Category Archives: Feminist Television

The Great “Golden Girls” Marathon: “Ladies of the Evening” (S2, Ep. 2)

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As I’ve said several times, the second season of The Golden Girls is, in my mind, the point when the whole thing starts to gel. The writing amps up–both in terms of the comedy and the political commentary–and the chemistry among the leads also seems to really hit its stride. You finally get the sense that these are four women who may disagree with one another in many significant ways, but deep down they truly love one another. Their friendship will endure many trials, but it will always emerge stronger than before.

In this episode, Blanche happens to win tickets to see Burt Reynolds and, as part of their celebration, they opt to spend the evening at a lovely hotel in Miami Beach. Unfortunately, the hotel they choose is a den of prostitution, and they are taken to jail. Hilarity ensues, particularly when Sophia snatches the tickets in retaliation for having been left out of their Reynolds plan.

To my eyes, at least, this is one of the funniest episodes of the entire series. The sequence in jail–particularly Rose’s dismay at losing Butter Queen in her youth–the appearance of Burt Reynolds at the end of the episode, the squabbling amongst the inmates. All combine to make this a riot from beginning to end. There’s even a nice little dig at Richard Nixon (courtesy of Blanche), which is splendidly funny. There are times in a good comedy when the writing and the performances all come together, and this is one of those episodes. What’s more, it once again shows the women come together in the end, all of their differences put aside.

There are also a few little comedic gems that are worth mentioning. When Rose reads off a litany of the other celebrities that will be present with Burt, she mentions that Charles Nelson Reilly will also be there. While the girls are less than impressed, the canny viewer will no doubt recognize that he appeared with Betty White in a number of game shows throughout the 1970s. It’s just another one of those little touches that the show frequently uses to highlight the exemplary careers of its leading ladies.

One also can’t help but wonder if the Sophia strand of this episode’s plot is a rather sly and self-aware gesture toward the fact that she wasn’t originally intended to be a key part of the series. She is justifiably upset that she is being left out of the plans that the four women make, and one can hardly blame her for her desire to finally take a little bit of pleasure for herself.

All in all, I think this is one of the most uproariously funny episodes in the entire series. The surprise appearance of Burt Reynolds at the end might be brief, but it is hilarious. The man somehow has the knack of commanding the camera regardless of what he is in.

In the next episode, we’ll see what happens when Stan returns and goes on a date with Blanche, much to Dorothy’s chagrin.

The Great Golden Girls Marathon: “End of the Curse” (S2, Ep. 1)

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As it’s been ages since I wrote anything about The Golden Girls, I thought I’d take a bit of a break from my novel and dissertation stuff to write a brief entry in The Great Golden Girls Marathon. Here, we move at last into the second season, wherein Blanche has to confront the fact that she is moving into the next phase of her life, when she is told that she has begun menopause.

To my eye, this episode marks a definitive turning point in the way that the series works. Whereas Season 1 focused primarily on the familial and the personal–conflicts with grandchildren, nephews, sons, daughters, etc.–the second begins to really break out in an explicit way into the broader political questions that will become one of the series’ hallmarks.

Further, it also marks some significant shifts in tone. As I noted several times in my discussion of the first season, the characters had not quite gelled yet, though they came pretty close by the season finale. Rose is the character that shows the greatest change from the first season. By this episode, she has largely shed the prude persona–so conspicuously on display in the episode in which Dorothy has an affair with a married man–and has slowly morphed into the naive, slightly dim-witted, yet incredibly sincere and lovable Rose that will be her incarnation for the remainder of the series. Her funniest moment in this episode comes from her fundamental understanding of what an aphrodisiac is, leading to an absolutely hilarious interchange with Dorothy about “African what?,” the singular or plural form of Spanish fly (or beetle); and whether minks can be induced to mate.

The real center of the episode, however, is Blanche’s body and her relationship to it.

