Michael Kelso

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Michael Kelso
That '70s Show character
First appearance	"That '70s Pilot" (episode 1.01)
Last appearance	"Misfire" (episode 8.04) (as a regular cast member) "That '70s Finale" (episode 8.22) (guest appearance)
Created by	Mark Brazill
Portrayed by	Ashton Kutcher
Information
Nickname(s)	Kelso, Michael, Dumbass, Kelslow, Dillhole, Tater Nuts, Big Chief Brown Bottom, The King, Crap Shoes, Jughead, Patchy, Mr. Clip On, The Head Dummy, Don Juan El Tardo, Kettlehead, Prettyboy Moron, Kelsmo
Gender	Male
Occupation	High school student Male underwear model Assistant chef Waiter Police officer Security guard
Family	John Kelso (father) Mrs. Kelso (mother) Casey Kelso (brother) Unnamed sister
Significant other(s)	Jackie Burkhart (ex-girlfriend) Pam Macey (affair) Laurie Forman (ex-girlfriend) Annette (ex-girlfriend) Brooke (ex-girlfriend) Angie (ex-girlfriend)
Children	Betsy Kelso (daughter, with Brooke; b. 1979)
Nationality	American

Michael Christopher Kelso, usually referred to simply as Kelso by his friends, is one of the five male leads on Fox Network's That '70s Show, portrayed by Ashton Kutcher. Tall, lanky and long-haired has been accepted as the local idiot until he moved to Chicago for the seventh season. His behavior is very much in line with a stereotypical oversexed lunkhead or a male-bimbo who gets through life on his good looks. He spends most of the series in a mutually parasitic relationship with the equally vapid Jackie Burkhart, whom he continues to obsess over following their numerous breakups. In spite of his stupidity, Kelso was shown on several occasions not to be immature, simply unmotivated; when he was either forced to or chose to, Kelso displayed startling intelligence unbecoming of his usual personality or hijinks. Near the end of the series, Kelso became one of the first characters to completely break away from adolescence and into adulthood when he impregnated a girl with whom he had a one-night-stand; to his friends' surprise, Kelso took responsibility for the child, moving to Chicago to take a job to support and be near his newborn daughter.

Personality

Among Kelso's most famous personality traits are conceit and sheer stupidity, performing a great number of idiocies on a regular daily basis. Throughout the series, Kelso has made a large quantity of moronic quotes and performed many dimwitted blunders, and possesses numerous infantile qualities such as enjoying Christmas specials deemed childish by his peers and fussing when something is preventing him from viewing them. Like the other teenage male central characters of the series, Kelso also possesses an abundance of "horny" personality traits and appears especially fond of the idea of having sexual relations, and the willingness to spoil his virginity resulted in the impregnation of a librarian named Brooke and the birth of a little girl named Betsy toward the end of the program. He fancies himself as quite attractive and capable of winning the affections of women such as Jackie Burkhart, with whom he has shared an on-again/off-again relationship throughout the course of the series. It was revealed in the Halloween special that Kelso is a year older than the other teenagers due to being held back a year in the first grade, which angered the character Steven Hyde knowing that all along Kelso was legally allowed to purchase beer for the teenagers.

Relationship with Jackie Burkhart

When the show debuted, Kelso was dating Jackie Burkhart (played by Mila Kunis), a popular and self-centered cheerleader. The two lost their virginity to each other after Kelso and his friends got out of jail for riding in a car that was mistaken for being stolen. Jackie gets on Kelso's friends' nerves on a daily basis and Kelso repeatedly said that he was going to break up with her. However, Jackie beat him to it and broke up with him after hearing about him kissing Pam Macy, only to get back together in the very same episode. Jackie later broke up with Kelso again after a pregnancy scare, but they got back together later at the Junior Prom (which Jackie was disappointed about not hearing he had asked her).

In Season 2, Kelso began an affair with Eric's promiscuous sister, Laurie, about which Jackie eventually found out and subsequently broke up with him again. Kelso then continued to date Laurie, until later in Season 3 when he found out Laurie had cheated on him. Soon after, Jackie decided to test Kelso to see if they should get back together, which they did. Kelso remained loyal to Jackie after that and stayed with her throughout Season 4. However, after Kelso had neglected Jackie by joining a modeling agency, Eric caught her kissing her boss, and held it over her head. Kelso eventually found out, and went to ambush Jackie's boss, not knowing he was a blackbelt. Kelso is beaten up by Jackie's boss, and he is angry at her for a while, until she tells him to find out why she cheated. She says she cheated because she was neglected. Kelso finds out he cheated because Jackie always insulted him and made him feel bad about himself, although typically everyone on the show treated him in the same manner. The reason why he didn't do the same with Laurie, who also insulted him, is because she actually did it with him whenever he wanted to, something Jackie never did. The breakup didn't last, as they got back together shortly after.

In the Season 4 finale, Jackie asked Kelso to marry her, but Kelso became nervous and left for California with Donna. When he returned in the beginning of Season 5 he found out that Jackie had moved onto Hyde, which made him extremely jealous, and he spent the majority of the season trying to get her back. Eventually, Kelso claimed to be over Jackie and renewed his friendship with Hyde, and began a relationship with Annette, a girl he had a short relationship with in California. Jackie, in the same way as Kelso, became jealous, and even went so far as to yell, "Get off my boyfriend!" when she saw Kelso and Annette kissing. Kelso responded positively to this and began to make a big show of it. Annette left him at the school dance, telling him he wasn't over Jackie, and he soon realized that she was right. So when Jackie broke up with Hyde, Kelso did all he could to win her over, even competing with Hyde at some points. However, when Jackie chose Hyde over him, he respected her decision and even helped to bring the two together again. From then on, Kelso and Jackie shared a relationship as friends. At the end of Season 7, Kelso drove Jackie to Chicago after her break-up with Hyde. When Hyde followed her there to propose, he found Kelso naked and in a towel, making a comment that implied he and Jackie were about to have sex. Although Kelso frequently makes sexual comments to every female on the show, including Jackie and Donna, Hyde believed the two really were about to engage in sex, and drove off to Las Vegas, effectively ending his relationship with Jackie.

