Jackie Burkhart

Jacqueline "Jackie" Beulah Burkhart (born September 24, 1961) is a fictional character portrayed by Mila Kunis on the Fox Network sitcom That '70s Show. Jackie is one of the two female leads in the show.

Personality

Jackie is a self-centered, spoiled member of a wealthy family who can be rather insensitive to the needs and feelings of others, though is regarded by many as attractive and fashionable, about which she can be quite vain. She is one of the program's most conceited characters, and can behave quite selfishly. She looks down upon those of lower status in her school and has been said to treat them unfairly, and on the occasions she has treated them with respect she has not continued to do so for very long or only did it knowing that she could be rewarded for behaving in such a manner, such as when she ran for the title of "Snow Queen" but was utterly disappointed when she loses the election. For the most part, Jackie only cares about herself, and fashion is among one of the few other things that she is concerned about. She believes herself to be very beautiful and appealing and has been involved in romantic relationships with Michael Kelso, Steven Hyde, and Fez at different points in the series. She starts to change when she starts dating Hyde and by becomes cemented as a member of the group. Even after her break up with Hyde, they remained good friends and she continued hanging around. She also becomes less shallow and cares about others. In the season 8 episode "Fun It", it is revealed she has coulrophobia (an irrational fear of clowns) ever since her seventh birthday party.

Friendships

Jackie's friendships tend to be complicated. While people might be endeared to her good heart and her triumphs over major life upheavals, her habit of being condescending to others keeps them at a distance.

Although she frequently criticizes Donna's dress, physique and feminism, she repeatedly calls herself Donna's best friend. Even though she thinks Donna is boring and unattractive when compared to herself, she believes Donna could do much better than Eric. Despite their extremely different personalities, Donna serves as Jackie's de facto big sister and often tries to look out for her when she feels Jackie is making a mistake, more often than not due to lack of common sense. After her father is sent to prison in the middle of season five, Jackie moves in with the Pinciottis after the Formans learn that she has secretly been living with Hyde in his basement room. Jackie is also defensive of Donna; she displays this often by insulting or kicking Eric for doing something stupid, for example Eric makes a sexist comment so Jackie kicks him in the shin in the episode "Won't Get Fooled Again." Although both girls often tease one another they show genuine friendship. In the episode "Squeeze Box" Donna shows how much she trusts Jackie when she runs in to talk about Eric. Jackie also demonstrates her level of care for Donna when she helps pay for Donnas wedding ring in the episode "No Quarter".

Of the group, Jackie and Eric seemed to dislike each other the most in the beginning, though as the series progresses, they develop a friendship. Throughout the series, the two have a clear "frenemy" relationship. They demonstrate their annoyance with each other, but show compassion for each other many times, and through it all, are close. In the beginning of the series, Jackie admits to trusting and liking Eric, confiding in him that she might be pregnant. In "The Pill", for example, she says to Eric's surprise, "Look, I've always been able to trust you--and, God, you are such a nice guy." Later in the episode, once Kelso threatens to break up with Jackie, Eric yells at him, having developed protective feelings towards her. This proves that their burning of each other throughout the show is only for laughs and friendly bickering, as none of their hostility is ever serious. Eric is consistent in ignoring Jackie as an object of sexual desire, but this changes in "What Is and What Should Never Be" where Hyde helps Eric realize that Jackie is "hot." After this, Eric has shown to have a sexual attraction to her, as shown in many episodes. Jackie is sometimes demeaning towards Eric due to his effeminate qualities, dorkiness and physical weakness. They have been known to occasionally help each other out. In the episode "Jackie's Cheese Squeeze," Eric admits that they are "friends," as long as they don't refer to each other as such in public, and in the season seven finale, Jackie calls Eric from Chicago and admits that she's always cared for him and that he was always very special to her.

Early on, Red remarks she was the favorite of Eric's friends for her ability to hold a flashlight on a car.^[1] Jackie has run crying into Red's arms no fewer than three times, all of which left him baffled and uncomfortable. Red finds Jackie as annoying as everyone else, but she still loves him because he's the closest thing she has to a father.

