#and the very first person Blanche falls for again is Dorothy. so of course she sees Rose as a threat the first time they meet

[hecatesbroom]

Apparently, today's brainrot of choice is a Golden Girls Sound of Music AU where Rose is Maria, Dorothy's the Captain, and Blanche is the Baroness, only that one scene where the Baroness visits Maria in her bedroom ends very differently & they end up in a polycule

[one-of-us-blog]

Yokel Hero (TGG, Season 4, Episode 4)

Today Eli is forced to watch and recap Yokel Hero, Episode 4 of the fourth season of The Golden Girls.  When Rose is nominated for her hometown’s highest honor, her friends are determined to help her win, no matter what it takes.  Will this ordeal end in triumphant victory, or shameful defeat?  Keep reading to find out…

As always, let me begin by commenting on Jon’s latest Doctor Who recap.  Who-ray, I am thrilled that you enjoyed The Doctor’s Wife, Cap!  I probably built it up too much beforehand, but I hoped that if anyone could bring you around to an Eleventh Doctor episode, it would be Mr. Neil Gaiman.  It isn’t my absolute favorite episode, but it’s certainly one of the best of this era, and I also loved seeing the TARDIS interact with the Doctor in a brand new way.  You have another two-parter on your hands next, and I’ll be curious to see how you feel about it.  But for now, it’s time for me to continue my journey in Miami.

Buttocks tight!

Episode written by Martin Weiss and Robert Bruce, directed by Terry Hughes

As the episode opens, Blanche, Rose, and Dorothy are returning home from a charity softball game on the hottest day of the year.  They are all exhausted, and unfortunately discover that their air conditioning is broken.  They head to the kitchen to call a repairman and have some ice cream, and discover Sophia exposing herself in front of the refrigerator in an attempt to cool down.  She already called the repairman, and that was three hours ago.  Rose receives some big news in the mail: she has been nominated for St. Olaf’s Woman of the Year award, the highest honor the town can bestow!  She clearly wants it bad, and heads off to list her achievements.  Meanwhile, the repairman arrives, and rats Sophia out for streaking in the neighbor’s sprinkler.

We jump forward a bit, and it’s still sweltering in the house.  Rose breaks into tears and flees into the kitchen, followed by the other girls.  She has been thinking about her life, and discovered that she is the most boring person alive; her accomplishments aren’t worth a damn.  Her friends attempt to encourage her, pointing out all the work she does helping people at the counseling center, and Sophia declares that everyone has a purpose (even if her message goes off course a bit).  It’s no use, however, and Rose is still pretty down on herself.  After she sulks off, Blanche and Rose take a look at her application for the award, and decide to punch up her achievements a bit.  There’s nothing wrong with a little embellishment, right?

Moving forward again, everyone is still attempting to cool down, and Rose has been talking to herself in front of a mirror to boost her self-esteem.  Suddenly, the St. Olaf Blue Ribbon Panel arrives at the front door.  The panel is composed of a group of triplets who look nothing alike, though the people back home don’t seem to notice.  They need to verify the details of Rose’s application with a face-to-face interview, and Rose goes to fetch refreshments while Dorothy and Blanche get nervous about what they’ve done.  But as they ask Rose questions, Dorothy and Blanche manage to smooth things over and cut the interview short, and Rose is named Woman of the Year.  Uff da!

Next, the girls are all on a plane ride to Rose’s ceremony.  It isn’t exactly a luxury flight, as St. Gustav doesn’t have much of an airport.  But hey, at least they don’t have to parachute into Beaver Falls, right?  The girls will have to switch to land transportation to make it to St. Olaf, however.  Sophia has a fond flashback of her first miserable apartment, and Rose comments that she is proud that her hometown is still a place populated by honest people living honest lives.  Blanche and Dorothy begin to feel guilty for being dishonest on Rose’s application.

After the plane ride (which didn’t go very well, as the gals have now lost their luggage), we are traveling by train.  Dorothy is concerned that the town’s strange logic seems to be making more sense to her as they draw near.  In a moment alone, Dorothy and Blanche discuss the fact that they need to tell Rose the truth, but this gets put on hold when the train goes through a mysterious tunnel and the gang briefly loses track of Sophia.

For the last leg of the journey, the crew is traveling in a straw-filled wagon, pulled by a jackass.  Despite their concerns regarding the town itself, Dorothy and Blanche have to agree that the view of the stars is quite beautiful.  Rose “calls” her friend Ingrid from the back of the wagon, and comments on the fact that she’s nervous about the ceremony.  The wagon driver realizes who she is, and says that he’s honored to be driving the woman who beat out Emma Immerhoffer, a woman who has served orphans and the homeless in St. Olaf.  Dorothy and Blanche finally fess up to their deeds, and Rose is so ashamed that she demands the driver stop the wagon so that she can call St. Olaf and tell them she’s not coming.

