Where has the time gone? It’s now been 20 years ago since the final season of the popular TV series “Thirtysomething.” A show fraught with parenting (and singlehood) anxiety along with the mundane and not-quite-mid-life crises faced by a rat pack of yuppie friends with few benefits, it came complete with romance, sexual tension, cancer and strained relationships between a tightly knit group of upwardly mobile faces tackling the sure abyss of upcoming middle age. A stream of consciousness continuation of the silver screen hit “The Big Chill,” it comforted and mirrored much of what was leftover from the ‘60s peace and love movement combined with the ‘80s “all about me” zeitgeist that gave us a glimpse of what was yet to come. This sometimes included hints of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper (think Melanie Mayron’s wardrobe); greed (thank you, Gordon Gekko) and having it all, often at someone else’s expense (think Michael and Elliot’s boss); and lots of navel gazing (stop thinking already – they did it all the time).
Times haven’t changed much, have they?
Two decades since the famous tearjerker episode – where the person you expect least to die does exactly that – I find myself wondering what would happen if they reunited the original ensemble cast and turned it into a new series (called, cleverly enough, “Fiftysomething”) to tell us how far they (and we) have come since we agonized together on Thursday nights over everything from infidelity to planning a romantic evening with our significant other.
I wonder if those marvelous writers would humanize those (then) almost perfect characters and give them nose hair, hot flashes, melanoma, foreclosure and parents with Alzheimer’s, or if they would make them all age gracefully, staying happily married and looking like people in ads for AARP where retirement is rife with wedding planning between pilates classes and building houses for Habitat for Humanity and yoga classes for all.
Maybe I should take a look at the first season (I recently ordered it from Amazon) and see if it holds up as well as I have, without the script writing. Times may not have changed much, but I know I have. And I’m still younger than the original cast, which makes me feel better already.