In Season 8, Kelso claimed he still loved Jackie and considered marrying her before he was offered a job in Chicago. By that time, Fez had already told Jackie about his proposal, which made him feel he should do so, but she eventually turned him down, which led to just friendship between the two of them for the rest of the show.

Other

It is clear from Jackie and Kelso's relationship that Kelso definitely is not the one wearing the pants in his relationships; he is easily manipulated (Laurie pointed this out once and called him a "tool") and never fulfills his promise of breaking up with his girlfriend, although later it may simply be because he is afraid to break a woman's heart. When he dates Annette in Season 5, he even remarked "It's good to be under someone's thumb again!" with a grin, suggesting he prefers his women to be controlling. After uttering this line, Fez asks him "What did your mother do to you?" which Kelso answers with a stupid grin.

In the Season 6 opener, it is revealed that Kelso is allergic to eggs - right after he downs a glass of raw eggs. Also, in the seventh season, Kelso became the father of a baby girl, Betsy, who was conceived in a bathroom at a Molly Hatchet concert with Brooke (Shannon Elizabeth) near the start of season six.

Kelso became a policeman, albeit a bumbling one. He attempted to take his job seriously by growing a mustache and calling himself "Mike," and even going as far as flushing Hyde's marijuana stash down the toilet (ironically in The Circle), but he was quickly reverted when Hyde and Fez shaved his mustache and made him resemble the mustache Adolf Hitler owned. He eventually set the police academy on fire via a flare gun, and even before then, broke into the academy and lost his supervisor's squad car.

Kelso often remarks that he has an entire future planned out for him. He says this several times in the third and fourth season. This was apparently a way to convince others he was mature, but his friends viewed it as boastful and annoying. Kelso's only plan was to coast through his life on his good looks, and when he believes this might not happen, he greatly over-reacts. He also fell off the water tower every year since Jr. High, a fact either explaining or explained by his idiocy.

Season eight

Ashton Kutcher did not renew his contract for the eighth and final season of the series. So after the seventh season ended, Kutcher appeared in a recurring guest role in the first four episodes of Season 8.

In his first guest appearance which is the eighth season premiere episode "Bohemian Rhapsody", he is avoiding Hyde after he caught him supposedly about to have sex with Jackie in a motel room. When Hyde finally catches Kelso, he punches him in the face and resolves the issue right then and there because everything he wanted to say was in that one punch and their friendship continues on. In the following episode, Kelso is thrilled to meet Hyde's new wife Samantha because of the fact she's a Las Vegas stripper.

Sometime after Samantha arrives, Kelso, Fez and the gang's new friend Randy decides to throw Hyde a surprise bachelor party but Kelso forgets his part of the plan to lure him to the Formans' house where they plan to throw the party. Kelso and the others wind up in jail for a while and Kelso ends up losing his job on the police force.

In his penultimate appearance on the series, Kelso claimed he still loved Jackie and considered marrying her before he was offered a job in Chicago as a security guard for a strip club from a sleazy owner (played by Bruce Willis). By that time, Fez had already told Jackie about his proposal, which made him feel he should do so, but she eventually turned him down, which led to just friendship between the two of them for the rest of the show. In his last scene, he joins Hyde, Fez, Donna and Jackie in a Circle in the Formans' basement before departing for Chicago.

He makes his fifth and final appearance in the series finale episode which is That '70s Finale. By this time it's been months since Kelso was last seen or heard from, so everyone is surprised as well as ecstatic to see him again after such a long absence. He returns to Point Place to spend the rest of the 70's with his old friends.

Excluding the end credits (which features all six of the original group members in a flashback of the first episode), he is the last character physically seen on the show as everyone beats him to get up stairs for the countdown to the 80's at the end of the finale. In addition to this, he delivers the final line of the series, which is "Aw man!" as he grabs the "Stupid Helmet" and heads upstairs for the countdown.

Family

Kelso has a daughter, Betsy Kelso, with Brooke. Their daughter is named after Kelso's grandmother. He has an older brother, Casey Kelso, portrayed by Luke Wilson. It is known that he has five other siblings, including a sister, who Hyde mentions in Season 2 and implies to be unattractive. In the episode, Stolen Car, Eric Forman states that Kelso's parents have seven kids all together.

One grandmother, mentioned in the episode Dine and Dash, has, in Kelso's words, "big honkin' whiskers". Despite Kelso's protests his own mom is very beautiful, Jackie insists she too has the same whiskers. One of his grandmothers, we find in the episode 5:15.

Kelso's father, John Kelso, appeared in the episode Career Day, portrayed by Francis Guinan. John Kelso's office job as a specialized statistician is unclear and confusing to Michael, who decides to make it up and say his dad is a farmer.

In the season 3 episode Romantic Weekend, Red and Eric have a discussion where they both refer to Kelso's parents as being "As dumb as he is."

Attire

Kelso's wardrobe consists mainly of Izod-Lacoste (now just Lacoste) brand polos, plaid long-sleeved shirts, and bell-bottom pants.

References

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