Back in Miami, Dorothy and Blanche are happy to be home, but Rose is pretty pissed.  Thankfully, we are almost out of airtime, so she forgives her friends immediately.  But we have just enough time for a last-minute Empty Nest crossover, as Dr. Harry Weston (the real star of the spin-off, not that chump from Empty Nests, the shitty backdoor pilot) shows up with his faithful dog, Dreyfuss.  While the gals were gone he saved their mail, and Blanche seizes the opportunity to flirt shamelessly and tell us all what a catch Harry is.  But wait!  A box has arrived from St. Olaf, and it’s the Woman of the Year trophy!  The committee decided to give the honor to Rose after all, since she demonstrated that she embodied the spirit of truth and honesty after admitting what had happened.  Well, that, and it turns out that Emma Immerhoffer was disqualified for having the bones of Mr. Immerhoffer in her closet.  The girls congratulate her, and they can hardly wait to peel back the foil on that trophy to enjoy the delicious milk chocolate.  Uff da!

The End.

The Season 4 hot streak continues!  This episode got pretty silly a handful of times, but that’s usually a given when St. Olaf is in any way involved in the actual plot, and everything about it was mostly charming and funny.  I’m sad that Rose made it to the threshold of the town she loves and had to turn around, but I suppose it’s for the best that we didn’t actually get to see the community, potentially ruining the magic.  I’m glad that there wasn’t a prolonged period of Rose being mad at the gals (we have seen that before), and I never got bored watching the episode.  The crossover with Empty Nest at the end was a bit forced, but didn’t really harm the episode, I suppose.  Overall, I would give Yokel Hero a score of 4 poofy hairdos out of 5.

Join us tomorrow, when Jon will be recapping The Rebel Flesh, the next episode of Doctor Who.  And I’ll be back on Tuesday with my take on Bang the Drum, Stanley, the next episode of The Golden Girls.  Until then, as always, thank you for being a friend, and for being One of Us!

[mredlich21]

You know the concept of “narrowcasting”?  Where you target your content to a tiny tiny audience?  Welcome to a very narrow cast version of Sunday posts!  Just for those of you who are both Indian film megafans, and Golden Girls fans! (also, unrelated, don’t forget to vote for the next tweetalong/watchalong movie on Friday’s post!)

For those of you who are still reading this, I will start by giving the main theoretical underpinnings for my concept of a Golden Girls feature film, and then 3 separate casting options because I just couldn’t decide!

Firstly, as I see The Golden Girls, each of the main four characters have different times in their life when they truly felt their best, when everything was perfect.  I think this is one of the best parts of how the show presents end of life, because most people do have those times at some point.  And when you are in your 50s/60s, those times are usually behind you.  And all you can do is refer back to them in stories and try to remind the people around you of what you once were.

For Rose, it was her childhood, they even give a little backstory to explain it with her early years in the orphanage, that just served to make the later years of her childhood after her family adopted her that much sweeter.  And she has never quite lost that adorable childish side of her.

  For Blanche, it was her young adulthood.  It’s established that her childhood was not that happy, she never felt as loved as her siblings or like she belonged anywhere.  But once she hit puberty and started attracting and being attracted to boys, everything fell into place.  And she had all the love and support she always wanted.  Which is why she has never quite lost that wild teenage girl feel to her.

  For Sophia, I think it is now.  Notice most of her stories of the past are made up.  She has no interest in her “real” past, she would rather live in the moment when she can be as rude and wild and irresponsible as she wants.

But for Dorothy, that time still hasn’t come.  She was an awkward child, she lost her young womanhood in marriage and kids, and now she is in late middle age, still unloved and lonely and trying to find her place.

  And therefore, my Hindi movie version will have Dorothy as the main character, as she tries to find her happy ending!  With Rose and Blanche and Sophia in supporting roles with their own little b-stories.  And all of this based firmly on real episodes of the show.

Blanche’s b-story first, because it is the simplest.  Blanche isn’t really about deep emotions and inner conflict, she’s there to give amazing one-liners and physical comedy.  And, in the Hindi version, obviously a sexy item song.  I want to do just a quick variation on the season 1 episode 9 story “Blanche and The Younger Man”.  As in the original, she will be asked out by a much younger man (let’s make him her dance instructor so we can have a steamy dance number).  She wears herself out getting ready for the date, and when it finally happens, she learns in the middle of dinner that he just wanted to spend time with her because she reminds him of his mother.

But, in my Hindi version, after her date leaves, the maitre’d/restaurant owner comes over and asks her out, because he is so struck by her beauty.  And while he isn’t quite as young as the original date, he is still a good 5-10 years younger than her.

  Rose’s b-story, I want to use a few of her interactions with Miles.  Their first meeting of course, at a community dance in episode 6, season 5 “Dancing in the Dark”.  They love to dance together, but she thinks he is too intelligent and sophisticated to be interested in her.  She embarrasses herself at a faculty party with his university colleagues and feels like he has more in common with Dorothy when they spend time as a group.  But, in the end, he convinces her that her beauty and sweetness and special Rose-ness is all he wants.

