'TWAS THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Golden Girls
Season 2 (1986)

It’s obviously best to spend Christmas with your closest family and friends so in choosing my post for today I settled on the Golden Girls.  When I was in high school, bullied and closeted and utterly miserable, I would watch Golden Girls long into the night, putting off my dread of the approaching school day by escaping to Miami with the girls.  I seriously dreamed about being able to move in with Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia, living a life of leisure, sitting with them in the kitchen or on the lanai, nibbling on cheesecake and tossing around bitchy repartee.  It still seems like my idea of heaven.  The show really did help get me through some rough years and the characters really did (and do) feel like family.

The show offered up quite a few holiday episodes over the course of its run but this Season 2 Christmas offering is the standout.  It could be studied as a model of TV Christmas tropes but I mean that in the best, most comforting way possible.  It relies on the classic “everything goes wrong” scenario as the geriatric girls face various obstacles in their search for a merry Christmas.

Prior to departing to spend Christmas with their respective families, the roommates decide to exchange homemade gifts in order to escape the materialism of Christmas.  Dorothy receives a whittled maple syrup spigot from Rose, which she memorably misidentifies as a “carved brooch in the shape of a duck’s head.”  Blanche’s gift gets the most screen time and is perhaps one of the show’s best-remembered bits.  It’s a calendar called “The Men of Blanche’s Boudoir.”  In true Golden Girls style it’s very dirty and suggestive without really revealing anything.

Sophia checks out Mr. September

En route to the airport on Christmas Eve Dorothy and Blanche stop by the counseling center to pick up Rose.  What unfolds is one of my favorite moments of the entire show, a small instance that relies entirely on Bea Arthur’s brilliant facial expressions.  Dorothy (Bea Arthur) takes a seat by a patron of the center who earlier has been revealed as a pyromaniac.  He stares intensely at her and verrryyyy slooowwllly she notices, unsettled recognition registering on her face.  Bea Arthur was a comedy goddess, and let’s leave it at that.

Bow down to the Queen of the side-eye!

After this the tropes come fast and heavy.  Just as they’re about to leave, a gun-toting Santa Claus holds the friends hostage.  He’s a sad sack who’s forcing them to spend Christmas with him, but they’re rescued by Sophia (who was waiting in the car).  She casually snatches the pistol away from him and reveals it’s a toy.  They make it to the airport only for their flights to be cancelled due to inclement weather.  Their car breaks down, forcing them to run through the rain (sadly off-screen) and take refuge at a diner.

The kindly proprietor mistakes the girls for family and causes them to realize that their rotten Christmas doesn’t matter since they’ve been spending it with their surrogate family all along.   A light, unlikely snow beings to fall and Rose goes to the jukebox to play a Christmas song, but presses the wrong button, so they stand and watch the snow to the strains of “Surfin’ Safari.”

This episode is like a warm, cozy afghan you can wrap around you.   It’s true that it borrows just about every Christmas TV trope in the book, but it never feels tired thanks to the wonderful acting, lovable characters and hilarious small moments throughout.  It’s sad to think that three of the four girls are gone now, but it’s comforting to know that we can always spend Christmas with them.

Forever Golden

Recurring Themes: This episode is a trope bonanza!  We’ve got a Santa Crook, Unlikely Snow, a Blizzard/Stranded and an Easter Reference!

Christmas Quotient: 5

See It, Skip It, Own It?
Less of a see it and more of a “adopt it as a religion.”  The Golden Girls are your gods now!