Will my kids be proud or think their old man is really a square?
When they're out having fun, yeah, will I still wanna have my share?
Will I love my wife for the rest of my life
When I grow up to be a man?
--The Beach Boys' "When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)"
I was happy to read recently that fortysomething character actor Patrick Gallagher, who played football coach and earnest but excruciatingly inept suitor Ken Tanaka on Glee, is joining the cast of TNT's Men of a Certain Age when it returns for a second season in November. Gallagher, who also was in one of my favorite movies of the last few years, Sideways, has an uncanny knack for personifying Thoreau's oft-quoted observation that the great masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation. (If Thoreau was here today, he might also have observed that they also wear fanny packs, tube socks and slightly too-snug athletic shorts, like the outfit that coach Ken sported.) And I'm also rooting for his soon-to-be fellow cast member Andre Braugher, who will be vying for best supporting actor in a drama category at the 2010 Emmy Awards on August 29. (Braugher previously won best actor in a drama in 1998 for his role in Homicide: Life on the Street.)
Seriously, though, Men of a Certain Age has become one of my favorite TV dramas, and not just because it features Brian Wilson's and Mike Love's wistful coming-of-age ballad as its theme music. I have to admit that I originally avoided watching it because its subject--the struggles of middle-aged ne'er-do-well males and their existential inner torment--seemed a little too self-indulgent in an Eat, Pray, Love sort of way. Or at least that's what I told myself, perhaps because I didn't want to watch a show that might be a little too uncomfortably true to life. I've read a lot of great books that explored this territory, from James Joyce's Ulysses to John Updike's Rabbit, Run and its sequels (none of which were quite as good as the original, alas). But for a long time, television mostly has treated the dilemmas of aging guys as sitcom fodder, in which they're portrayed as klutzy husbands and dads with little or no awareness of how ridiculous their vanity and overreaching aspirations appear to the rest of the world. Think Ralph Kramden in garish golf attire, trying to learn to play golf from an instruction manual in that old episode of The Honeymooners, or Hal Wilkerson embarrassing his son with his roller-skating tricks on Malcolm in the Middle, and you've got the general idea. That's allowed middle-aged guys like me to maintain a reassuring distance from the characters, because we know that we're not as dorky as them. (We aren't, right? On second thought, don't answer that.)
Men of a Certain Age, in contrast, gives us a trio of troubled boomer boy-men who are fully, painfully aware of their own shortcomings and personal failures, and grappling with them bravely, if not always adeptly. Ray Romano's Joe Tranelli, for example, had dreams of being a pro golfer, but that didn't quite work out, so instead he runs a party supplies store and tries to keep his sense of humor about managing a workforce of disinterested Millennials. His marriage didn't work out, either, and he scrambles to maintain a presence in the lives of his son and daughter. He's trying to figure out how to date again, and insecure about whether his no-longer-buff looks are still attractive to women his age. And underneath all that, he's trying--but so far, failing--to face up to the reality that he's addicted to gambling. One of his compatriots, Owen Thoreau, Jr. (played by Braugher), is a stressed-out car salesman who works for his overbearing father. Scott Bakula is Terry Elliot, an actor who never got the breaks he deserved, and who now is trying to deal with the realization that he's really just the super/handyman of the apartment building where he lives.
What I really like about Men of a Certain Age is that these three guys are looking mortality in the mirror every morning, and though they joke about it incessantly, they're clearly worried by what they see. Joe can joke about how he's having trouble reading the label on the ketchup bottle these days, but deep down, he really does fear that someday he's going to be doing the same thing with a bottle of medication. Owen knows that he's going to have more and more trouble keeping up with the younger, more energetic salesmen on the staff. And Terry has to deal with the pain and frustration of seeing less-talented contemporaries make it big in Hollywood, because they were lucky and amoral, and he was neither. For characters in a TV show, they seem an awful lot like some of the guys my age that I know. And like those real guys, the characters in Men of a Certain Age aren't going to give up trying just because the numbers on the scoreboard of life are starting to get lopsided. Because real guys don't mail in. There's a certain dignity in beating the point spread. And who knows? Maybe you will pull that rare upset. Remember the Mets in the 1969 World Series? And the U.S. shocking the Soviets in hockey in the 1980 Olympics? (We male boomers love our sports metaphors, don't we?)
Of course, because Men of a Certain Age is a TV show, it has to maintain the dramatic tension. So we may never see Joe, Owen and Terry ever get the best of their inner demons or fully come to terms with who they actually are (or at least not until the series finale). In real life, where they could write their own script and dream up their own second acts, their future wouldn't have to be so bleak. I could see a real-life Joe sticking with Gamblers' Anonymous, remarrying and starting a program to teach golf to inner-city teenagers. Owen might decide to quit the car business altogether and go to work selling environmentally friendly home renovation materials. And Terry might join the Peace Corps or sail around the world. Come to think of it, that might make for an even better TV show. But in the meantime, I'm eager to see what season two has in store for them, and for their new buddy.