Relationships

When the show premieres, Jackie is dating Michael Kelso, a good-looking, brainless goofball. She decides to finally lose her virginity to him when he is released from jail after being mistakenly arrested for driving a stolen car.^[2] Jackie gets on Kelso's friends' nerves on a daily basis and Kelso repeatedly says that he is going to break up with her. However, in the first season it is Jackie who ends the relationship - twice. First, after Kelso is caught kissing Pam Macy (they get back together in the very same episode) ^[3] and again after a pregnancy scare. However, admitting that they miss each other, they get back together at the Junior Prom.^[4]

In season 2, Kelso is seduced by Eric's promiscuous and manipulative sister, Laurie, and later on begins a physical affair with him. Later in the season, Jackie eventually discovers his repeated infidelities and breaks up with him without realizing that Kelso has told Laurie that he is done with her since he only loves Jackie.^[5] After this breakup she is openly hostile to Kelso and many things clearly remain unfinished between them. She often insults him in front of his friends to get his attention and just for the sake of bringing him up. By season 3, she does eventually warm up to him. Following Kelso's breakup with Laurie, Kelso apologizes to Jackie for cheating on her because now he knows how it feels to be cheated on as Laurie cheated on him, except he states that what happened to him and Jackie was different because they were actually really in love. After this, Jackie begins to notice that Kelso has matured somehow, so Jackie devises a series of "tests" for Kelso to see if they should reconcile. He passes her tests and they get back together.^[6] Kelso remains loyal to Jackie after that and stays with her throughout season four, and they enjoy a happier, more loving relationship. However, towards the end of season 4, Jackie's father tells her that if she stays with Kelso, he will cut her off financially. She ends up choosing Kelso, and gets a job. Later, Kelso begins to spend less time with Jackie as a result of his joining a modeling agency and she is caught kissing her boss by Eric. This event spurs a period of discovery for Jackie and Kelso. After reading Cosmopolitan, Kelso realizes that the reason he cheated on Jackie with Laurie was because Jackie has always bossed him around and made him feel bad about himself. Following this revelation, he breaks up with her (true to form, the breakup doesn't stick and they reunite one episode later).^[7]

In the season four finale, Jackie and Kelso both agree that they don't want to stay broken up. So, Jackie has Kelso choose to kiss any girl at The Hub to make things even between them and they can move on and be together again. Kelso surprises Jackie when he pretends to look around the room, but ends up choosing to kiss her. Jackie decides that it's time for Kelso to really choose her. Without warning, she brings up marriage to Kelso and decides that they're getting married. Kelso, feeling overwhelmed, flees to California. When he returns in the beginning of season five, he (along with the others) is horrified to learn that she has begun dating Hyde. Jackie continues to date Hyde for most of the season, but when Kelso introduces Annette to the gang, Jackie finds herself clearly jealous and tells Donna that Michael is still supposed to pine over her. Later in the episode, she claims to not be jealous anymore, but the moment she sees Annette kissing Kelso, she screams, "Get off my boyfriend!" For the rest of the season, Kelso is clearly not over Jackie and doesn't realize that he's indirectly trying to win her back. Towards the end of season five, as Jackie comforts Kelso, he states that no one understands him like she does. In the finale, Kelso and Hyde make Jackie choose between the two of them and she chooses herself. By the beginning of season six, Kelso claims that he is happy and genuinely enjoying their new friendship. He spends the rest of the season trying to move on with his life, joins the police academy and impregnates a girl named Brooke and spends the rest of season 6 and 7 taking care of the baby.

Towards the end season seven, however, Kelso drives Jackie to Chicago after her break-up with Hyde, and Jackie asks him to spend some time with her before he leaves. He is later seen entering Jackie's hotel room in only a towel, implying that he and Jackie were about to sleep together, but runs off nude into the night when he sees that Hyde has come to the hotel to get Jackie back.^[8] In the beginning of season eight, with Hyde married to a stripper, Jackie figures out her own life. Kelso considers marrying Jackie and states that the happiest time of his life was with Jackie and claims he still loves her. When Fez tells Jackie what Kelso intends, she considers the proposal and decides that if he asks, she will accept. However, he gets offered a job out of town and realizes he can move on with his life, but Fez reveals to him that he has already told Jackie of the proposal. Kelso grows angry, and states that he loves Jackie and that he knows in the future, they will be together, but now is not the right time, but since Fez has implied that Kelso will lose all of his chances with Jackie if he doesn't propose now, Kelso ends up proposing at Red and Kitty's anniversary party, though, she turns him down giving practically the same reasons as Kelso, which is that she loves him, but he has a lot of maturing to do and she has her own life to figure out so now is not the right time for them yet. They both feel an unexpected relief, and end on good terms.^[9]