That can be the beginning of her story, but I want to add on a couple of bits in the middle, just so we see Rose again.  Maybe something with the episode where she gets sick of how cheap he is and goes out on a double date with Blanche just so she can go to a nice restaurant, and then Miles catches her and they end up talking it out?  I like all the cheapness jokes in that one.  Or else the one where Rose feels like Miles has become boring and they go skydiving at the end.

  And as usual, Sofia doesn’t get an actual story, she just hangs around and makes wise-cracks about everyone else’s stories.  And then gives words of wisdom at the very very end.

  Now, Dorothy’s story is the complicated one!  I am going to combine 4 separate episodes and 3 separate storylines to give her the ending she deserves.

First, there is season 1 episode 14 “That Was No Lady”.  Dorothy is passionately in love for the first time in her life.  She’s never felt like this before.  She and a fellow teacher are sneaking out for long lunches and meeting in hotel rooms in the middle of the day.  But then she finds out he is married and won’t leave his wife for the sake of the kids.  At first she continues the affair because she loves him too much.  But in the end, she realizes she doesn’t like what she has become.

Now, as I picture it, Dorothy in my Indian film version goes through this romance pretty quickly and early.  And Rose’s first meeting with Miles is scattered into the middle of it. And then Dorothy’s first story is over and she returns to form as a somewhat acerbic and entertainingly unhappy person.  At which point, she gets a call out of the blue from her ex-husband, the man who ruined her life, Stanley.

And now we go into the two part “There Goes the Bride” from season 6.  Stanley has returned, and he is different.  Considerate and mature and caring.  But still the man she was married to for 38 years as well, familiar and safe.  She agrees to marry him.  Only on the day of the wedding, he asks her to sign a prenup, showing that he still doesn’t appreciate her and everything she does for him.  INTERVAL

Post interval, we have Blanche’s little filler story with the younger man while people get popcorn and find their seats again.  And then we go straight into a Dorothy story by a back way.  It seems like a continuation of Blanche, she is all excited about her new lover and doesn’t want to entertain her uncle who is coming into town, her father’s youngest brother.  So she tricks him into going out with Dorothy and they have a terrible time together.  Until they decide to play a trick on Blanche and pretend to be in love just to mess with her!  And then in the end, they really do fall in love of course.  But when they tell the news to Blanche, she refuses to accept the relationship, Dorothy is just too different to fit into her family, and to marry her uncle and become her step-aunt.  Her uncle is willing to live with her objections, but Dorothy can’t go against her friend, even if it means breaking her own heart.

Which brings us to “Cheaters” (season 5 episode 22) in which the married lover returns!  This seems like her happy ending, the first man she ever really fell in love with is now free and wants to marry her.  It’s all perfect!  Except that wise Sofia keeps giving him a hard time, and Rose and Blanche aren’t really sure either.  And then my little twist on the plot, in the end Blanche tells her that she is too good for him, she deserves a man who isn’t just marrying the first woman who comes along because he doesn’t want to be single after a divorce.  And while talking, Blanche realizes that Dorothy is wonderful like that and she was blind not to see it!  And rushes out to call her uncle and have him fly down and propose again.

And finally, Dorothy gets her happily ever after!  Married to a wealthy important man who adores her, about to start a new wonderful life, leaving her friends behind her.  And, of course, Rose and Miles and Blanche and her new beau are at the wedding too, and Sofia even gets a vision of her dead Sal in the big wedding dance number (think “Bole Chudiyan”).

(In my version, Dorothy’s wedding dress is considerably less hideous)

Beyond the general plot tweaks, it would clearly be set in Goa instead of Miami.  Rose would be from rural Tamil Nadu instead of rural Wisconsin.  Sofia would be a Punjabi partition refugee instead of an Italian immigrant, and Dorothy would have grown up in Delhi instead of New York.  And Blanche would be..what?  A local Christian Goan, I guess!

So, obviously, this is the perfect movie.  But who to cast?!?!?!?!?  I have been over and over this, and I am still not happy with all my choices.  And I had to come up with multiple casting configurations to make it all work (oh, and remember Estelle Getty was the same age as the others just wearing make-up!  So all 4 actresses should be the same generation):

Really really old classic 60s-70s actresses cast:

Blanche: Saira Banu

(I feel strongly that Blanche has to be played by an actress that was truly stunningly beautiful in her youth, just like Rue McClanahan was)

Rose: Waheeda Rahman

(Southern, sweet face)

Dorothy: Sharmila Tagore

(Confident, powerful personality)

Sofia: Helen

(So cute!)

Blanche’s younger man: Shahrukh

Blanche’s slightly younger man: Jackie Shroff

Miles: Dharmendra

Dorothy’s Married Boyfriend: Prem Chopra

(Obviously, he’s always the bad guy)

Dorothy’s ex: Amitabh

Dorothy’s final husband: Dilip Kumar

(Look how good they looked together!  Also, I’m pretending he doesn’t have severe dementia and can still act for this casting)

Sofia’s Sal in a vision: Salim Khan, obviously

  Kind of old 80s era cast:

Blanche: Shabana Azmi

(Remember, has to be stunningly beautiful in her youth!)

