My first car’s name was Dorothy. She was a little dilapidated—her back window rolled down over speeds of 30 mph, her floor passenger floor carpet had mold on it, her windshield was cracked. Age gave her what some would call flaws, but I would call character. She was still reliable. She kept her footing in the snow. She huffed up hills at a nobody-honked-at-her respectable pace. Just like her namesake Dorothy Zbornak, my favorite character from The Golden Girls, she was a slow-but-steady calm in a storm.

My obsession with The Golden Girls is long-standing and well-documented. My babysitter in the fifth grade, a woman named Katie who I can only remember had red-hair and freckles and who would bring me Greek fried zucchini, turned out the lights and turned on Lifetime. Rose, Dorothy, Sophia, and Blanche appeared in syndication. I’d eat the zucchini, learn about Italian vendettas from Brooklyn-Sicilian Sophia and laugh at the jokes I understood. At ten, I was reeled into the comfortable, but controversial, kitchen of the 1980s, over-50 crowd.

I’d eat The Golden Girls’ cheesecake many times to follow (they ate cheesecake on the show over 100 times). My obsession grew to a level only matched and appreciated by a die-hard Trekkie. I practically tied my friends in high school to chairs with the strong bond of pizza and forced them to watch the show with me. I debated, or rather insisted, that The Golden Girls was the best show ever written. I bought a Dorothy costume for Halloween during my junior year of college—a holiday that I spent it in Venice.         

Why the obsessive Golden Girls fandom?

I'm not entirely sure.  But, thankfully, I am not alone.  Enough Golden Girls fans brought Betty White back to Saturday Night Live not long ago, even though Betty’s television presence waned after the 1980’s.  Enough drag queens dressed as the four ladies that the theater version, featuring four male leads in drag, called Thank You for Being a Friend is touring the country. The show still plays on Lifetime in syndication and all of the seasons have been released on DVD to huge payouts.

Yes, it’s one of the only shows ever on TV that featured women who could be happy without men, who could have punch lines of jokes that were sometimes and were sometimes not about their waistlines and sagging cheeks, who were independent and sexually active over fifty, who had men lusting over them even without their double-D’s and youthful figures.

And now that three out of the four leads are dead, it isn’t surprising to me that a show this good is reaching cult status. It seems like this is the fate that all good TV shows should meet.  After all, outcasts in society--gay men, the over-fifty crowd, the women who would rather crack jokes than laugh at men’s lame punch lines—cling on to whatever television role models they can.

Bottom line, The Golden Girls was funny. It’s the only one that we’ll ever get. Plus, it’s easy enough to pretend that Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur are still living when they’re so alive on your TV.