YMMV / Maude

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "The Tax Audit", Maude recounts having a Near-Rape Experience 31 years prior. Her description of her father's reaction—blaming her, calling her a "tramp", etc—as well as Walter's dismissive attitude—"You got away, so what's the big deal?", etc, is precisely what has been stated by numerous women as the reason they didn't report instances of sexual abuse/assault/harassment.
  • In the sister show All in the Family Maude's niece Gloria and cousin Edith have nearly been raped, the latter during her 50th birthday.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The show was remade for UK television under the title Nobody's Perfect, which starred Elaine Stritch in the Bea Arthur role. A few years later, Stritch would audition for an American TV show called The Golden Girls, and would lose the role she was going for, Dorothy Zbornak, to Bea Arthur.
  • Herb Edelman appeared with Bea Arthur in the episode "Maude the Boss", years before the two of them played Stan and Dorothy Zbornak on The Golden Girls.
  • A line from Walter when Maude is trying to wake him up on election day in "The Election": "Wake me up when the float with Betty White passes by!" Fast forward a decade and Betty White is co-starring with Bea Arthur on The Golden Girls.
  • Betty White had a short-lived sitcom on CBS during this show's final season, which aired Monday nights at 9:00. As Maude aired Monday nights at 9:30, CBS viewers on Monday night during the 9:00 hour would have seen three of the four future Golden Girls in action (all except Estelle Getty). And curiously, neither series hit ratings gold that season: White's sitcom fizzled quickly and Maude had fallen into the ratings basement by then.
• It Was His Sled: The only thing many people know about this series is that Maude has an abortion. So when she discovers in a Very Special Episode that she is pregnant, it's a pretty safe bet she won't be welcoming a new baby into the world.
• Just Here for Godzilla: More than a few viewers have admitted to watching the show just to look at Adrienne Barbeau.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • The show ran for six seasons, and was a ratings hit throughout its run, but today it is remembered for the abortion episode and little else. This was very evident when Bea Arthur died, and reporters mentioned virtually nothing else about the show. (Contrast their fond and detailed retrospectives of The Golden Girls, which has stuck far more firmly in the popular imagination.)
  • For the most part, being the first show to have a legal abortion after Roe v. Wade right in the middle of the Feminist Movement was a huge deal. However, it seems more like Maude tends to get overshadowed by Arthur's and McClanahan's success on The Golden Girls, since The Golden Girls still has a huge periphery demographic of younger people, while Maude has somewhat faded from the TV landscape. On the other hand, the popularity of Golden Girls has likely inspired many viewers to check out Maude who wouldn't have given it a chance if not for Arthur and McClanahan.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Look, it's Dorothy and Blanche! But why is Blanche acting like Rose? Made even more apparent when we learn that The Golden Girls producers wanted McClanahan to play Rose and White to play Blanche; Bea Arthur, who had not planned to work on another sitcom after her 1983 vehicle for ABC, Amanda's, had bombed, wasn't interested in playing Dorothy under those conditions (calling it "Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann Nivens") until McClanahan informed her that she would be playing the vamp, and White the nitwit. "Now that sounds interesting", Arthur replied, and the rest is history.
  • Herb Edelman, who would later play Stan Zbornak on Bea Arthur's later series The Golden Girls, appears as Maude's co-worker in the third season episode "Maude the Boss".
  • Fred Grandy played Carol's boyfriend in the second season.
  • Michael Keaton appeared in the fifth season episode "Arthur's Crisis".
• Values Dissonance:
  • The episode where Walter, in a drunken rage, hits Maude and gives her a black eye. Yes, he's sorry and all that, but the way she's comforting him and telling him it's OK, she knows he didn't mean it.... for a character portrayed as a radical feminist, this seems pretty jarring.
  • There's a similar scene when she confronts the man who tried to rape her 31 years prior. He apologizes and claims that he found her very sexy. She starts smiling and blushing and acting flattered that the reason he assaulted her was because he found her too desirable to resist. Granted given her age and the era of that time (not too far off when Joan boasts to Peggy about having men follow her home to her apartment on the street as show of her sexual desirability), it's understandable.
  • In the episode where Arthur gets enraged when he catches Carol's son and his granddaughter "playing Doctor", the focus is on how Maude and Carol have more liberated ideas about sexual expression and curiosity about the human body. Now, the concern would be whether this game was consensual and the two would have defended sex as natural but also discussed with the boy about respecting boundaries. In the same episodes Arthur also rants several times about the government being "permeated by homosexuals" as a sign of the decay of moral society, something that sounds downright insane by modern standards, the other characters meanwhile just treat it as a drollery and reprimand Arthur for "getting off of subject".
• Values Resonance:
  • In response to Walter's dismissive attitude regarding her Near-Rape Experience 31 years prior, Maude angrily declares that what happened to her is not insignificant, nor are her feelings about it.
  • The third season episode "Maude's New Friend", in which Maude admires a local gay novelist, confronts her husband about his bigotry, and confronts her own preconceptions about gay people. The episode aired five years before the first gay pride march in Washington.

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