Rose: Sridevi

(Obviously she also fulfills the “stunningly beautiful” Blanche requirement, but Rose is a much harder role.  You need to be able to play silly-but-lovable, which Sridevi is particularly good at)

Dorothy: Ratna Pathak (so excited for her to get a leading romantic role!)

Sofia: Kirron Kher

Blanche’s younger man: Hrithik

Blanche’s slightly younger man: Shahrukh

Miles: Amitabh!  He is the perfect impressive professor type!

Dorothy’s married boyfriend: Naseeruddin Shah. I know, you think he would be the husband, but I think he can pull off charming but weak better than anyone else.

Dorothy’s ex-husband: Boman Irani. Perfect as a the lovable yutz!

(I don’t know what’s happening in this photo but I love it)

Dorothy’s final husband: Jackie Shroff. The perfect man, always.

Sofia’s Sal in a vision: Anupum Kher, of course.

  Really too young for these roles 90s edition:

Blanche: Madhuri

(Just in case we needed proof that she was stunningly beautiful as a young woman)

Rose: Juhi Chawla

Dorothy: Dimple Kapadia

(I know she seems older than the others, but she isn’t really.  Was just launched a lot younger)

Sofia: Rani Mukherjee (picture like in Dil Bole Hadippa.  Heavy make-up just frees something insane inside of her!)

Blanche’s younger man: Tiger Shroff?  But really, who is too young for Madhuri?

(Most importantly, he can dance really well!  I want my Madhuri item numbers!)

Blanche’s slightly younger man: Ranbir Kapoor

(I fully believe that he would fund and produce this movie himself, if we gave him a chance to play opposite Madhuri)

Miles: Shahrukh!  I want to see him playing a glasses wearing professor

(Plus, he and Juhi always have a great time together)

Dorothy’s married boyfriend: Rishi Kapoor, clearly

Dorothy’s ex-husband: Boman Irani (still the perfect yutz)

(Maybe we give him a bad wig to help with the characterization?)

Dorothy’s final husband: Sunny Deol!  Or Jackie Shroff?  I can’t decide.

(Who seems better with her?)

  So, which cast is best?  Or would you mix and match between them?  And are there better options I missed for certain roles?

Silly Sunday Speculative Post: Golden Girls Edition! You know the concept of "narrowcasting"?  Where you target your content to a tiny tiny audience?  Welcome to a very narrow cast version of Sunday posts!  

[rachelkaser]

Stay Golden Sunday: Blind Ambitions

Rose’s blind sister Lily visits and might need more help than she’s willing to admit. The Girls have a garage sale.

Picture It...

The Girls are having a barbecue on the lanai with their guest, Rose’s sister Lily. Lily lost her sight six months ago, and is still adjusting while Rose tries not to be a mother hen. Blanche reminisces about Southern barbecues and Lily tells a story about their St. Olafian camping trips. The Girls discuss Lily’s adjustment -- she claims she can cope with most things now, and she even still watches television. When Sophia grouses about their TV being broken, Lily gives them the idea of having a garage sale to get money for a new one.

DOROTHY: Listen, mom, we cannot afford a new TV. We’re using the household money to repair the roof and repave the driveway. SOPHIA: Great, and what am I supposed to do while every other old lady on the block is watching Cosby? DOROTHY: Well, you can sit in the new driveway and hope that an amusing Black family drops by.

Later, the Girls are gathering together the things they could sell at a garage sale. Dorothy pulls out an old doll, Blanche has a hippy outfit she wore to Woodstock (the movie), and Rose finds a pair of candlesticks she decides to keep. Lily offers to put them in the alcove, and tells Rose not to be so protective. Rose apologizes -- while discreetly moving aside a lamp Lily was about to walk into. Lily then announces she’s going to her room and Dorothy and Blanche scramble to move a half-dozen boxes out of her way without her noticing, and she triumphantly declares, when she makes it to the hallway, that she doesn’t need anyone’s help.

The next day, Lily is cooking bacon on the stove, and when she turns away for a moment, the pan catches fire. She cries out for help, and Rose and Blanche come rushing in, with Rose putting out the fire with an extinguisher. Dorothy runs in as Blanche tells Lily she shouldn’t have been cooking on the stove. Lily apologizes but says it was just an accident as she sulks out. Blanche and Dorothy confront Rose, saying Lily isn’t as independent as she’s saying she is, and she might need to go back to the school for the blind, despite dropping out due to alleged boredom. Rose agrees to talk to her.

LILY: I remember when you were six years old and dad got you that puppy for your birthday. You worried because you thought her paws were too big and that the other dogs would laugh at her. ROSE: Well they did! They used to bark and point at her! LILY: Everybody pointed at her. You made her wear a bonnet and matching booties.

Rose goes to her room, where Lily is staying, and Lily reassures Rose that she’s fine. She says Rose is a worrier by nature, and Rose says not to change the subject. She tells Lily that she’s trying to do much by herself, and the independence of which she’s so proud isn’t serving her now. Lily finally breaks and tells Rose she just wants things to go back to the way they were, but they’re not going to. Rose tells her she needs help, and Lily begs Rose to come back home and live with her before bursting into tears.