There’s no question that the subject of women’s bodies and their functioning is one of the most vexed in western (and perhaps global) culture. This is particularly true of Blanche, who sees herself as, first and foremost, both an object of desire for men and, I would argue, as the agent of that desire. The accumulated myths associated with menopause (or “The Change,” as it is menacingly referred to throughout the episode) suggest to her that with this biological shift she is losing an essential part of her femininity that renders her into that desirable and desiring subject/object.

Fortunately, the episode goes out of its way to inform Blanche (and us), that there is nothing unnatural about this shift. As her psychologist tells her, she will still be the same Blanche that she has always been, the same desiring, fun-loving woman with an uninhibited sex drive. Rather than seeing her as deranged–which Rose seems to, quite problematically, believe–he helps de-escalate her psychological state. As a result, she goes from seeing in her face the shade of her mother to hitting on the veterinarian who comes to examine the minks. She has emerged triumphant, back to being the love goddess that we know and love.

It is also worth noting that the series other major plotline, the breeding of minks for their fur, also expresses (albeit more subtly) one of the other semi-consistent political issues of the series: the ethical treatment of animals. Fortunately, the minks don’t end up being fur coats.

Next up, we come to one of my favourite episodes, in which the women’s plans to meet Burt Reynolds go terribly awry…

The Great “Golden Girls” Marathon: “Big Daddy” (S1, Ep. 23)

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Since its been ages since I published a post about The Golden Girls, and since I needed something to distract me from some personal grief, I thought I’d write another one. In today’s episode, we meet Blanche’s father “Big Daddy” who, unbeknownst to her, has sold the family mansion and taken up a career as a country singer.

While Big Daddy will appear in another episode, this iteration is a rather earthier, more homespun charmer than his later incarnation. It’s clear that Blanche has a very close relationship with her father, yet it is equally true that she cares just as much about the dignity of the family name (for anyone who is from the South, this should sound and feel quite familiar). Unfortunately, as the episode progresses, she finds that her interest in maintaining the latter conflicts with the former.

There are truly some golden comedic exchanges, as when Big Daddy asks Dorothy to promise him that she won’t “fret none.” Dorothy, with her typical dead-pan delivery, says she would so, only she doesn’t know what “fret none is.” Of course, part of the humour in this situation arises from Dorothy’s ever-present skepticism and indeed dismissal of the peculiarities of southern culture.

Despite the episode’s focus on the personal relationship between Blanche and her father, there is also an ever-so-slight feminist element that springs from the conflict between the women and their cantankerous neighbour who refuses to repair the damage done by his tree.

TV Review: “Feud”–“Abandoned!”

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I’m running a bit late with the reviews of FX’s Feud, so in the interest of giving the finale the appreciation it deserves, I’ll have to make this one a bit abbreviated.

I thought this episode, as a whole, was a fitting lead-up to the finale, in that we see the toll that this whole set of affairs has begun to take on both women. Joan falls deeper into a form of self-pity that eventually becomes destructive, while Bette has to contend with the fact that her daughter has begun to see her as truly the worst sort of mother.

Lange is one of those truly extraordinary actresses who can combine, in one scene, a mixture of vulnerability and strength. Whether that is how the real Joan Crawford would have acted is for me somewhat beside the point. When she confronts Bette after being left behind during filming, one can sense in Lange’s performance that powerful sense that she has endured so much at the hands of a system that really couldn’t care less about her. However, her great strength is also her greatest weakness, for she is prone to seeing sinister motivations, even where none exist. And as the last scene reveals–in which Joan is left screaming in a hospital room, abandoned by both the film studio and by Mamacita–Joan winds up being the worst victim of her own machinations.

The bitter irony of the entire ugly affair, of course, is that each actress possesses the thing that the other desires most. Bette has all of the acting power, the acknowledgment from all of her peers and from the establishment that she is one of the greatest craftspeople to grace the screen. Joan, however, is already acknowledged as the more powerful star and the greater beauty. Each, in a tense exchange, recognizes a piece of herself in the other, and they also acknowledge, in their gestures and their performance, the enormous weight of Hollywood history that weighs on them and on their present relationship. They are both victims of the system, and the real tragedy is that they don’t really have a meaningful way of communicating that to one another.

