To be honest, I’ve been off my game for so long regarding the lair that I wasn’t even sure if I was going to do a Flashback Friday this week. Then the unfortunate news from yesterday regarding Rue McClanahan’s passing provided me with the prompting I needed.

I adored The Golden Girls. No, correction. I adore The Golden Girls. I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating: This is one of a select few sitcoms from my childhood that I can still watch without wanting to wretch from the cheese overload. True, it’s got ample slices of cheddar and Swiss spread throughout its seven seasons, but there’s something more that makes it palatable. This show, with all its overtly 80s style and fashion, is timeless in wit, in topic, in humor.

And how the stars aligned so perfectly the day they were casting these roles that we were gifted such an amazing ensemble! Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White made Dorothy, Sophia, Blanche, and Rose not just hilarious but real. You believed that this quartet could actually exist, that they were going through the same things that the rest of us were going through or were destined to go through at some point. They were just doing it with way more humor than the rest of us (and way larger shoulder pads, too).

This show was also a standing weekly ritual in our house. No matter what else was going on, every Saturday night my parents and I came together to watch the latest episode. And we always laughed (sometimes I would even get caught laughing at jokes that my parents thought would be too “grown-up” for me to understand; awkward way for my parents to keep track of how quickly their little girl was growing up, fo’ sho’).

Dorothy was my favorite. But that’s almost like saying air is my favorite of the things I need to survive. I loved them all almost equally. It’s just, I think I’m a little more like Dorothy than any of the others (Prophets know I’m nothing like Blanche). Although I have my fair share of Rose moments.

It’s strange and most definitely depressing to think that a show like this would probably never be able to exist in today’s television market. We’ve become a society that not only doesn’t respect age, but shuns it and any who dare to show its signs. How else can we explain why people willingly get a paralyzing toxin injected into their faces? Where would the Golden Girls, with their love of cheesecake and their discussions about menopause, fit in among the anorexic plasticized perfection of those Desperate Housewives or the McDreamies and McSteamies and McBoobies of modern prime-time television?

There is a shimmer of hope. Betty White, now the Last Girl Standing, has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity recently, with several appearances in movies, that wonderful Snickers commercial, and even the honor of becoming the oldest SNL host in the show’s 35-year history. She continues to prove that humor and grace are supremely more beautiful than cheek implants, tummy tucks, fake tits, butt lifts, or whatever else the Hollywood elite are doing to keep people from noticing that their talent, just like their beauty, is skin-deep and thoroughly unconvincing when examined closely.

So, there you go. Flashback to a favorite sitcom from my youth and another glimpse at the vitriol that roils just beneath the placid surface of Lake Loba. Bonus! Want another bonus? How about a few show clips and bloopers? Not only are they funny but they show a quartet of women who were able to laugh at themselves and each other and who genuinely seemed to like each other’s company. That’s not just golden…that’s priceless.