Four Old Women Share an Apartment *Why The Golden Girls was sitcom genius.* By
Troy Patterson
http://www.slate.com/id/2217147/
As if presiding over a festive wake, both the Hallmark Channel and WE tv are airing *Golden Girls*marathons
this week. This heavy-rotation tribute to the show's top-billed star, Beatrice Arthur, provides die-hard fans with a low-key alternative to rending their garments. Additionally, it provides us all with a fine opportunity to assess the sitcom anew. We begin with the observation that *The Golden Girls *is way too good for WE, where it rubs its '80s shoulder pads with *Amazing Wedding Cakes* and *Women Behind Bars*.
The show debuted in September of 1985, a time that, in TV terms, is as distant as the Enlightenment. *The Golden
Girls * joined an NBC lineup that featured *The A-Team*, *Remington Steele*, *Hill Street Blues*, *St. Elsewhere*, *Miami Vice*, *The Cosby Show*, and *Cheers*. To be sure, there was room for raw idiocy on the schedule of programming executive Brandon Tartikoff. *TV Bloopers & Practical Jokes* aired on Mondays at 8 p.m., thus anticipating the current strategy of programming executive Ben Silverman: Howie Mandel's *Candid Camera* knockoff does the practical jokes while his thought process behind greenlighting dreck like *Crusoe* covers the blooper angle. Those were different times, and *The Golden Girls* aired during a two-hour block of Saturday-night comedies. Yes, children, people used to watch network TV on Saturdays, instead of going to meth parties or diddling their Twitters or whatever passes for an evening's entertainment nowadays.
It aired at 9 p.m., between *227* and *The Facts of Life*, two other gynocentric comedies, the one celebrating the role of women in holding communities together, the other inculcating a fetish for prep-school girls. But *The Golden Girls* —about a group of older women sharing a Miami house designed like a multichamber sunroom—trafficked in something like pop feminism, and it's terrifically apt that Arthur played the Carrie Bradshaw figure in a sketch deftly spoofing on *Sex and the City*.
Created by Susan Harris—a pioneering producer and the writer of the famous abortion episode of Arthur's *Maude*—*Golden Girls* boasted characters who were sharp in their humor and secure in their freedoms, which included the freedom to be mean. The show's most biting laugh lines—which are shaped so well that these scripts would work
for radio—achieve that ideal bitchiness animating *The Women*. In a typical moment, Blanche, the vain Southern belle played by Rue McClanahan, preens, "One thing I know for sure, I have not lost my hourglass figure." Which is the cue for Arthur, as acid Dorothy, to snipe, "And it looks like somebody poured about 90 minutes of extra sand in the glass." The in-studio audience laughs, and Blanche laughs it off. That the characters insult one another so viciously indicates their intimacy. When addressing the comforts and frustrations of friendship, *The Golden Girls* is more interesting than *Friends* (which had its moments) and as compelling as *I Love You, Man* (which has some rather awesome moments). Call it *The Sisterhood of the Comfortable Slacks*.
Let us review the girls' bios, as if you need reminding: Blanche Devereaux was the youngest and most sexually ambitious, occasionally catching the vapors, sometimes mincing rhythmically. Blanche vamps along as a cartoon
version of a Tennessee Williams hothouse flower, with her first name swiped from *A Streetcar Named
Desire* and her regular references to her father as "Big Daddy" nodding to *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof*. But McClanahan brings the part to life by coming on like a light-farcical version of Maxine Faulk, the rapaciously lusty widow played by Ava Gardner in the underappreciated film version of *The Night of the Iguana*.
Betty White played Rose Nylund, who had relocated to Miami from St. Olaf, Minn., where all children are subnormal, based on the evidence of her cracked anecdotes and gloriously dingbatty self. *The Golden Girls* is a broad ethnic comedy, and she is its Norwegian-American emissary of the upper Midwest, as affable as Marge Gunderson's accent, though without any brains. Not just the daffiest of the girls, Rose is also the prettiest, and the combination gives her an aspect of Elsie the Cow.
.
Estelle Getty was Sophia Petrillo, the mother of Arthur's Dorothy. From Sicily by way of Brooklyn, she slices off her lines like Catherine Scorsese in her bit part in *Goodfellas*. Because *The Golden Girls* made the scene before the political correctness and identity politics of the 1990s, its writers didn't get hung up on inappropriate jokes, and Sophia, because of her advanced age and old-world attitude, was given the most tasteless. In a fairly tame instance,
she wonders, of a girl-on-girl hug, "What is this, Wimbledon?"
Which brings us to Dorothy Zbornak, who, despite having been raised by Sophia, speaks in the Catskills cracks and vaudeville cadences of Jewish humor. Either Dorothy is intended as a generically ethnic New Yorker or else
she picked this up during her decades of marriage to ex-husband Stanley. Significantly, while the other three girls are widows, Dorothy is a divorcee. Her lines are the most bitter and world-weary. She exudes the strongest scent of desperation about dying alone.
Wrapping up the first night of its *Golden Girls *marathon on Monday, WE aired the series finale, the second half of a two-parter titled "One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest." For a valediction, *The Golden Girls* married Dorothy off to an eligible bachelor played by Leslie Nielsen. In her angular white wedding dress, she looked like a hybrid of Ivana Trump, Krystle Carrington, Cruella DeVille, and a snowy egret. The episode ends with a group hug and then an encore of the hug. What was this, the LPGA tour? Then Dorothy disappears into the sunset, perhaps the one from the first scenes of the opening credits, with a jet sliding in front of an orange disc like a friendly vision of the great grand finale in the sky.