On a bit of a random note, I’m still not quite sure what to make of B.D. I can’t tell if I’m annoyed by her because the actress is terrible (which I think might be true), or is it a reflection of the fact that the real B.D. was also pretty awful? Maybe, on reflection, it’s a bit of Column A and a bit of Column B. It might even be the unique combination of the two that makes her such an utterly unappealing and insufferable character. However, it’s also worth pointing out that she has a lot to complain about. True, we’re meant to identify with and align ourselves with Bette, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that she really is something of a tyrant–even if she is a benevolent one–to her daughter.

I want to close out with a brief discussion of the best line of the episode (and possibly the series): When Olivia is asked by the interviewer whether she felt that she had ended Joan’s career by taking her place on Charlotte, she responds that no, “Time did that. All on its own.” Wow. If ever a line will go down in the annals of bitchy invective infamy, it will be this one. It comes out of the mouth of Olivia, of course, who has her own subtextual feud with her sister Joan Fontaine. Despite its venom, there is a note of truth to it, one that Olivia was also in a position to recognize in the 1970s.

For all of its flaws, Feud does make clear that time, inexorable, destructive, crushing, is truly the enemy of us all.

TV Review: “Feud”–“Hagsploitation” (S1, Ep. 6)

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A friend recently remarked to me that, every time he watched an episode of Feud, he felt as if nothing significant had transpired. As I continue to watch, I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with him. While there is still much to love about this series, it does feel like it’s beginning to drag a bit, weighed down by its own pretensions.

In this episode, Joan attempts to resuscitate her career by acting in cheesy horror films, while Bette also struggles to find roles that are worthy of her talents. However, Aldrich is determined to cement his legacy and so, even as his marriage falls apart, he proposes another entry in the “Hagsploitation” genre (a term allegedly coined by Jack Warner), and he hopes to reunite Crawford and Davis and continue to exploit their antipathy toward one another.

The relationship between Aldrich and Bette, as always, continues to ring the truest and to have the most emotional depth. There is an undeniable chemistry between Sarandon and Molina, and they carry this over into the fondness that these individuals have for one another. They understand one another, even more so now that Aldrich is faced with a life without his wife (who has told him she wants a divorce due to his inability to truly privilege her in the face of his work).

As always, though, it is Lange who steals the show, and she manages to continue wringing the role of Joan for all of the pathos that it’s worth. While it remains unclear whether the real Joan Crawford–if we can even speak of such a thing–would ever have shown the type of vulnerability that Lange conveys, the fact remains that Lange combines strength with vulnerability. Lange’s Crawford is knowing and understanding about what the world is like, and the world of Hollywood in particular, but this knowledge does not give her any sort of comfort. Knowledge in this context proves to be just as much a burden as it is a blessing.

She does, however, display a true spine of steel when her brother threatens her with an alleged video of her performance in a stag film (the rumour of the existence of such a film ultimately sunders her friendship with Hedda). While she pays off his demands, she does so because she values her career and her accomplishments above everything else, and she is not about to let a money-grubber, even if he happens to be related to her by blood. Thus, when she finds that he has died during an emergency operation on his appendix, her first move is to cancel the payment on her check. For Joan, family is a burden, yet another sacrifice that she must make in order to solidify her career and the reputation that she has taken such an effort to maintain.

However, while I still take a lot of pleasure in this show, it’s clear that it’s starting to run out of steam a bit. I’ve thought for some time now that it would have probably made more narrative sense for this to have either been two episodes shorter or to have been released all at once. For me as a viewer, the appeal of the show continues to lie in the performances and the sumptuousness of the image, rather than in the narrative. I’m not sure that this is entirely as Murphy intends it, but I have long felt that his skills as an image-maker and as a casting agent far excel his skills as a creator of long-form drama. I suppose that we will have to wait until the final episode to see if my theory is proven correct. (Note: while he is not the writer or director of most of the episodes so far, his imprint is indelibly stamped on the series as a whole)

Overall, I found this to be a touching entry, but I’m still a little unclear about what the series in the aggregate will look like. If the series’ purpose was to show the ways in which women are exploited in Hollywood and their interests sublimated in the service of men’s profit, then that mission has already been well-accomplished. However, one can hop that there will be a deeper takeaway by the end, one that merits the expanded frame of the narrative.

