The Golden Girls Season 1 (1985)
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The Golden Girls Season 1 Review
The Golden Girls is a sitcom created by Susan Harris that aired on NBC. Its first season consisting of 25 episodes aired in 1985.
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“In what, Blanche? Dog years?“
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This is one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time and I am excited to go through each season. It is about four elderly women who share a home in Miami, Florida. The series features a laugh track, but the use of it is surprisingly and refreshingly sporadic for the time. The show is obviously very limited in its technical aspects. It’s a chamber drama set in one house after all and in the first season they rarely left that house. But the show is populated by such lovable characters and it’s superbly written in its dialogue that it did not need more locations.
The opening theme song is wonderful and instantly iconic. It’s a beautiful song about friendship that fits the main theme of the show deftly. The Golden Girls pretty much only has four characters as others are mostly one-offs who are just there for one episode for a scene or two and then they’re gone. And I have no qualms with that as the four gals that we got here are more than enough.
Each of the four women is unique in their own right and they’re fully fleshed out in their arcs and personalities. Rose is clearly the more innocent and childlike of the gang and she is also the most ladylike and most old-fashioned. Most of her humor centered on her dim-witted nature and her strange and silly childhood stories. Betty White is wonderful in this role and so charming. It’s easy to see why she got an Emmy this year as she’s just radiant.
Blanche is the most narcissistic of the four women and the one who is most obsessed with men. Rue McClanahan is so charismatic and playful in the role. The highlight is her many comments about men and her sex appeal that were continuously funny and ridiculous. She is the most theatrical character and she is particularly effective in smaller doses.
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Dorothy is clearly the standout. She is the best-written and most realistic character on the show and Bea Arthur nailed her from the very beginning as her performance is nuanced and quite powerful. Her different look is a source of great comedy, but her practicality and being easily angered made her perfect to deliver brutal answers and comments to the other women that are always hilarious.
Estelle Getty plays her mother Sophia, who is this extremely honest older woman whose blunt comments are constant scene-stealers. Getty was much younger than the character she played, but her performance and look was so authentic that she was very believable nonetheless.
The first episode is called The Engagement. This episode is the only one that featured their gay housekeeper Coco. He was quickly written off the show and this was a great choice as Dorothy already fulfilled that sassy role perfectly. This episode focused on Blanche and is overall solid, but far from memorable. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner focuses on Dorothy’s bitter feelings regarding her divorce and her cheating ex-husband. It established her backstory so well.
Rose the Prude focuses on Rose’s, well, prudish behavior and she is very endearing throughout this episode. Transplant is all about Blanche’s sister and their fraught relationship. The kidney transplant subplot was too melodramatic, but their relationship was very well realized nonetheless. The Triangle establishes that despite Blanche’s dating obsession, she is still very moral and how she warned Dorothy about this womanizer man was very sweet.
On Golden Girls is the worst episode of this season. It is one of those dated sitcom episodes that focus on teenagers being obnoxious in an over-the-top and unrealistic manner. The Competition is by far one of the most beautiful episodes of this season. It focuses on Sophia and Dorothy’s mother-daughter relationship and that is the emotional crux of this highly endearing story. Their final conservation really moved me as it established just how important treating older people with dignity is.
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Break-In features Rose at her most scared and it’s all about her overcoming her fears. It’s a funny character-driven episode that really works. Blanche and the Younger Man is all about Blanche not being a whore basically, which was important to establish as she is more talk than action at the end of the day. The Heart Attack is about Sophia’s supposed heart attack and it’s a great example of the show’s ability to definitely not brush away from portraying all these serious issues facing older people all the while retaining the humor and optimism in even the worst moments.
Stan’s Return sees Dorothy rekindle and then once again end her relationship with Stan. It was a great case of her character growth and how Sophia supported her was so wonderful. The Custody Battle finds Dorothy and Sophia at their worst, but they eventually made things up and it was all very endearing as always. A Little Romance has Rose date a dwarf, which did lead to a great human rights message, though the ending was too convenient and odd.
That Was No Lady is solid, but forgettable. No episode in this season is bad, but there are some that are much weaker than others. In a Bed of Rose’s is the quintessential Rose episode that makes full promise of her supposed curse of killing the men she sleeps with. It’s a surprisingly emotional as well as hilarious episode that is particularly moving in Rose’s kinship with a grieving woman in the final scenes.
The Truth Will Out isn’t particularly funny, but it is important in revealing Rose’s troubled financial history. Nice and Easy sees Blanche at her most motherly, but it’s particularly funny in Dorothy’s fear and eventual conservation with a mouse that was simply hilarious. The Operation is all about Dorothy’s fear of hospitals. It’s a very important, empathetic and relatable story. Second Motherhood ended another of Blanche’s relationships, but it’s not the funniest of those episodes, though the plumbing subplot had its moments.
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Adult Education again confirmed that Blanche would not sleep with men to get ahead in any way, which made her quite admirable. The Flu is not all that funny and is rather typical in its setup, but it does benefit from a moving finale. Job Hunting treats ageism quite well while being at its funniest when focusing on Blanche’s weight gain issues.
Blind Ambitions treats Rose’s blind sister with so much kindness and dignity and this element is the main strength of the entire show. Big Daddy sees a lot of growth from Blanche in her treatment of her father while the final episode The Way We Met is a wonderful recreation of the first days of our favorite girl gang. The highlight is the emphasis on their shared sweet tooth.
Overall, the first season of The Golden Girls has its weaker episodes, but most are very good or excellent. The highlight of this season is of course Dorothy and her sassy remarks while many episodes focusing on her relationship with her mother, Rose’s backstory and Blanche’s character growth were the standouts. It’s a great first season of this iconic sitcom.
Worst Episodes: On Golden Girls, That Was No Lady and The Flu.
Best Episodes: The Competition, Stan’s Return, In a Bed of Rose’s, Nice and Easy and The Way We Met.