Jackie and Steven Hyde are, from the beginning of the show, polar opposites and even enemies. She is disgusted by his poverty and crass behavior, he scorns her superficiality and materialism. They strongly dislike each other during the first season, but begin to form a bond when Hyde helps Jackie cope with her breakup with Kelso in season two. This leads to a brief period in which Jackie is infatuated with Hyde, but her feelings gradually fade. It isn't until season five, when Kelso is in California, that their romance begins. After watching The Price Is Right together all summer, the two begin making out every time they have a moment alone.^[10] When their friends discover the relationship, they each insist that they are not dating and that it is purely physical, but finally give in and admit that what they have goes deeper than just sex. They date for most of season five until Jackie sees Kelso kissing Annette and yells "Get off my boyfriend!" Hyde reacts angrily to this and grows suspicious of Jackie. When he sees Jackie holding Kelso in her arms, knowing Jackie and Kelso's long history and on-off relationship, Hyde assumes that something must be going on between her and Kelso again. Despite her pleas that she was only comforting him and that nothing untoward happened, he doesn't believe her and he takes revenge by spending the night with another woman. When he realizes that Jackie has been telling the truth, he confesses his infidelity. Although she claims to love him, Jackie immediately ends the relationship.^[11]

In the beginning of season six, Kelso and Hyde are in competition to get Jackie back because they both still love her. She decides she needs time to think about it, leaving them to wait and agonize, but chooses Hyde in the end.^[12] Their relationship goes on until Jackie is offered a job in Chicago. She is torn between her relationship and her professional ambition, but tells Hyde that she will stay if he can gives her the merest hope that they will eventually get married. Hyde has no immediate answer, and when he finally decides, he is upset to realize that she has already gone (or so he thinks). Jackie has no way out of Point Place, and in a final attempt to get an answer out of Hyde, she goes to the basement. Hiding his hurt and anger that she "left" him, Hyde tells her to have a good trip.^[13]

Hyde decides he still wants her, and goes to her Chicago hotel to persuade her to take him back. During his conversation with Jackie, Kelso walks into the hotel room with a towel around his waist and a bucket of ice in his hands and implying that he and Jackie were about to have sex.^[8] Hyde goes to Las Vegas. When he comes back to Point Place, he has impulsively married a stripper named Samantha and brings her back to Wisconsin with him. This effectively ends his and Jackie's relationship.^[14]

Throughout season eight, Jackie remains single. She and Hyde, no longer together, have since remained good friends. However, their friendship somewhat reverts to how it was in the earlier seasons as they sometimes bicker and tease one another. Fez tells Jackie that Kelso intends to propose to her, and she decides that she will accept, but after considering it, she turns him down claiming that though she loves Kelso, he still has a lot of maturing to do, and now is not the time for them to be together. Feeling that she is in a low point in her life, Jackie decides to find someone that would be perfect for her and writes out a list of what she wants in a man. She is surprised to find out that Fez matches everything on the list. She denies this at first, but quickly comes around to the idea and decides to wait for Fez to come to her. Fez, however, is clueless of her attraction to him and is instead seeing other women at the time, which makes it hard for her. Jackie then chooses to go to him. She kisses him and asks if they can be together because he is the one good thing in her life right now, but Fez turns her down, feeling that she is treating him as a last resort, citing how she has already dated both Kelso and Hyde. Jackie then goes to the bathroom and cries, but immediately after vows revenge on Fez. She flushes his toothbrush, microwaves his lotion, and ruins his car with graffiti. To get back at Jackie, Fez dyes her hair green, and says that now she is ugly on the outside like she is on the inside. Hurt by Fez's words, Jackie decides to move out. However, she later learns through one of his friends that he loves her and wishes that he had never said those things. They eventually reconcile and in the final episode, Fez and Jackie finally get together and kiss atop the water tower.

Footnotes