Humor comes in many flavors, any of which may appeal to one person but not to another, and which may be enjoyed in alternation or in combination. Often what one finds absolutely hysterical another may not even understand the joke. Here are names and descriptions of the varieties of comic expressions that I prefer and will be discussing. Juvenile/sophomoric: Humor involving childish themes such as pranks, name-calling, and other immature behavior. Self-deprecating: Humor in which performers target themselves and their foibles or misfortunes for comic effect. Stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield was a practitioner of self-deprecating humor. Situational: Humor arising out of quotidian situations; it is the basis of sitcoms, or situation comedies. Situational comedies employ elements of farce, screwball, slapstick, and other types of humor.
FRIENDS VS GOLDEN GIRLS
The Golden Girls was one of the first sit-com shows that I remember watching with my grandmother who was a huge fan. As a result, I’ve always had a great fondness for the show. I’ve hummed its theme song and the still remarkable fact that it was a hit starring three women in their 60s.
In the meantime, I’ve seen every episode of Friends and to this day would rather watch its re-reruns than almost anything else on TV. Friends may be hugely popular and beloved by mainly girls but that does not make it bad (it just makes it an easy target). Who would not laugh when they watch Monica dance with a turkey on her head?
I assumed that Friends would win easily. But after re-watching The Golden Girls again now that I’m older, the competition has tightened up. Since Friends ended its ten-season run in 2004, audiences have been treated to/tortured by one clone after another. But before we lived in a world where there were dozens of shows just like Friends, there was Friends, which was a show sort of like The Golden Girls. The Golden Girls finished its seven seasons in 1992, just two years before Friends began. Based on the way they dressed alone, you would think they had been separated by a decade. They do both share a major theme. This is what happens when a group of strangers, a few with blood ties, devote their lives to one another and become family, not because they have to, but because they want to. Golden Girls’ and Friends might as well share the same theme song “Thank You for Being a Friend”.
The Golden Girls was created in that Lear-influenced TV era when sitcoms still believed in the teachable moment and in taking on social issues. This was a tradition that Friends did as much as any sitcom to annihilate, choosing instead to address hot-button topics in a glancing, casually liberal way, if at all. (Golden Girls dedicated a very special episode to Dorothy’s lesbian friend coming to visit and falling for Rose; on Friends the fact that Ross’s ex-wife is a lesbian, with whom he has a son, is just a recurring plot point.
Millions of viewers tuned in weekly to watch the withering Dorothy, her sassy mother Sofia, the ditzy sweet Rose, and the lascivious Blanche. This was an active foursome, engaged with the world, each other, their jobs, families, men, and sex. Which all of them, not just boy-crazy Blanche, had. They hang out, they eat, they cook, they watch TV, they laugh, and in the middle they have heavy, tossed-off, wonderfully written conversations.
Golden Girls can feel dated. The pacing is slow and some of the jokes barely land. But if you’ve never watched an episode, you might be surprised by its edge. The humor is sardonic, consistently funny, and often biting, particularly when they bicker. Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sofia are unkind to one another in the way you can only be to the people who really love you. In other words, realistically. The women go to therapy together because they fight non-stop. Blanche is accused of selfishness, Rose of being annoying, and Dorothy of being impossibly competent. But competence is an extremely generous term for Dorothy’s manner. There is a Dorothy-like character on Friends. A woman of the same generation who is almost as judgmental: Monica and Ross’s mother Judy.
Dorothy, who believes nothing is better left unsaid and never caves in to a pleasantry, but Friends always does. There is very little bite to Friends. The characters snip and snipe, but gently, and always make up by the end of the episode. There would never be a need for them to go to therapy together. It could be this preference for amiability that can bug people. It’s a, for a lack of better expression, a vanilla sitcom. I can’t deny that a really great vanilla ice cream is the platonic ideal. Whatever else we may like or want in our ice cream, vanilla is the purest expression of the form and so it is with Friends.
The best sitcoms are as much about the casting as the writing, and in this respect Friends was perfect: Rachel, and her roommate Monica; Joey and Chandler, the neighbors across the hall; Monica’s brother Ross; and Phoebe. And here’s where Friends distinguished itself in a way that Golden Girls did not. If you think of Dorothy as the quintessential Golden Girl, and Rachel as the quintessential Friend, the thing that differentiates Rachel (like the thing that differentiates Mary Richards or Lucy Ricardo) is that at some point, unlike everyone else around her, she ceased to be defined by her idiosyncrasies. Much as I love each character on both shows, to the very end Phoebe was the space cadet who sang “Smelly Cat,” Monica the control freak, Joey the loveable dummy (he, of course, is the Rose of Friends), Chandler the sarcastic guy, Ross the spazzy paleontologist, Dorothy the abrasive critic, Blanche the oversexed Southern belle, and Sofia the tiny, wise-cracking Italian. Only Rachel was a whole person, not a type.
Friends was lovely and hilarious and enjoyable and so satisfying because the friendships were relatable. It could be simplistic and formulaic, but the show’s sharp writers and even sharper cast accomplished the hardest thing of all. They made a really funny sitcom for ten years, and they made making a really funny sitcom look easy. I think it is fair and true to say that Friends was simply about being a simple, realistic pleasurable sitcom. There are hardly any of those on your television right now, and a whole lot more shows that, in trying to be like Friends, and in failing to be anywhere near as good, burnish it.
Golden Girls is funny and prickly and because we live in a world that is sexist and ageist it is also rare and remarkable in today’s time. I would watch the heck out of it. But give me a remote control and a choice and Friends is the one I want to see. Some will continue to downgrade it because the show is easy, because it is simple, because it doesn’t make you work to love it, and that makes it feel like it might not be worth respecting, but it’s not going to be me. Another way to put it: Friends is a show that Rose and Blanche would have curled up on the sofa to watch together, and they would have laughed and laughed, having reached a time in their lives when they know a good thing when they see it.

Winner: Friends