Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them.
It's the last Thursday Movie Picks of the year, y'all! Which is why it's kinda weird that it's a TV Edition, but hey, the calendar is what it is! And besides, we're all friends here, and what better way to celebrate the friendships this series has fostered than by picking great TV shows about friendship?
The Golden Girls (1985-1992) I mean, it's right there in the theme song, isn't it? "Thank you for being a friend." Blanche, Dorothy, Rose, and Sophia are THE super girl group of TV, and they bucked every trend in the book by being a top ten Nielsen-rated TV show for six out of its seven seasons. Even with major stars leading it, there was no guarantee that a sitcom about four "over the hill" women (three divorcés and one widow, no less) would be a hit with audiences. But the show's warm, gentle humor was put over with panache by Bea Arthur, Rue McLanahan, Betty White, and Estelle Getty. Watching The Golden Girls is to watch old pros doing what they do best: Setting up punchlines and knocking them out of the park as easily as you or I change channels. It's a delight.
New Girl (2011-Present) Curse the show all you want for foisting the word "adorkable" on us, but New Girl has been one of the most consistently hilarious shows on TV for the past few years. Once they realized that the chemistry between the cast members was bigger than any one of them (about halfway through the first season), and the show shifted Zooey Deschanel's titular Jess from being the main character to just another ensemble member, they also slowly started realizing that all the motley crew of characters were weirdos in their own way, and they just let the actors be weirdos. And really, that's the key to the show's success. It may have started off as a show about one weird girl getting her life back on track after a bad breakup, but it became a story about how five weirdos realized they could let their freak flags fly. Hilariously.
Red Band Society (2014-2015) This one-season wonder, based on an acclaimed Catalan series, is about a group of kids living in a hospital's pediatric ward, and the nurses and doctors who look after them. At times overly simplistic and obvious, but always touching, the show had a pretty great cast and a knack for perfectly used pop tunes. I got invested in the characters pretty quickly, and was disappointed when the show was cancelled after 13 episodes.
