?thirtysomething?

 

Jay Rosen

arshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick are
both in their midthirties, Jewish, and married

to non-Jews; both have young children. To-
gether they have created ?thirtysomething,? a one-hour
drama just completing its second season on ABC. Their
main character, Michael Steadman, is also in his mid-
thirties, Jewish, a father, and married to a non-Jew.
Michael is played by a thirtyish actor named Ken Olin,
who in real life is Jewish, the father of two, and married
to a non-Jew. Herskovitz and Zwick co-write many of
the episodes, using their own lives and the lives of
their friends as material. Both their wives have written
episodes. The actors are all good~looking, educated,
middle-class people in their thirties playing good?
looking, educated, middle-class people in their thirties.
The executives who approved the show at ABC are
themselves thirtyish and the parents of young children.
?thirtysomething,? then, offers an interesting possibility:
the TV series as a medium by which a generation com-
municates with itself.

Somethings going on with this show. For one thing,
it?s a hit in the ratings. About a quarter of the total
TV audience tunes in each week (almost nineteen mil-
lion viewers, heavily concentrated among women ages
eighteen to More important than the ratings,
however, are the reactions. This is a show people actively
hate?and watch anyway. Some who are hooked consider
it the only thing on TV worth taking seriously. Intellec-
tuals who ordinarily look down on television feel it
necessary at least to have an opinion about ?thirty-
something,? and if you ask them about the show (as I
did) they?ll go on for ?fteen minutes about what?s wrong
with it. One woman I know makes a point of watching
alone each week; that way she feels free to cry. College
students gather in groups to watch, and therapists have
requested tapes of the show to discuss with patients.

?thirtysomething? is about seven friends, all in their
thirties (obviously), all reasonably self-aware, and all
with problems that they like to talk about. At the center
of the show are Michael Steadman and his wife Hope

 

Jay Rosen is an assistant professor of journalism and mass
communication at New York University, and an associate at New
York University?s Center for Peace, and the News Media.

(played by Mel Harris). They?re the ones who?ve gotten
it right. They have a loving marriage, a beautiful baby
daughter named Janey, and a large, comfortable house
in an upscale section of Philadelphia. The remaining
characters define themselves against this (relatively)
happy couple, and in particular against Michael. We in
the audience are invited to do the same.

 

One of the most serious indictments
of American life is that
even an upper-Middie-ciass existence
can be radically insecure
and spiritually empty.

 

Gary (Peter Horton) is a compulsive charmer. An
ex-radical with an English he continues to seduce
women with what one of his conquests calls ?a peculiar
combination of [long] hair and whimsy.? What Gary
can?t do, of course, is commit. Among those he can?t
commit to is Michael?s cousin, Melissa (Melanie Mayron),
a photographer living a bohemian, but ultimately lonely,
existence. What Melissa lacks, of course, is a husband
and a baby; in their place is a therapist. Ellyn (Polly
Draper) is Hope?s best friend, a career woman with
anxieties enough for several characters. Like Melissa,
she is single and not happy about it. Elliot (Timothy
Bus?eld) was Michael?s partner in the advertising agency
they owned before it went bankrupt this season. He?s
smart and funny, but he has trouble telling the truth;
for a long time, for example, he fails to tell his ex-wife
Nancy (played by Patricia Wettig, who is married to Ken
Olin in real life) about his affair. Everyone recognizes
him as the ?irresponsible? type. The marriage soured
during the show?s first season and the consensus is that
it was Elliot?s fault. Nancy has been left to raise the
couple?s two young children, one of whom, the older boy,
is acting out the trauma of the divorce. A talented illus-
trator, Nancy has been trying to revive her career, but
with two kids and no help the task is too much for her.

Since their lives have not worked out as well as
Michael?s, these characters feel a right to complain.

29

And complain they do, to the point where the show has
become known for its ?whining? tone. Here?s Jay Leno
complaining about ?thirtysomething? on the ?Tonight
Show?: ?First, I see the wife, and she?s whining, ?What
about my needs?? Then they cut to the husband, and
he?s whining, ?What about my needs?? And I?m sitting
here saying, ?What about my needs? I want to be enter-
tained. Can?t you blow up a car or something??

Leno has a point, sort of. It?s true that the problems
of seven middle-class professionals don?t amount to a hill
of beans in this world, especially in comparison to the
problems of drugs, poverty, AIDS, and homelessness.
Still, it?s a perverse standard that regards all suffering but
the most extreme as somehow trivial or inappropriate.
One of the most serious indictments of American life
is that even an upper-middle-class existence can be
radically insecure and spiritually empty. ?thirtysome-
thing? sometimes addresses this problem, more so this
past season than the ?rst.

