One show from my past that I’ve never been able to shake is Thirtysomething. The show aired in the late 1980s, and I never watched it. Not a single episode. I was in college, and I was too busy to watch a show about whiny old people. A few years later, I moved to a new town where there weren’t very many people my own age. Thirtysomething aired on the Lifetime Network three times a day. It became my new best friend.
Trust me, I know that it’s a cliche that I love Thirtysomething. It’s embarrassing. I’m a married, white, middle-class female in her late thirties, and I love Thirtysomething! Shocking. But instead of focusing on my flaws, let’s take a look at the show’s strengths and see whether it merits continuing adoration on my part when it hasn’t even been able to get a DVD release….Thirtysomething, with its obnoxiously neurotic but lovable characters, was, dare I say, a microcosm for the struggles of an entire generation of people. The show, if you’re not familiar, follows Hope and Michael Steadman, a young married couple with a new baby; Nancy and Elliot Weston, who have two kids (Michael works with Elliot at an advertising agency); Gary Shepherd (Michael’s best friend); Ellyn (Hope’s best friend); and Melissa (Michael’s cousin and Gary’s sometime paramour). Granted, it’s not new for a generation to attempt to overthrow the strictures and structures of their parents’ generation. But for the first time since the 1960s, the fallout of the hippie generation was apparent: A generation of people were scared to death of growing up because they no longer knew how. They knew who they didn’t want to become, but they were still visualizing the desirable.
One of the show’s obvious flaws is that the entire cast is white. In fact, they are all white, middle-class, and heterosexual. But the show tackled a lot of Major Issues, including gay romance, and paved the way for its descendant shows by the same creative teams: My So-Called Life; Once and Again; Brothers and Sisters. The characters may have been incessantly narcissistic, but they were also incredibly self-aware; they even irritated themselves. They stretched, developed, and grew. And an entire generation of viewers loved them for it.
Here are some of the key issues the show addressed (aka, highlights):
Christian/Jewish Marriage
In the first season, ninth episode “I’ll be home for Christmas,” after having a child, Michael (Ken Olin) decides to revisit his Jewish roots … during the Christmas season. This throws off his protestant wife who loves Christmas. I mean, she really loves it. You don’t want to mess with Hope’s (Mel Harris) Christmas tree, or her vision of teaching her baby daughter Janey to love the holiday as much as she does. So, not for the first time and not for the last, Hope and Michael push and pull against each other, each reluctant to compromise (which may be the largest theme of their relationship), afraid of what they will lose. In the end of the episode, Michael comes around to helping Hope celebrate, and when he returns home to tell her, she is waiting with Hanukkah candles, holding their daughter in the window, the Christmas tree lit behind her. Compromise? Success.
Divorce
Even though Nancy (Olin’s real-life wife, Patricia Wettig) and Elliot (Timothy Busfield) eventually got back together, they were still separated for a significant amount of time. Nancy was forced to work to take care of her children. We got to see her struggle with finding time for painting her children’s book illustrations and playing with Ethan. We got to see what an ass Elliot was/is. We got to watch the friends find time for both members of the couple, and the ensuing awkwardness. It may not have been a truly new topic on television, but it seems that at the time, Thirtysomething was allowing us a more in-depth look at the topic than we had seen since Dallas.
Cancer
Then, Nancy got cancer. So, viewers accompanied her to doctors’ visits, chemo treatments, lost their hair with her, and re-found love with her husband. Hey, it was moving at the time, even though we have seen it millions of times since.
Cougars
Melissa (Melanie Mayron) starts dating Lee (Corey Parker) when he paints her house (“Mr. Right,” from season three, episode three). Lee is more than a decade younger than Melissa, but, oh, he’s dreamy and sensitive! And mature! It turns out that Lee is more capable of handling the age difference than Melissa, so they end up breaking up (stupid Melissa!). That was a great storyline while it lasted because Lee was so likable.
Gay Romance
David Marshall Grant as Russell (he now produces Brothers and Sisters and writes for the show) shared a very chaste first! primetime kiss with Peter (Peter Frechette) in season three, episode six, “Strangers.” I remember hearing about how advertisers were pulling copy from the episode and boycotts were threatened. For its time, the show was producing groundbreaking material.
Tragedy
Although the show tackled many other Major Issues (like adultery, temptation, unplanned pregnancy), perhaps the most memorable and tragic both for characters and fans was the sudden and tragic death of their beloved Gary Shepherd (Peter Horton). In the fourth season, episode 14, called “A Closer Look,” everyone is grumpy because Gary is late to see Nancy at the hospital on his bike. He always rides his bike. So, when he dies, Michael, who has always chastised Gary about wearing a helmet, is stunned to learn that Gary died in an accident in which he was in a car… although clearly, the loss is Michael’s because he and Gary have been best friends for so many years, the writers also let Melissa cut loose with a singularly piercing (if inappropriate) grief for her lost love. Gary was the one who got away, yet as long as he was alive, it was okay, she could handle his being with Susannah and having a baby, because he was still within reach. She could still bump up against him emotionally and share his life. Melanie Mayron’s performance left no doubts about whose life was most devastated by Gary’s death. Ironically, it is also the episode in which Nancy discovers she is cancer-free — and yet Gary is dead. It was a memorable episode.
I am very frustrated that I can’t buy the series (or even RENT it) on VHS or DVD. However, if you’re really desperate for a fix, you can find tidbits on YouTube:
Clacked by Jen Creer
on Jan 15, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
I loved Thirtysomething back in the day. And it goes down in my memory bank as both one of the first shows I was really disappointed about the cancellation of AND the last show I watched the night I went into labor with the birth of my daughter. :)
Terrific show! It’s a shame they cannot connect the dots and get the series on DVD. I came to the show at the end but happily watched every episode over and over again when it hit syndication in the early ’90s. A great cast and some intriguing story lines. Again, it needs to be on DVD… now!
I didn’t start watching the show until it was on Lifetime and it became my crack – each day I had to have another fix. And that scene you linked to of Gary’s death – man, a flood of emotion and memories overwhelmed me again as I watched it.
Another thing this show gave me was great theme music by WG Snuffy Walden. I can still hear it even now in my head and it stirred up the emotions just as much as the characters every time an episode began. The only theme song to truly match it for that with me was ‘Quantum Leap’ – but that was combined with the imagery of times past.
Great show, and it better show up on DVD!
It’s finally coming to DVD! Check Amazon.com — available August 2009. AT LAST!! Exaltation, domestic unease, tragedy and grout!!