Melanie Mayron, Polly Draper
- Drama
- 1990
- Buy the DVD
Reviewed by Ross Ruediger
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t’s always a little sad when you come to the end of the road for a series you’ve been watching via TV on DVD. Probably less sad than the end of a series you’ve been dedicated to over the years on broadcast TV, because the amount of time and thought invested isn’t quite the same, but sad nevertheless. For me, “thirtysomething” has been one of the great pleasures of the last year and a half, and that certainly isn’t something I thought I’d say when I agreed to watch and review the first season back in August of ’09. But the good news is that “thirtysomething” ends right and proper, and the creators and producers knew halfway through the season that the end was nigh, so they were able to craft a fitting end to the series that doesn’t leave viewers hanging.
So much TV is so jaded and cynical today, which is understandable, because we’re a jaded and cynical society (and probably with good reason). “thirtysomething” has brief moments of cynicism, but it’s 20 years old, and comes from a time when those sorts of feeling weren’t cranked to the max, 24/7. This is a show about life, and I think it may be nearer to the real deal than most of what we see on television today. There are real feelings and moments being negotiated on this show that don’t always require a punch line at the end in order to leave audiences feeling as though there’s some joke they need to be in on, so they don’t feel so uncomfortable about feeling something. You know what? I’m a human being. I like to feel. It’s what reminds me I’m alive.
In Season Four, the folks on “thirtysomething” are more alive than ever. Well, most of them are anyway, but we’ll get to that in due course. Writing up the third season, I naïvely wrote that Nancy’s (Patricia Wettig) cancer was handled much differently than most shows would’ve handled it. My thinking was that they’d done everything they were going to do with it, and that come Season Four, she’d be cancer-free. Boy was I wrong. This season painfully showcases not just the physical toll it takes on her, but the emotional toll it takes on the entire family. One episode, which takes place at New Year’s, sees Elliot (Timothy Busfield) getting thoroughly shit-faced simply because he’s no longer capable of dealing with it. It’s some honest material that works incredibly well. I’ve said it time and again with this series, but Wettig and Busfield make the show. Damn they’re good.
There are many other stories “thirtysomething” has left in it for its final season, though – many of which have to do with DAA, Miles Drentell, loves and spirits lost and found, and some that were maybe never there to begin with. The most shocking move “thirtysomething” makes, however, is to kill off a major character halfway through the season. I simply cannot and will not say anymore than that on the issue, except that it’s a death that ripples though the cast of characters, and changes everyone’s outlook on the future and in the process, lays the seeds for the end of the show. It would be silly to recommend this set to anyone who hadn’t seen the previous seasons, but it’s an easy sell to anyone who has. Even more so, maybe you just watched the first season and never came back for seconds or thirds. I’m here to tell you that “thirtysomething” is a four-year journey well worth taking. Watch it with your significant other; she’ll thank you. Had I the money, I’d gift all four seasons of this show to my closest friends for Christmas this year, and provided they’d watch all four sets, I’m pretty sure they’d come back and thank me for it.
Yeah, it’s a little sad to see “thirtysomething” go, and I gotta be honest: I’d love to see all this talent come back together to do a reunion movie called “fiftysomething.” That would be outstanding.
Special Features: Whoa! Nothing special at all for the last set, folks. There’s a new video introduction from Ed Zwick and Marshall Hersovitz, and that’s it. I think we should probably just be happy all four seasons came out in a reasonable amount of time.
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