Historical Analysis of "Thirtysomething"

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Alex Carriere
BCA 503
Historical Analysis
26 May 2015
Thirtysomething​and the Aging Baby Boomers
In 1971, the Coca-Cola Company first released its now world-famous
“Hilltop” commercial featuring young people from all reaches of the world
singing together on a hilltop. “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” they sang,
offering the idea that the peace and unity that had been sought for the preceding
decade was possible thanks to the most American of capitalist products:
Coca-Cola (Ryan). In addition to being the apex of a golden age in advertising,
this famous ad marked a turning point for the growing Baby Boomers that had
been born between 1946 and 1964 (Werner). The counterculture movement of
the 1960s was beginning to meld with American capitalism and by the 1980s the
generation that once protested war and marched for freedom was entrenched in
Reagan’s America and struggling to come to terms with their conflicting values.
Perhaps the best representation of this unique generational struggle was a
radically new television drama that aired on ABC from 1987 to 1991. Edward
Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz’s ​Thirtysomething​would be the defining show
for an entire generation and its pilot episode (originally aired September 29, 1987
(“Thirtysomething”)) perfectly captured the angst that most thirty-somethings
were then facing.

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Thirtysomething​’s pilot episode is low on plot but rich in character
development. We are first introduced to our main characters while scenes of
intimacy between our main couple is interspersed with important moments
from their lives so far (including their meeting and eventual marriage) as the
credits are displayed at a slow pace against a black screen. The first thirty
seconds of the episode resemble a film more than an hour long network
program especially considering the highest rated shows at the time included
Murder, She Wrote​and ​Who’s the Boss ​("List of Season's Top-Rated TV Shows.").
The entire plot of the pilot can be summed up so easily and concisely that
it almost seems the writers read the summary in that week’s ​TV Guide​before
typing out a script. Quite simply, the episode was about Hope (Mel Harris) and
Michael (Ken Olin) Steadman struggling to find a babysitter for their infant
daughter Janey. Wanting to spend time camping with their friends, the couple
want to be able to find a sitter but aren’t willing to settle for anyone that is less
than perfect. Hope finds the prospective candidates as either too young (and
thus irresponsible) or too old (and too overbearing). At the same time, Hope’s
best friend Ellyn (Polly Draper) is upset that all of Hope’s time is taken up by
being a wife and mother. Michael’s friend and partner at their advertising firm,
Eliot (Timothy Busfield), admits to having an affair. Both the men struggle to
keep clients happy while their wives stay at home, unsatisfied with their new
domestic roles.

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While little happens in the way of story, the characters are more fleshed
out at the end of the pilot than many shows were ever able to achieve by series’
end. Viewers are witness to a group of thirty-somethings that came of age
during a turbulent time but have seemed to abandoned change to settle into a
world not unlike the way their parents lived​. ​The characters are very aware of
the situation and this realization, coupled with the remnants of the 60s and 70s,
sparks in them an incredible angst and lose of identity. How, they wonder, did
an entire generation of freethinkers and revolutionaries turn into the
materialists “yuppies” of the 1980s?
The most noteworthy signifier of this theme is the professions, or lack of,
of ​Thirtysomething​’s protagonists. The actors playing Michael and Eliot were
born in 1954 and 1957 respectively. This makes their characters approximately
30-33 and thus college students during the 1970s. Incidentally, Michael’s alma
mater, Penn State, was no stranger to student unrest during the decade​. ​Class
boycotts were called in February of 1971 to protest the United State’s invasion of
Laos, female students were permitted to join the all-male campus band, and
protests erupted over the arming of campus security in 1978 (“Protests to
Preppies: The 1970s at Penn State”). While not explicitly stated that Michael was
involved in the more liberal student movements, viewers can surmise as much
based on his still close relationship with his college roommate Gary (Peter
Horton) who is now a free-spirited college professor who still sports a
disheveled beard and shoulder-length hair.

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Whatever he may have been in college, Michael Steadman is inarguably
the archetypal 80s yuppie with his high-stressed, high salary job as an ad
executive and his clean cut style complete with pressed pants and suspenders.
Similarly, his wife Hope is also college-educated and obviously smart and
outgoing. She wants to be a writer she says but when we first meet her, Hope is
feeling like a sell-out. She stays at home with her child, struggling to sleep at
night, keep the house clean and finding it impossible to connect with other
adults outside her home.
While the Steadmans are the typical well-to-do yuppies, their friends
represent the more outright selfishness rampant during the baby boomer’s adult
years during the late 70s and early 80s. The “Me Generation” was obsessed with
itself and concerned only with betterment of the self. After a failure to make real
change in the 60s, baby boomers became disillusioned after the loss of the
Vietnam War, Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and the assassinations of leaders like
Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Instead of striving for change, baby
boomers decided to do whatever they needed to make themselves feel good
again.
In ​Thirtysomething​, Hope’s friend Ellyn complains about their lack of
communication recently. She is visibly upset when a crying Janey forces Hope
to abandon their lunch plans and later admits her anger to Hope. Hope points
out to Ellyn that like it or not, Janey is now a part of her and Ellyn seems to
resent the infant for that reason, having had little to do with her since her birth.

