( continues...) When I first watched “My So Called Life” I was a few years older than Angela. Not deep inside the heartahces of adolescence, still the same questions linger on, alluding solutions, even after one stops phrasing them in the most painful words of holding them at the most expose front soul' even when the wrong answers to them don't seem like the bitter end of the world anymore. It's not just in a certain age that one faces those issues, but older people, as well. They may phrase themselves in less of a “doom” manner, perhaps, but still asking answers to those same questions of self definition, the right thing to do, family, love and friendship. The search is conducted from a different point of view, that of somebody whose walked some part of the road, chosen certain paths, accumulated experience and experiences, but the answers may still be unclear.
The show focused on highschool and adolescence, stages that that vast majority of its watchers have already been through (and is currently going through), and therefore they're well known. In expanding to the adults who surround Angela's life, the show managed to show inner processes which take place through a wide range of years through a person's life, not just in a particular phase. And by going back to the narration made by a self-centered teenager, her young age gives her permission to discuss, without any embarrassment, those processes and experiences, without anybody thinking that it's wrong for the heroine to put herself in the center of the world, occasionally blind to other people's needs. Thus, a possibility emerged to focus the look in these emotions and thoughts un a more direct way than with a character in any other age.
A few years later, another show took the highschool world and managed to portray the world through it. Instead of describing the situations in a clear mirroring of reality, it chose a different path, and used the reversing of conception regarding these situations. So, when a teenager didn't go out in the evening to meet her friends, it really could be the end of the world. The show was called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, but that's another story.
- Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison. And the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while. And admit the truth: that when you really look closely? People are so strange and so complicated that they're actually... beautiful. Possibly even me.
A few years later, in reruns during the morning hours, including setting of the VCR's timer and breaks for long months (whenever there was a vacation from the schools that changed the tv's schedule accordingly), I discovered the older “thirtysomething”. Those two shows shared many of the backstage crews, including producers, and some of the writers and directors, as well as the form of storytelling, the focusing in the simple everyday details, turning the thoughts and the discussions regarding them into the heart of the story, refraining from judgment, and putting the characters in the center. For me, in a reverse order from that in which they were created, and according to my own aging, “My So Called Life” gave the signal to the opening of the revolution, but “thirtysomething” set it in stone. In its first airing I was still in the age where I could understand why all these annoying grownups can't shut up already. In the reruns, however, I found reflections of my thoughts, emotions and experiences in each and every one of the characters.
In a similar way to “My So Called Life”'s focus on Angela and her point of view, the axis around which “thirtysomething” turned was Michael Steadman, an advertising man with literary ambitions which were shoved aside due to the need to support his family: his daughter and his wife Hope, who left her job as a journalist in order to become a full-time-job mother. Michael's partner, the creative and childish Elliot, is married to the quiet and motherly Nancy, and they raise two children. Garry, the ladies man and Michael's collage best friend is a literature professor who was involved in the past with Malissa, Michael's cousin and a sensitive and talented photographer. Ellyn, the career woman and Hope's childhood friend, completes the group.
(continued...)
( continues...)
“thirtysomething” doesn't have narration, which exposes the inner world of the characters. According to the characters' age, everything is less direct and exposed, but more subtle, sensitive and wide in scope. The exciting freshness component that's so dominant in adolescence is also missing, but it's exactly this – the accumulation of experiences – that enables a more sombre and layered observation in some of the themes. The characters can deal not only with their current problems and wishes, but also with the long-term results of their past choices, with the unavoidable comparisons to the people they dreamed to be when they were teenagers themselves. Beyond that, they can examine not only the difference between themselves and the realization of their dreams, but also the transformations that these dreams undergo themselves, with the continuation of maturing and balancing of needs, passions and duties, with the creation of an actual change and the acceptance of limits.
Eventually, all the characters in these two shows, each in its own way and according to its own personality, faces similar questions. Despite the differences in their daily lives, the variety of the 'outside' problems that bother them and of the sources of the melancholy brooding they all seem to be prone to, at the bottom line, they all ask themselves the “big questions”' of identity' search of love and ways to express it, family, loneliness, friendship and morales. Angela, the youngest, still hadn't lost the innocence and directness which enable her to pronounce these questions out loud' some of which she's only beginning to answer. But her search reflects more often than not the search of her parents, of the thirtysomething-ers, and my own.
- Sometimes someone says something really small and it just fits into this empty place in your heart.
As the time passed, I kept returning to Angela, Michael, their families and their friends. Each time looking with different eyes, more mature, who left some (no, not all, not entirely) of the inner conflicts behind. “My So Called Life” changed with me, when my daily life changed. For example, as an older sister to a teenage girl I could see Angela's parents problems and issues in a completely different way. And maybe when I become a mother myself, a whole new field of meaning will wait for me in “thirtysomething".
I never stopped reading stories full of faraway imagination, or sliding into distant worlds every now and then, but even in them, now, I see more than more of myself, of the issues that bother my thoughts in my everyday life, the tiny as well as monumental indecisions which appear as a result of the small details. In every beloved tv story. under various plot disguises, I now find the common denominator of inner observation, honesty, and a search which is also a purpose in and of itself. Just like Angela of the last episode couldn't go back to being the girl she was on the first one, I myself can't watch tv in the same way ever since. The discovery of magic, depth and beauty that are so close by affected the gray routine, the distant adventures, the imagination and the mirroring of reality. And this, too, is my so called life.
[Edit: oh, my, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to monopolize Natter like that. I didn't realize how long it was. Where did I think I was posting, the "Firefly" thread?]
Yeah, and just as I was rejoicing that
Bones
had been moved to Wednesdays at 8 PM, 'they' (ABC?) go and move
The Amazing Race
opposite it.
Happy birthday, Tom Scola!!!
Nilly, that was great.
I am still anxious about my Wednesday at 8 pile-up of Bones, TAR, and ANTM.
Oh yeah: Overheard for ita: [link]
Oh, Nilly, thank you. That was beautiful!
The only other event of note is that yesterday I ran into a couple I know from the RenFaire at church, and just as I was about to start chatting I got hit by a wave of exhausted-plus-queasy and had to make a quick excuse and bolt away to go sit in my car and try very hard not to throw up. They looked very confused as I left. I should probably send the girl an email to explain that I'm neither crazy nor repulsed by them, and please don't judge me by the haste with which I fled.
JZ, I'm not saying what I'm thinking, but I'm thinking it really loudly. ijns
Now I get to have another cup of hot coffee, and read Nilly's MSCL posts. Excellent! It's like it's not even Monday at all.
Happy Birthday, Tom!
It really looks like it is about to come down outside and I didn't bring an umbrella today. Drat!
Also, Nilly that MSCL/thirtysomething post was beautiful. I had forgotten how much I used to love thirtysomething. Why is it not in reruns somewhere?
JZ, I'm not saying what I'm thinking, but I'm thinking it really loudly. ijns
@@ Hush, you. There's been a rogue stomach virus running around the Bay Area for a bit now. Emmett's mom and her fiancé have been taking turns being sick as dogs for the past few weeks, and even though Emmett hasn't gotten sick himself (yet, knock wood), I would be shocked if he wasn't already toting little germy critters back and forth across the Bay.
Happy Birthday Tom!
There should be a law against working the Monday after a time change.