Later, Rose tells the Girls that she’s seriously thinking about moving with Lily to Chicago, but both Blanche and Rose are skeptical that it’ll actually help Lily. Dorothy accuses her of doing it out of guilt, and Blanche relates a story of how she lost a male friend because her husband made her feel guilty about it. Sophia has a slightly more relevant story about how she struggled to get back on her feet after her stroke. It took Dorothy pushing her to be independent for her to actually make the effort, and Sophia tells Rose she needs to help her sister “to help herself.” Rose goes off to think some more.

DOROTHY: *after Blanche rebuffs a customer’s offer of $1.25 for her Elvis shakers* Blanche, I can’t believe that you did that! I mean, they’re just a silly salt and pepper shaker. BLANCHE: The King is gone, Dorothy. But we must cherish the things he left behind. His movies, his songs... DOROTHY: And his seasonings.

At the garage sale, every time someone shows an interest in one of the Girls’ things, they react badly. Rose isn’t willing to give up her teddy, Mr. Longfellow; Blanche believes her Elvis salt and pepper shakers must be cherished; and Dorothy squabbles with a teenager over a hockey stick used by Bobby Hull. They come to the conclusion that they’re not willing to part with any of their things, and decide to just pay for a new TV in installments. Blanche and Dorothy go to shoo out their customers.

Lily enters and tells Rose how much she appreciates Rose being willing to help her. She asks Rose to get her a glass of water, and Rose freezes before reminding Lily that she’s capable of getting a glass of water — and if she isn’t, she needs professional help that Rose can’t give. She’s made up her mind: She’s not going to Chicago. Lily gets angry and accuses Rose of turning her back on her, storming out.

DOROTHY: *after the third time Rose leaves the house and returns* Come on now. Come on now, get out of here. You’ve come back more times than Shirley MacLaine.

Two months later, Rose is on her way to visit Lily. She’s sure that Lily is going to pressure her into living with her again and is nervous because it was hard enough to refuse the first time. The Girls encourage her to stick to her guns. She leaves, but not without kissing her friends goodbye. When Rose arrives at the airport later, she thanks the flight attendant for all the extras they provided her (including pillows, Dramamine, and 10 packs of smokehouse almonds).

Rose is surprised to see Lily at the airport, waiting for her. Lily introduces her seeing-eye dog, Becky, who Rose of course melts over (side note: I don’t think you’re supposed to pet service dogs the way Rose does here, but considering the dog is likely not an actual service dog, I’ll excuse it). Lily apologizes to Rose, saying Rose did the right thing by pushing her. She went back to the school for the blind, and is finally in a place where she can take care of herself -- with Becky’s help, of course. She and Becky take the lead to the baggage claim, with Lily tossing off a one-liner that has Rose a bit concerned:

ROSE: I’m so proud of you. LILY: Oh this is nothing! What till you see me drive home!

“If it’s a choice between the two of them, let the blind one make change.”

After Blanche and Dorothy had their turns with sisterly conflict episodes, it’s now Rose’s turn. This time it’s not long-standing animosity or bubbling resentment that sets the two against each other, but a new life change that prompts an adaptation in the relationship. As depressing as it may be, I think Lily and Rose might be the healthiest sister relationship in the show’s history, not that that’s saying much. Lily is one of the more memorable guest characters on the show, mostly because she’s given room to have complex emotions.

In the episode, Lily is played by Polly Holiday, whose main claim to fame is playing Flo “Kiss My Grits” Castleberry on the sitcom Alice -- a catchphrase I’ve always found a little baffling, but at least it’s memorable. If you’d asked me based on what little I’d seen of Alice if she’d be capable of giving one of the most memorable guest performances on Golden Girls ever, I admit I’d have been a little skeptical -- and I’d be wrong, because she really brings it. It’s not often an actor can be in a scene with Betty White and completely command all the attention (and probably some of the credit goes to White for being a great scene partner).

SOPHIA: Why are we cooking outdoors? DOROTHY: Ma, we’re having a barbecue. SOPHIA: You know what they call cooking meat over an open fire in Sicily? DOROTHY: No, what? SOPHIA: Poverty.

I appreciate what the episode does, making Lily an . . . well, I don’t want to say antagonist, but definitely the person who’s causing the conflict. She’s not actually dealing with her problems, but she wants to look like she is because she’s too proud to ask for help -- and when she finally does, it’s from a person who’s not qualified to help her. The first time I watched this episode, I was a naïve youngster who didn’t understand why Rose didn’t go help Lily -- I felt that I would, under the circumstances. Now that I’m an adult, I understand better why that situation is untenable, because Rose would have to quit her job and, given that she can’t really teach Lily to be independent, would never be able to have her own life because Lily would be dependent on her.