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Also goading the Steadmans into finding a babysitter to spend more time
with them are their friends Gary and Michael’s cousin Melissa (Melanie
Mayron). After Hope gives up on finding a suitable sitter, camping plans are
cancelled leaving Gary and Melissa selfishly dismayed with the couple’s new
responsibility.
The message of ​Thirtysomething​as a whole is hard to pinpoint. Its
creators, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick share much the same
background as their characters with Herskovitz hailing from Pennsylvania
("Marshall Herskovitz Biography (1952-).") and both men meeting in college and
becoming lifelong creative partners ("Edward Zwick Biography (1952-)”). This
similarity suggests that the show is a sympathetic look at the lives of its creators’
peers. If it was their intention or not, what really stands out from the pilot
episode is an overwhelming sense of criticism and disappointment toward the
baby boomer generation.
Thirtysomething​suggests a breakdown of generational solidarity
following World War Two and leading society into angst-ridden self-absorption.
The characters on ​Thirtysomething​had been born into a time of great prosperity
in the United States following the end of the war. They were raised by parents
belonging to a generation that survived war and the Great Depression by means
of great self-sacrifice. Despite the strides of their parents, baby boomers soon
looked at the elder authority figures as failures and harbingers of inequality.
This reaction led to a dismissal of previous expectations according to race and

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gender and a rejection of the conformist ideals of the 1940s and 1950s.
Disillusionment followed, culminating in the full embrace of self-absorption and
materialism.
Because the pilot episode aired nearly thirty years ago, it can be difficult to
look at it without the benefit of hindsight. We may have a good idea of how
things would turn for people like the Steadmans and their friends, but no one
had any guess when the pilot first aired in 1987.
However, it is evident a certain lack of disdain toward the characters exist.
It is easy to call them whiny and self-involved, a popular criticism of the show
from many (Miller), but what really shines through is simple positioning of the
lead character Michael Steadman as the yuppie ad executive. It was the men of
the advertising world that many baby-boomers called phonies and “the man”
during the 1960s.Symbols of conservative America with short hair and neatly
pressed suites. It’s the ad men that made Coca-Cola’s Hilltop ad, linking the
peace and love message of the 60s with the consumerism of the coming times.
Coca-Cola called itself the “real thing” in their ad but so many would have argued
just a short time before that it was anything but. Here, in the pilot episode of
Thirtysomething​from 1987 we have our protagonist deep into this phony world
himself, bridging the radical early years of the baby boomers to the yuppie
middle-aged years of the Reagan Era and finding themselves lost and confused,
aching for a new identity.

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Works Cited
"Edward Zwick Biography (1952-). " ​Film Reference ​. N. p. , n. d. Web. 25 May
2015. <http://www. filmreference. com/film/82/Edward-Zwick. html>.
"List of Season's Top-Rated TV Shows. " ​AP News Archive​. Associated Press, 19
Apr. 1988. Web. 25 May 2015. <http://www. apnewsarchive.
com/1988/List-of-Season-s-Top-Rated-TV-Shows-With-AM-TV-Ratings-Bjt/
id-53b06e0c8df47c0ee910cfcc5c903b3f>.
"Marshall Herskovitz Biography (1952-). " ​Film Reference ​. N. p. , n. d. Web. 25
May 2015. <http://www. filmreference. com/film/0/Marshall-Herskovitz.
html>.
Miller, Jim. "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. "
Entertainment Weekly Book Reviews​. Entertainment Weekly, 8 Nov. 1991.
Web. 25 May 2015. <http://www. ew.
com/article/1991/11/08/backlash-undeclared-war-against-american-women
>.
"Protests to Preppies: The 1970s at Penn State . " ​AlumnInsider​. Penn State
Alumni Association, Feb. 2010. Web. 25 May 2015. <http://www.
imakenews. com/psaanews/e_article001656545. cfm?x=b11,0,w>.

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Ryan, Ted. "The Making of 'I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke'. " ​Coca-Cola
Journey​. Coca-Cola, Jan. 2012. Web. 25 May 2015. <http://www.
coca-colacompany. com/stories/coke-lore-hilltop-story>.
"Thirtysomething. " ​Internet Movie Database​. AMC, n. d. Web. 25 May 2015.
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0755545/?ref_=ttep_ep1>.
Werner, Carrie A. "The Older Population: 2010. " ​United States Census​. US
Census, Nov. 2011. Web. 25 May 2015. <http://www. census.
gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-09. pdf>.