Aware of complaints about excessive whining, Hers-
kovitz and Zwick made an important decision. They
decreed that ?Michael and Elliot?s Company? (that?s
what it?s called) would fail. The collapse of the agency
gave Michael something serious to complain about and
introduced a fearsome instability into his generally secure
world. A number of men I know said their interest in
the show picked up at this point, which says a lot, I
think, about the appeal of ?thirtysomething.?

erskovitz and Zwick think of themselves as
courageous auteurs, willing to try things that

no one else would do on television. There is
a good deal of truth in the claim. Trashing Michael and
Elliot?s agency took guts because it left an empty narrative
space at the center of the show. Daring, too, was an
episode in which an argument was ?lmed and replayed
from four characters? points of view. Almost every week
?thirtysomething? offers an unusual moment, something
a little sharper, more carefully observed, than we?re used
to seeing on TV For example, Nancy tries to get some
work done at home, but her children keep interrupting
her, as real children do; and with each interruption she
realizes how trapped she has become, a victim of the
economic consequences of divorce.

This is the sort of realism the show repeatedly offers:
small, familiar events that illuminate the direction of
the characters? lives. But this smallness would be tedium
without the strong undercurrent of fear. When ?thirty-
something" is compelling, it?s often because the charac-
ters are afraid of things that truly frighten. The men, for
example, are afraid of failing in the ruthless competition
that still prevails among them. They frequently take
refuge in the safe and relatively contained competition
of team sports, where they can humiliate each other

30 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 4

(and be humiliated) without real consequences. Michael
in particular is prone to childhood fantasies of basketball
heroism. An episode about the collapse of his buSiness
is interrupted by a dream sequence showing him as a
member of the Philadelphia 76ers; he makes the winning
shot and is mobbed by his joyous teammates (among
them Charles Barkley, a real-life 76er). The men also
fear the responsibilities they inherit with relationships,
in particular the promise of ?delity, which Elliot could
not keep and Gary would presumably ?nd impossible.

 

Micbael bas retreated
from the public world and bas set up
a rigid boundary
between tbe 1960s and the present.
He mocks any claim to
strong prina'ples or cberisbed beliefs.

 

For their part, the women are afraid of the choice
between career and family, or (in the case of Ellyn
and Melissa) of never getting to make that choice and
remaining forever single and childless. Hope has Nancy
to remind her of her fear of abandonment, while both
women can see themselves suffocating in their domestic
roles. The women also worry that their creative talents
may be illusory, that they are kidding themselves about
being illustrators or photographers or whatever. And
everyone worries that with a sudden whoosh their
lives may be upended. If it could happen to Michael
Steadman, then no one, it seems, is safe from economic
disaster.

When fears as real and as common as these are
addressed in a setting as plausible as ?thirtysomething??s
(bonds formed at college or work among a group of
people the same age), the potential is created for an
unusual kind of communication in which the home life
of the audience is relayed, through television, back into
the home. ?thirtysomething? is occasionally so on target
that TV almost becomes a different medium, able to
show us that we are not alone, that our personal problems
are also social conditions. This used to be called con-
sciousness raising, and it?s what separates the show
from almost everything else on TV. The relevance of
?thirtysomething? to the lived experience of its audience
is a remarkable achievement. One of the results, however,
is that the show?s distortions seem more signi?cant.
One such distortion is the handsomeness of the cast.
As a reviewer for Rolling Stone put it, ?There?s nothing
particularly enjoyable about watching y0ur life reenacted
by people better looking than you.?

Indeed, outside of Hollywood, no group of friends is

that good-looking. Yet the handsome faces on ?thirty-
something? seem right at home on television, where
the visual stakes have continually been driven up by
advertising and its need to present us with impossible
images of beauty. It?s helpful to know, for instance, that
Mel Harris was actually a model before being cast as
Hope (whose very name is a not-so-clever joke on all
the women who will never look like her).

One issue ?thirtysomething? will never tackle, then, is
the social and costs of having the ?wrong?
body type. Any observer of baby-boom culture knows
how much anxiety can be generated, especially among
women, by the perception that one is too ?fat,? and
yet none of the show?s characters could fairly be classi-
?ed as overweight. Dealing with this issue would mean
tangling with the forces that favor the doomed quest
for a perfect body?chief among them being advertising.
By casting trim, good-looking people, Herskovitz and
Zwick play it safe, and thereby give in to commercial
imperative.

But even if the actors were more average-looking,
there would still be something annoying about the show.
It?s partly the sense that real life is somehow cheapened
or spoiled simply by its making an appearance on TV.
So accustomed are we to the medium?s banalizing every-
thing, that what appears on the screen often seems
instantly banal, whether, in fact, it is or not. As we
experience the hyped-up realism of ?thirtysomething,?
a terrifying thought ?ips through our minds: good lord,
are my problems so common that even television can
pick up on them?