I still can't believe Bea Arthur is gone. It's just a bummer to know that
another Girl is gone. Thought I'd do some Dorothy quotes. Her and Estelle
Getty had some of the best lines.
And as much as Dorothy loved her Mother, she had plenty of names for her!
Dorothy: [to Sophia] You're a furry little gnome and we feed you too much
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Dorothy: Good night, Rose. Go to sleep, honey. Pray for brains.
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Dorothy: [to Sophia] Get back here, you deceitful little Sicilian gekko!
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Dorothy: You remember my lying vicious toad of a mother?
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Dorothy: Shady Pines Ma! Shady Pines!
Random Tweets of the day...........
- 01:19 Please Rose. What I forgot you'll never know. - Sophia
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Random Tweets of the day...........
- 01:09 "She could be in a coma. Put a man within 5 miles, she'd roll over and shave her legs" - Dorothy
- 01:27 You know Bea would have been 87 on May 13th. My fellow Taurean will be missed.
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from Fox News and the Associated press...
LOS ANGELES — Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows "Maude" and "The Golden Girls" and who won a Tony Award for the musical "Mame," died Saturday. She was 86.
Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give further details.
"She was a brilliant and witty woman," said Watt, who was Arthur's personal assistant for six years. "Bea will always have a special place in my heart."
Arthur is survived by her sons and two granddaughters. No funeral services are planned.
Random musings......................................................................
- 00:30 Sweet Sassafrass! Clear satin polyurethane protecting nightstand AND new design idea looks like it will work! #
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Random musings.................................
- 18:21 They let us in early. Thank goodness. It was getting brick outside. #paley #
- 18:47 Still hoping NPH shows up! #paley #
- 18:51 I'm a masquerading Joss Whedon fan. These folks are hard core fans! #paley #
- 18:58 I'm willing NPH here! #paley #
- 19:15 Dr Horrible on the big screen! #paley #
- 19:43 We do the weird stuff! #paley #
- 20:44 Loving this but so SAD that NPH isn't here. #paley #
- 21:18 Totally worth it! Please God, let there be more Dr Horrible. #paley #
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Interestingly enough, the civil case that I was on is affecting my driving.
The only negligence we found with the cab driver is that he didn't make sure
that the intersection was clear before he went forward on his green light.
He couldn't see because of the SUV to his left. And the SUV started to go
forward on the green light and so did he. Unfortunately the cab driver
didn't notice that the SUV slammed on his brakes to avoid the bike rider and
then the the bike rider hit his car. Well since the case I've noticed that
my view is CONSTANTLY blocked by other cars. My little Taz is so small I
can't quite see if the intersection is clear. Now I kind of wait until the
car to my left or right has gone forward pretty far before I go (to the ire
of the drivers behind me). Sometimes I try to inch up but the other cars
think I'm trying something shady and they inch up too! It sucks because it's
my light but I still have to check for assholes trying to beat the light!
I finally found the perfect nightstand on Craigslist for a steal at $10 but it wasn't quite the right color. I thought I would stain it but the guy at Home Depot said it wouldn't quite work and that I should paint it.
BEFORE
AFTER
Grey primer then Espresso paint and a dandelion decal from Etsy. I also bought some contact paper from the 99 cents store, traced a butterfly and dots on it and put it on the side of the drawer and painted over it. Came out pretty good I'd say. I LOVE it!
I was unable to come up with a single plausible lie to get out of jury duty last week and got picked for a civil trial. That's what I get for registering to vote - plucked for jury duty a few months later. Grrrrr.... Very annoying but interesting nevertheless. Bike vs motor vehicle. Motor vehicle happened to be a cab. Basically the bike rider blows through a late yellow light going west and runs into the left fender of the cab moving forward on a green light going north. (Or something like that. All of that northbound, westbound shit is confusing to me.) Anyway the Judge was great - making sure that everything moved along swiftly. And there were objections! Overruled! Sustained! Mostly I was sat there trying to pay attention and look like I was taking notes while doodling. Had the random-est thoughts. Few notes to self:
- Court reporting looks hard (my mind would totally wander and I would miss tons of testimony. Wouldn't want a ton of people to lose their jobs but why don't they just tape the trial and get it transcribed? Inquiring minds...)
- How does one develop pockmarks? (both attorneys had pockmarks and it occurred to me that I didn't know how one develops them. Apparently it's "A pitlike scar left on the skin by smallpox or another eruptive disease". I really hope I don't get them.
- It's so deceptive. You think the judge isn't listening cause he's reading and on his computer and leaning back staring into space and then WHAM "Hold on Counselor, what's the point of this testimony? It's already been stipulated. Move it along".
- Are there hostile witnesses in civil trials? (One or two of the plaintiff's witnesses felt hostile!)
- Why are legal pads called legal pads? Were they created for lawyers specifically?
- Two great words used: germane and demarcation. Gotta remember to use them in a sentence.
In the end we found that it was mostly the bike rider's fault. I thought it was almost all of the bike rider's fault and wanted to assign almost the entire percentage of blame to him. Condescending old man tried to get me to change my vote but I told him off and kept firm. And when they polled the jury I was happy to say No when they asked me if that was my vote. Thank GOD the vote didn't have to be unanimous!
