What I learned from The Golden Girls

PICTURE IT: MICHIGAN, SEPT. 14, 1985. A YOUNG Vietnamese girl watches television with her grandmother on a Saturday night.

- BY BETH NGUYEN

Like everyone in her refugee family, the girl loves TV, which often feels like a lesson in American life. That night, a new show called The Golden Girls airs on NBC. From the first notes of the theme song— “Thank You for Being a Friend”—the girl is hooked.

The characters of Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose are in their 50s and Sophia is 80, but the girl feels an immediate connection to them. Perhaps because her own closest relationship is with her grandmother, or perhaps because she's used to identifying with characters who look nothing like her. The girl loves everything about these women—how they laugh and play, how they gather around food to figure out their lives. She doesn't realize that she has watched the pilot episode of what will become one of the most important, iconic TV shows ever. She doesn't know that she will watch The Golden Girls again and again, over decades of reruns, DVDs, and streaming, throughout her life.

Readers, that girl was me. I grew up watching these women, never stopped watching, and now, at age 50, I am almost one of them.

If you've seen The Golden Girls, you already know why it's been going strong for 40 years, outliving all of the actors involved. The Golden Girls is about deep friendship and the specific experience of life for women beyond middle age—still groundbreaking. It's got biting one-liners, incredible comedic timing and chemistry, and a fantastic '80s Miami aesthetic. Over seven seasons the show covers topics like menopause, elder care, homophobia, estrangement, discrimination, and more. But it always returns to joy, including sex, dating, food, and the refusal to be invisible. The show is about creating family out of friends, and friends out of family. And it's very much about the art and necessity of storytelling.