Thirtysomething

Yeah, so they were yuppies, and yes they whined. so what. I loved this program when it first ran. And I watched every episode when it was shown this year on Bravo. Thank you, Bravo! I was disappointed to find out that it was the producers (Hershkovitz and his partner) who had pulled the plug on it back it 1991. They thought that 4 years was enough. It just dropped out of the Fall lineup, so there was never ever any closure to the plot line. Very Disappointing!

The most annoying show about the most annoying people on the face of the earth and that's saying a lot. I was thirtysomething when thirtysomething began it's run and I absolutely loathed it, the characters and the whiny dialogue and the stories about loathsome, whiny, self-absorbed brats who'd had everything handed to them on a silver platter but were still whining because everything wasn't perfect. Whew, how was that for a run-on sentence? But it was hard to care about these characters. It seemed to me that the writers secretly agreed with me, because the dilemmas these yuppies and their larvae faced brought into sharp relief the shallowness of their lives and their lack of empathy for others.

I just read a comment by a guy who said he couldn't feel sorry for characters who had great cars and houses etc as if these characters were rich. I'm not sure what show he watched but 30something was one of the few shows on television where its characters lived in homes that actually reflected their middle class incomes. Hope & Michael lived in an old (albeit big) fixer-upper and Nancy & Elliot's house was a typical suburban tract ranch house while the single characters, Melissa, Gary & Ellen all had apartments that reflected their varying income levels. Michael drove an old faded car that maybe 15 years earlier had been a higher priced foreign sports job. This same person's comments go on to say that no real guy ever watched the show except for one wimp that he knew. I think we can all read between the lines of what this reviewer is all about and we don't need my adding any personal reaction to those comments. On to more, grown-up, shall we say, observations about 30something.....

30something deserves its repuation as one of the best written dramatic shows that aired in the 80s. Storylines were original whether addressing traditional issues of career and homelife or veering off into sidelines as when the character Hope finds an old trunk in her attic and the show revolves around letters she finds in the attic. The show blended humor and drama and allowed it's characters flaws and strengths and showed relationships struggling, falling apart and enduring.

There were many favorite shows and storylines for me. The entire sequence of shows where Michael & Elliot plot to takeover their advertising firm from the evil boss, Miles. The aforementioned WWII memory show. Who could forget the couple of shows that dealt with Gary's unexpected death in a car crash? And what about the shows detailing Gary's finally finding a woman to marry, Susannah and how everyone disliked her! Seeing Melissa find happiness in the arms of a younger man, Lee. And one of my favorite episodes, the marriage show between forever neurotic Ellen and her cartoonist boyfriend Billy?

The show was great and my wife & I still talk about the characters. I always jokingly said that "Hope was perfect" because of all the characters she was probably the most disciplined and level headed of the group. Even the character of Nancy, who in less competenant actor's hands could have come off as whiny was brought to the screen as a woman who had her hands full with an emotionally immature husband but was just trying to improve her marriage and her lot.

Another thing that is important to note about this show is that the drama had lots of humor running through it. Not over the top, comedy show humor, but humor nonetheless. For me, it will always be the perfect hour long dramatic show, because it was a show where I REALLY felt I could know these people. It wasn't some turgid, life threatening hospital show or some backstabbing cold blooded lawyer show or some cops and robbers show that my life will never be about. It was about, people like me, who had some creative impulses and who were married with kids, or before they were married struggling to establish a real adult life and get over the fact that college was long gone, etc. Time to grow up and deal maturely with your own self and those around you. Time to do it with discipline and humor and caring for others.

This was a great show with perfect casting. Now when will some cable channel start broadcasting these shows again so I can watch em all over again?

Finest ensemble drama series I have ever seen. It's 13 years since it finished yet it's still keenly missed by it's many devotees. Ths is made worse because it's not available on video or DVD, unlike other series' made by it's creators.

It suffered from the label of being 'yuppie' & 'whiney', probably because the first series took a little time to settle into a rhythm. Yet it was anything but, being both serious and funny about the issues which affect everyone. Yet it never descended into a soap opera and the acting, writing and staging was of a consistently high standard. It's a pity that it ended so suddenly, without a real resolution.

The line above was how Lifetime plugged this show about yuppies when they repeated the four series; Fascinating Aida chose to describe the likes of Michael, Eliot et al as "Yawningly Uninteresting People Paid Irritatingly Excessive Salaries." Many non-fans of "thirtysomething" tended to agree, but despite not turning thirtysomething myself until well after I'd seen Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz's compelling series, I begged and beg to differ.

Focusing on Michael and Hope Seligman and their daughter Janey, Eliot and Nancy Weston and their children (Ethan and the other one), and their single friends - professor and Bjorn Borg-lookalike Gary, husky-voiced businesswoman Ellyn and photographer Melissa - they exhibited an Alfie-like tendency to wonder "What's it all about?" but it was done with sensitivity and more humour than you would expect considering the misery they went through, from Michael and Eliot's advertising company closing down to Nancy's battle with cancer. They were prone to indulging in fantasies throughout (the episode "Whose Forest Is This?" was virtually all fantasy, revolving as it did around the children's book Nancy and Ethan wrote together), but unlike a certain Boston lawyer, no dancing babies were involved and the only singing was on the soundtrack (Carly Simon notwithstanding).

"thirtysomething" was essentially the soap for people who hated soaps, but better than that; the creative team proved that it wasn't a fluke when most of them came up with the marvellous "My So-Called Life." But I still think they shouldn't have killed off Gary.

Footnote: Miles Drentell, the slimy rival advertising man who Michael was compelled to work for, returned (again played by David Clennon) in Zwick and Herskovitz's later series "Once and Again," in one of those crossovers you almost never see in the hermetically sealed world of British television, which is one reason I always liked this show and was not happy when Sky One dropped it. (Another reason was Sela Ward, but that's another story...)