Television used to be good. It used to be perfect, in fact.
Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia used to sit around their kitchen table in Miami, eat cheesecake, and read the filth out of each other. They also used to raise provocative, hilarious, and, more than that, truthful conversation about the way their lives were changing as they got older—and how the world around them was changing, too.
Sunday night was the 40th anniversary of The Golden Girls’ premiere episode, which the Emmy Awards paid tribute to.
It’s been 40 years since these actors and these characters demanded to grow older, find friendship, and live vigorously and sexually with dignity and humor. They spoke about aging, about AIDS, about gay rights, about euthanasia, about mental health, about female empowerment, and about politics—but all with the casualness that we all do, because these are the things that we think about in life.
The fact that they dared to articulate it was positively renegade. And it’s why that, four decades later, the series resonates as much as it ever has.
Emmys host Nate Bergatze even jibed at how edgy the show was, something that I don’t think it gets credit for: “Growing up, I was not allowed to watch the Blanche parts.”
Reba McEntire and the female vocalists from Little Big Town performed the iconic “Thank You for Being a Friend” theme song during the Emmys telecast. They were on a replica of the Golden Girls kitchen set. Few things feel as right as Reba McEntire singing in honor of The Golden Girls.
The camera cut to the audience, where Sarah Paulson, Michael Urie, Jessica Williams, and even Colin Farrell were grooving to the song. My biggest gripe: Why didn’t Bargatze or McEntire make everyone stand and dance? Everyone clearly wanted to. I know I wanted to in my living room.
It’s poignant to celebrate a show like The Golden Girls during a ceremony where actors from shows like Hacks and Somebody Somewhere are winning trophies. Both of those series, in different ways, exist on a path paved by The Golden Girls: the idea that people’s lives are fruitful at any age, the acknowledgement that it’s hard to know who you are as you go through the roller coaster of life, and that, what matters most of all, is we connect to on that journey.
Thank you for being a friend, indeed.
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