thirtysomething Coming TO DVD!!!

Finally, after nearly two decades, thirtysomething is to be released on DVD.  The first season, on a six disc collection including commentary and various extras, will be released by Shout! Factory on August 25th, so anyone that wants to preorder a copy as a birthday present for me, my 29th (oh the irony) birthday is August 12th. 

 

I'm certainly keeping my fingers crossed that all four seasons are eventually released.  The show was award winning and ground breaking and whatever else networks, producers and studios usually say.  Except in this case it's true.  The drama really was ahead of it's time, one of a kind and did win a whole mess of awards.  It also had a really great cast of virtually unknown actors who went on to star in some of TV's greatest shows.

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Party Of Five: The Original Gossip Girl?

Slowly making my way through the entirety of "Party Of Five" and nearing the end, broadcast in the fall of 1999, and what do I come across? The freakin' original plot of Gossip Girl! Well, sort of. The show is taking place in the very early days of blogs (I can't recall if they had officially been coined 'blogs' yet) and the show takes place not among rich New York teens but average San Francisco teens.

The storyline is really just a subplot in an episode more famously known as Jennifer Love Hewitt's last episode and a lead-in to her very short lived, very unsuccesful spin-off, "Time Of Your Life". I'll bet ya $10 "Gossip Girl" writer Cecily von Ziegesar was tuned in that evening.

The episode, "Bye Bye Love", was broadcast a mere three years before the first Gossip Girl book was published.

What happens is, Claudia breaks up with her boyfriend an episode or two before and subsequently becomes one of "the cool kids" after her ex serenades the entire school with an amp and guitar in hopes of winning her back. The queen of the "it" crowd latches on to Claudia after realizing they've both been cheated on and Julia was strong enough to dump her loser boyfriend and she was not.

Things are going great with Claudia and the cool kids until someone prints out nasty blog entries about each of the group and brings them to lunch. Claudia, the brains of the group quickly figures out who the original GG may be and confronts them in gym class. The blogger then frames Claudia and she's ostracized!

I'm not gonna give you the whole story. You should check it out yourself. The episode can be found on Youtube in three parts if you want. Here's part two with the beginning of the GG-like subplot.

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Top Ten 1990's TV Theme Songs

While watching the entirety of Party of Five season 1 back to back on my laptop I was struck by the lack of a theme song for the first four episodes. A title card would simply flash across the screen and I wondered what on earth had happened to the well known guitar intro to The Bodean's Everyone Wants To Be Free. Finally, on episode five it appeared.

I don't remember if the original broadcasts of the first four were theme-less or not but this got me thinking about all the great theme songs I knew and loved from my teen years. So here it is, my first top ten:

Rosanne. ABC 1988-1997.

A raunchy sax jam remniscent of a sleazy vaudvillian strip tease juxtaposed with a laughing family eating dinner. The song fit the dysfunctional comedy to a T. Roseanne Barr's evil sounding cackel ending the theme was just the cherry on top, hinting towards the trashy, dark humor the show was full of.



Download MP3.


Frasier. NBC 1993-2004.

Frasier was a pompous jackass and so it would be that his theme song follow suit. Sung by Kelsey Grammer himself, the song is a throw back to the old crooner days, though singing about tossed salad and scrambled eggs is not something Old Blue Eye's would have done.



Download MP3.


Dawsons Creek. WB 1998-2003.

Though a radio hit pre-Dawson, Paula Cole's overly dramatic I Don't Want To Wait ushered in the overly dramatic teen lives of Dawson, Pacey and Joey. The urgency and desperation of the lyrics mirrored the characters desperation to be grown ups and the song managed to keep the Lilith spirit alive into the new century.

According to the shows Wikipedia page the theme song was originally going to be Hand In My Pocket by Alanis Morissette, but she denied the use of her song. Talk about kismet. Had Morissette allowed her song to be used it probably would have changed the whole feel and possibly direction of the show.

For international airings the producers were forced to use songs other than I Don't Want To Wait and a quick youtube search pulls up some awkward, not quite right intros. I suppose if you don't know any better they seem to fit but for a kid from the U.S., it's a bit off putting, like seeing your family dog walk upright and ask you where the bathroom is. It just doesn't fit your previous impressions of how things should be.



Download MP3.



