"You're not cutting up the obituaries, are you? I want to make sure my canasta game is still on for tomorrow." - Sophia (Estelle Getty)
The Golden Girls: The Complete Fifth Season DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
The Golden Girls returned to NBC's Saturday night schedule for a fifth season on September 23,1989, continuing to offer viewers a peek into the lives of four vibrant older friends living together in a beautiful Miami home: randy widow Blanche Devereaux (Mama's Family's Rue McClanahan), perkily naive widow Rose Nylund (The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Betty White), divorced substitute teacher Dorothy Zbornak (Maude's Bea Arthur), and Dorothy's stroke victim mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty).
While previous seasons showed that older women had much in common with their younger counterparts - active sex lives, heartache, strong bonds of friendship - season five often focuses on what sets them apart - the problems of illness and aging. In "Sick and Tired (Parts 1 & 2)," Dorothy spends two episodes visiting several doctors while trying to determine exactly why she's been feeling so under-the-weather. No one can give her a real diagnosis until one physician discovers that she has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. What cheery subject matter, especially for the opening two episodes of the season. Each of the characters suffers from a health scare in season five: Blanche has a pacemaker installed ("Like the Beep Beep Beep of the Tom-Tom"), Rose has to take an HIV test when it is discovered that a transfusion several years back may have exposed her to AIDS ("72 Hours"), and Sophia experiences extensive memory loss ("Clinton Avenue Memoirs"). All of these situations may be realistic concerns for characters of this age, but to have all four of the strong, independent women in the series face illness in the same season is a bit disconcerting. Sure, each is better by the end of the episode (this is a sitcom, after all), but it still feels like overkill.
The Golden Girls' strong point has always been its snappy dialogue. One-liners, putdowns, and sassy remarks often help to gussy up familiar plots. In season five, however, the writers seem to have rethought the series' tone. Watching the first four seasons on DVD, the series' "joke formula" quickly becomes evident. An example of this kind of formula is that Rose asks an obvious question, one of her pals gives a sarcastic response, Rose takes the response literally, and then the joker yells at her for being so dumb. These formula jokes were abundant in previous seasons but are largely absent here.
This could be a sign of growth, but more often than not it leaves a laugh vacuum. Without genuine guffaws to distract us, we have ample time to think about how remarkable similar some of these episodes are to installments of other TV shows. In "Love Under the Big Top," Dick Van Dyke (The Dick Van Dyke Show) guest stars as Dorothy's latest boyfriend, Miami's most successful lawyer. The friends think that she has struck the jackpot.until he announces that he plans on giving up law and joining the circus as a clown. Despite a game performance by Van Dyke, this episode brings to mind not one but two installments of The Mary Tyler Moore Show: "Smokey the Bear Wants You" (Rhoda dates a successful businessman who decides to give up his lucrative career in favor of becoming a park ranger) and "But Seriously, Folks" (Mary supports Dick Van Dyke's brother, Jerry, in his attempt to become a standup comedian). In "All That Jazz," Dorothy's ne'er-do-well musician son quits his latest job, leaves his wife, and decides to sponge off of his mother, causing her to worry that she raised a loser. This same basic storyline was seen in The Facts of Life several years earlier. There are admittedly a limited number of plots that can be used in sitcoms, but these episodes stand out because The Golden Girls recycles these stories without adding its own golden touch.
This isn't to say that season five is terrible. White especially shines in a series of episodes in which she dates college professor Miles Webber (the always dapper Harold Gould). She feels a little out of place when she's around Miles' sophisticated colleagues ("Dancing in the Dark"), gets rejected by Miles' disapproving daughter ("Triple Play"), and finally must decide between Miles and an old flame from St. Olaf ("Twice in a Lifetime"). It is refreshing to see Rose in love, even if the setup is mostly an excuse for Being There-style humor about stupidity mistaken for profundity.
Guest stars in season five include Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), Mel Stewart (Tabitha, All in the Family), George Grizzard (Law & Order), Sheree North (Bay City Blues), Matt McCoy (We Got it Made), Robert Mandan (Soap), Molly Hagan (Herman's Head), Ronnie Schell (Good Morning, World), Sid Melton (Green Acres), Robert Culp (I Spy), Mark Moses (Desperate Housewives), Eddie Bracken, Barbara Babcock (Dallas), Marian Mercer (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman), Sam McMurray (The Tracey Ullman Show), Jerry Orbach (Law & Order), Howard Duff (Flamingo Road), and Quentin Tarentino.
The twenty-five episodes that make up season five are divided onto three discs. Each of the three orange-hued discs are decorated with portraits of the gang - Blanche on disc one, Rose on disc two, and Dorothy and Sophia on disc three. The discs are housed in an orange foldout case decorated with publicity and production stills. The three discs attach to two panels - one of the panels holds two discs (one on top of the other) in a figure eight pattern. One panel of the foldout case lists the title of each episode. As with the other Golden Girls releases, no plot synopses are included, making it somewhat difficult for viewers to choose individual episodes. The case slides into a cardboard sleeve.
The DVD menus - which feature full-motion clips from the series in small windows while an instrumental version of the theme song plays in a loop - are simple and easy to navigate. Viewers can play all episodes or choose an individual one. There are no scene selection menus, but the episodes do include chapter stops.
