“Thirtysomething” & the Long Shadow of Miles Drentell

Like a lot of folks, TV has been a consistent source of entertainment — even before the pandemic made it a more consistent source. We’ve been re-watching the late-80s/early 90s drama Thirtysomething on DVD. Yes, DVD. For some reason, the streaming rights have never been agreed to, so Amazon or Netflix or Hulu doesn’t have it. You can find random episodes on YouTube, but if you want a consistent (and high quality) viewing experience, you’re going to have to with DVD for now.

What I’ve noticed over the course of the last few weeks watching the show (and this is probably my fourth time re-watching the series) is how much the character of Miles Drentell is a lot like some corporate leaders of today. Back then, his odd way of speaking to his employees (well, mostly to Michael Steadman) would often come in the form of head-shaking reactions. It wasn’t just his employees, though. During one season when Michael was being used as an intermediary by Minnesota Brands during an attempted hostile takeover of Drentell’s advertising firm, an early dinner scene with Miles, Michael, and the CEO of Minnesota Brands contained this oddity that everyone at the table thought was the commentary of a guy who was not playing with the full deck: “The decimalization of time is so arbitrary.”

Miles doesn’t fit in at all, and that’s okay with him because in a way he has it all. A successful advertising firm, all the trappings of success, and employees he can command with the confidence of a new age dictator. He’s no one’s friend — and that’s what makes him so dangerous. He lacks compassion, thrives on conflict, enjoys manipulating people and situations, and do so without exhibiting much (if any) outward signs of stress. Some critics have described him as Nietzchean with his devotion to power, power plays, and keeping his business relationships orbiting powerful people. The characters of Michael stands at the somewhat opposite end of the spectrum. His devotion is to his family, being responsible for the material well-being of his employees, and, at times, taking a stand on liberal-pluralist principles. In the show, it’s not really liberal-pluralist principles that are depicted, but rather Michael slowly selling out his 60’s-era idealism for middle-class comforts, upward mobility, and a sense of stature and prominence in his life.

Miles sees Michael as wanting the same unvarnished power he has achieved, and through the course of a couple of seasons, grooms him to eventually take over his job at the head of the agency. That’s about the time when things go south. After Micheal suffers a couple of losses in his life, the people who anchored him to his idealist past got kicked away, and the pressures of his job come to a head when the actor who is featured in a big ad campaign Michael is heading up protests Operation Desert Storm. The client wants the actor fired, and Michael takes a stand on the principle that the guy didn’t do anything wrong; that he was expressing the freedoms that U.S. troops were supposedly protecting during the war. That’s when Miles wonders if Michael is completely missing the big picture of what advertising executives do the society:

MILES

I’m curious to know, Michael, just what you think this company does? On a very basic level, you seem ignorant of what you and I do for a living. Have you been sleepwalking all this time? In a trance? 

Sidebar: When Michael says, rather sarcastically, that he’ll give in and do a campaign that the client wants — which Michael describes as a kind of “full tilt” patriotism where “everybody’s gonna feel safe, and united, and secure, and God bless America, man!” That’s when Miles realizes the gifted man he’s been mentoring and grooming to assume the reigns of power is not only ignorant of the goal of advertising, but also a hypocrite.

MILES 

The thing that most appalls me is your hypocrisy.

MICHAEL

My hypocrisy?

MILES  

Do you actually imagine there’s some difference between this campaign and everything else that we do?

MICHAEL 

It is different, Miles!

MILES  

No, it is not.

Miles then attempts to really spell it out for Michael in terms of what people in the world really care about.

MILES

Do you know what I love about this country? Its amazingly short memory. We’re a nation of amnesiacs. We forget everything. Where we came from, what we did to get here. History is last week’s People magazine.

Sidebar: That bit about people in the U.S. being a “nation of amnesiacs” is pretty accurate at times, especially in light of our current political culture. We live in a moment when flooding the zone with spin and propaganda can change the subject of a story on a dime. I think we’ve seen this for the better part of four years with the current occupant in the White House. Knowing that “History is last week’s People magazine” is how people can easily forget scandal after scandal in politics. As long as you control the narrative and the medium, you can spin, spin, spin people on a merry-go-round with tweets, slogans, catchphrases, and petty insults. We’re prone to forgetting because 1. We have short memories. 2. We are easily distracted by the newest shiny object. 3. We tend to respond to messages that reinforce what we already believe. Of course, not all of this is accurate. There are many people with long memories who view history through the lens of long-term trends and not weekly doses of headlines. Moreover, many can see through the shiny object of manipulation and spin. But the point Miles makes is that repeating a message over and over will soon have the effect of rendering whatever controversy came before moot.

This is brought to a head as Michael starts cracking under the weight of these revelations. Seeing his protege wounded, weakened, and struggling to stay grounded, Miles then goes in for the kill.

MILES

No one wants to be unpopular. That’s why we’re here. That’s the dance of advertising. We help people become popular. Through popularity comes acceptance. Acceptance leads to assimilation. Assimilation leads to bliss. We calm and reassure. We embrace people with the message that we’re all in it together, that our leaders are infallible, and that there is nothing — absolutely nothing — wrong. That is what we do. It’s what we’ve always done…In return for our humanitarian service, we are made rich. I’m sorry if you misunderstood the nature of this covenant, but you’ve done so well up until now. I thought you knew.

That last bit sends Michael almost staggering out of Miles’s office. He’s probably close to a nervous breakdown and is eventually helped to a chair by his employees who note how terrible he looks. Michael’s trying to put on a brave face as he fumbles for a prescription med while shakily drinking a glass of water until he zapped into a vision or dream featuring the female actress/model featured in the beer ad that was pulled. She begins to tell him that she’s the American ideal and that she’s always been there helping him, opening doors, creating opportunities for his advancement. Yes, she’s very much a devil in a white dress with strawberry blond hair and a million-dollar smile. This is what Michael has been resisting all these years, and when he finally is told the price he’d pay for this covenant with The Powers That Be, he quits his job.

But what of Miles? One would like to think that Michael’s departure from his job would have negative repercussions on Miles’s agency. But it doesn’t. Miles doesn’t care about the people who work for him, only what they bring to grow the power of the institution — which is the long shadow of one man at the center of it all. This “great man of business” model that Thirtysomething was singling out for critique seems to have its scions in CEO and companies that run the gamut from automotive to tech. Though few (if any) of the people who lead these modern-day goliaths have the quirkiness of Miles Drentell, there’s a similar focus on power and control not only over their employees but of the public who buys or uses their products and services. Miles loved watching people twist in the wind. He loved coming in after a creative team spent days working on a campaign to essentially deep-six their ideas and decrease their self-worth with a pithy summation of their failed efforts. He also loved to see how the masses were so easily manipulated by a message to get them to consume. Compare the fictional Miles Drentell with Facebook using techniques of gambling to keep you glued to the platform or Google (well, many tech companies really) having weekly or monthly metrics to constantly measure employee productivity in an endless pressure cooker of an environment. Or Tesla, who push their assembly line employees to work long hours six days a week for relatively little pay. All for what? An electric car that doubles as a data mining vacuum? Think of that line where Miles says that advertisers make people feel popular. Feedback on social media makes us feel popular, which leads to a dopamine rush, which leads to wanting more, which leads to the acceptance that you can’t live without Facebook, which gives rise to a belief among some that our personal Jesus leaders are infallible and nothing they do is wrong. That was supposedly the dance of advertising Miles told Michael about, but now it has migrated to many other industries. I’m sure if Miles Drentell were a real person, he’d survey our current political and economic landscape, smile in a knowing way, and feel a sense of solace in a culture that feels very much like home to him.