I, for one, am accustomed to having my tastes antici-
pated by people who design clothes and decorate
restaurants. I accept the fact that certain home furnish-
ing stores know what I want in a new lamp better than
I do, and I have learned to live with this preempting of
desire. But the preempting of my own speech patterns,
as this show sometimes does, is another matter. I get
nervous about allowing into my home television charac-
ters who occasionally sound like me and my friends,
because, at bottom, I don?t trust television?s motives.
The character of Michael Steadman tells me the suspicion
is ?well founded.

.ichael is shown to have managed his life better

than the others; the traits he demonstrates are

the preferred ones?~according to the show?

if you want to avoid the minefield that personal life has

become in the 19803. And how does he do it? He

compromises, because he knows that good things come

to those who never insist on anything too strongly. In

short, it?s helpful not to believe in very much, which is
why he doesn't.

Let?s look at some of his compromises. What Michael

 

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really wants to be is a writer, but instead he compromises
and goes into advertising. Advertising is perfect for
him. He avoids the agony of trying to become a writer,
but still gets to think of himself as a ?creative? person,
maybe even a ?rebel? in comparison to others in the
profession. Indeed, he and Elliot opened their own
agency because they were just too ?creative? for the
stodgy old pros at the shop where they met. So they?re
both rebels, but their rebellion is on behalf of con-
sumer capitalism, for which they create ever more clever
appeals.

Elliot, who doesn?t pretend to be as principled as
Michael, nonetheless makes the mistake of believing
too much in their partnership. When the business begins
to collapse he pleads with Michael not to give up on
their dream. Separated from his wife and his kids,
Elliot has nothing in his life to feel good about but the
company he co-owns with Michael. But Michael knows
what the reality is: the business is headed down, and he
refuses to keep it going by borrowing money and trying
to cut costs. Michael?s business judgment may be sound,
but he also doesn?t believe in the company the way
Elliot does, and so it?s easier for him to abandon it.

This fact is con?rmed later when the two go hunting
for a job. Their ?rst stop is a bargain-basement depart-
ment store that needs some in-house ads done?flyers
in the local pennysaver, that sort of thing. This is not
the kind of ?creative? design work ?Michael and Elliot's
Company? was known for. To accept the job would
thus be a humiliating defeat, a sellout of their reputation
and the principles on which their partnership has been
based. Elliot takes one look at the place and turns to
leave. For him, it?s an open-and?shut case: I may need

31

 

 job, but there are some things I won?t do. Michael has
a different reaction. He considers taking the job and, if
necessary, busting up his partnership with Elliot. That?s
Michael: no belief strong enough that it can?t be dis-
carded under the pressure of events.

Politically, Michael is (what else?) a pragmatist, aware
of the tough realities everyone else forgets in their rush
to be principled. Here?s Michael arguing with Hope
over the death penalty (which is at issue because Michael
and Elliot are doing some work for a candidate who
supports capital punishment): Hope says ?atly, ?The
state doesn?t have the right to take life.? ?Oh, come on,?
Michael replies, ?the state takes a convict and puts him
in a hole for sixty years where he?s made into an animal,
raped, I don?t know what?I mean, who are we kidding?
That?s taking life just as surely as ?ipping the switch on
the electric chair.? This is typical of the tack Michael
takes: Don?t meet a principle with a better principle;
assert your superior grasp of reality, before which all
principles shrink into irrelevance.

As with politics, so with religion: no belief strong
enough to be worth acting upon. In an episode this
season about the problems of an interfaith marriage,
Michael toys with the idea of going to synagogue and
thereby reaf?rming his identity as a Jew. He wanders by
the place, but he can?t bring himself to have a serious
discussion with the young rabbi who heads the congre-
gation. In a dream sequence he reimagines the rabbi as

32. TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4

a withered old man?thus equating religion with a
world that is passing. He never does look the rabbi in
the and say, want to learn what it means to be a
Jew.? Instead, he ends up confessing to his cousin Melissa
a vague belief in God. He adds that he doesn?t know
what to do with this belief, especially because he?s
married to Hope, who is not Jewish. This would seem
to be an ideal question to put to the young rabbi, but
Michael never does. That way he can keep his options
open. Whenever he wants to feel religious, he can tell
himself he believes in God and insist on Hanukkah as
well as Christmas at the Steadman house. What Michael
refuses, then, is any system of belief that would forbid
or require certain conduct. It is Hanukkah he wants to
observe, not Yom Kippur.

must give Michael credit, though, for truly

loving his family. He is a good husband and

a good father, and he doesn?t resent the
sacri?ces that devotion to family requires. But he?s
devoted to little else; his immersion in private life is
complete. This is signi?cant because the characters on
?thirtysomething,? although a little young, think of
themselves as part of the generation that came of age in
the 19605. (Michael, teasing Hope, says, ?You can take
the girl out of the counterculture, but you can?t take the
counterculture out of the girl.? Nancy and Hope are
watching the children play, and Nancy sighs: ?We didn?t
change the world; maybe they?ll do a better job?)

