The Really: You weren’t born yet? Sure you were and the television show which changed the direction of television watching and helped blur the lines between generations is back. Really.

From Newsday:

‘Lost” owes a debt to “thirtysomething.” So does “Mad Men.” “Six Feet Under.” “Gilmore Girls.” Even “Sex and the City.”

That’s quite an impact for a four-season drama of people in their 30s sitting around talking, sharing their struggles to be good parents, spouses, friends, moneymakers, idealists. Name an aspect of daily life, and the show’s two core married couples and three single friends got introspective over it. Forsaking detached TV tradition, they bared their souls to viewers, who often embraced this intimate portrayal of their own angst (or rolled their eyes at its “me decade” self-absorption).

From the LA Times:

“Thirtysomething” may have come into being just as TV was focusing its attention on the youth market, but it also helped that market widen to include just about everyone, 60 being the new puberty or whatever we’re down to now.

Nowhere is that more apparent than on the blogosphere, which may owe more to “thirtysomething” than even “Seinfeld” does. With its reliance on endless self-revelation and catchy phraseology, the blogosphere dispenses with the shackles of narrative structure, and you don’t even have to worry about getting Botox. Like “thirtysomething,” we all love and hate it in equal measure, for pretty much the same reasons.

Watching “Julie & Julia,” it wasn’t hard to see the blogging Julie (Amy Adams) as a direct descendant of Melissa Steadmen.

If “thirtysomething” were made today, Michael and Elliot would have their own website, Melissa would work for Gawker and Hope would be a Mommy blogger. And they’d all be in their 40s or 50s. Not that it would matter.”