TV Review: “Feud”–“And the Winner Is…(The Oscars of 1963)”

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In the most recent episode of Feud, the lead-up to the Oscar ceremony gains momentum, and the chasm between Bette and Joan continues to widen until it is irrevocable. When Bette loses the Oscar to Anne Bancroft, largely as a result of Joan’s scheming, the bitterness is fully set, and there will be, can be, no turning back for any of them.

There’s a nice little aside included in the episode, in which the majestic, statuesque, and ever-so-slightly over-mannered Olivia de Havilland, suggests that the feud between her and her sister Joan Fontaine was one fabricated in large part by a media determined to sow dissent.  There is a slight bit of hypocrisy in this episode, however, in that a subsequent scene shows all too clearly that Olivia had no love for her sister, and that the bitterness between them was quite real indeed.

Though de Havilland has been hovering on the edge of the screen since the series began, it’s only now that she has finally come into full focus, as the episode shows us the close relationship between Bette and Olivia. One can sense in Olivia’s somewhat distant performance a hint of jealousy and bitterness about her friend’s success and talent. As she remarks, Bette always saw her as Melanie from Gone with the Wind to her Scarlett, and she acknowledges, with just a trace of sadness, that that is true. Graceful and statuesque as she is, she knows that as far as Hollywood and the broader public is concerned, she will always be one of the system’s lesser lights, a minor star in a galaxy full of supernovas like Davis.

The other bit player in this episode who also begins to emerge into a fuller light is Judy Davis’s magnificently waspish and poisonous Hedda Hopper. For all of her vitriol and bitterness, Hopper is convinced of the rightness of her poison pen, which she has honed to a fatal point. The episode also reveals that she is as riddled with contradiction as any other woman in Hollywood. She criticizes Davis for being vulgar, and yet she makes a spurious claim that Bette Davis uses one of her Oscars as a doorstop in her bathroom. Yet she sees all of this as justified, her self-understanding as the moral compass of Hollywood rendering her inviolable from any trace of true self-reflexion or criticism.

Once again, Lange’s Crawford continues to wring the pathos from the script. When she says that something in her broke at the word of the Oscar nominations, for the very first time I felt like I was looking at the actual Joan Crawford on screen before me. Her visage showing all of its alcohol-produced flaws in the glaring light of the California sun, she has clearly begun a descent into desperation that ends, embarrassingly, in a phone call to Geraldine Page in which she convinces the younger actress to step out of the Oscar ceremony and an equally uncomfortable and pathetic visit to Anne Bancroft (who eventually wins, allowing Crawford to step out onto the stage). Yet even these moments are full of pathos, as Sarah Paulson’s Geraldine Page proudly announces that Hollywood should be made to look at what they have done to Crawford, and Bancroft graciously concedes to Crawford’s request.

Lange’s Crawford emerges in these scenes as a peculiar mixture of pathetic and malignant, someone driven by her own chronic sense of fragile self-worth.  As she tells George Cukor in one of the episode’s most affecting lines, she is not bigger than this pettiness, a stunning confession that reveals the extent to which she has come to understand her zenith as inevitably and irrevocably past.

(On a random note, I also appreciated the episode’s use of mirrors, in which constantly forces the characters to look at themselves and to face the unflattering light in which they so frequently paint themselves).

All in all, I found this the best episode yet of Feud, and yet also the most tragic. The final scene, in which Joan comes home from her pyrrhic victory was one of the most affecting the show has yet produced. As Crawford sits alone in her bedroom, gazing at the statue, one can’t help but reflect about all that has been lost as the feud between the two women grows ever more venomous. It is truly one of Hollywood’s greatest tragedies.

