The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls was a popular 1980s sitcom that originally aired Saturday nights in primetime on the NBC network. It was followed by 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 Network. It stars Bea Arthur as Dorothy, Betty White as Rose, Rue McClanahan as Blanche, and Estelle Getty as Sophia, all of whom won Emmy Awards for the show. Early casting ideas included Elaine Stritch as Dorothy, Rue McClanahan as Rose and Betty White as Blanche.
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.
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.