Lena Dunham’s Girls spoof The Golden Girls
The edgy comedy about the friendship of four 20-something Brooklynites became, for a night, the classic 80s sitcom about four retired women who share a home in Miami
Lena Dunham’s great comedy Girls is coming to its end, but last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live the four main actors from the show (Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke and Dunham) imagined what the show would look like if the quartet remained friends until their 70s – and the results look very similar to classic 80s-90s sitcom The Golden Girls.
The spoof sketch sees the four dressed up in grey wigs and liver-spotted skin, but despite their advanced age the characters of Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna are as badly behaved as ever: Hannah’s still very comfortable with nudity, Jessa still abuses illegal substances (“I still don’t understand how you think it’s OK to be on recreational morphine,” says Shoshanna); Marnie is still self-obsessed; and Shoshanna still talks like a 15 year old. Oh, and they’re still brilliantly foul-mouthed.
While the four don’t exactly match up to the characters from the original Golden Girls, Marnie certainly fits pretty perfectly with vain Southern belle Blanche (played by Rue McClanahan in the sitcom). She explains at the start of the clip the women are all together to celebrate her 63rd birthday, her divorce and her impending knee surgery, although Jessa, as ever, is quick to cut her friend down to size. "You're 77 years old. You've been married eight times. And the only surgery you’re having is in and around your face."
Unfortunately for fans of the show, we won’t be seeing the Girls quartet still squabbling into their dotage, as season six, currently on air, will be the final one. “It felt like the saddest thing that could happen would be for people to be like, ‘Is Girls still on?’” Dunham told Rolling Stone magazine. “During season four, we started talking about wrapping it up; we then were able to clearly see the 20-episode arc of seasons five and six that took Hannah and the girls to their logical conclusion. It's an intense, painful sort of breaking up of a family but it's also one of the most inspiring creative experiences that you can have.”