My Top 25 Favorite TV Shows: #9!

When it was in primetime on NBC every Saturday night in the 80s, I never ever watched "The Golden Girls."

I did, however, watch "The Golden Girls" every Sunday morning in the 80s. Each week, it was a bagel with Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia. Thanks to the pre-TiVo days of video cassette recorders. I realize that perhaps I might have been better off all those years going to church on Sunday mornings. But, indeed, in some ways, "The Golden Girls" helped me find religion.

The show made me want to write again after many years of let globs of lint pile up on my keyboard. It reminded me of the exhileration you get when an expert actor delivers a line in such a way that your writing suddenly becomes 10 times better than what you put on the page. It led me to a new writing partner, as it was a spec script of "The Golden Girls" that was one of our first collaborations.

And it was "The Golden Girls" that made me think all over again of the time I spent with my grandmother as I was allegedly growing up.

The common thread in this Top 25 Favorite TV Show countdown has often been those programs that I watched with her. As I look back, with parents working nights, so much of my primetime TV viewing was in tandem with her. And, while "The Golden Girls" debuted three or four years after she died, I'd like to think that she would have loved it. And totally enjoyed the remarkable performance of the now late Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo.

Rarely do four actresses like Beatrice Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty come together in an acting company that is in total complete unison. And how often do we even get to see four actors over 60 starring in any TV show? But, somehow in some way, "The Golden Girls" managed to do that. If network executives would think about it, they might be intrigued to discover what is now the most popular TV rerun amongst college student. In these days of young angst as displayed on junk like "How I Met My Mother" and "Rules of Engagement," people should remember that, in the course of a day, we all deal with people of all ages. And "The Golden Girls" certainly triggers the memory of some old timer that was prominent in your life and my life.

When we first moved to LA in 1997 for fame and non-fortune, we filled out the days by watching "Golden Girls" reruns every single day as the Lifetime Network ran them back-to-back-to-seemingly endless back. And, for one more time, we were taking yet another master class in writing comedy. An education that never ends. And shouldn't.

Dinner last night: Milan Pizza at CPK.