In addition to being a fascinating preview of the emotional and spiritual complexity David Chase would later achieve with The Sopranos, the 1990’s television series Northern Exposure also offers a glimpse into what it would feel like to turn 30. As Northern Exposure’s principal character Joel turns 30, he realizes that the things that once distinguished him as a medical prodigy are now simply ‘expected’ of him. He also lugs a canoe around a pristine forest, and bitches to a shaman-in-training who dines with Peter Bogdanovich. Ripped from the headlines, I know. But:

As you turn 30, there’s something wonderful about being who you are, and no longer worrying about who you might be. The mirror is no longer a challenge; it is simply a reflection. Your bookshelf is no longer competing with all the Milton-heads in the English department, your CD collection exists without input from the snarky wunderkinds populating sweaty mid-town nightspots, and all the assorted people who you’ve loved and buried and birthed now form the backbone of your legitimacy. You’ve probably learned to trust yourself, or not trust yourself, as the case may be, and found a certain comfort in that. You know your limit on vodka, and the types of people who will cause you to have a nervous breakdown if you are exposed to them for any significant amount of time. You know definitively how you feel about leather pants, for example.

But while turning 30 shuts the door to wildly diverse career dreamland (“I’ll be a piano virtuoso AND a champion boxer!”), it is not the end of one’s growth, exactly. David Chase was in his late 40’s when he took over producing Northern Exposure, and his 50’s when The Sopranos first aired. Turning 30 means you’re pointed in a direction; now you have all the rest of your life to see how far you can go.