A show I’ve been looking forward to seeing on DVD has finally materialized. Wandering through Wal-Mart yesterday, I bit the bullet and bought it. It’s season one of The Golden Girls.
Stop laughing…or I’ll break your face.
Have you stopped laughing?
Good…because watching this DVD set will set you off once more. I’ve made it through the first disc of the 3-disc, 25-episode set, and I must have choked on my own laughter at least a dozen times…usually at the pithy one liners of either Sophia (Estelle Getty at her snippy best), or Dorothy (the magnificent Bea Arthur, in full sardonic glory).
Why do I love this show so much? Because it was the first sitcom to break through the age barriers of the middle class/2.4 children household. Who would have suspected that four female senior citizens sharing a house in Miami could provide so much fertile ground for laughs…especially in the greedy, image-defined world of the 1980s.
If anything, The Golden Girls proved that campy could be an art form, long after the demise of I Love Lucy, and long before the wacky fun of Ally McBeal.
This is a show that reminds us that incredible writing, smart direction, and classy performances can combine to examine real-world issues in a sitcom format that looks tired and worn out in the present-day standard bearers of the genre.. They’d never put The Golden Girls on in the current TV climate — it requires too much thought and appreciation for the finer (and funnier) things in life, and for the quiet, character-based moments that rarely exist outside of HBO offerings such as Sex in the City and Six Feet Under.
The Golden Girls IS a modern classic, with three consecutive Best Comedy Emmy awards to its name. Go out, watch it, laugh your ass off, and cherish it.
It certainly cheered me up…and I’ve needed a lot of cheering up in the last few days.
