Amanda's (By the Sea)
Yes, much like Friday the 13th (the show) this show's tittle got tweaked after the fact to avoid confusion with another show/movie.
I discovered this little show quite by accident and decided to give it a go. Now, unlike some reviewers on here, I've never seen Fawlty Towers so I can't judge it on "Why wasn't it an exact scene-for-scene remake of each and every episode of the original?" That's quality entertainment, right? I know it worked so well for the Psycho remake. Anyway...I can only judge the show based on what it was and not what it was emulating (or failing to emulate).
Bea Arthur of Golden Girls and Maude fame runs a small hotel (the titular Amanda's...By the Sea). It's a bit strange when you consider how the other three golden girls later spun-off into running a hotel on Golden Palace and this is for all intents and purposes Dorothy if she did the same thing. Bea's character has a sharp-tongue and a no-nonsense attitude...just like every other character she plays. Don't get me wrong, when Bea is being Bea it works well...too bad it didn't last. By that, I mean, the first three episodes or so showcase Bea's formidable presence and snarky attitude, but after that, the show slowly devolves into more of a dead fish...it just sort of lays there. It just sort of abandons comedy and shifts lanes into more of a serialized dramedy. To put it another way: It stops being Golden Girls and shifts back towards being Maude. This is especially true when Amanda's (Bea) Brother-in-Law shows up and they begin falling for each other. The show immediately grinds to a halt from being about zany situations in a hotel to "All About Amanda" and frankly, it doesn't work. It's not to say Bea can't do it, but to shift the tone that much is off-putting and confounding. You were doing okay! Why did you change? I wanted to watch wacky hi-jinks like Mama's Family, not dramedy like The Facts of Life.
But perhaps it's for the best that this show remains obscure given its many insensitivities. I know the 80's weren't the most culturally sensitive, but who thought this idea would stand the test of time? I speak, of course, about the show's crown jewel of embarrassment...Aldo. Aldo is the "Token Character"..no wait, excuse me...I meant "Racist Caricature." You know, I Love Lucy was thirty years before this and Desi was given far more dignity and respect than this...just tossing that out there. This isn't a case of "Questionable, but was a product of its time" where the non-whites were always "The Help." This is just plain offensive. It's one of those "Why cant foreigners learn English if they're going to come to OUR country" depictions where the token minority serves no comedic function beyond being the token minority. Amanda's plans went bad? It's usually because Aldo doesn't speak much English and his idiocy led to the situation. But its okay, physically assaulting the indecipherable foreigner should help.
There's another issue that doesn't hold up well at all in Amanda's love interest. After they've been dating (for 3 months in-between episodes) he begins pressuring her to have sex. Now, I grant you, they managed to pull out of this nosedive before people started screaming, "Oh! THE HUMANITY!" but it was still just...Thank goodness for whichever writer walked in the room and said, "Um, no, let's fix this before the letters start rolling in." Because by pressure...I mean pressure! Despite it being clear that Amanda isn't ready for a physical relationship, the BIL all but makes it an ultimatum. Amanda repeatedly says she's not ready and doesn't want to discuss it further, but he will not be dissuaded and forcefully grabs her and demands she explain herself, resulting in a well-deserved smack to the face. Again, they toss some water on this fire by explaining that his motivation was to get her to let down her guard and talk to him honestly about what she was feeling and why it was bothering her and furthering that he would be happy to wait (after borderline assaulting her). It wasn't "We can't have a full relationship because you won't sleep with me," it was "We can't have a full relationship because you won't talk to me and trust me"...but that explanation only barely manages to pull the passengers out with the jaws-of-life rather than having no survivors at all.
Analysis: Problematic and questionable. It's not hard to imagine why this show didn't last longer. Between the odd tonal shift from comedy to dramedy, the racist caricature of Aldo, and the 'Explain why you won't have sex with me and do it NOW, woman!' this show doesn't hold up well at all. The other characters? There were other characters? OH, RIGHT! I completely forgot about them! My fault, it was hard to tell them apart from the rest of the wallpaper. Amanda's son is...there, which is more than I can say for his wife. While the son gets the privilege of participating, it's never to any real effect, making him just a convenient warm body to have around. The daughter-in-law just sort of flitters in here and there for a moment or two...rather like a hummingbird. She is probably the least-developed character in the entire show and just sort of gets slapped with the 'hoity-toity-she likes nice clothes, make-up, and pretty things' label.
Final Thoughts: It was interesting to discover the show. But after seeing it, it's probably best it remains lost in obscurity. While Bea does a fine job with what's she's given (particularly when it's verbal cut-downs and zingers) she's not given much. It's like the show got bored with its own premise of being set in a hotel. The writers really seemed to struggle with (and eventually drop) coming up with situations that lent themselves to comedy. It's like they saw the premise as a box and not a single one of them could figure out what to do inside the box nor how to break out of it, so they shifted their focus towards outright storytelling rather than humor.
