Golden Girls: Romance & Priests

Romance & priests has a notable history. There's Thornbirds, of course, but priests as potential romantic partners certainly didn't begin and end with McCullough's book. Alcott threw a soulful priest into A Long Fatal Love Chase and if Supernatural's Castiel isn't a priest, well, then who would be? 

For some writers, the "untouchable" aspect creates an instant plot barrier: will he or won't he? I consider this plot problem a trifle dull. I also have a low opinion of the assumption that a "good" priest should give up his integrity and beliefs for love. In a remarkable Tony Hillerman novel, the priest ends up deliberately walking into a dangerous situation to escape pressure from the woman who is convinced he should give up all for love. What a jerk! And I mean the woman! 

Rather than the priest who struggles with celibacy, I've always been more interested in the priest who struggles with his vocation or his theology. My priest, Rhys, from Anubis on Mars and Saint of Mars already has a lover, which is sort of/kind of okay but precludes him from rising further in the futuristic Catholic hierarchy. Since his lover is more sincerely orthodox than Rhys, Rhys's primary struggle is over the type of priest he will be. 

CSI produced a decent-ish episode in which the priest-in-love came to terms with his affection by embracing other theological principles (God's call for him to be a husband and father) while Blue Bloods includes one of my favorite episodes in which Frank investigates a dead priest who is up for canonization. The priest deeply loved a woman in his parish, stating, "He was grateful to God for the challenge. He just wished the challenge didn't have such a great pair of legs."

Of course, priests also make for decent jokes. In Golden Girls, Dorothy once again falls for the wrong guy when she asks out a priest (when he is in civilian dress). When he shows up at the house in his cleric's clothing, Blanche initially mistakes him for the representative of a local charity. When she realizes he is Dorothy's "date," she becomes flustered and produces a series of inappropriate remarks, including, "I'm not asking you to forgive me in your official capacity. I'm a Baptist. You can't forgive Baptists," followed by a declaration that she never swears, followed by, "Oh, God, now I'm lying to a priest." 

Jokes rely on a common denominator--otherwise, they aren't funny. Likewise, priests as romantic partners rely on a common denominator. Even in my futuristic world, I rely on "here's what priests are not anymore." 

What will happen when/if American television doesn't even have Catholicism as its backup? Maybe every episode will have to come with footnotes.

Golden Girls: Class in America

Marxists get upset these days because the folks they thought were on their side, the academics with their theories and labels, have retreated into near-Victorian elitism (with far more pretense than the Victorians). That is, calling someone the wrong label or pronoun--showing a bit of ankle--has become more horrific than, say, keeping kids in school, funding rehab programs, and getting people registered to vote. 

I'm not a Marxist--I think it misses way too much about basic human nature to be a palatable theory. But it does get one thing right. 

Class has impact. 

In my undergraduate program, an instructor had us watch The Story of English, the PBS miniseries from the mid-1980s. I currently own the program, purchased through eBay. 

In one episode, an executive-type woman from New York tells a story about her engagement to a man from the South. In New York City, his accent was there but softened by the acquirement of Northeast speech patterns. She went home with him for a weekend. The closer they got to his hometown, the stronger became his very Southern accent.  She felt like a stranger had crawled out of the man sitting beside her in the car. The engagement didn't last. 

I'm not saying she was right. I'm saying, "Wow! Talk about honesty!" 

Because admit it or not, human beings make these judgments all the time. They may call them something else. They may pretend they are something else. But class--the expectations of class (blue-collar, middle-class, elite)--the associations of that class with certain choices and attitudes regarding education, lifestyle, politics, religion, child-rearing, entertainment--are immensely strong. 

The strength of those expectations doesn't always leave people open to the "other." Hence, the tendency for elites in America to cry "mea culpa" while keeping a quite literal distance from the people they claim to feel for. 

In Golden Girls' episode "Diamond in the Rough," Blanche, the romantic, gives up a great (and gorgeous) guy due to class distinctions. Rose and Dorothy tell her she is an idiot. And Blanche is not proud of herself. But she doesn't lie to herself either. 

Courtship is, to a degree, always going to be based on "I think I know what I'm getting" (even if nobody really does).

Golden Girls and James Frain: the Pain You're Familiar With

In The Closer, "Critical Missing," James Frain as Paul Andrews delivers the virtuoso performance of a cruel and dangerous man who keeps killing his imperfect wives, then burying/disposing of them where he and the wife married.

