The Golden Girls

Honestly, what can I say that hasn't already been said of this classic sitcom? Not much, truth be told. But here's some quick thoughts and a few of my favorite gifs I made while watching the show just the same.

A rejected alternate title for the show was "The Golden Gmilfs".

The Golden Girls is an instant classic because it dares to use one of the most under-utilized character premises in all of TV media: the world of old women. Our four main characters are all somewhere between 50 and 80 years old, in varying stages of graying, wrinkling, sagging, and giving less of a fuck with every passing day. That alone should already tell you that this series is going to be unmatched in terms of writing (after all, who else is writing shows about old women to begin with?), but even then, The Golden Girls still goes above and beyond, and delivers hit after hit with every season.

You can tell this show takes place in Florida because any time a character is holding a drink, it's always orange juice.

It's especially impactful considering when the show came out. Throughout the 80s and into the 90s, as with most other facets of everyday life, there was a big push toward conservatism in TV shows and movies. Make things more "traditional" like the 50s, just "updated" for the current era. And in many ways, you can feel that essence steeped into this show; old women confronting this newfangled modern age, often flabbergasted by how different and alien things have become. But rather than bitterly mock the inevitable oncoming future, The Golden Girls sought to have its characters navigate and even learn to embrace it. Even if that's not "realistic" or relatable in our modern age, where older generations "reject modernity and embrace tradition", it's refreshing to see such protagonists actually choose to be understanding and accepting for a change.

The hallmark of good character writing is knowing EXACTLY how a given character would react to any potential situation you can put them in.

And that was a radical thing, really. This show not only went above and beyond in terms of smart quippy dialogue and wacky sitcom gags, but also hit hard with genuine and heartfelt writing. And while our main cast tends to lean more straight-edge, no topic is off limits for them to discover and grapple with. Whether it's the fear and/or acceptance of death in old age, scathing commentary on the state of women's healthcare in America, the ever-present specter of racism, sperm bank babies, or learning that just because someone is a lesbian doesn't mean they're attracted to you personally, The Golden Girls acts as a laugh track show that can actually punch well above its weight without (for the most part) sounding ham-fisted.

All this while still dishing out one-liners sharp enough to kill somebody.

Well, most of the time, anyway. The usual go-to insults here are unfortunately still just garden variety fatphobia and slut-shaming, which gets a little grating for my taste. But hey, eight seasons is a big ask for maintaining excellence, so I like to give the writers a little grace if they occasionally fall flat.

It's okay to suck or blow once in a while, everyone puts their pants on one vaccuum cleaner at a time.

That's right, I said EIGHT seasons. After season seven ends on a somewhat somber note after Dorothy leaves the group to get happily married off to some rando we've never met prior to that episode, the network still wanted another season. The decision to marry off Dorothy was born out of Bea Arthur deciding to leave the show - most likely to retire, research shows she left on professional terms - so The Golden Girls was re-written into a weird little spin-off series about Blanche, Rose, and Sofia selling Blanche's house to buy a hotel and try to make some easy money off it by becoming its new live-in managers.

The first show on network television to feature a grandma shakin' her cake?

The Golden Palace - what I lovingly refer to as the Golden Girls DLC - only ran for one season and didn't "perform" well, but if you ask me, popularity is no way to measure a show's quality. The writing remained as strong as ever, and the new setting brought in some wild new additions to the cast: namely, Don Cheadle and Cheech Marin. And it's not just their contribution that makes this DLC season shine, the jokes are still as sharp as ever, and still unafraid to tackle touchy subject matter. The Golden Palace is pretty difficult to find nowadays outside of piracy, but worth the effort of tracking it down if you really enjoyed the main series!

No other actor on the planet could have made this line any funnier.

Like I said though, what else can really be said? In my own journey watching this show, I found myself captivated by the world of these four silly silver foxes. You can say it's because I have thing for older women if you want (you wouldn't be entirely wrong), but it's more than just that. There simply aren't enough stories ABOUT older women in popular media. They live exciting and interesting lives too, and it's a whole world that just never gets explored because apparently grandmas are just too "niche" of an audience to market to. So until executives level up and stop being cowards (I'm not holding my breath for that one) and produce more shows about them, The Golden Girls remains the undisputed champion of shows about old women.

And the world could use a lot more shows like it!

When all is said and done, the best actors don't even need any dialogue to be funny.