Celebrating 35 Years of “The Golden Girls”
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the pilot episode of The Golden Girls airing on NBC. The show was an instant sensation, winning 11 Emmys and ranking among the top 10 most watched shows in America for its first six seasons. In the decades that followed, its popularity has somehow only grown. In honor of its monumental anniversary, I curated a list of the show’s 35 best episodes for your binge-watching pleasure.
A Very Brief History of The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls premiered on September 14, 1985. As most people know, the sitcom centered on four “mature” women living in Miami, Florida. Blanche Devereaux was a former Southern belle whose appetite for the opposite sex had become voracious following the death of her husband. (She was played by Rue McClanahan, who was most famous at the time of the show’s premiere for her co-starring role on the revolutionary 1970s sitcom Maude). Looking for roommates to share in her living expenses, Blanche invited two women to move into her bungalow’s spare bedrooms. One was a fellow widow, the naive, sweet-natured, perpetually optimistic Minnesotan Rose Nylund (Betty White, who had already had decades of success in television, most notably her Emmy-winning role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show). The other was recently divorced, short-tempered, tough-as-nails Brooklyn native Dorothy Zbornak (Beatrice Arthur, a…
