The Golden Girls: Canned Laughter, Nostalgia, and Cheesecake

In

, the double chapter with which the fifth season of

, Dorothy gathers her mother and her friends in a restaurant to celebrate that the disease she suffers from has a name: chronic fatigue.

After visiting doctors who, minimizing or ignoring her suffering, suggested that she have appointments, go on a cruise or dye her hair, a specialist had diagnosed her condition.

It didn't even cure her, it just validated her ailment: she wasn't crazy;

I was sick.

An experience as sad as it is everyday in which many women could — can — recognize themselves.

When the waiter asks what they celebrate, Sophia lightens the tone of the sequence with a line that brings us back to the humorous spirit of the series: "That my daughter has learned that she suffers from a debilitating disease."

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Much more than a 99-year-old 'golden girl': the gripping survival story of trailblazer Betty White

That plot, based on the personal experience of the series creator, Susan Harris, makes two things clear: the importance of women in the script room and the extraordinary variety of material that was covered in the series. A material that was probably not what NBC expected when it considered adding a comedy about "older women" to its grill. The team of scriptwriters who came up with the idea did not take long to discover that by "older" the chain meant 40 years and that the project was a kind of

that replaced the sophisticated New York environments with the sunny fish farm of wealthy retirees that is Miami.

The script delivered by Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas and Harris was much more revolutionary: three sixties sharing a house and confidences taking three decades ahead of

.

If it occurred to NBC that old age could be synonymous with boredom, that idea vanished after a pilot that attracted 25 million viewers and made audiences and critics alike fall in love.

The chemistry between Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty was unbeatable and made them the most popular and award-winning faces on screen.

Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty, Bea Arthur and Betty White in 1992 with their Emmy Awards.ABC Photo Archives (Disney General Entertainment Con)

Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia captivated audiences of all ages with clever humor and intergenerational experiences. They were widows, divorcees, mothers and even grandmothers, but the series did not pivot on that. They did not live their lives through their children or look forward to the visit of their grandchildren. “What we told America was that life was not over just because you have an empty nest, you are divorced, or your spouse has passed away. You can create a new family and live another life ”, sentenced Tony Thomas in 2019.

The protagonists, like any woman of any age, had domestic and work problems; they fell in love, dealt with their exes, and had sex. And everything was backed by an unbreakable friendship based on a sometimes somewhat peculiar affection. "What was the first thing you thought of me?" Blanche once asked Rose. “That you were a whore and that you wore a lot of makeup. But I was wrong, you don't wear much makeup ”.

Throughout its 177 chapters, in addition to chronic fatigue, there was room for HIV, menopause, sexual harassment, suicide, addiction to painkillers or homosexuality. In fact, its most successful episode, isn't

, told the story of Jean, Dorothy's lesbian friend who fell in love with Rose. In 1986, during the Puritan era Reagan, it was a groundbreaking plot for a family comedy. If sex after menopause played a negligible role on television in the 1980s, homosexual love in old age played none. "It was never just jokes," Paul Junger Witt told

, "Those episodes meant a lot to us because we addressed serious issues that needed to be addressed at the national level and it was a sure way for people to see, hear and assimilate."

The naturalness with which they joked about everything was one of the factors that caused the audience to remain faithful until the end.

After seven successful seasons, Bea Arthur decided to leave the series and

said goodbye as a fundamental piece of the audiovisual culture of the twentieth century and one of those fictions that must be wielded when someone says that women are not funny or are it justifies misogynistic, homophobic or racist humor under the shield of "they were other times."

Almost four decades after its premiere and turned into a pop phenomenon, it was one of the great shortcomings of the overwhelming offer of platforms.

This Wednesday, at last, he will disembark in full at Disney + and it is fair to wonder if viewers who did not experience the phenomenon in the eighties will connect with Sophia's Sicilian battles, Blanche's southern ardors, Dorothy's sidelong glances and spiel about festivals juggling herring from the St. Olaf de Rose.

But as if there is something as timeless as sharing a piece of cake with the people you love is intelligent humor, the answer can only be: yes.

Tribute on the streets of Hollywood to Betty White after her recent death.ROBYN BECK (AFP via Getty Images)

Goodbye to the last golden girl

Next Monday, Betty White would have celebrated her centennial.

It could not be, he passed away on December 31, leaving behind eight decades dedicated to audiovisuals and a legion of inconsolable fans.

A pioneer in television, she was one of the first women to host and produce her own

and, as revealed in the documentary

available on Movistar +, she was ahead of the quotas by hiring female teams and showed her personality ignoring those who demanded her in the fifties. to fire the musician Arthur Duncan for being black.

White's face became familiar thanks to

, but it was Rose Nylund's character in

that made her a star.

In 2010, her presence in a viral Snickers ad sparked a movement on Facebook that led to her becoming the oldest presenter on

.

Since then its popularity has not waned.

A staunch animalist, she is also mourned by the long list of associations with which she collaborated.

In his honor, the

has been organized, which encourages him to celebrate his birthday by donating five dollars to animal shelters.

Again he has managed to make social networks serve for something relevant.