Rewatching the '90s?

I recently had occasion to think about how we never left the '80s in the really important things--in our economics and politics, the right-wing backlash, the financialization and inequality and the rest going on and on and on.

To my surprise, this is even the case with television, as I am reminded when I run across a rerun of a TV show from the '90s. The Pretender, for instance.

This may sound odd. The long opening credits sequences have been discarded--for the sake of cramming in more commercials, I'm sure, no matter what anyone says. There is less inclination to standalone episodes and more toward arcs (albeit shoddily assembled ones). There is much pompous display of self-important edginess and middlebrow pretentiousness (the indie movie sensibility come to the small-screen).

But simply happening on an episode in the middle, especially if no one is holding a cell phone or making an ostentatiously current pop culture reference, none of this is necessarily apparent. What is apparent is the way people look and talk, the hair and the clothes, the ring of the dialogue--even the texture of the images--they don't scream '90s the way a show from the '80s or '70s or earlier does. It might have been made yesterday. Or so it seems to me.

But then I actually am old enough to remember when the '90s was new.

I wonder, does that factor into all this?