Thirtysomething

I loved this show so much when it was on and never stopped. It may be my favorite TV show ever, definitely top 5. The negative reviews still get me irate, but it isn't for everyone, obviously. One irk was in the very first show, as everyone was telling Michael not to worry, Hope will lose the baby weight. Hope was as slim as anyone would ever want to be. So yeah, there were some contrived conversations for a brief bit, then they hit their stride and absolutely nailed it show after show.

I'm coming to the conclusion that a lot of people actively hate signs of intelligence. The characters weren't whiny, but they did discuss, a lot. If smart people having real conversations about life is boring or annoying, go watch Cagney and Lacey or Home Improvement. They weren't rich yuppies, the two main families were striving to have a nice home and work life, like most people were then, me included. The other characters chose more alternate lifestyles.

They were the first TV show to have two gay men in bed, even though they just talking. That really made upset people off and I always assumed that the negative reaction hastened the end of the show, Too bad, I would have happily followed the characters along much longer and I wish there had been follow ups later. Sadly, it was never meant to be.

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?

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...)

This is a series that started out good, and only got better! wow! The cast working together so well the way they did made it even better. Everyone fit together so nicely, and it went so well. I have this on tape and I wish I could buy it on permanent tape. So many fav episodes! wonderful series! Love it!

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.