Friends. NBC 1994-2004.

Ah the snappy, poppy, upbeat sounds of The Rembrandts. Hand claps, lyrics portraying the downsides of life yet remaining positive, dancing in a park, playing in a fountain. The Friends intro had it all.



Download MP3.



Mad About You. NBC 1992-1999.

Paul Reiser, star and producer of Mad About You actually penned the theme song, Final Frontier. It's a catchy piano based love song played over lovey-dovey shots of the show's married head characters living life in New York City. As a teen watching this week after week my life ambitions, all completely failed, of course, were heavily influenced by this 30 second spot and it's show.



Download MP3.



Freeks and Geeks. NBC 1999-2000.

The bad old days of high school. The best days of your life and yadda yadda what the heck ever. High school sucked for most of us and for those not born with athletic talent or good looks, who better to sum up our very existence than the queen of bad girls, Joan Jett, and the so perfectly fitting Bad Reputation. If only Judd Apatow had produced this show after he became so crazy famous we may have made it further than just one season.



Download MP3.



Beverly Hills 90210. Fox 1990-2000.

Oh you know it well: badda-badda-donna-donna-chh-chh, playful punch from Jason Preistly to Luke Perry. It was air guiatar heaven backed by preppy early 90's fashion, lovingly joined by sax jam outs and keyboards capped off by a simple synth ending. Fantastic.



Download MP3.




My So-Called Life. ABC 1994-1995.

Oh the drama, the depression, the anxiety. And Juliana Hatfield as an angel. Of all the teen dramas to surface in the 90's I'll proudly admit that My So-Called Life was not only my favorite but the most like my actual teen life. And so a deep bond and everlasting love affair was formed in my life. I still get a bit teary-eyed each time I see the opening.

The song starts slowly with a soft "Go...Now. Go." like we're joining Angela in sneaking out of the house, avoiding grumpy parents, en route to a gothy coffee house to listen to Jordan play Ramones covers. A mid tempo Enya-esque song kicks in, the perfect soundtrack to teenage discovery, first kisses and broken hearts, not a single lyric, just atmosphere and hopefulness.



Download MP3.



Party of Five. Fox 1994-2000.

A blasting guitar the likes of Beverly Hills 90210 could only hope for perks up the ears and off we go into the lively, TV friendly world of The Bodeans. Everyone truly does want to be closer to freee-heee-heee.



Download MP3.


And in the number one spot, this wasn't even really a competition. If you read the title of this post you should have known right away as there is no such thing as competition when it comes to this theme song.


The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. NBC 1990-1996.

I know every single word by heart. I can recite said song from the top of my head without any music. I could probably do this in my sleep. There was a time I could even act the scene out.

Even before Quincy Jones came calling, Will Smith was known in hip hop circles and to MTV fans as half of DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. The prince himself became famous for his family friendly, snarky and comedic rapping style and this theme song, though performed by Will Smith and Quincy Jones III, not Jazzy Jeff as one might assume, played right into that tradition.

Unfortunately, after the third episode the theme song was nearly cut in half for time reasons but it's out there and you can get the full version below.



Download MP3.

Thanks to Televisiontunes.com for the downloads.

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Hallmark Hall of Fame This Weekend

Forgot to mention the new Hallmark Hall of Fame movie this weekend, The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. It airs this Sunday at 9pm (though be prepared for a sports run-over, of course). True Blood's Anna Paquin stars as Irena Sendler, a woman who somehow saves 2,500 Jewish children in World War II Poland. TV critic for the Orlando Sentinel, Hal Bodecker writes "Anna Paquin gives a subtle, moving performance as Sendler" and "The movie is darker and edgier than most Hallmark fare".

Hallmark Hall of Fame films may have a reputation as heartwarming chick flicks but I tend to enjoy them and they have to be doing something right as this is the 236th installment. I doubt many would recall, but the series began in way back in 1951.

According to it's wikipedia page, The Hallmark Hall of Fame began as live telecasts, was one of the first television programs to be broadcast in color and "the series has received seventy-eight Emmy Awards, twenty-four Christopher Awards, eleven Peabody Awards, nine Golden Globes, and four Humanitas Prizes".

It started out on NBC before moving to PBS, ABC and finally, to where it rests now, CBS.

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