Rue McClanahan

I never watched Maude or Golden Girls more than a handful of times, so I'm not exactly overwhelmed with grief about her passing. She was 74 years old, which isn't exactly young but it’s not really old either. That fact doesn't even bother me too much. Here's the thing though - when she was on Golden Girls the running joke about her character was that even though she was "old" she was still a passionate woman with an appetite for sex. They must have made several jokes about that fact in every episode that I saw. In fact the very idea of a sexualized senior was considered groundbreaking for television at the time. Then I noticed in some article that the show hit the airwaves 25 years ago. I did the math. If Rue died at 74 this clichéd view of seniority - the age at which the TV audience thought a sexy senior was a great comedic foil - would be somewhere around......MY AGE!

Strangely, both Gary Coleman and Rue McClanahan were inshows with Conrad Bain-Rue was Conrad's wife in Maude. Add Dixie Carter and it is 3 former Conrad Bain co stars who died in less than 2 months. Rue was in poor health, like Coleman though, and probably was not going to live too much longer. Rue was quite entertaining in the Golden Girls and , well, kinda sexy in her day. Any one of The Golden Girls deserves 5 stars because they were the best. Looks like this summer will be like last summer trying to keep up with the shocking deaths of famous celebrities.