Faking the hate.

Meet Maurice Schwenkler, the new Ashley Todd.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage:

Our young Mr. Schwenkler, a/k/a the Gangster of Love, would have done better to have spent his spare time watching reruns of "thirtysomething," learning how to be an adult.

Let's speak of the pompatous of politics.

Another article about the DVD of "thirtysomething" by someone who loved the show as a teenager and is now in her/his 30s.

There was this one in the NYT, by Porochista Khakpour, which we talked about here. And now Slate's got virtually the same thing, by Seth Stevenson.

As I said in the earlier post, I had no interest in watching the show when it originally aired, though I was myself in my 30s (and dealing with the problems of marriage, career, and raising young children that the show explored). I'm wondering if the show really was aimed at the younger generation, the kids who wanted to learn what adulthood was really like.

I suppose I could watch the show now — now that it wouldn't be a boring depiction of the ordinary — and see how I'd react to it. Would it feel like looking back on my own past? At the time, I thought that I and my family were very individualistic and not representative of my generation, but I've often thought, looking back, that for all of the individuality I thought I (and we) had, that I really did ride the curve of times quite closely — and that even that illusion of individuality was a conceit typical of Baby Boomers.

"It is true, it is real, it is me, it is not me, it is horrible, and I love it."

The DVD set of "thirtysomething" has finally arrived. Do you dare relive the horror of your long-ago attachment to it?

And I do mean you, not we. I was one of the many people who rejected the show — and I was thirtysomething at the time. That show was certainly not me, though I suppose it actually was, and perhaps that what put off. I was married, then teetering on divorce. I had little children, a new career, and angst about unmet aspirations from the previous decade.

The author of the linked piece, Porochista Khakpour, was in grade school at the time, and she used the show to get a grip on what it meant to be an adult. (She had rejected her parents, Iranian immigrants — "fallen aristocrats" — as role models.) Now, of course, she actually is thirtysomething:

... I find myself torn between the decadent counterculture of my 20s and a desire for things “properly” adult. And this is the very no-man’s-land paralysis that “Thirtysomething” was obsessed with, that cold-sweat-panic moment when youthful rebellion runs headlong into the responsibilities, pains and joys of full-blown adulthood.

In this second-chance viewing as a thirtysomething, I am amazed and inspired by all the everything-in-between, all the nothing-happening, all the ambivalence and the stagnation.

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Link to buy the DVD.