What ‘Party Of Five’ Taught Me About Grief And Growing Up

The Fox show now reads as one unnecessary trauma dump after another.

I’ll never forget the first time I came across “Party of Five,” Fox’s popular teen drama that celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. I had spent what amounted to the cost of designer jeans on the show’s individual DVD box sets, and they were a hallmark of my adolescence.

Growing up, TV dramas and daytime soap operas — “The Young and the Restless,” of course — were my only window to a world beyond my own. Like other young people, I struggled through my teenage years. Eighth grade is hard enough, and the homophobic insults didn’t make it any easier.

That summer wasn’t any better. I was too old to play outside and too young to drive or get a job. I didn’t have many friends that year. Usually, I would have had friends from school to call from my landline telephone to make plans during the summer, but that year, there were no numbers to call. My relatives started to notice — and the last thing I wanted was pity.

So I asked permission to use my mom’s credit card to order “Party of Five: The Complete First Season” from Amazon.

“Party of Five” centers on the Salinger family, whose parents have recently been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. The eldest, Charlie (Matthew Fox), is in his early 20s, and the youngest, Owen, is barely a year old when the series begins. Much of the show’s drama revolves around the lives of Charlie and his siblings, who aside from Owen include Bailey (Scott Wolf), Julia (Neve Campbell) and Claudia (Lacey Chabert). Claudia is an 11-year-old piano prodigy, while Bailey and Julia are in high school, trying to find their footing in the world for the first time without any parents or role models.