At least in part, then, ?thirtysomething? is a show
about how the generation that tried to ?change the
world? is faring now. Michael, who?s faring the best
among his circle of friends, did it by retreating from the
public world and setting up a rigid boundary between
the 19605 and the present. He polices this boundary
with a hip, ironic tone, suitable for mocking any claim
to strong principles or cherished beliefs. Consider this
example: Melissa lets on that she?s been going to
synagogue and, surprisingly, enjoying it. She ?nds a
?warm feeling" there, she says. ?And single men,? Michael
reminds her, a subtle challenge to the sincerity of her
awakening interest in Judaism.

Michael goes further?indeed, all the characters do?
in trashing Susannah, Gary?s new girlfriend, a community
activist who is serious about politics. Susannah gets
invited to the Steadmans? for dinner and immediately
puts everyone on edge. First she refuses to eat meat,
con?rming everyone?s sense of her as an extremist; then
she criticizes Michael and Elliot for agreeing to take on
a slimy politician as a client. This impertinence leads
the clique to joke about her behind her back, and
Michael goes beyond ridicule the following day when
he casually informs Gary that his new girlfriend is a
?judgmental bitch.?

Somewhere in this extreme (and sexist) pronounce-
ment is the voice, not of Michael, or even of Herskovitz
and Zwick, but of television itself. As Mark Crispin
Miller argues in his new book of essays, Boxed In: The
Culture of TV (Northwestern University Press, 1988),
television has been evolving into an increasingly hos-
pitable environment for advertising. The medium has
?gradually puri?ed itself of all antithetical tones and
genres,? he writes, leaving a TV universe in which the
programs rarely offer a serious challenge to the way of
life on view in the ads. Susannah, who claims to devote
herself to public values, must therefore be dismissed:
?rst by the giggles of the other characters, then by
Michael?s more aggressive assault.

By keeping a cool distance from all manner of serious
belief, Michael, a television character, goes to work on
behalf of television. TV is one of the forces that stands
to gain when the public realm is abandoned for a safer
environment at home?where the link to the outside
world is TV. TV bene?ts as well from what Miller calls
?the hipness unto death,? that glib and ironic tone by
which any claim to seek a better world, a higher truth,
or a deeper spirit is easily turned into a joke. Television,
then, has an interest in the way the entire culture views
the generation that came out of the 1960s?and ?thirty-
something? has to be seen in this light. Michael, the
expert accommodator, the smart manager, the glib dis-
misser of politics and public values, is placed at the
center of the show in part to refute the relevance of the
1960s to personal life today.

What a different show ?thirtysomething? would be if
Michael?still the responsible, sensitive family man,
still the stable center of his friends? world-were also a
public interest lawyer, or a socially conscious journalist,

My Story

or a biologist for an environmental group. Then ?thirty-
something? might be a drama about doing good in the
world and getting on with your personal life at the
same dif?cult trick, to be sure, but one that
many who came of age in the 19605 have managed. But
Michael isn?t the type. He?s an advertising man, perfect-
ing the world in images only.

Still, what?s interesting about ?thirtysomething? is that
it retains, so to speak, the courage of its compromises.
The show?s view of the counterculture may be hostile
and loaded, but it hardly sees the Yuppie culture as an
attractive alternative. Michael and Hope are a handsome
and loving couple with nice clothes, a house of their
own, and money enough for private child care. But
their lives frequently exhaust them, and their fears of
sudden ruin can barely be contained. Selling out, then,
is no guarantee of a safe haven. This past season a
radon scare hit the Steadman home. When Hope gets
the news that the readings are high, she says to Nancy,
?We?re so stupid; we thought it would all be perfect,
like nothing could touch us.? Her mind races on: ?And
we never had the pipes checked for lead, we never got
around to it; Janey could have been drinking lead all
this time.?

The scene ends when Hope, trying to calm herself,
goes to call Michael. But Michael does not know what
to do. Unable to contain his own fear, he is powerless
to ease his wife?s, and the look on his face tells us we
could be next. At least part of the time, then, ?thirty-
something? is sending out a message that cannot be
soothed by the next ad that comes up in soft focus, or
by the ?happy talk? that is sure to follow on the local
news. Even for those who have it together, things fall
apart: an unusual premise for a television show. 

 

David I gnatow

I accept the candle

handed to me out of the dark
where I hear the thunder

of Roman troops. The candle

is lit, ?oating down

from over the heads

of the fighters against Rome.
Iplace it in a candle holder

and set the light beside my bed.
In its ray the thunderous troops
recede. I pick up a history

of the Jews and read. My story.

33