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rachelkaser · 1 year ago

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Stay Golden Sunday: Golden Moments, Part 1

Sophia announces her intentions of moving in with her son Phil and his family. The Girls reminisce about the good times while trying to convince her to stay.

Picture It...

Blanche and Dorothy are in the kitchen when Rose enters with a tin of cat food behind her back. She’s been feeding the strays outside. Sophia enters and casually announces that she’s moving out. The Girls demand she explain herself, and she says she got off the phone with her son, Phil. His wife left him and took four of his six kids with her. Sophia intends to go live with Phil and help him raise the remaining two. Dorothy criticizes Sophia for trying to solve Phil’s problems and, when Sophia tries to counter about Dorothy’s problems, Dorothy reminds her why she moved there...

SOPHIA: Boy, something smells good in here! What’s for lunch? BLANCHE: It’s cat food, Sophia. SOPHIA: Is that seafood medley? ROSE: Yes it is! SOPHIA: They used to feed that to us every Sunday at the home. DOROTHY: Man, they did not make you eat cat food at Shady Pines. SOPHIA: I didn’t say they made us eat it . . . you had the option to go hungry.

Clip from “The Engagement”: [The] doorbell rings, and Dorothy answers to see her mother Sophia Petrillo, who says that her nursing home burned down. As Blanche has to explain to Rose, Sophia’s cutting words are the result of her stroke destroying her inhibitions . . . Harry arrives and schmoozes all of the ladies, though Sophia is not impressed.

The Girls ask why Sophia can’t just visit Phil, and tell her she won’t have any privacy or rest as she, Phil, and his two sons will be living in a trailer. Sophia says she doesn’t get any sleep or privacy anyway thanks to the Girls invading each other’s rooms all the time. | Clip from “On Golden Girls”: [Dorothy is staying in Sophia’s room.] They argue over the amount of topical ointments Sophia’s wearing, and the hacking sounds she makes as she’s sleeping.

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Clip from “Isn’t It Romantic”: In her room that night, Dorothy consults with Sophia about her feelings on gay people. Sophia says she wouldn’t love her children any less if they were gay. Dorothy eventually confides that Jean thinks she’s in love with Rose. Sophia immediately starts cracking up at the thought of someone falling for “Little Miss Muffet,” which attracts the attention of Blanche. Sophia tells her Jean is a lesbian. It takes a while for Blanche to catch on, but eventually she does. She’s confused by the idea that anyone wouldn’t be attracted to men, but she says she only cares that Jean is happy. Then they hit her with the other news about Rose. Blanche is indignant … that Jean would prefer Rose over her.

Clip from “Bedtime Story”: Sophia’s the only one in the house with an electric blanket to get them through the night . . . They all cuddle up in bed together. Sophia silences their complaining about which side of the bed they’re on and Dorothy agrees that she needs to go to work early. Rose suddenly remembers that she needs to say her prayers, to the rest of the Girls’ disbelief. She kneels down and thanks God for the other Girls and how they keep her warm on a cold night. When the prayer starts getting too lengthy, a deep voice suddenly tells Rose to get into bed. Blanche leans over and congratulates Dorothy, who mutters back to a terrified Blanche that it wasn’t her.

BLANCHE: Well, maybe we have all dated our share of losers, but I, personally, have had my share of winners, too. SOPHIA: Please, you’ve ridden more winners than Willie Shoemaker.

Sophia again says she’s certain about moving in with Phil, criticizing his wife for not appreciating him. Dorothy says Phil has always had terrible taste, but Sophia reminds them they’ve all dated some losers. | Clip from “Blanche and the Younger Man”: Blanche arrives home with her aerobics instructor, a young Harry Hamlin-circa-Clash of the Titans-lookalike named Dirk. He asks if they can go out to dinner, and Blanche is flattered.

Clip from “Forgive Me, Father”: Frank quickly realizes that Dorothy didn’t know he was a priest . . . the other Girls hustle out to let her talk to Frank, who says he assumed Dorothy knew that he was a priest. They’re both embarrassed, despite the assertion that they can still be friends, and make awkward conversation. Clip from “‘Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas”: Blanche made them all a calendar called The Men of Blanche’s Boudoir, featuring naughty images of some of her more special paramours.

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Clip from “A Little Romance”: Blanche and Dorothy want to know who [Rose’s] new squeeze is, and she says he’s a psychiatrist at her grief center named Jonathan Newman. She’s strangely evasive when the other Girls ask when they can meet him. . . The bell rings again, and Dorothy answers this time. Now the caller gets to introduce himself: Dr. Jonathan Newman. Dorothy’s initially disconcerted to see he’s a little person, but quickly composes herself.

Blanche, however, thoroughly embarrasses herself by accusing Rose of hiring a little person to “teach her a lesson.” (Apparently not one in sensitivity.) Dorothy takes Blanche away to collect herself, and Blanche is determined to be a good hostess from then, but flubs it when offering Jonathan shrimp. | Back in the kitchen, the Girls ask Sophia if there’s anything they can do to convince her to stay. She says her mind is made up and she’s leaving the next day.

SOPHIA: My baby needs me. DOROTHY: What about me, Ma? SOPHIA: You’ve always been able to take care of yourself. You don’t need me. BLANCHE: Alright, what about me? SOPHIA: You were always strong and independent even before I got here. You don’t need me. ROSE: What about me? SOPHIA: You? You need the Wizard of Oz.

“With the right woman behind him, he could’ve had a real diamond in his front tooth.”

