Parenting & Family Quote by Rue McClanahan

McClanahan is naming a kind of pop-cultural magic trick: smuggling grown-up truth into something that still plays as harmless fun. The dashes and self-corrections matter here. They mimic the careful calibration she describes, the constant testing of how far you can lean into a joke without tipping it into “blatant” territory that would trigger censorship, sponsor panic, or a network note. What sounds like modesty is really craft.

The key word is “remained.” It signals durability, a show engineered to survive different eras of taste and different viewers’ levels of knowledge. Kids “laugh at it” because the surface comedy is physical, rhythmic, character-driven. Adults laugh later because the same lines reveal a second track: sexual innuendo, social critique, and adult loneliness, all packaged as banter. The audience grows into the show, and the show grows sharper in retrospect.

There’s also a quiet flex in “So they tell me now.” She’s acknowledging the afterlife of television, long before streaming made rewatching a default habit. The joke isn’t just in the script; it’s in the time-delayed payoff. A line that slid past a child’s understanding becomes, years later, a revelation about what the culture used to let women say - as long as they said it smiling, sideways, and fast.

“Anything blatant” isn’t prudishness. It’s strategy: ambiguity as permission, double meanings as a loophole, and comedy as cover for telling the truth on a primetime stage.