Writer: Michelle Nader & Amy Cohen
Director: Andy Cadiff

Episode Length: 22:29

Guest Stars:

Rating: n/a

Rating:  TV-14

First Broadcast: November 5, 1997

Storyline #1: Sleepless in New York
Today is Mike's 30th birthday and he's celebrating in style.  One of the cards delivered to him is from an old high school flame.  The gang holds a party at Mike's apartment, but he is clearly distracted by what this card said.  It seems he made a promise to her that if neither one was married by the time he reached 30, they would meet on top of the Empire State Building the night of his birthday.  Intrigued by whether or not she will show, Mike decides to venture to the famed Observation deck.  There he is suprised to find Renee Miller, his high school sweetheart, who kept her promise.   She gives him a birthday present, a Don Mattingly baseball card, which Mike proceeds to accidently lose.  The couple reminisce and catch up.  Once they start to hit it off, Rene pauses to call her "contingency friend".  While she's calling, another of Mike's former romances, Bridget, shows up.  Apparently, Mike has used this line on more than one lady.  Renee comes back and there is much confusion.  Mike admits it was a line to Bridget and in the middle of explaining himself, two more girlfriends show up.  Once the "Mike Flahrety" tour bus departs, Mike tries to sweet talk Renee into staying.  But she's seen enough to know it wouldn't work, so they promise to meet next year and give it a try.

Storyline #2: What do you Get for the Man Who Wants Nothing?
Buying Mike birthday presents seems to be a sore spot on the staff.  Last year, there was a big fiasco with everybody trying to get the best gift.  Mike makes a suggestion to avoid that by putting a $25 cap on this year's presents.  Like any other sitcom device, the idea fails when everyone gets him $25 gift certificates at various stores.  (Except James.  He tries to win Mike's praise by getting him a $625 gift certificate at an electronics store.)  After Mike leaves, the gang stick around to try to find a real gift to give to Mike.  They go through old yearbooks and find an old teacher, Mrs. Helen Walker, who says she "will never forget" Mike.   Paul and James go to Mrs. Walker's apartment in an attempt to "get" her for Mike's birthday.  But it turns out that the reason Mrs. Walker never forgot Mike was because she didn't like him very much, and Paul gets a faceful of pepper spray for his troubles.  So the gang decide upon the next best thing:  a pony.  Mike seems to enjoy the gift as he rides the pony for the rest of the evening.

Storyline #3:  Flaming Out
The Mayor asks Carter for his perspective on the Mayor's nephew Stephen.  It seems Stephen has been acting gay.  The family is worried.  They aren't neccessarily against it, they just want to know for sure.  When we first get a glimpse of Stephen, there is little doubt.  He speaks in the high voice and with a lisp and caters to all the gay stereotypes:  fashion-loving, broadway-loving, and very effemenate.  The rest of the episode is spent having Stephen literaly prance around and act  gay.   In the end, Carter confronts Stephen and gives his oberservations:  Stephen is acting so gay, he's probably straight.  Stephen confides that it's true, and he's acting this way to avoid having his family set him up with someone.

Review: The Thirty Year Itch

Overall, a reminiscint episode.  One couldn't watch the episode and see the direct parrallells to Sleepless in Seattle.  And instead of America's Sweethearts Hanks & Ryan, we get real-life couple Fox and Tracey Pollan.  It was pulled off with suprising effectiveness, especially when more girls started showing up and making the scene surreal.  As with any spoof, you need a definite amount of silliness when imitating something and this one was plenty silly.  An especially amusing portion was Stuart at the end trying to pick up any Flahrety holdovers. 

The meat of the episode involved some leftover threads from Mike's relationship with Laurie.  With Mike inviting the other girls on the same night, it reinforced the notion that Mike is not ready to settle down and have a single grown-up relationship with a woman.  He tries to make it work with Renee, but Renee recognizes that Mike still has work to do.  All the rest is arbitrary.  As for the actual performances, I thought Tracey Pollan seemed a little flat.  If I was seeing the love of my life for the first time in 12 years, I would be a little more excited.  Maybe it's because she has seen Mike in real life everyday.  Maybe it was because Tracey Pollan hasn't acted in so long she forgot how to be excited.  Either way, her performance took a little life out of the character and made it a little less romantic than it could have been.

The gift search is a standard sitcom fair.  Recipient wants low key gifts.   Recipient gets low key gifts and feels underwhelmed.  Gift givers feel bad and try to get a better gift.  Gift givers look through old yearbooks.  Gang gets new gift that doesn't turn out the way they expected.  It was fun to let the Staff go through the yearbooks.  Along with Renee, it let us see some of the background story on Mike's character and what he had done to get where he is today.  Other than that, this part of the episode was a litttle flat.

As uninteresting was the gift story was, the Mayor's gay nephew was outstanding.   Having Stephen act gay let the character explore all of the suggested gay stereotypes and play them up to their ridiculousness.  Job?  In closets.   Drink of choice?  A fruity concoction.  Of course Carter could see through all of it.  While Carter has been outwardly normal, we see in his comments that his private life closely mirrors the stereotypes of homosexuals once he's outside the office.  This duality let him see the two sides of Stephen and call his bluff.   I almost hope Stephen will make some return appearances.  He's a great character and will be able to be a forum for writer's to play out stereotypes as much as Carter plays against them.

Rating [5 pt. scale]: 4.0

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