I love her so much I named my dog after her, and I think Bea would be totally down with that. In any other show, Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty or Betty White would be my favourite actress, but it's Bea Arthur who will always have my heart here. What other people of my generation felt when Kurt Cobain died is what I felt when Bea Arthur passed on to the great cheesecake factory in the sky. Then go off and weep for the present day. Ask yourself: could a show today about a bunch of pensioner women be commissioned and be in the top 10 for SEVEN YEARS? No it could not. Then there was that one episode in which a seventysomething couple tried to recruit Sophia for a threesome, and that was awesome. Usually Blanche, of course, but I loved it best when Bea Arthur and Leslie Nielsen would passionately make out on the sofa. In GG, not an episode went by without either one of the characters having sex or at least talking about sex. I can't even remember the last time I saw someone older than Samantha have sex on TV. But has either of them suggested that it's not only normal for 70- and 80-year-olds to have sex but that 70-year-old women are sexy? Or even that this demographic is smart, funny, have human needs and individual personalities? No they have not, and nor has any show that has come after GG. Yes, SATC talked about anal sex and, yes, Hannah in Girls played ping pong naked – whatever. But really, the comparison flatters those later programmes because neither has been as groundbreaking as GG. People have used this similarity as an insult against both of the shows but especially Sex and the City, where idiotic critics have used the comparison to mock the SATC actresses' age (late 30s and 40s: veritably ancient!). Sex and the City and Girls are the most obvious inheritors of The Golden Girls with their "four women, each with distinct personality traits" setup. Never mind Hill Street Blues, Friends, The Cosby Show or The Office: no TV show has been as influential as The Golden Girls. So let's do this in list form, otherwise I'll give up and just go back to watching my boxsets. In fact, I love it so much that I'm finding it hard to begin to explain why I love it. That's how good it is: it decimates my ability to empathise. I love The Golden Girls so much that I don't, if I'm honest, really believe anyone else could feel differently.
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