TV Review: “Feud”–“More, Or Less” (S1, Ep. 4)

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Having finally watched last week’s episode of Feud, I am at last ready to share my thoughts. In all, I found this to be the best episode so far, in that it really does a great deal to flesh out the stakes of Baby Jane for everyone concerned, not just the principals, but also those who surround the production.

The opening sequence highlights the extent to which both Joan and Bette have found themselves on the losing end of an industry controlled and manipulated by ruthless (and not terribly likable) men. Both of them have, by this point, become aware that their fortunes may be irrevocably in decline, the possibility of a comeback tainted by the “B” movie status that has already begun to stick to Baby Jane and to taint its artistic pretensions.

The responses of the two women reflect a great deal about their respective personalities. While Bette handles the demotion to the junior leagues with biting sarcasm by taking out a classified ad, Joan spews out f-bombs to her utterly uncaring agent and his cronies. Throughout the episode, Crawford emerges as the one more attached to her rapidly-fading stardom and Davis to the fact that she can’t get roles that challenge her craft (this dichotomy has now become so much part of Hollywood history that it’s become fact).

Lange continues to bring Joan to life in a particularly compelling way. There is an almost frantic energy to Lange’s portrayal, as she teeters on the edge of utter collapse. She sees the writing on the wall of her career, and she is determined to do everything in her power to stop the downward spiral, including distancing herself from Bette and from any other woman who might taint her aspirations, even when that means distancing herself from the very people who would be happy to help her.

The scene at the premiere highlights how dependent Joan has become on the glamour of stardom. The colour and lighting here is quite warm, an evocation of Crawford’s renewed sense of vitality and happiness that she has once again returned to being adored by her legions of fans. One also gets a sense that the episode is making a conscious reference to Lange’s role of Big Edie Beale in Grey Gardens, which also featured her in the role of a woman clinging to vitality in the face of adversity.

For all of her talent, however, Crawford knows something that the others seem reluctant to acknowledge: the golden age of classic Hollywood is well and truly over. When she turns down Pauline’s efforts at jumpstarting her own directorial career, she does so not (so she claims) because the latter is a woman, but because she’s a nobody. Crawford is old enough and wise enough to recognize that Hollywood is a cruel and ruthless business, and she is just cutthroat enough to do what needs to be done to ensure her own legacy (it doesn’t hurt that she’s also being manipulated by the waspish Hedda Hopper).

Despite how despicable he can be at times, Molina’s Aldrich continues to come across as affable, accomplished, and likable, if more than a little self-centered and misogynist. He knows as much as the women do that his career is on the line, and indeed that, for all of his aspirations, he is not, after all, fated for greatness. Even his success with Baby Jane, however, is not quite enough to rescue him and elevate him to the status of an auteur. In a taut and unpleasant conversation with Jack Warner, the latter makes the cutting observation that he is nothing more than a journeyman, it’s a remark that hits all too close to the bone.

Feud is a delicious treat, but it’s also far from subtle. With Joan Blondell and Olivia de Havilland (Kathy Bates and Catherine Zeta-Jones) as the film’s chorus, we are left in no doubt how we are supposed to feel about the characters and their circumstances. For all that, though, the show continues to hold up a none-too-flattering mirror to the machinery of Hollywood, an industry that still has a lot of distance to go in terms of the way that it treats women.

TV Review: “Feud”–“Mommie Dearest” (S1, Ep. 3)

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Just when I thought that Feud couldn’t get any better, it manages to continue to showcase the ability of Ryan Murphy to plumb the depths of despair and sadness in the human psyche. In particular, it shows his longstanding interest in the suffering that women endure in a patriarchal world that rarely, if ever, values them for themselves.

