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After the age of 30, however, life gets more complicated and troubling. TV's thirtysomethings are tense, introspective, concerned about relationships. They have pressure-filled jobs, and they usually live in big cities, where just getting to work can be a problem. "If we're not on the subway by eight, all the nonsticky seats are taken," says the husband rushing for work in Mad About You. They worry a lot about their future, and no wonder: if they're not careful, they could end up like one of the midlife losers of Middle Ages, CBS's downer drama that just opened for a five-week run. Take Peter Riegert, for instance, who plays a salesman trying to peddle computers to small-town Midwesterners, many of them old people who are still mystified by the little holes in steam irons. Willy Loman never had it so drab.
TV's younger generation, of course, has its troubles too, but they are usually overblown soap-opera cliches, and they seem to catch everybody by surprise. In Melrose Place, a naive young secretary is sexually attacked by her new boss, but only after warning signs that not even Senator Arlen Specter could have missed. In The Heights, a band member's girlfriend announces that she is pregnant. "I guess we'll get married. It's the right thing to do," says the boyfriend, who has apparently never seen an episode of Oprah or Donahue. The knottiest problems in The Heights are not personal but group related. The sole black member of the band gets razzed by his neighborhood pals for playing with a bunch of whites. "It's not a color thing," he replies. "It's a people thing." A blond waif complains that the band won't let her sing her own soulful music. "If you don't start taking me seriously, I'm going to quit the band!" she cries. Who said anything about taking people seriously?
Not all of TV's under-30s appear brain damaged. Beverly Hills 90210, the high school drama whose success launched the current spate of twentysomething ensembles, has always borne more resemblance to a thirtysomething show, with its brooding characters and relatively forthright treatment of teen problems. Going to Extremes, the new series from John Falsey and Joshua Brand (I'll Fly Away, Northern Exposure) and set in a Caribbean medical school, is a surprisingly bland concoction from that creative team. But at least it revolves around characters with minimum scores on the SATs and some awareness of the real world.
Nor are the older-targeted shows, for all their introspective angst, necessarily profound or truthful. Laurie Hill sets up a familiar problem: a two-career couple (she's a doctor, he's a freelance writer) trying to find time for each other and for their five-year-old son. But the day-to-day conflicts are too overbaked. Laurie's husband gets pouty when their evening at ) home is interrupted by her beeper. "You have a kid at home who's gonna be in college by the time the three of us get to have a meal together!" he snaps later. And what is the crisis that has called her away? A sick young boy whose test results show he is HIV-positive. So much for marital sensitivity.