During the nearly episode-long interrogation, he presents himself as astute, self-reflective, and entirely innocent. In one of his justifying speeches, he states the following:

"Someone...I think it was my first Latin master...he told me that if you were locked in a library of the world's miseries, you would be led inexorably to choose your own because it's the pain you're familiar with." 

It's a great passage from a serial killer--like all great passages by evil characters, it contains a kernel of truth. 

A very young Clooney is on the bed.

Golden Girls highlights this truth. Dorothy complains about not getting dates/meeting decent guys, yet when, in Season 2, she meets a great guy, a police detective who is using Blanche's house to spy on the neighbors, she dumps him when he gets shot at (his partner is wounded). She just can't handle the worry. 

Her decision is a legitimate assessment of being the spouse of someone in a dangerous profession.

Nevertheless, the viewer sighs: When will Dorothy stop bouncing between deadbeat Stan and great guys she ends up dumping for ridiculous reasons? 

Except her behavior is entirely believable. It takes her 7 seasons to finally dump Stan completely and accept a good relationship. She chases the familiar. As Frain's character argues, the familiar--even the bad familiar--is comfortable, known, manageable (been there/done that).

The key, perhaps, is to do as Doc does in Hide & Seek: Instead of fighting one's inherent nature, find the variation-on-the-familiar-theme that works. 

Golden Girls' Couples: Dorothy and Her Ex-Husband

Dorothy is the archetypal smart, accomplished woman who keeps dating losers. 

She married one, who left her for a stewardess. The husband, Stan, is excellently played by Herb Edelman. And he is a jerk. But he is a jerk in the Babe Ruth-sense, not the con-artist sense. That is, he is natural man without the pride. He committed adultery during his marriage because, well, the women were there--and they said, "Yes." He invests in any idea that comes along. He is the exactly the kind of guy to get his girlfriend pregnant, get married at the insistence of the parents, and then slump through life waiting for life to...keep being life. 

"Why did you ever marry him?" Blanche asks Dorothy at one point.

The brilliance of Dorothy and Stan, however, is that despite the divorce, they carry with them the same patterns of married life, good and bad. There's a reason why counselors instruct divorced couples not to date each other again. The familiar is security, comfort, surety. It is tempting. And Stan, despite his choice-less life, has a fuzzy likability, due in large part to the actor. And Dorothy, despite her outspokenness, needs seven seasons to finally take responsibility for her dating choices.

Dorothy and Stan should never have gotten married. But it's understandable why they would function well together anyway, at least long enough to raise a few kids to adulthood, and why they keep coming back into each other's orbits.  

Golden Girls' Couples: Rose & Miles

In real life, Rose would have remarried within a few years of her husband's death. 

She loved Charlie. She loved being married. She's a comfortable woman who attracts with little effort the kind of men who also want to get married again (the anti-Monks). She corresponds quite well to Christie's description in The Body in the Library of Addie Jefferson:

"She's the kind of woman," said Miss Marple, "that everyone likes. The kind of woman that could go on getting married again and again. I don't mean a man's woman--that's quite different." 

Consequently, unlike with Blanche and Dorothy, Rose's continual singlehood is not entirely realistic. Sitcoms falter on this edge: the same people in the same location go through stuff and joke about it. Nobody moves on or marries. Nobody gets their own place. Permanent lock-down. And it's not entirely believable.

Intelligently, the writers eventually give Rose an ongoing, steady boyfriend, Miles, played by the excellent Harold Gould. 

Harold Gould shows up early in Season 1 as a different character, Arnie, with a similar personality and back-story to the later Miles (aside from the surreal witness protection plot). It's a great example of the needs of chemistry--the actors work well together--outweighing the issue of continuity. He was the right guy to bring back as the "steady."  

Golden Girls' Couples: Blanche

The pilot episode, "The Engagement," establishes that Blanche is a romantic. 

Blanche's marriage was a love-match to a man with a marvelous voice (played by George Grizzard). In the years since he died in a car accident, she has dated man after man. Although she has a reputation for being "loose," she is far more discerning and careful than she presents herself. 

Rather like Dean, who scorns God because he feels threatened by his own disillusionment, Blanche treats relationships as fleeting because at heart she wants another "one and only" relationship. 

Only, when she actually does get close to the altar, she ends up with duds. The one non-dud (see Season 2), she dumps. 

Arguably, Blanche knows she can never have what she had with her first husband. So she sabotages herself. The pursuit of romance is her coping mechanism.

And hey, that pursuit provides a continual string of plot points!