We’re almost to the end of Season 3, and we’ve finally gotten our first clip show. Just to be clear, episodes that feature newly filmed footage of past events are flashback episodes, while episodes that feature previously filmed stuff are clip shows. Presumably these episodes were made so that the show’s cast and crew could get a couple of weeks of minimal work, and in that spirit I’ve decided that, when we cover clip shows, I will copy-paste my own analysis of the clips from past Stay Golden Sunday posts. I’ll also include links. I’ve already summarized the scenes in question, so I might as well use those.

These clip shows are all two-parters, and each of the next three seasons will have them -- Season 4 & 5 end with clip shows, and they comprise the penultimate episodes of Season 6 (which ends with the Henny Penny episode instead). I suspect that the crew discovered that the shorter filming days these episodes afforded them made for a good way to end a season. This episode’s framing device takes place entirely within the kitchen over the course of maybe an hour of conversation. Not to diminish the challenges of television work, but that’s gotta be one of the easier things they’ve filmed for this show.

BLANCHE: Whatcha hiding behind your back? ROSE: Nothing. DOROTHY: What smells so awful? ROSE: It’s a new fragrance I’m wearing. DOROTHY: I’m almost sure I don’t have to ask this, but you are aware that toilet water comes in a bottle?

This is not the first time they’ve tried to use one of the Girls moving out to try and give the episode some stakes. This is the first time they’ve ended an “episode” without resolving the matter. These clip shows usually aired as a single, hour-long episode, but the first half usually ends on a mini-cliffhanger to be resolved in the second half. It gives us a glimpse of what the GG writers can do with a little more space -- these glimpses are usually better served in two parters like “Sick and Tired” and “Home Again Rose,” which we’ll get to in later seasons.

First, let’s tackle the framing device. Sophia once again reminds the audience that, while she lives with Dorothy, she has two other children who sometimes need her attention. However, unlike Gloria, who invited Sophia to live with her to give her a luxurious lifestyle, Phil apparently wants Sophia to live with him to help him take care of two of his teenage children. I know Sophia’s a devoted mother, but if she didn’t take the former up on her offer, I think she’d be kidding herself to think she’d go live with the latter.

DOROTHY: Ma, the four of us have lived together for a long time. Now how can you just walk in her and announce that you’re leaving? SOPHIA: Well, Warden, I could make a break for it. But I’m afraid you’d shoot me going over the wall.

Also, I hate to be negative towards Phil, but the things they’ve mentioned about his family thus far paint a weird picture. He and his wife Angela (or “Big Sally” as Sophia calls her) have at least six kids -- though Sophia said ten in an earlier episode -- and live in a trailer despite his wife being a welder who works all day. And Sophia estimates that two of her grandchildren will take at least another ten years to graduate high school, despite them being 14 (and apparently both are on parole and can’t cross state lines), and one of her other grandsons already failed animal grooming school. Though one of her granddaughters did get married earlier in the season, so I suppose it’s not all bad. But seriously, what is going on with Phil and his family?

Moving on to the clips themselves, they appear to be divided up in to three segments ordered by length. The first “segment” is just a clip from the pilot that shows how Sophia came to live at the house following Shady Pines burning down. I realize that, in the macro sense the show doesn’t change much over its seven-year length, as someone who’s looked very closely at every fiber of it, the difference between the pilot and this third-season episode is striking. It also shows how Estelle has progressed from a side character in the show’s earliest iterations to one of the headliners.

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The second segment is about how the Girls spend an inordinate amount of time sharing each other’s rooms for various reasons. These include several bedroom skits, including the four of them huddling under Sophia’s electric blanket and Dorothy telling Sophia and Blanche about Jean and Rose. Like the segments themselves, the clips are ordered from shortest to longest, with almost the entire clip from “Bedtime Story” playing out with minimal cuts. I think this is the first time the show has ever gotten “meta,” in the sense that it’s addressing the inordinate amount of musical bedrooms the characters play. It feels like the writers poking fun at themselves for using the device so often.

The third segment is about the kinds of men the Girls have dated . . . or failed to date, as the clip includes two former beaus -- Dirk from “Blanche and the Younger Man” and Frank from “Forgive Me, Father” -- who very notably do not date Blanche and Dorothy respectively. This clip also includes the Men of Blanche’s Boudoir segment, despite that not featuring any of the actual men in the flesh. Actually, now that I think of it, the only clip that features one of the Girls’ boyfriends is from “A Little Romance,” with Dr. Jonathan Newman. And he’s probably one of the only men any of the Girls have dated who I would not call a yutz, though he would fit Blanche’s stated recounting of “a variety of men in our lives.”

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I think these clips aren’t necessarily selected for narrative coherence or consistency -- or at least I hope they weren’t because if they were then whoever it was who compiled them failed. I think they were selected for popularity and laugh factor more than anything else. These are likely the moments the studio audience laughed the loudest. I’m fine with that, I just wish they’d strung them together with a little more grace. The “yutz parade” segment could definitely have added a few of the Girls more yutz-y lovers, and it’s not like those were in short supply up to this point. But as far as clip compilations go, it’s fun and a good way to get new viewers caught up on some of the bigger laughs.

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

Favorite part of the episode

My favorite line of the framing device:

BLANCHE: Aw, cat food. DOROTHY: Oh Rose, have you been feeding those strays again? ROSE: I can’t help it, Dorothy. I heard them howling and moaning all night. How do you ignore something like that? DOROTHY: I’m getting used to it. You know, my room’s next to Blanche’s.

#golden girls #stay golden #stay golden sunday #s03e18 #blanche devereaux #golden moments part one #picture it #rose nylund #sophia petrillo #dorothy zbornak

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