Ashton Kutcher is going to be a star. It seems inevitable. But in a good way. Kutcher has canny comic timing, but so do the others in the cast. Prepon is the proverbial formidable presence.
Television dances the time warp all the time.
One odd and off-putting thing is the fact that the producers insist on forcing us to spend time with Eric's parents, played by Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith. They don't do much except bicker and babble. Rupp does offer a funny parody of the all-American mom as sitcoms used to portray her. He doesn't seem comfortable here. The parents' segments are lulls between the sunny storms of the teenagers' antics.