thirtysomething: The Complete Fourth and Final Season

It’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.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

thirtysomething: The Complete Third Season

Jerry Stahl is a great writer who once upon a time had a very rough time of it while trying to write TV scripts in Hollywood. He became addicted to heroin and watched his career and life quickly spin out of his control. He mapped out these experiences in a grimly humorous tell-all called “Permanent Midnight,” which was later made into a rather tepid movie starring Ben Stiller. One of the shows Stahl worked on during his days and nights of near oblivion was thirtysomething. Here are a couple paragraphs from the book detailing his thoughts on the show:

“By the time I hit thirtysomething, I had this bad habit of spraying a bloody jumbo Z on the tiles of whatever TV show toilet I happened to be shooting up in. Kind of like an intravenous Zorro. It was my way of saying ‘Just because I happen to be here, writing an episode of thirtysomething, that doesn’t make me ONE OF YOU REEBOK PEOPLE!’

Maybe I did overreact, tweaked by that nasty, subconscious realization I just couldn’t shake: I was perfect for the show. The horror! Because I had the wife, the home, and there was probably a baby on the way. And some part of me wanted all that. I hated admitting the extent to which I could relate to the very things I considered most despicable.”

Now, I’ve never succumbed to heroin addiction, but I’ve been around a few blocks a time or two, and after watching three full seasons of thirtysomething, I can relate to Stahl. The kinds of lives these people lead aren’t what most people in my circle envisioned when they were young, and yet these are the sorts of lives that most of us inevitably end up living. Maybe we dream of climbing the mountain, but few of us ever actually get around to doing it. I should stop myself before I slip and fall into a full-on, Harry Knowles-esque recount of the first 30 years of my life, and just get on with the fucking review.

Read the fucking DVD review for the third season of thirtysomething by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye. (P.S. I really do like this show.)

thirtysomething: The Complete Second Season

Imbibing in the second season of thirtysomething brought me to a minor revelation: I like this show because it makes me love a group of characters who, on the surface, I feel I should dislike. The reason? These people are dirty, or rather, there’s nothing clean about their lives. After thoroughly digging on Season One, I was interested, but not exactly eager, to check out the winding road it would continue to go down. If you picked up Season One and didn’t care for it (it’s hard to believe anyone would outright hate it), then there’s nothing here that’s going to change your mind. On the other hand, you may have viewed Season One and thought, “OK, that’s enough. I’ve sifted through the time capsule once and there’s no need to go for seconds.” You’re probably right. If this was just enough for you on the first round, why bother with another helping? My TV-watching life wouldn’t have suffered any irreparable damage without seeing Season Two, and yet there’s no denying that once again the show sucked me in. thirtysomething is good writing and acting, and while there’s no shortage of either on TV today, you can never have enough of both.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

thirtysomething: The Complete First Season

In September of 1987, I was a couple months away from my 16th birthday, and you can be damned sure that there was no series on television that looked less interesting to me than thirtysomething. The title, which wasn’t exactly reaching out to my age group, was only part of the problem. The ads seemingly showcased a series about a group of yuppie scum of whom I had no interest whatsoever in following the adventures. So not only did I not watch the show in its first season, but I never even caught a single episode of it during its entire four-year run. But now I am thirtysomething – 37, in fact, which I believe makes me even a few years older than the show’s characters – and with this brand new DVD set and a gig as a reviewer of such material, it seemed like the time was right to give this show that earned my teenage scorn all those years ago a real chance.

What do you know? thirtysomething is actually pretty good stuff, and not at all comprised of the yuppie scum I’d always assumed – or, at least, not the yuppie scum I’d envisioned in my youth. I’m not sure that I even knew what a yuppie was when I was a teenager, only that they were not what I was supposed to turn into. It’s noteworthy that one of the show’s writers says in this set’s rather substantial extras section that the intention was never to make a show about yuppies; indeed, if someone had ever accused him of working on a show about yuppies, he probably would’ve punched them in the face.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.