Who am I, my mother?
Thirtysomething was just released on DVD and as a My So-Called Life fan (it has the same producers), as well as someone who has a passing interest in late 80s fashion, I decided to check out the show.
It's been more than 20 years since this show first aired, and watching at first I found the couples difficult to relate to and the emotions overwrought. As I watched more episodes, I kept waiting to like the show...and I just continued to try through 3 discs worth of episodes, until I finally straight up gave up! I really, really gave it a shot though. It is definitely dated, and I plainly did not like the male characters on the show at all, with their cheating thoughts and penchant for suspenders.
My other major issue with the show: it's so boomer it hurts. Really, it hurt me when they used and badly cropped Joni Mitchell songs not once but twice just in the first few episodes! Ouch.
I also feel, as someone who is currently technically thirtysomething and living in this ol' world of ours, that our lives now, at least in my scene anyway, are so completely different from these portrayed back in 1987 it's kind of a bit shocking. These people own their own businesses, h
omes, can afford children, have perfect hair and functional, stylish vintage cars...it's just not real to me, in my world, and that's a big part of why the show fell flat for me personally.
Thirtysomething was just released on DVD and as a My So-Called Life fan (it has the same producers), as well as someone who has a passing interest in late 80s fashion, I decided to check out the show.
It's been more than 20 years since this show first aired, and watching at first I found the couples difficult to relate to and the emotions overwrought. As I watched more episodes, I kept waiting to like the show...and I just continued to try through 3 discs worth of episodes, until I finally straight up gave up! I really, really gave it a shot though. It is definitely dated, and I plainly did not like the male characters on the show at all, with their cheating thoughts and penchant for suspenders.
My other major issue with the show: it's so boomer it hurts. Really, it hurt me when they used and badly cropped Joni Mitchell songs not once but twice just in the first few episodes! Ouch.
I also feel, as someone who is currently technically thirtysomething and living in this ol' world of ours, that our lives now, at least in my scene anyway, are so completely different from these portrayed back in 1987 it's kind of a bit shocking. These people own their own businesses, h
omes, can afford children, have perfect hair and functional, stylish vintage cars...it's just not real to me, in my world, and that's a big part of why the show fell flat for me personally.
We've all had our own ways of coping with the interruption of the season during the strike, and one of mine was to go online and watch Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick's (My So-Called Life, Thirtysomething) new show Quarterlife. Has anyone out there besides me been watching this show? Has anyone else out there even heard about it?
There's a main character, Dylan, a too-pretty-to-be-an-outcast outcast. She lives with her friends Debra and Lisa, both skinny-as-all-get- out but burdened with complex problems of course. Note to casting agent: you can't make a model-esque actress more relatable simply by slapping some eyeglasses on her! Oh well. Anyway, Dylan has a video blog where she talks about her own inner thoughts and her friends' lives. I have no idea why someone would do this and think her friends would not discover and watch the blogs....but I guess on this show it's used as a catalyst for drama. Also causing drama, in a nearby unit there are three 20-something guys, ladies man Danny and film nerds Andy and Jed. Also, Debra's hippie style friend Eric moves in with the gals after a few episodes and starts filling the house with his aggro leftism.
with the show. I really felt like it was like watching my own life in so many ways... except I don't have an
annoying little sister, just an aggravating older brother.
There's a recent interview with Claire Danes (Angela) and she has this weird air about her. She seems
unnaturally poised or something, and her perfectly coiffed layered blond hair stands in stark contrast to her fire engine red stick straight hair back when she played Angela. She seems miles away from Angela, and I guess she should since that was 13 or so years ago. In a way though, I still feel often like that kid I was in high school, and Claire, despite admitting to sharing many characteristics with the fictional Angela, seems not only to have moved waaaaay beyond her 15 year old self, but also seems determined in her speaking on the DVDs to prove it to be so. Maybe a lot of people come up to her in the street and still expect her to BE Angela. That really would get old. I'm glad she's agreed to be on the new DVDs at all. It was an interesting experience to see her now, speaking about what transpired so long ago.
