The Golden Girls

The Golden Girls was a popular sitcom that originally aired Saturday nights in primetime on the NBC network from 1985 to 1992. The show was created by Susan Harris, who had also created the sitcoms Soap and Benson. In its later years, it was followed by Harris' other series Empty Nest and Nurses, both of which took place in Miami Beach, Florida. Because of this, the three shows would occasionally have specials where characters from one show made appearances in the other ones in order to boost ratings.

It can now be seen in syndication frequently on the Lifetime cable network. It stars Bea Arthur as the sarcastic Dorothy Zbornak, Betty White as dimbulb Rose Nylund, Rue McClanahan as sexpot Blanche Devereaux, and Estelle Getty as the witty Sophia Petrillo, all of whom won Emmy Awards for the show. Early casting ideas included Elaine Stritch as Dorothy, Rue McClanahan as Blanche and Betty White as Rose.

The Golden Girls was quite risque for its time, as its main characters were four single old women who lived together, but were still up-to-date with pop culture and sexually active. Mild profanity and strong sexual innuendo were common on the program. Estelle Getty's character, Sophia, was written as a woman who had a stroke that destroyed the part of her brain that censored her speech, thus enabling her to get away with much more than the other women. Nevertheless, the show was hugely successful with older and middle-aged women in America.

The show was extremely controversial for often tackling topics that, at the time of airing, were taboo for television and often times simply not addressed in society. These included the coming out of Blanche's brother, menopause, domestic violence and senility. Perhaps the most controversial episode involved the character of Rose being misdiagnosed as HIV positive. At the time, AIDS and HIV were still considered by the public at large to only affect homosexuals.

The Golden Girls was one of the final sitcoms to have its complete initial run before the widespread advent of the Internet. With fans of a tv show now able to watch and discuss each episode, offer suggestions and even point out continuity mistakes, writers and producers have the option of keeping much better tabs on their potential viewers. As the Golden Girls took place before such avenues of communication were as widely available, the characters were written more as "concepts first, people second." While the sitcom was not unique in this respect, it did have its fair share of minor continuity errors, ranging from disappearing siblings and illnesses that may or may not have happened to the question of Sophia's age (after a while, her character simply replied "in my 80's" when asked.) Subsequent series, such as Friends, have carefully-organized flashback episodes, timelines, and even profiles for the fictitious characters.

After the original series ended, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty reprised their characters in the CBS series Golden Palace, which ran from September 1992 to May 1993.

In the early 2000s, Saturday Night Live had a skit that comically combined The Golden Girls with the then-popular MTV show, Jackass. Satirizing the many teens who had gotten themselves injured or killed by attempting to recreate the dangerous Jackass stunts, an SNL skit featured a group of teenage boys who idolized The Golden Girls and got together to recreate the goings-on of the four old women in the show.

In 2003, Lifetime Television hosted a special Golden Girls retrospective, showing some popular episodes as well as a reunion special featuring Arthur, McClanahan and White reminiscing about their times on the show. Herb Edelman, who had played Dorothy's unorganized ex-husband Stan, had passed away before the reunion was broadcast. Arthur paid tribute to Edelman, saying that he was very nice and little like his character of Stan.