in Los Angeles somewhere, Brooke Shields is probably taking a meeting about rebooting “Suddenly Susan.”