Overall, the episode offers a surprisingly nuanced and sympathetic portrait of the convoluted nature of motherhood in particular. As is well-known, both Bette and Joan had quite vexed relationships with their children. Overall in this episode Bette is the one who emerges as the most compassionate mother, in that she continues to try to support B.D., even though it’s obvious she’s a terrible actress. Further, she also continues working in order to pay the bills for her younger daughter’s schooling.

It is her relationship with Victor Buono, her effeminate and portly gay co-star, that really cements Bette’s inner core of maternal feeling. In Buono, she sees a companion spirit, a man who has suffered because of his sexuality (at one point he is arrested in a vice sting and she has to bail him out of jail), but in whom she sees a great deal of genuine talent. The scenes that show them together show a meeting of the minds, a young acolyte starstruck and determined to make the most out of this moment to costar with one of the greatest stars in Hollywood history (incidentally, Buono would also star with Davis in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte).

Even Crawford, whose motherly reputation has long been overshadowed by her daughter’s tell-all memoir and its filmic adaptation, appears in this episode as a woman who genuinely wants to care for the children who come under her care. The episode makes it clear that she craves the affection that she was denied in her childhood (except from her stepfather), and that it is this desire for human connection that drives so much of what she does. The brutal irony, of course, is that she cannot see the truth that is right in front of her face. It is Davis, more than any other character, who actually understands Joan and what she suffers, yet she is the one person that she cannot quite bring herself to be friends with, no matter how much it might benefit the two of them.

This episode, as with the ones preceding it, continues to show the extent to which both Joan and Bette are being manipulated by those who have a vested interest in keeping them at one another’s throats. It’s particularly frustrating that it’s Hedda Hopper who continues to pull the strings on Crawford, for as a woman one would think that she would be more sensitive to the need for women in Hollywood to band together and support one another. But, like so many others in Hollywood, all she can see is her own aggrandizement, no matter the human costs.

Yet the episode also shows that, for all of their foibles and flaws, both Crawford and Davis are consummate masters of their craft. Even Crawford, acknowledged as somewhat less than an accomplished actress by subsequent filmgoers, manages to impress even Davis by her delivery of Blanche’s final, crushing revelation. All in all, the episode manages to do justice to both of these phenomenal women of old Hollywood.

However, I do have to express a small amount of concern over the future of the show. After all, we’re only in the third episode, and now, diegetically, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane has finished filming. Where will the show go from here? Presumably, it will stretch into the drama over the Oscars, and perhaps will even show the women as they pursue their careers in the aftermath of

TV Review: “Feud”–“The Other Woman” (S1, Ep. 2)

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There’s nothing quite like settling in with your Boyfriend to catch up on last week’s episode of Ryan Murphy’s FX series Feud: Bette and Joan. In the episode, titled “The Other Woman,” the tensions between the two women continue to ratchet ever-upward, exacerbated by the machinations of the men running the show (Robert Aldrich and Jack Warner) and by the malevolent Heddy Hopper and other gossip columnists who are only too eager to exploit the escalating tensions between the two women for their own financial benefit.

The strongest part of the series continues to be the performance from Lange and Sarandon. While Lange manages to convey the bruised and aching heart of Crawford–battered by decades in Hollywood at the mercy of the men in charge–she also shows the inner core of iron that allowed this working-class girl to become one of the most prominent stars of classic Hollywood. For all of her vulnerability, there is still a harshness to her, one that only bursts out of her at moments of extreme stress and anger, as when she commands her current husband to leave.

For her part, Sarandon continues to bring a similar amalgam to her characterization of Bette Davis. Her voice has the same sort of tough hoarseness that was Davis’s trademark, and she also manages to convey a similar blend of steely strength and aching vulnerability. Sarandon’s Davis is a woman caught in an impossible position; her belligerent daughter has already begun to turn against her, reminding her in a fit of the fact that she is no longer young. Yet she also is a woman single-mindedly devoted to her craft. Unlike Joan, who seems to be more committed to her star status, Davis sees herself as an actress, a distinction that has, in the historiography of both stars, become the accepted wisdom.

