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Golden Girls - The Complete Third Season, The
I grew up on a steady diet of sitcoms like The Brady Bunch and The Cosby Show, two shows that were disparate in quality but equally engrossing to a little girl growing up in the suburbs during the 1980s. When I was about 11-years-old, The Golden Girls began airing on NBC, and it quickly became my favorite television show of all time. I have always marveled at The Golden Girls' universal appeal; as it airs today in endless reruns on the Lifetime channel, it continues to draw legions of new fans. I found proof of this when earlier this year I found my 31-year-old self pitted in a heated battle against a 19-year-old during "Golden Girls Trivia" on an Alaskan cruise. I won, by the way, but just barely – the 19-year-old really gave me a run for my money!
The premise of this show is quite unique: four women, including one innocent, one promiscuous, one professional, and the other full of sarcastic quips, gather regularly to dissect their lives and the opposite sex. No, it's not Sex and the City, my friends, for that didn't appear on the scene until over a decade later. The premise of The Golden Girls remains a standout because of the fact that it emphasized the fact that women over 50 could be fun, fabulous, and enjoy (gasp) their sexual freedom. The four friends, dopey Rose, caustic Dorothy, sexy Blanche, and loud-mouthed Sophia (who is Dorothy's elderly mother), share Blanche's house in Miami. By Season Three, The Golden Girls really hit its stride with a crop of laugh-out-loud episodes that are beloved by fans to this day.
It is always interesting to experience a season of a television show on DVD; watching it in reruns on television, one is subject to the whims of the network, which does not always air episodes in order and chops them up in order to fit in more commercials. The episodes on this season of The Golden Girls appear to fall into three categories.
First, there are the family-oriented ones, in which extended family members of the Girls visit Miami, often leaving havoc and hilarity in their wake. In "Mixed Blessings," Dorothy's irresponsible, starving artist son decides to marry an African-American woman many years his senior. Dorothy's ex-husband, Stan, makes several appearances in episodes including "The Audit," where the formerly married couple is subjected to IRS scrutiny, "Brotherly Love," where Dorothy finds herself falling for her former brother-in-law, and "My Brother, My Father," in which Dorothy and Stan must pretend they are still married.
Other family episodes include "Blanche's Little Girl," where Blanche must suffer in silence as her overweight daughter endures insults from her obnoxious fiancé, "Charlie's Buddy," which centers around Rose's attraction to a friend of her late husband's, as well as "And Ma Makes Three," where Dorothy's new romance is jeopardized by Sophia's insistence upon joining her on dates. In "A Visit from Little Sven," Rose's strapping male relative develops a crush on Blanche.
There are also "message" episodes in this season that are so well-written, well-acted, and subtle that you may forget that these episodes are also teaching a lesson. "Old Friends" finds Sophia befriending an elderly man with Alzheimer's disease, the aforementioned "Mixed Blessings," in which Dorothy displays very real dismay at the thought of her son's interracial romance, and "Strange Bedfellows," where a politician manufactures a fictitious romance with Blanche to help his campaign. "Strange Bedfellows" underscores the fact that even a woman with a tainted reputation like Blanche can stand up for herself when a man attempts to gain from it.
Finally, several of the episodes border on the completely absurd. "Bringing Up Baby" finds the girls caring for a pig, hoping to collect $100,000 in return. In "Mister Terrific," Rose dates a goofy man who makes his living wearing tights and a cape, and in "Letter to Gorbachev," Rose writes a letter to the Soviet leader, only to discover that he wants to meet her. "The Housekeeper" finds the Girls believing that their recently fired, mysterious maid has put a voodoo curse on them. Perhaps the weakest episode in this season is "Larceny and Old Lace," which features the legendary Mickey Rooney as Sophia's new boyfriend. The entire episode comes across as a let's-feature-a-famous-actor! gimmick.
Keeping in mind that rabid Golden Girls fans often differ on favorite episodes, in my opinion, the best episodes of this season are "Golden Moments," a clip show of favorite scenes from the show, and "Three on a Couch," where, in a series of flashbacks, the Girls complain about one another to a psychiatrist. I also love "Blanche's Little Girl," which is comical but contains darker undertones, as Blanche attempts to bond with her estranged daughter, Becky, but remains torn as to whether to risk alienating Becky by confronting her rude fiancé.
One of my all-time favorite episodes of any season is "Dorothy's New Friend," in which Dorothy is befriended by a prominent author named Barbara Thorndyke. Blanche and Rose take an immediate dislike to Dorothy's friend, creating a great deal of friction in the household. Sharp-eyed viewers will recognize the actress who plays Barbara as prolific film and television actress Bonnie Bartlett, who is perhaps best known as the character of Grace Edwards from Little House on the Prairie.
The DVD
Video:
The Golden Girls: The Complete Third Season is presented in full screen, and like the two seasons that came before it, it is a pleasantly surprising improvement over what one might expect when viewing it on television. The pastel and jewel-toned colors of the ladies' outfits (it was the '80s, people!) are incredibly vivid, and the lines are sharp and clear. The fact that this series recently celebrated its 20th anniversary is not apparent, at least in terms of picture quality. In my experience watching endless television shows on DVD, the television-to-DVD improvement of The Golden Girls ranks as one of the best.
Sound:
This season is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, which is adequate, but not remarkable in terms of quality. I'm not sure that this is such a travesty, as sound quality is not always a top priority for the intended audience of this show (women of all ages).
Extras:
Although there are not a ton of extras included on this season, there are some mitigating factors to be considered, the first of which is that on Season One, the only notable extra was a featurette starring Joan and Melissa Rivers, where the two of them basically ridiculed and guffawed over the Girls' outfits. I've always enjoyed the Rivers's red carpet commentary at awards shows, but the Season One featurette was a tasteless insult to fans of the show who had waited years for the series to finally be released on DVD.
Fortunately, the releases of later seasons more than make up for the lack of decent extras on the first season, however they are still light considering the immense popularity of the show. On Season Three, each character has two clip montages devoted to her that are quite good and highlight not only the individual details that made the characters so unique, but also the tremendous comedic talents of each actress.
Final Thoughts:
This collection is a must-own for even the most casual Golden Girls fan, and with its many strong episodes, Season Three is a terrific introduction to those of you who have not had the pleasure of getting to know this absolutely standout show.
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