The show is also not shy about showing how Lily’s lack of control over her situation is making her lash out, and that this isn’t excusable: During the pivotal scenes between Rose and Lily, Lily does everything she can to deflect taking responsibility for herself. She tells Rose, “You’d be worried if you couldn’t find anything to worry about” when Rose comes to check on her (keep in mind, she’d been screaming for help mere minutes earlier), begs Rose to fix the problem for her, and finally escalates to accusing Rose of abandoning her when Rose tries to get her to take care of herself.

DOROTHY: Will you look at this? I got this doll on my 10th birthday. I can’t believe I’ve kept her all these years. *Sophia enters behind her* Her hair’s falling out, her clothes are all worn, she smells of mothballs... SOPHIA: Hey, I may not be Ann-Margret, but I’m still your mother!

There is a difference between toughing something out and truly coping with it, and I think anyone who’s gone through a major life change would agree. The difference lies in confronting the reality of the situation. For most of the episode, Lily adamantly refuses to do that, and Rose enables her -- the other Girls recognize that and try to help Rose see it. For me, the best (and hardest) part of the episode to watch is that little moment in the kitchen when Rose says Lily is very independent, and Dorothy firmly says, “No she’s not, Rose.”

I’m not disabled myself, so I looked up details on common reactions to late-onset disabilities. We never know how Lily became blind -- if it was something that had been coming on for a while or if it was the result of some kind of trauma -- but I found an article on the Royal National Institute for Blind People’s website that clarified what Lily is going through: Grief. If you watch closely, you can see Lily’s going through a few different stages of grief -- denial, anger, and fear. While her situation is resolved mostly off-camera, it’s nice to see that she’s allowed to have those emotions.

ROSE: *about Lily* She served three terms on the city council, and she was the first woman in St. Olaf’s to ever have a pilot’s license. BLANCHE: Oh really? Well we have something in common, Lily. I was the first woman in my hometown ever to have a pilot! DOROTHY: Blanche’s bed is next to the X-15 at the Space and Aviation Museum.

Still, as much as I like the episode, I do think there are a few parts where the writing isn’t as strong as it could be. Most of the episode is tipped on the serious side rather than the comedic side. The garage sale scene is really funny, but doesn’t make sense. Presumably the Girls went through all their stuff before putting it out on the lanai, to confirm they wanted to sell it and to price it. Why is it that only on the day of the sale do they decide they want to keep all their bric-a-brac? Also, I’m not exactly sure how they plan to get a new TV with a $60 down payment and paying “the rest of it” off on time. Side note: The scene of them frantically clearing Lily’s path of boxes is funny, but it’s really their fault for leaving boxes of stuff lying around while a blind guest is trying to navigate their house.

While the episode is balanced really well between the four Girls, I think Blanche’s major part of the episode -- her extended story about her male friend Andrew (an excellent lover . . . no, riveter) -- doesn’t really serve either the episode or the scene it’s in, which is a recurring problem with first-season episodes. Her anecdotes from the opening scene about barbecues with the Darcy triplets (Hank, Beau, and . . . Dove?) are much funnier and feel more appropriate to the scene.

BLANCHE: *about Sophia’s stroke* But you got better. SOPHIA: Yeah, because [Dorothy] stopped coddling me. She screamed, she hollered, day and night. She made me do my therapy. She forced me to rebuild my life because she knew I could. And for that I’ll always be grateful. DOROTHY: Aw, thanks, Ma. SOPHIA: I only have one question: Now that I’m better, why do you still scream and holler at me?

Also, bit of dubious-but-fun trivia for you: I already said that Holliday is great as Lily. That said, she allegedly wasn’t the first choice for the role. If the information in Golden Girls Forever is correct, the person who the producers originally wanted to play Lily, the actress whose name was thrown around early in the process . . . was Lucille Ball. Yes, that Lucille Ball.

Keep in mind I couldn’t find a secondary source for this information. Contrary to the impression I probably give, I don’t take Golden Girls Forever as gospel and I generally do try to confirm what’s written via some other source. If I can’t, I don’t want to present it to you as fact. So allegedly the reason Ball declined the role was that she didn’t want to do too many serious roles, and I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad Polly Holliday got the role instead of Lucille Ball. If she had, I think the whole episode, including the dramatic scenes, would have been less about the characters and performances, and more about “OMG, that’s Lucy!”

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰 (three cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite part of the episode:

Sophia shows how much patience she has for haggling:

CUSTOMER: How much? SOPHIA: Two bucks. Get wild. Treat yourself. CUSTOMER: Nah, I’ll give you a dollar-fifty. SOPHIA: What does this look like, Baghdad? *pulls vase out of her hands* Get the hell out of here! DOROTHY: Ma, that’s no way to sell things! SOPHIA: Hey, go to Neiman Marcus sometime, see if they treat you any better.

[rachelkaser]

Stay Golden Sunday: Joust Between Friends

Blanche invites Dorothy to work with her at the museum, and it doesn’t go as well as she hoped. Rose rescues a lost dog.

Picture It...

