All seasons of the “Golden Girls” are available on DVD. But who watches DVDs anymore? You can also see Sophia, Rose, Blanche and Dorothy on Disney+. But the women’s shared apartment only reveals its full effect when you see it at the Disney Chanel at a very late hour. Then their wisdom (“Sometimes life is like a jar of mayonnaise – you never know what’s in it until you open it and start crying”) and vanities (“My beauty is a gift! Like the Mona Lisa’s smile – only with nicer teeth”) and nastiness (“Sleep now, my darling. Pray for more sense”) gently nudge you to sleep.
When The Golden Girls debuted on NBC in 1985, the idea of making a sitcom about four older women was a risk. Today, 40 years later, she appears quite alone in the field. Yes, there’s “Grace And Frankie,” “Hacks” and “Hot in Cleveland,” but television hasn’t produced another smart, funny series about community aging. And so it remains to be said: Hardly any other series has changed the image of women – especially older women – in media reality so lastingly.
Loving mockery
It’s a punchline in itself that this grandmother of all sitcoms essentially turns one of the principles of this format completely on its head. Friendship appears here as an alternative to romantic redemption. The “Golden Girls” live in a world AFTER men: Dorothy (Bea Arthur) is divorced, Blanche (Rue McClanahan) is widowed, Rose (Betty White) mourns her husband’s absence almost every day and Sophia (Estelle Getty), Dorothy’s mother, is already too old for amorous illusions and destroys hopes with sarcastic remarks the others if they become weak again.
The tribulations of love are mocked here by a joke that celebrates loyalty and difference (Blanche: “You know what’s sexy? Confidence. That’s why I never apologize for anything – except once, in front of my mirror because I fogged it up”).
There are no emotional promises in the series, nothing that the plot would lead to (except, and this is not left out, death!). Husbands and family members keep appearing on the periphery, they seem pitiful compared to the gang of girlfriends – and that drives the women to take care of them, no matter what happens. You also enjoy watching these companions who keep disappearing, especially Stan. Dorothy’s ex is played deliciously between pathetic and sad awkwardness by Herb Edelman.
The obvious feminism of the “Golden Girls” comes without claws, at most with shoulder pads. While many series portrayed women as either rivals or as dependents on male attention (see the Bechdel test), here we enter an island of solidarity. It’s about accomplices who can also be corrective: Dorothy counters with her dry intellect, Blanche plays with her sensuality, Rose enchants (or disturbs, as you like) with her naive goodness of heart and Sophia always invokes the ruthless directness of the old people who no longer have to prove anything.
If you want to imply a “feminine sense of humor,” then it is always laughter based on the experience of being a woman.
Women who are snappy and smart and still talk about sex
The “Golden Girls” exposes a society that either labels older women as wailing, shrinking mothers or punishes them with invisibility. The women all caricature clichés of masculinity – Blanche is a Don Juan with lipstick, Dorothy is a female Woody Allen, and certainly not with fewer neuroses.
For example, when Dorothy responds to Blanche’s salaciousness with an enjoyable comment to the audience waiting in the hall for punchlines (“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night”), then this is not only a casual quote from “All About Eve” (All About Eve, 1950), but also proof that women are smart, be snappy and culturally educated – and still be able to talk about sex. In the 80s, just to remind you, women were at best smart or snarky or culturally educated and they rarely joked about sex.
The stars of the series became icons of the television industry in their own right, partly because they already had a career eating cheesecake at the kitchen table at nightly gatherings. Rue McClanahan was more than ten years younger than Betty White – and almost 15 years younger than Bea Arthur. Estelle Getty, the eldest of the shared apartment residents, had to have extra make-up applied to her age; she was 62 years old when filming began.
The actresses, each in their own way, had already set the tone years before. Bea Arthur brought the feminist-sarcastic tone from “Maude,” and Betty White played against her image of the “American clean woman.” The latter was also a star of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” and appeared in numerous comedy formats until her death at the ripe old age of 99.
Aging as a new form of consciousness
“Female empowerment” may have long since degenerated into a marketing buzzword and is used as a justification for every narrative, no matter how skewed. But what allows the “Golden Girls” to avoid all the socio-political potholes is a female strength that does not arise from the pathos of unlimited self-optimization. Rather, it develops from the ability to laugh together at one’s own failure (and that of others).
Their conversations about menopause, loneliness, physical ailments or sexual longing are free of any embarrassment and do not attempt to create a sense of unity in the collective fate among the audience. Aging, it becomes almost philosophical, is shown here as a new form of consciousness. Or as Dorothy puts it on a pertinent topic: “I have no idea how old I am, but I know I’m too old for this conversation.”
The ever-improving scripts and the confident acting of the actresses (not forgetting the many supporting roles and guest stars, including Leslie Nielsen as Blanche’s uncle and Dorothy’s short-term husband, a very young George Clooney as a police officer and Burt Reynolds as Burt Reynolds) made it possible to address hot topics, which is actually far too rarely the case for comedy series is.
Here the “Golden Girls” were more radical and political than almost all of their predecessors and often more progressive than their liberal heirs. Conservative thinkers are punished with friendly smiles while talking on the couch. Sex, death, religion and illness play a role in almost every episode, and without shame. Menopause, loneliness and depression are discussed bluntly. Because homosexuality and AIDS fears are openly shown (in one episode, Rose believes she was infected through a blood transfusion), the sitcom is also considered a cultural fixture of the LGBTQI+ community. Not to mention there are episodes about hospice, organ transplants, Alzheimer’s and long-term care.
After all, aging and the prospect of dying are the basis for the strange tension that outlines all the warming, friendly moments. “You know you’re old when you have more friends in the obituary than in the phone book,” says Sophia, unmoved. Experience, as the “Golden Girls” teach us, is the source of self-irony, certainly not coolness. The boys still have a lot to learn.
“Golden Girls” and their cheesecake
Ultimately, it’s about comfort and care. And this is where cheesecake comes into play again. The series’ best running gag (along with Rose’s stories from St. Olaf, Blanche’s insatiable appetite for men, Sophia’s memories of Sicily, and Dorothy’s cynicism) always appears when something bad happens. Then the women meet in the kitchen and discuss their misery over the dessert.
The cheesecake is the emotional center of the series, almost a ritual sacrament. If an episode of cheesecake also recapitulates old series snippets – a filler like there was in many earlier series – then it’s even meta-reflexive fun. Sophia: “Every catastrophe in life can be overcome with a piece of cheesecake and a good slap in the face.”
These miniatures show how every sitcom episode is also a small lesson in the art of comedy, how tricky situations are transformed into stage drama. It’s like a therapy session with whipped cream: there are confessions, confessions and reconciliation. You may later feel regretful about the late-night fat-and-sugar snack, but the cheesecake is the female counterpart to the hastily downed “Cheers” drink at the bar. It is sweet and banal, but as a secret pleasure and comforter, it is also quite honest. Anyone who comes together like this doesn’t need to bend.
Forty years after their start, the “Golden Girls” today seem neither nostalgic nor old-fashioned. Instead, the series radiates a fearlessness unaffected by taboos, which is embedded in a universal declaration of love for the power of friendship. A timeless concept? One last time Sophia: “People waste their time thinking about whether a glass is half empty or half full. I just drink what’s in the glass.”