As requested, this post will be a review of
The Golden Palace.
Almost every aspect of the show I wish to talk about is related to the issue of continuity. The premise is to take as much as possible from a previous series and just plunk it down into a new location.
On the one hand, the show is big on a community-style sense of continuity. Some characters, like the girls' children, only appear in a few episodes, but the show gives a sense that their storyline continues outside of our view. Stan, is around a fair bit, but his continuity is still greater than his actual presence on the show.
On the other hand, there are the men/dates. For the most part, dating is a within-the-episode event. Because of this, the original series is plagued with in-congruencies. Characters often say things that conflict with events that have happened in the past.
On Rose's hand, Miles occupies a special place between the other hands. At some points, they're madly in love, then they're just friends, then they almost get married a few times, and are seemingly unaffected when they go back to just dating the next episode. Because Miles's presence is sporadic, the viewer is forced to assume that he occupies that first sense of continuity - that he and Rose are close and exclusive, but there are so many problems with this continuity. Anyway, I don't want to waste too much time discussing this.
Anyway, everything I've said this far applies to both series.
I love both series and thoroughly enjoyed watching them this year.
The Golden Girls was a fabulous series that was and is timeless. When ratings took a dive in the 6th and 7th seasons, everything that happened was understandable: Bea jumped ship, realizing that the show was falling out of fashion. Everyone else wanted to keep it going and thought a change of scenery would help.
Now, I'll go through the characters to outline my thoughts about both shows, and the Palace in particular.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion among Golden Girls fans and gay culture, I never really liked Dorothy. Granted, she was a vital part of the mechanics of the original series, but we all have our favourites, and she just wasn't on my list.
[Bottom line, I think Golden Girls was a perfect comedic entity. It dropped in ratings because that's just what happens eventually. They should have just ended it, but with a much better finale - Gosh that was sappy!]
In theory, I was excited to be rid of her voice and better-than-thou attitude, but it fell short. Sophia's one-liners, which were once beautiful escalations, seemed out of place. Their tag-teaming was sorely missed in terms of Blanche mocking. St. Olaf stories lost that je ne sais quoi that came with waiting for Dorothy to explode with impatience.
I have a certain fondness for Blanche, likely because she reminds me of a dear friend. In the Palace, she became one of the biggest victims of continuity. Basically, she only has 2 or 3 dates in the whole season, yet the new characters jump right into the slut-casting. I also didn't like the control-freak part of her character that was prominent at the hotel. I know it started in the GG, but it just caused more frustration than anything plot related.
Chuy - HA! Cheech... need I say more?
Roland tried to be the straight man replacement for Dorothy, but he wasn't severe enough to really be effective. I would liked to have gotten to know more about him, but there wasn't room for that.
It's obvious that GG spent the first few seasons making sure that each character was solidly backgrounded and their characters were developed. After that, it went on autopilot and no one ever really needed to venture out of the house. By adding these new characters, they were incomplete pieces in the puzzle, but the show couldn't spend the time it needed developing those characters to the point of the girls.
I LOVE SOPHIA!!!
Through her, we see the stark change in action between the series. In GG, all the action was either sitting at the table in the Kitchen (with one character standing), or sitting in the living room (the Linai was a direct substitute for occasional variety).
In the Palace, there were more scenes and they were used less regularly. Also, the type of action was greatly increased. The kitchen, which was almost exclusively the table in GG, was divided into the table (rarely used), the work area by the stove, and the area near the door. The replacement for the living room would likely be the front desk. Additionally, there was the lobby area and the dining room. I might be making too much of this, but it changed from a static show, where the dialogue was the motivator, to one that was more driven by action.
Sophia seems to be the biggest victim of the change. They basically reduced her to a trouble-making one-line spouter, ignoring the wisdom, and old-country stories that I loved so much
Finally, Rose - my favourite! Back to the loss of the static quality of the GG - sitting around and gabbing, Rose's St. Olaf stories suffered. On GG, there was always a sense that Rose could be telling the story for hours without thinking twice about it (or once, even), but on the Palace, she was almost always standing, giving the sense that she was going somewhere. The roles were reversed, people would stop when she told a story, and it just wasn't the same. I also felt that they dumbed up her character a bit much, to the point that it became almost insincere.
In the end, The Golden Palace had me laughing a lot. I'd long been attached to the characters and was happy to have a little longer with my favs.
Without the Golden Girls, the Palace wouldn't, couldn't, and shouldn't have existed. I would only recommend it for people who watched the entirety of the Golden Girls.
I'm disappointed in the lack of finality. GG had a strong, though cheesy conclusion, but the Palace didn't even make the effort for a season finale, much less a series finale. Surely, they must have realized that they wouldn't be coming back for a second season...
Oh well, thus ends the Golden Girls portion of my life. It's been about 9 or 10 months over which I watched 8 seasons of marvelous comedy. I would happily recommend any and all of it to anyone and everyone!