Rose comes home with an adorable sheepdog in tow. She tells a bemused Sophia that she found him lost at the supermarket and she’s going to find his owner. Sophia has to remind her that Dorothy hates dogs. Blanche enters and says the dog is cute, but isn’t happy about Rose wanting to keep him until she finds his owner. Rose promises to keep him under control, and Blanche relents, but she too warns Rose that Dorothy has to agree as well.

BLANCHE: Oh well, look at the cute little puppy dog. Hello there, honey! Oh, he likes me! He must be a male. ROSE: Then you don’t mind if he stays here until I find his owner? BLANCHE: *still smiling* Mind? Mind? Of course I mind. You can’t keep that filthy beast in my house.

Dorothy enters, frustrated as she can’t find part-time work. She’s required to take a ten-week leave as part of an experimental year-round school system (which, as I learned from Lauren and Sarah of the Enough Wicker podcast, was a real thing that was being tried at the time this episode was written), but she still needs money, but can’t find anything. Blanche offers her a job at her museum, and says she won’t take no for an answer. Rose presents the dog to Dorothy, who’s initially resistant and reiterates that she hates dogs, but agrees to let Rose keep him in the house temporarily.

Sometime later, Dorothy is with Blanche in the office of Mr. Allen, her boss at the museum. He’s very distracted and barely paying attention, and he says it’s because he was having an affair with his best friend’s wife and was caught (it doesn’t make any more sense in context -- I’m just as confused as you are). Blanche talks about Dorothy in glowing terms, and Mr. Allen seems to catch on, but he is again distracted and rubber-stamps Dorothy’s employment with an “Oh sure, I don’t care.”

A week later, Dorothy confronts Rose about the dog still being in the house, and Sophia reveals she shared a sherry with him the night before. Dorothy insists that Rose has to take the dog to the pound and soon. Blanche enters and notes that Dorothy is doing almost as much at the museum as she is. Mr. Allen calls for Dorothy to compliment her on her work, and Blanche starts to seethe. The dog enters and sits down next to the bottle of sherry.

Back at the museum, Sophia enters Blanche and Dorothy’s shared office to deliver Dorothy’s packed lunch, and clashes with Mr. Allen when he behaves very strangely to her (though the tipping point is a misunderstanding about Gaugins). Dorothy hustles her out, and while she’s gone, Mr. Allen breaks some news to Blanche. She was initially supposed to plan the closing banquet of an art show that she’s put together, and she was very excited about it, but now Mr. Allen is giving the task to Dorothy. Now Blanche is really upset.

DOROTHY: *when the dog won’t leave the room* Aw come on, now this isn’t fair. Come on now, I’m not falling for those big sad eyes and floppy ears and wet nose. The last time I did, it ended in divorce. And Stan couldn’t even catch a Frisbee in his teeth.

That night, at home, the dog creeps into Dorothy’s room and curls up in bed with her. She wakes up and starts having a conversation with him, revealing that she never really got over the death of her first dog and that’s why she’s so hostile. She catches herself and goes to the kitchen to insist that Rose get rid of the dog, and Rose goes to remove the dog from Dorothy’s room. Blanche comes in and confronts Dorothy about taking the banquet, and Dorothy responds that she was assigned it by their mutual boss and Blanche is being childish for taking it personally. It ends with Rose announcing that the dog is sick as they storm out.

The next day, at the museum, we discover that the reason Mr. Allen assigned the banquet to Dorothy is because it’s actually a surprise party to celebrate Blanche. Blanche enters at that moment, still extremely hostile and throwing every possible insult Dorothy’s way. Dorothy finally snaps and tells Blanche that she’s hurting her feelings by behaving this way. Blanche realizes how she’s been acting and apologizes to Dorothy, who accepts.

BLANCHE: You no-good, back-stabbing Jezebel, I demand you show me that paper! DOROTHY: I’m sorry, flattery won’t work!

Mr. Allen chooses the wrong moment to enter and mysteriously give Dorothy some paperwork, retreating to his office before the fireworks start. Blanche asks Dorothy what it is, and Dorothy can’t say without revealing the truth, so she tries to deflect. Blanche gets angrier and finally goes back to yelling out and insulting Dorothy, before finally storming out in a fury. Later, at home, Dorothy tells Sophia that she’s still upset about how things went down with Blanche, and Sophia tries to convince her to reveal the truth.

Blanche enters and says one of her more iconic insults to Dorothy. Sophia takes charge and reveals that the banquet is in her honor, as she never agreed to keep the secret. Blanche, shocked, apologizes again to Dorothy, and they make up. Rose comes home happy: She found the dog’s owner. Dorothy seems happy, then starts to cry. She confesses the truth to them: She actually loves dogs, and she’s going to miss the sheepdog. Rose, happy, goes to the door to reveal she brought home a whole pack of other dogs from the animal shelter.

“I was married for 45 years, and I never even saw my husband’s Gaugins!”

We get the second episode of Blanche and Dorothy clashing -- this time, the conflict is the more Bechdel-friendly work-based conflict, though I do think the source of the conflict is still a man, just not a man either is interested in romantically. Meanwhile, Rose gets the first of her many, many animals in the series and predictably the other Girls aren’t as enthused -- except Sophia, strangely. It’s a hard episode to rate, because I hate seeing my favorite Girls fight, especially over something so avoidable, but I also like seeing the actresses get to show off complex emotions.

