( 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?]