As with the pilot, this episode of Feud continues to highlight its awareness the hypocrisy and cynicism that seethes beneath the glossy surface of Hollywood life. Hollywood cares for nothing more than the accumulation of further financial gain, and it is willing to destroy the lives of the women who, it must be admitted, are key to its very system. Even the redoubtable Hedda Hopper, along with her truly glorious hats, can’t seem to find in herself to have any innate compassion for her fellow women. It is only when Joan promises to let her in on some juicy gossip for her noxious columns that she agrees to be her ally, and it is her machinations that lead Aldrich to betray both women in his own relentless pursuit of career advancement.

While they only appear only briefly, both Kathy Bates and Catherine Zeta-Jones deliver strong, precise performances as Joan Blondell and Olivia De Havilland. Both of them act as a sort of Greek chorus, offering the audience a sense of the conflicted position women occupied (and continue to occupy) in the entertainment industry. They are the source of one another’s greatest strength and yet they are repeatedly encouraged by the industry to tear one another apart in the media and in the eyes of the public.

All in all, I found this to be an extremely compelling piece of television. Love him or hate him, but Murphy has a knack for churning out stories that help us to understand and empathize with powerful women who are punished by the societies in which they live. It remains to be seen, however, whether Feud can continue threading the precarious needle it has set itself. Is it possible to critique a system that encourages women to hate each other by providing a pleasurable drama about…women hating each other?

Only time will tell.

The Great “Golden Girls” Marathon: “Blind Ambitions”

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Since it’s been quite a while since I posted about my dearly-beloved Golden Girls, I thought I’d take a minute and post about one of my favourite episodes from the first season. In this episode, we meet yet another member of the extended family, in this case Lily, Rose’s sister, who has recently gone blind and struggles to make it on her own.

As my Boyfriend recently pointed out, it’s an interesting fact that the women that hail from St. Olaf (with the exception of Rose) seem to be a bit quicker on the uptake than Rose herself. This is distinct from the men, such as Rose’s cousin Sven or the three men who come to determine whether Rose will be eligible for the St. Olaf Woman of the Year Prize, all of whom are quite as dense (if not more so) than Rose. Lily seems to have escaped the veil of idiocy that surrounds almost all of the other inhabitants of this small Minnesota town.

Throughout the episode, brief as it is, we get a good sense that Lily has really struggled to adapt to life as a blind person. She is clearly a woman who is used to doing what she wants when she wants, and her physical disability has made it difficult for her to adapt to a different kind of life. As a result, she finds that she has to rely on Rose to an extraordinary degree and, unsurprisingly, she asks Rose to come life with her. As happens so often in the series, Rose finds herself torn between various competing personal loyalties.

I’ve always thought that The Golden Girls was fairly progressive in its articulation and representation of disability. The disabled persons who appear in the show are, in many ways, treated just like any other characters. For the most part they aren’t just magical figures that sweep in for a very special episode, only to serve as a message. Now, admittedly, Lily doesn’t really appear again in the show, but it is true that she has a richness and a depth that one rarely sees in a one-off sitcom appearance. We get a real sense of her, both as an individual as well as part of Rose’s very large family. Just as importantly, we also get a strong, almost gut-wrenching sense of what she has lost, when she breaks down and confesses that she yearns for the days when she could still see.

It is thus refreshing that the episode ends with Lily taking control of her own life and deciding that she can, indeed, be independent without Rose’s assistance. Rose’s decision to force Lily to be independent is certainly heart-wrenching for her, but in the end it enables Lily to prove to herself and to her sister that she is capable of leading a life of her own without assistance from others.

Of course, the episode is also full of some truly hilarious moment, as when Rose rediscovers her old teddy bear that was almost sold at the garage sale. The high-pitched voce that she adopts when talking with that teddy bear engenders a screech of dismay from Dorothy, and it is hard not to erupt into laughter at the banter between these two.

Next up, we meet Blanche’s father Big Daddy. Blanche, like her fellow women, must contend with the various pressures of a family.