It’s 25 minutes of your life! It won’t kill you! And you need to know nothing about the background of the show to enjoy this particular episode and also get something from it.

I picked this episode because it is the perfect combination of straight up ridiculous funny, and strangely uniquely touching and a little heartbreaking that Golden Girls did so well. Which, I guess, makes it Masala!!!

Hmm, let’s unpack that a bit more. Yeah, I think it works. The classic old Indian films were made to be endlessly rewatchable because the humor chased by tears chased by humor kept you on your toes, kept you interested, made it feel new each time. And the excellence of the performers who went all out to entertain, and the familiarity of the character types/plots which let you wander in and out of the film and never feel lost. That is why Golden Girls, and other classic American sitcoms, last and last and last. It’s not the humor, it’s the pathos mixed with humor. Besides Seinfeld (and that was the point of Seinfeld, that it chose to go against this tide), I can’t think of another American sitcom hit which didn’t throw in some real sorrow with the laughs.

This episode, to me, is a perfect mixture. It’s mostly laughter and ridiculousness, and then it just hits you right in the gut with a special sort of Golden Girls sadness based on what we know of these characters, and what makes them more than just “types”.

Also, Sonny Bono is in it!