I confess: I am among those Baby Boomers who were rabid fans of “Thirtysomething,” that iconic late ’80s TV show much in the news lately because it finally made its way to DVD. I loved it because it was, spot on, about my life and my friends’ lives – about lead characters who had just started their own ad agency, much as I had just launched my own PR agency, relationships between young marrieds, the pull between work and motherhood (some things never change), the responsibilities of a home, and everything else that seemed so critical to becoming whoever we thought we wanted to be. Hope and Michael, Nancy and Elliot were characters I turned to without fail on a weekly basis, friends I could rely on to mirror my own thoughts, needs and experiences and I suppose, help me work through them. It was the better, fictionalized version of any yet-to-be reality show. And as I describe it all here, it reminds me very much of — social media. The “characters” today may be real rather than fictionalized, the relationships, while mostly virtual, a lot more interactive, but the end goals — identification, support, inspiration and yes, entertainment — remain very much the same.
