Thirtysomething’s First Christmas Episode Showed Off the Power of Its Ensemble

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We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at a Thirtysomething episode that spotlighted the Michael/Melissa relationship in a big way, in a wonderful spotlight for Melanie Mayron’s Melissa.

Thirtysomething was an acclaimed drama series about a group of friends making their way through their lives in Philadelphia in the late 1980s in their, well, you know, thirties.

The main couple on the series was Ken Olin’s Michael and Mel Harris’ Hope, who had a baby daughter, Janie, at the start of the series. Olin’s REAL LIFE wife, Patricia Wettig, played Nancy, the wife of Elliot (Timothy Busfield), Michael’s business partner at an ad agency.

Wettig was brilliant, and she took her housewife role to the next level, winning the Best Supporting Actress Emmy in the first season of the show, but being so good that Nancy eventually became one of the show’s main characters, and then Wettig was soon winning Best Actress Emmys period.

With Harris so central to the show, and Wettig FORCING herself to be central to the show, Melanie Myron’s Melissa, the photographer cousin of Michael’s, fell by the wayside a bit, but she was excellent, and won a Best Supporting Actress of her own in Season 2.

The Christmas episode, though, was so good that she probably should have won one for this episode, as well.

The central conflict of the episode is how Michael and Hope will raise Janie come holiday season, since Michael is Jewish and Hope is Christian. Neither of them are really practicing, but they still have fond memories of their religious upbringings. Michael feels that Christmas is almost the default celebration at this time of year.

The much more compelling conflict, though, is between Michael and Melissa. She’s a struggling photographer, and she makes most of her money from the last minute assignments Michael hires her for for his ad agency, as he knows she will always be available and need the work.

It’s a fascinating character conflict. Michael cares about his cousin, but he’s also incredibly patronizing, while at the same time, he’s extremely jealous that she is succeeding at being an artist while he always felt he had to make “Sensible” use of his writing skills instead of just writing novels or whatever.

That complex relationship becomes a major deal in this episode, where Michael pooh-poohs the artistic shots she takes for a campaign, insisting that she do a more cliche, boring approach. She meets a famous photographer, and he is wowed by her work. She makes the mistake about being happy about him liking her work in front of Michael. He says it’s great, but how does she know the guy just doesn’t want to have sex with her? DANG, DUDE!

But, of course, the guy DOES make a pass at her. She freaks out, and leaves, even though he DOES seem to legitimately enjoy her work. In her haste departure, she forgets the new photographs for the campaign, and then Michael gets to talk down to her about her screwup. She starts arguing about how he NEEDS her to be a screwup so that he can feel better about himself.

Michael tries to visit her to make up, and he meets up with their mutual friend (Melissa’s ex-boyfriend), Gary (Peter Horton), who often stops by her place, when the photographer stops by, dropping off her forgotten attache case.

Then the show makes one mistake that KILLS me, as Gary then just spells out the conflict to Michael. “You’re jealous that she’s living the path you’re too afraid to take.” UGH, show! DON’T SPELL OUT CONFLICTS!

Michael then secretly submits Melissa’s work to a local gallery. She gets a rejection letter, but it’s a really NICE rejection letter (you know, “We’re booked up right now, but please show us your future work, you’re very talented”), and she assumes the famous photographer submitted the photos, but Gary lets her know that it was Michael.

At the end of the episode, Gary is helping Michael with SOMEthing. He gets to his place, where he is surprised to find Hope lighting a menorah with their baby. He’s, like, “Where did you get a menorah?” when he turns and sees Melissa there. She obviously helped. He breaks down crying. She breaks down crying. It’s a great scene.

Gary, bored at Michael not coming back outside, leaves the Christmas Tree he and Michael got at Michael’s front door. TOO ADORABLE!

This was a good show.