Thank You for Being a Friend

I miss "The Golden Girls". How can I miss it, you ask, when the re-runs are on daily and I watch them during my lunch break? Well, I miss the idea of the show and yearn for future episodes instead of constantly watching the ones I know by heart. But a show like that can never be re-created. Most shows can't be. That is why all those lame attempts at doing so by Hollywood fall flat ("Dukes of Hazard", "The Beverly Hillbillies") or have to be completely self-aware mockeries disguised as modern homages to work. One great example is the hilarious "Brady Bunch" movie, which indeed had to remove all the innocence of the show or turn it on its head. That show was too sickly-sweet to be true even back when it was first aired and we all now know that there was quite a bit of scandalous dysfunction going on backstage at Chez Brady. I mean, one episode had Greg getting "caught" with cigarettes that belonged to a friend and he got a serious talk from Mr. Brady but in real life the actor playing Greg was showing up stoned on the set; and 10 years later on "The Cosby Show" they stole that plot but instead of cigarettes, Theo got "caught" with a joint belonging to a friend but maybe that joint should have been cocaine. Still, a movie which just made fun of those four lovely older ladies would tick me off, not have me rolling in the aisles.


The thing is that a re-make would probably have to be executed in the 80s, like the original. That is because the ladies on the show (roommates Blanche, Dorothy and Rose) were about 55-58 (except for Dorothy's mother Sophia, who was in her 80s) and women in their 50s back then are pretty different from women in their 50s today. For one thing, the women were "on their own" only because they had widowed or in Dorothy's case, left for a younger woman. Near retirement age but still vital and working, they had jobs, not careers. (Dorothy is kind of an exception, as she was a substitute teacher, which is a career, though not the same as a tenured teacher.) The women lived together in a home in Miami owned by Blanche, which had been bought during her marriage to the late George Devereux and presumably with his money. Rose was widowed back in St. Olaf, her hometown in Minnesota, and she was forced to take on a job at a grief counseling center and later as the assistant to a newscaster. Blache worked in a museum. Most women their age today would have successful careers they'd been involved in since graduating college and would probably not be widows, though possibly divorced but most likely never married.


They also looked different than women their age now would look. They had middle-age spread and wore matronly clothes. Today, women have fit bodies they work hard at keeping by jogging or going to the gym and they like to show off said bodies with more revealing or form-fitting clothing. The original Golden Girls also had short hair, though styled to the nines. This is in keeping with the former established style of cutting your hair once you became a woman of a certain age. Long, sexy locks are for young women, you see. (But not anymore) Not that the women were not into sex. Blanche especially was constantly the butt of many jokes which ended in the word "slut" but the funny thing is that her sex life is no different than that of most modern single women, for example all the women on "Friends". She didn't really have casual sex with strangers, she just had quite a heavy social life and dated tons of men, eventually going to bed with them. I don't think it was ever mentioned she slept with anyone she didn't date at least once. Even her tales of sexual exploits as a young woman in the South had her sleeping with local boys after a dance but in a small town setting, teenage boys and girls have grown up together and are therefore not strangers so it's not the same as hooking up with a stranger at a club.


**NOTE: When I first wrote a draft of this blog post (last night, longhand), I had no idea that a successful version of the show was now airing in Greece. A similar show aired in the UK but was cancelled. So there is hope yet! I really think that a modern version of "The Golden Girls" that could work would star not the originals Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty or similar matronly ladies but instead Kate Jackson, Jacklyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett! Yes, the original hotties from the 70s/TV version of "Charlie's Angels" could play the women in their late 50s who live and love together. What do you think? Should I pitch my idea to NBC?