DOROTHY: *after Rose spends several minutes “talking” for the dog* Boy, do you believe this? SOPHIA: Nah, I saw her lips move.

The center of the conflict in the A-plot is that Blanche is upset that Dorothy, who takes part-time work at the museum where Blanche works (and at Blanche’s insistence), appears to be better at her job than she is. I like seeing Blanche have something she’s proud of that’s not related to her appeal to men (picking up pencils in low-cut blouses in front of her boss notwithstanding). It’s not something that happens often, but it helps round out her character that she does have something she loves and does well besides sex. It’s also totally believable that she’d react poorly when her dominance in that field is challenged. This isn’t the only time in the series Blanche will react that way, nor will it be her last clash with Dorothy.

Dorothy, for the most part, is a passive player in the A-plot. She’s put in a big no-win situation by first Blanche, then Mr. Allen -- Blanche insists that she work at the museum without considering how it’ll feel to be working with her, while Mr. Allen puts her in charge of the banquet while swearing her to secrecy without considering that she lives with Blanche. I like that she plays a more active role in the B-plot, because even though she’s at the center of the A-plot conflict, she doesn’t do much besides just absorb Blanche’s negativity and Mr. Allen’s cluelessness.

SOPHIA: And now that you feel like the dirt you wanted my daughter to eat, I think I’ll go into the kitchen and have a nice hard candy.

Out of everything in this episode, Mr. Allen is the strangest part. I’m honestly not sure what they were going for with his character. His first scene, he’s all spacey because he was caught in bed with his friend’s wife, and he also apparently gropes Blanche at the museum Christmas parties -- yeah, there’s a joke that hasn’t aged well one tiny little bit. He’s weirdly condescending to Sophia when she arrives, talking to her like she’s a child. And his idea of honoring the work Blanche does at the museum is not giving her a raise or anything like that, but to reassign part of her own exhibition from her to a temp worker to flip it to a banquet in her honor.

Aside from the fact that he does it in the most clumsy way possible that all but guarantees Blanche will spend the whole lead-up to the banquet angry and frustrated -- and personally, this is why I hate surprise parties, because part of the inherent setup is that the person being honored spends a whole day thinking people have forgotten the special occasion -- I have a question: What was he going to do if they hadn’t hired Dorothy? Remember, she was a temp worker who’d only been there a week, and he was barely paying attention during the job interview. If she hadn’t appeared, who was he going to have planning that banquet? Because I can tell you just from his five mins of screen time that it wasn’t going to be him.

ROSE: Dorothy, now don’t be upset. The poor little thing was lost. He followed me home. DOROTHY: Oh come on, Rose, you drive to the market. How did he follow you home? In a taxi?

As for the B-plot, we get Rose’s first dog. We know the character, a born farm girl, has a soft spot for animals, and this is the first time we see her insisting on bringing home an animal. It’s not as bad here as it is in some later episodes, because she’s only keeping the dog to find his owner, but she still has a problem with asking forgiveness, rather than permission. I’m not sure if they intend to keep all the dogs who appear at the end of the episode, but at least the actresses got to play with dogs on set for while. This episode feels like one massive apology to everyone after the mink-breeding subplot at the beginning of the season.

Dorothy’s role as the antagonist of the B-plot is a little strange, as she’s initially supposed to be a dog-hater, and then we find out in the end of the episode that she actually loves dogs, and apparently never got over her heartbreak at the death of her first dog, Wawa. I mean... sure, I guess. Seems a bit odd that being so deeply attached to one dog would lead you to shun all other dogs. That’s against some kind of dog owner ethos, isn’t it? Whatever. The moment when Dorothy realizes she’s basically had a whole therapy session with a snoozing dog is still one of the funniest of the episode.

As is becoming usual for Sophia, she plays support to both plots, being friendly with the dog -- including giving him sherry, which you shouldn’t do, as too much alcohol can be lethally poisonous for dogs (more so than with humans, anyway). She seems like the only sane one in the A-plot, calling out Mr. Allen for being weird, and being the one to tell Blanche the truth. I choose to believe she did it out of protectiveness for Dorothy, as she wasn’t just going to sit there and watch Blanche insult her. Either way, if she can’t be a main part of the episode, she plays a great supporting role in both plots.

Just to wrap up, here’s some trivia for you: Remember when I said that Lucille Ball was once considered for a role on the show -- specifically, Rose’s blind sister Lily, the role that eventually went to Polly Holliday? She turned that role down, but she did pay a visit to the set of The Golden Girls, according to the book Golden Girls Forever (which calls it the "sitcom equivalent of a Papal visit”). She sat in the studio audience and watched them film an episode, and it was this one! So whenever you hear the studio audience laughing along, be aware that one of the voices you’re hearing probably belongs to Lucy.

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰 (three cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite Part of the Episode:

You know what it is: