Golden Girls Inconsistencies 2: Son of Golden Girls Inconsistencies

Why did Rose call her husband Charles in one of the earlier episodes, and Charlie thereafter?

Why didnt we see Rose's biological father ever again after she met him in the hospital?

Here is a great site regarding the house and its inconsistencies.

The problem with the original thread as it wound toward its conclusion was that many of the items mentioned were not really inconsistencies, they were just explained circumstances.

Given that this thread BEGINS, at the OP itself, with the very same problem that the original thread ENDED with, I hereby declare the topic dead. There is no new ground to cover.

Let it go, OP.

I disagree, r4, because I don't remember this being discussed on either previous thread:

The episode "The Mangiacavallo Curse Makes a Lousy Wedding Present" tells us that ever since her own wedding day, Rose invariably gets so horny at weddings that she hits on every man in sight and desperately needs the girls to stop her from fucking anyone she can get her hands on.

Then how is it she is able to get through the weddings of Kate Zbornak to Dennis, Sophia to Max Weinstock, and Dorothy to Lucas Hollingsworth with absolutely no signs of horniness/sluttiness?

INCONSISTENCY!

My favorite inconsistency was the age of everyone and children...

Dorothy got knocked up in highschool and yet her children Kate and Michael were in their late twenties int the beginning of the series I think Bea even says Michael is 26 when he marries Lorraine. That show aired in 1987-1988 which would mean he was born in either 1961-1962. That would mean Dorothy would have gotten pregnant at 17 years of age in 1961, which would have her born in 1944. That would make her 41 when the show started which she was supposed to be at least 55. Furthermore if Sophia was 80 in 1985 when the show stared that would mean she was 39 when she had Dorothy who was her oldest child which would mean she had Gloria and Phil in her mid 40's.

Blanche has two daughters Rebecca and Janet(who had a 15 year old boy who visited the girls in season 1, yet also had a 7 year old the final season and then an entire new family when she herself visited when Rose had the heartattack. Along with 4 sons, one of which she tried to give to Dorothy in an episode. Yet they were never mentioned again. I wont even get into the inconsistencies of Charmaigne, Virginia, and her brother Clayton, who Blanche never mentioned until he visited. In addition, her father Big Daddy was played by different actors and nary a word was mentioned about season 1's Big Daddy's singing career. Also her niece Lucy came to visit, and who knows who her mother was.

Rose was VERY incosistent. First of all her mother visited in season 1 but was never mentioned again excpet for a brief off the cuff remark by Rose in a later season that said she wiched her parents were still alive. So she died sometime. Fort her blind sister came to visit in season 1. Then we never heard from her again. Then her sister Holly came to visit in season 4 and again neither one of them showed up at the hospital when Rose had her heart attack. Neither did her daughter Brigit from season 2. Only Kiersten came, who was played by a different actress than Season 1 Kiersten.

When Sophia's sister Angela shows up, Sophia says that she and Angela were the last of the original family, then a few seasons later Angelo shows up. Was Angelo, Angela's twin? Was he forgotten because he went into the priesthood?

"Blanche has two daughters Rebecca and Janet(who had a 15 year old boy who visited the girls in season 1, yet also had a 7 year old the final season and then an entire new family when she herself visited when Rose had the heartattack."

Not to mention that when Janet visited at the end of Season 7, she would have been the mother of a 21-year-old (her son David having been 15 when he visted in Season 1), yet the actress playing Janet looks to be in her twenties herself.

Also re: Kirsten - they never explained when, or why, Kirsten uprooted her family from St. Olaf (where she was living in Season 1) and moved to some location a couple of hours away from Miami). It certainly couldn't have been just to be closer to Rose, since they never come to visit and Rose never goes to see them. And by the way, if Kirsten is only a couple of hours away, why doesn't she come to the hospital when Rose first has the heart attack (she only shows up later when Rose takes a turn for the worse and has to have a triple bypass)? Pretty cold. Was that greedy bitch still so resentful on missing out on her "inheritance" that she didn't even bother to show up for a heart attack?

And speaking of people not showing up at the hospital for Rose's heart attack - why was there no mention of alerting Miles to what was going on? Rose says at the beginning of the episode that he's out of town, but if your serious girlfriend (who you'd just been on the verge of marrying) had a heart attack, wouldn't you cut your trip short? I realize the writers wanted to keep the focus of these Very Special Episodes on the four girls and not include Miles, but how hard would it have been to have a throwaway line of one of them saying, "I just left another message on Miles's home machine, but he must not be checking his messages. I wish we knew how to locate him!" Instead, it's as if Miles doesn't even exist.

And when Rose dated the "Cheeseman" who was tracking Miles in the witness protection program, NOT ONCE did they mention his real name Morty Seinfeld, and that his son Jerry did stand-up in NYC!!

I remember the episode where Blanche revealed she got a tramp stamp tattoo and showed Dorothy.

A few seasons later she is in a bathing suit with a low cut back and it's gone.

WTF? Did she get it lasered off?

Speaking of Miles, at one point his daughter comes for a visit. And a year later it is revealed that he is not really Miles Webber and that he is in the witness protection program.

And I read somewhere that to be on House Hunters, you need to have already bought a house or at least have one in escrow before the producers will even talk to you.

So was Blanche really a slut or not? This seems to be an inconsistency throughout the series. Sometimes she's a big tramp and then sometimes she alludes to the fact that she embellishes things sometimes and isn't a slut. So which is it?

Can I use this thread to ask you experts:

How would you describe their socioeconomic class? Different answers for each girl are ok, if they're different.

Blanche said she came from money, yet needed to rent out rooms in her house. She also worked. We know that Charlie was bad with money and didn't leave Rose with anything, except a small pension. Dorothy received alimony from Stan, but also had to work.

But then again, they were also always going to big ticket galas and events. So I think their financial situation was altered to fit the plot of the particular episode.

Yeah the girls have always had fluid finances.

At times they were all hovering on the line of bankruptcy, at other times they were dressed to the nines attending black tie galas and taking the red eye to LA to appear on game shows.

At one point Dorothy had to "sell her stuff" to come up with 2,500 dollars to pay for her and Stan's tax debt. She couldn't afford it. Then in a later episode she offered to pay Sophia 1,000 out right in cash to say she loved Stan when Stan was in therapy to get off the monkey. So somedays she couldn't afford to pay her taxes and then other days she could afford to give her mother cash bribes in the thousands.

The real reason for a lot of the inconsistencies is that the show got a whole new team of writers around Season 5, who admitted that they never watched the earlier seasons.

Also, Blanche's son Matthew appeared in one episode of The Golden Palace.

In the classic season 2 Christmas episode, Blanche mentions that she met George on a Christmas Eve. When George reappears a few seasons later, she mentions that they met at some high school dance.

In one of the very first episodes, Dorothy says she's from Queens and Rose says she's from Little Falls, Minn.

Blanche mention numerous sons over the years...Biff, Doug, Skippy, Matthew, and then in one episode she says that she's only had two sons.

In all the Brooklyn flashback scenes, the door to Sal & Sophia's apartment was stage left. In the episode where Dorothy & Sophia travelled back there, the door was stage right.

"Yeah the girls have always had fluid finances.

At times they were all hovering on the line of bankruptcy, at other times they were dressed to the nines attending black tie galas and taking the red eye to LA to appear on game shows."

Exactly. To me, the most glaring example is when the roof is leaking. (And this is another example of Bizarre Golden Girls Logic - they treat it as an expense they will all be sharing, but since when are renters obligated to help their landlord pay for structural repairs?)

Anyway, Sid La Bass tells them a new roof will cost $10,000 vs. a patch job (which probably won't work) which costs "a couple of hundred". They then go in the kitchen, and Rose says "We can't afford $10,000!" and Dorothy says "We can barely afford a patch job!"

Really?? Each of these women can barely afford $50? As r16 says, that would seem to indicate they're living on the edge of bankruptcy... yet they're constantly paying for tickets to black-tie benefit galas and getting impulse-buy spur-of-the-moment plane tickets (in addition to suddenly flying cross-country for "Grab That Dough", there's also the time Rose leaves the Mangiacavallo wedding to fly to see Miles, the time Sophia and Dorothy fly to New York to get back Sophia's memories, and the time Sophia flies to Sicily to make amends with Guido Spirelli and Blanche then flies there to try to find her).

The finances were always inconsistent, esp. concerning Blanche. She grew up in a wealthy family and her late husband George had quite a bit of money. Blanche mentioned once she felt guilty because her children were mostly raised by nannies, so she obviously had some financial means. Yet, she was renting out rooms in her house and had to work. And as noted above, she cried poor a lot.

Blanche volunteered.

[quote] Blanche volunteered.

They did say that but there was an episode where Blanche said she was going to use her bonus to have her breasts done.

Actually, R5, that was discussed because I remember that I had never even considered that before at the time(it's one of my least favorite episodes).

You all know why they have these inconsistencies, don't you? Because they make up the show as they go along, that's really all it is. That's why mistakes are made. Knowing that, it's kind of silly to focus all this time on it, it's like screaming "I have no life."

r25 = Frieda Claxton

There is never any follow up as to why the girls are such illegal immigrant loving America haters!!

Most shows have show bibles and continuity people to catch mistakes.

Oh yes R25, nothing like a person going onto a thread they have no interest in to tell other people they have no life, to prove that you do have a life.Did you post that while on a date? While having sex? While performing surgery?And thank you for informing us why the show may have had so many inconsistencies. Goodness, how did you work that out? You're just so super smart.

I, on the hand, love this thread. I've only just started watching the golden girls and the inconsistencies were very confusing. I've never read the other thread so I'm glad there's a part 2.

I believe the practice of using "show bibles" and continuity people really didn't start until "Three's Company".

This is an inconsistency with reality! Why did Rose and Dorothy constantly wear sweaters in the sweltering heat of subtropical Miami where the humidity is often around 99%? I found that the most absurd part of the show.

Perhaps this is not inconsistent to the reality of New Yorkers, but the jokes that involved being verbally abusive of Rose never struck me as at all funny. If anyone treated me like that, I'd smash a brick in their face.

THe episode where Miles was revealed as in a witness protection program "jumped the shark" for me. The writers had gone over-the-top and made the show cartoonish. I was waiting for them all to get abducted (like an old MORK & MINDY episode) and crack jokes as the aliens were performing rectal probes.

R28, Three's Company ended before Golden Girls so they could have had a show bible but obviously chose not to use one or ignore it.

On a different note can someone tell me the temperature range in Miami. I live in Australia in a sub tropical city and I do wear long sleeves in winter however I rarely need to rug up like the girls sometimes do. And didn't it snow during one christmas special?

r32, you can wear shorts and t-shirts in Miami year-round. I also thought it funny that the girls (especially Dorothy) were all in layers like they were in Buffalo in January. If you wore a cowl-neck sweater and suede boots in Miami, you would collapse in five minutes.

R32 shows us again that the only thing worthwhile to come out of Australia was Marie Antionette.

Yeah the weather thing was always inconsistent, like the show where they have to share a bed because the heater went out and they are all freezing.

The one that has always bothered me the most was that Michael was 28 in the episode where he beds Rose's daughter but is only 22 2 years later when he marries the woman twice his age (and it is the same actor.)

Also, that Rose's mother appears in an episode in season 1 but in all subsequent seasons is dead.

And I'm sure this has been mentioned, but the inconsistencies as to how long their individual husbands have been dead.

I hate to break this to you about Rose's mother, R35, but...people die.

My biggest gripe is that they make a big deal about Dorothy being afraid to fly when they are going to Rose's aunt's funeral, but they often fly in other episodes and she never has a problem with it.

Also, in the first season, she has to have surgery on her hoof and leaves the hospital because she is terrified of surgery, but in a later episode she admits to having her eyes done.

Thanks R33. I've been wondering if perhaps they had the air conditioning on but who would turn it on so high that you then need to put on a jumper. Sophia is always in a wool cardigan too.

The other inconsistency I noticed recently was that there was a whole episode dedicated to sophia's first marriage having been arranged and she left Italy to escape it. She said she married Sal for love. On another episode she casually mentions that her marriage to Sal was arranged.

R35, I just think that the death of Rose's mother would have been fodder for an episode, don't you think? Especially since we had in fact met her and they had devoted an episode to her? No need for the geez really.

ROSE: "But an airplane isn't that thin or that bright, Dorothy."

DOROTHY: "Well neither is Oprah Winfrey but it doesn't make her a UFO."

In the episode where Rose lost her job, she said she was 55 years old, yet Betty White was at least ten years older than that, if not more.

For the record, she was 63 in that episode R41, but you are right, their ages never really matched up.

That's really not an inconsistency, R41.

What annoys me is the Grab That Dough episode when Sofia says it tapes tomorrow in Hollywood and Rose asks "Hollywood California?" and Sophia says, "No Rose, Hollywood on the planet Romulac." Did the writers not know Hollywood is a Miami suburb too? If you ask anyone in South Florida about Hollywood they will think you are talking about the one between Miami and Ft Lauderdale.

Also, Rose's aunt Gretchen dies in Ft Lauderdale but wants to be buried in the Bahamas where she spent her winters? Breaking news: South Floridians don't have winter homes! What would be the point?

They never changed the calendar on the back of the door that lead to the living room. It is always the same calendar and the same month throughout the series.

They were very mean to Rose in the earlier seasons, but they got vicious with Dorothy in the later seasons. Every other joke was about how ugly and manly Dorothy was.

It got truly vicious in the last couple of seasons, with jokes about Dorothy's looks/dating life, Rose's stupidity, Blanche's trampiness, and Sophia knocking on death's door. Which isn't really an inconsistency, unless you wonder how they could say such horrid things and still manage to remain friends.

Of course, most of their comments were also friggin' hilarious, which is why I continue to watch in reruns.

R32, the Christmas episode was pure fantasy. It does not snow in Miami any more than it snows at the equator. Pure sentimentality. Large parts of the USA never experience snow, e.g., parts of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arizona, and California. But snow is just part of the Christmas Culture, so people (like me in LA) see outdoor CHristmas displays that include snow. Very silly, but that's the way we are.

Thanks R48. I assumed it was fantasy but the girls are always rugged up so I begun to wonder if my picture of Miami in winter was wrong. Nope. Just another inconsistency.

Of course there inconsistencies in the story writing in general. The episode where Rose starts hanging out with a wild beach crowd! She's 60 not 15, so who are these people? And then when she moves into a beach side apartment to be closer to the mysterious new group of friends she becomes lonely. What happened to the beach crowd who were calling her night and day when she was living with Dorothy and Blanche??

R32, I think Rose's wild crowd dropped her when she stopped buying beer for them (in other words, they were underage, which fit Rose's mental aptitude). This was a sweet episode though at the end, where Rose just appears back in the kitchen, and Blanche asks "Are you back?" and they end up eating cheese cake (which I loath).

Yes, the concept of Rose's new "beach friends" is truly bizarre.

"It's the middle of the night! Time to party! Hey, let's call that old lady who came up to us on the beach the other day!"

Off topic for a bit....

Were 'Designing Women' and 'The Five Mrs. Buchanans' the only shows directly inspired by the popularity of 'The Golden Girls' during the period?

Also, wasn't 'The Golden Girls' the last Saturday night television hit?

Finally, was I the only one who hated Stan episodes?

I hate Stan episodes too! I dont really know why. Maybe because it's the same story line over and over. Stan turns up in a bad hair piece, he brings some sort of unforgivable drama to Dorothy's life, she forgives him anyway and realizes he means more to her than she'll admit. I love the show for the witty lines, st Olaf stories, the girls interactions etc but the Stan story lines were always a bit meh.

No one cares about The Golden Girls anymore, except outdated elder-gays, who have missed the memo that this isn't 1985 anymore.

Not true r48, it snowed one Christmas vacation when I was there. Don't remember the year b/c I go there almost every vacation. True it only lasted a few minutes and it didn't stick but it SNOWED.

The fact that it snowed in Miami in the Christmas episode is not an inconsistancy anymore than the fact that Rose's aunt spent her winters in the Bahamas is. The woman can spend her winters anywhere she damn well pleases no matter where she spends the rest of the year.

More of an unlikelihood than a set-in-stone inconsistency? It's much less likely that people who live in Florida would have summer homes, but it's not technically impossible.

Before this thread I had never paid attention to the number of sweaters they wore. They always dressed like they were freezing. Who freezes in Miami?

I actually enjoyed the Stan episodes, because Bea Arthur and Herb Edelman were wonderful together with their constant sniping.

"An illegitimate concern" always bugged me. The guy comes to the door claiming he's George Deveraux's son, and she just comes to the conclusion that he is, based on some earrings George gave her after a trip. WTF?

And in the "George comes back to life" episode, she doesn't even bring up the bastard child to George!

What's with the morons trying to ruin this thread? Such miserable bitches some of you are.

I know plenty of people in their twenties who love and watch THE GOLDEN GIRLS in reruns. (95% straight people too, go figure) The show is truly timeless.

I'm 32 and my friends and I have seen every episode of the GG. A lot of younger people love it.

I was going to go into a play-by-play of how the interior of the house in no way resembles the exterior, but I would probably use all the bandwith on this site.

Why was Sophia's friend Gladys living in a homeless shelter, then seen later drinking it up in fine clothes at a bar, pre-then planned suicide attempt? Why did Dorothy not acknowledge her father when he was waiting her table? In fact, she sent him away.

Why is Peter seen putting Brian Griffin underneath the xmas tree for his children in the New Brian episode but in another episode (the one with the Dog show) shown meeting Peter on the highway as an adult washing windows?

How about when Dorothy's brother Phil dies and the girls all go to the funeral? We see Brenda Vaccaro playing Big Sal, his wife, but we do not see his baby sister, the rich one in California who could surely afford a cheap plane ticket across country.

Angelo tells the gang that he promised his (and Sophia's) mother on her deathbed that he would be a priest while still in Cicily. Years later, we see a flashback episode that featured Bea as Sophia's mother in Brooklyn.

And also, there was no reason why Phil's funeral was in Miami anyway. Not an inconsistency but it didn't make sense.

Maybe the Golden Girls was a make believe show. Maybe the writers didn't think 20 years later a bunch of queens with no life would be worried about such stupid shit.

People, if you're not into this discussion, there are plenty of other threads for you to read and add your comments to. You're not required to post here, you know.

My grandmother always wore sweaters in Miami. Old people tend to be cold.

Last December and January it was sometimes warmer in NY than in Florida.

I'd like a bacon, lettuce and potato sandwich, please.

Well, even with a new bunch of writers in Season 5, would it have killed the PRODUCERS to have some consistency?

I don't know why they didn't insist that the writers needed to at least be familiar with the show's history in order to get the job. That's not to say they didn't write some hilarious stuff despite the continuity problems

Not an inconsistency, just an observation:

We all know Rose raised one daughter, Kirsten, to be a grasping, greedy, frigid cunt. But could we also take a moment to acknowledge how fucking annoying Bridget is? Smug and prissy, and just all around unlikable. (I mean "prissy" in her manner, not her actual behavior, which as we know is slutty.)

None of them seem to have been capable of raising a child to be a person you'd actually want to be around. I guess the exception is that Sophia did raise Dorothy to be a person you'd like to be around - but on the other hand, Gloria is a pretty materialistic, self-involved bitch.

Part of what is a little bit infuriating is not that some plot points are inconsistent, but there was no attempt to make the show logical, even with the addition of a throwaway line.

I can't remember the movie but it was a behind the scenes type of a movie that was set on a spaceship movie set and one of the characters reads in the script that he has to light a cigarette and he says, "Wouldn't that cause the ship to blow up?" and the director says, "Well, we'll just have to add a line where you says, 'Thank God they've invented cigarettes you can smoke in outer space!" Or something like that. Anyway, these throwaway lines would have been very useful to the GG writing team.

For a woman who claimed never to wear panties, Blanche sure showed a lot of panty lines.

Some trivia: when Robert Mapplethorpe was incapacitated due to the effects of AIDs he started watching television. His favorite show? The Golden Girls.

Same with Liberace. He watched tapes of the Golden Girls when he was bedridden at the end. It was his favorite show as well.

Maybe they didn't have AIDS. Maybe watching the the Golden Girls on a loop simply rotted their brains and they died. Sure seems like it's happening to people here!

Say what you want, it's still among the most watched finales of all time:

The series finale was watched by 27.2 million viewers. When the series finale aired on May 9, 1992, it was the 10th most watched Series Finale of all time. As of 2010, it ranks at 18.

r63, those were two different women.

r32, the Christmas episode was pure fantasy. What diner manager would leave four complete strangers in charge of his business while he ran off for a couple of hours - with all the money still in the cash register?

On "Grab That Dough", Sophia is introduced as a grandmother of six, which is inconsistent because Dorothy has two children, Gloria has at least two (she makes reference to "my children are practicing professionals", so there's more than one), which would leave only two for Phil. BUT in early season episodes they definitely say Phil has more than two children - it's some large number, which makes their trailer very crowded when Sophia goes to visit.

Apparently, Newark in the eighties had a transvestite community.

A WHITE transvestite community.

Grab That Dough was a show that barely relied on teamwork, so why even bother splitting into teams?

The rules to Grab That Dough made absolutely no sense.

Why wasn't Doris Belack good enough to ask back for the big two-parter when Gloria slept with Stan?

I did like the fact that they always used the same actor for the role of Michael, especially since he resembled the actor who played Stan.

However, their choices to play the children of Rose and Blanche were always bad choices.

Is it inconsistent that Dorothy, who we're usually supposed to believe is smart, can't answer even the simple questions on "Grab That Dough", or should we take this as a subtle sign on the writers' part that Dorothy is all talk and is actually just as dumb as the rest of them?

Another inconsistancy is the int he Christmas episode, the black guy that works at the diner is the same actor who later shows up at the homeless shelter in season4 when the girls go looking for the lottery ticket. Yet in this episode, he as a completely new idenity.

Same thing with the woman who was Rose's friend att the train station on Mother's day, showed up next season as Sophia's suicidal BFF Martha.

But nothing was more alarming than Season 1's Arnie Peterson, who later showed up in season 5 as Miles Webber. Both of whom dated Rose, and yet played by the same actor.

R82 the episode you're referring to is Golden Moments part 1. I caught it just last night. Sophia mentions that Phil has 6 kids, which means she has at least 10 grandchildren.

You want an inconsistency? I got a fucking inconsistency for ya! All their concern because poor, poor Lillian was living in a nursing home with an inattentive staff - the tragedy! Oh sure, they gotta use all their extra cash to pay for an upgrade to a swankier nursing home for HER. Meanwhile, five months before, they found me living at a FUCKING HOMELESS SHELTER!! When they just happened to have an extra $10,000 lying around. And did my old friend Sophia and her roommates lift a GODDAMN FINGER to help me?!?

I don't give a shit that they donated the money to the shelter. So there'll be new mattresses and more toilet paper in the bathrooms. Big whoop, I'm still living in a FUCKING HOMELESS SHELTER!! I could have used some of that money to see a doctor, BITCHES!!

You be pissed off Ida! I vaguely an episode where Stan and Dorothy co-own the building that Uncle Angelo lives in. It's seemed a bit roach infested but the rent would have been cheap. In the late 80s or early 90s that $10,000 could have paid your rent there until grim death came to grab you. But instead they used the money to the homeless shelter and left you there to rot.

You should also be aware that they wore a lot of fancy dresses to a lot of different parties and spent a fortune on cheesecake.

Does it count as an inconsistency that the dialogue states that Mr. Terrific's show has been on the air sixteen years, yet his voice and manner are so incredibly grating that no child would ever want to watch him and his lack of ratings would have had him canceled within a month?

Sure, R92, yours is as much an inconsistancy as the fact that they used the same actors for different parts in R88's example. Weird, Barbars Thorndyke came across as so smart on the show, when actually she knows shit.

An inconsistency I noticed is Blanche's daughter Becky. In some episodes she was thin and had a baby by artificial insemination and in another episode she was obese and with some guy who treated her lie shit.

Not an inconsistency, just an observation:

Women's earrings are something I just never take in - big or small, I never notice them. However, every once in a while watching Golden Girls, I will stop and actually make sure to take in their earrings, and I get struck again with the absolute ENORMITY of the things they often have hanging from their earlobes (even without Disney ever issuing the Dumbo line Dorothy was waiting for).

Were mammoth-sized earrings really fashionable in the '80s, or only in Golden Girls-land?

R95,They are attention grabbing aren't they? I always notice them too. To answer your question earrings were big in the eighties but the really huge sort worn by the GG were mostly worn by women over 50. Apparently the idea was that it drew the eye to the earring rather than crows feet.

Earring Inconsistency Alert (proving there is new ground to cover since I don't think this was ever mentioned in the other two threads):

In the scene where Sophia tells Dorothy and Stan that Uncle Angelo is coming and she wants them to pretend to be married, sloppy editing results in a disappearing earring in one of Dorothy's ears - in some shots it's there, in other shots it's not. (Why Bea had one earring out during certain takes, I have no idea.)

This isn't an inconsistency but maybe someone here can explain it to me.

While Blanche wore low cut satin nighties and Rose wore pyjamas (I think), Dorothy always wore very conservative nightgowns to bed. They were buttoned right up to the neck and came to the ankle. They were often very Victorian looking. Was that sort of sleep wear fashionable at the time or was that particular to Dorothy's taste?

There's a giant scriptwriting gaffe in the pilot. When Blanche introduces Sophia to her bf Harry, she mentions that Sophia's home had just burned down. There's no way that Blanche could've known that. Sophia had just appeared a little earlier in that same scene, and only mentioned the fire to Dorothy and Rose, while Blanche was in her room getting ready for her date.

Also the pilot is an editing mess. They obviously reshot some scenes later on, probably to work around the Coco issue. In some scenes Rue has one hairdo, and when they go to a close-up of her, she has a completely different do. Also Bea looks a little different in her close-ups.

It's inconsistent that Blanche would be surprised that Rose would be better than her at dirty dancing, since Blanche would have known from the time they did a dance marathon that Rose had incredibly limber dance skills, including cartwheels and splits.

When Dorothy brought Angela over for Sophia's birthday, how could she not have known that Angela and Sophia haven't spoken for 30+ years. The writers tried to show that Dorothy was in contact with Angela all these years, but she never knew a thing about her feud with Sophia?

In the episode where Michael and Bridget hook up, in the opening scene, Rose tells Michael that that Dorothy has told them all about them. In the next breath, she asks him where he goes to school. If she knew all about him, wouldn't she have known that he's a musician.

Slightly OT, but when I was a kid I thought Rue McClanahan was singing the GG theme song. It wasn't until years later I realized it was someone else.

"When Dorothy brought Angela over for Sophia's birthday, how could she not have known that Angela and Sophia haven't spoken for 30+ years. The writers tried to show that Dorothy was in contact with Angela all these years, but she never knew a thing about her feud with Sophia?"

That's an excellent point, r101.

Aside: I hate when I sit down to watch GG, and it's that faux Rita Moreno/Empty Nest episode.

I know, r104. You must've been watching the Hallmark episodes last night, since they showed that faux Empty Nest pilot at 1am. I used to hate it and switch the channel, but now I just find it sort of fun to watch because everything about it is just so cringeworthy.

The layout of the house makes no sense, which I am sure has been mentioned before, but:

Has anyone ever noticed that it always shows that stock footage at the beginning of a car pulling into the driveway in front of a garage (rather fast btw which is funny) and then someone immediately walks through the front door in the next scene. However, the "garage" is know to be on the backside of the house, whenever they are inside people come and go from the garage through the back of the kitchen. The house has two garages?

on an early GG episode Blanche states that she has exactly 3 sons, and names them: "Biff, Doug, Skippy." But then she later mentions a son "Matthew" and "Matthew" actually appears on Golden Palace. Skippy could be a nickname for Matthew but it's unlikely she would use his nickname Skippy when talking to Dorothy and then call him Matthew later.

On one episode they say Charlie (Rose's hubby) has been dead 15 years, on another show they say it's been 5 years.

Blanche constantly insists she's in her forties but on the first season she has a 14 year old grandson.

When Dorothy's class has its reunion, it's in Miami, even though Dorothy grew up and went to school in Brooklyn.

In the first season Dorothy refers to Stan as being 65 years old but they went to high school together (I thought) and she's only supposed to be around 55.

It's not exactly an inconsistency, but I thought the relationship between Dorothy and Barbara Thorndyke (the writer) was very implausible. They seemed to have nothing in common in reality. And why would Barbara, who turned out to be such an elitist snob, even give Dorothy, a marginally employed substitute teacher, the time of day? Unless she just liked anyone who read her books and sucked up to her.

LOVE your signature, r105.

Dreyfus @ r107: I think your last sentence is the reason I don't find the relationship implausible. Barbara was just a narcissist who responded well to anyone willing to fawn over her. She was such an irritating cunt that she probably had very few real friends, anyway.

My question on that episode, though, is - by 1988, were there still clubs in major cities, particularly cities like Miami with large Jewish populations, that refused even to admit Jews to their dining room for the evening as a member's guest? Seems far-fetched to me, but please correct me if that kind of thing really was still going on in 1988.

R109 There was a club in Palm Beach (Everglades?) that had a reputation for being restricted, which is what I imagine what inspired the writers.

Of course, Palm Beach and Miami are two very different animals, so it would be pretty implausible.

I hate it when they have them just learning things they clearly would already have found out during their years of knowing each other.

Like when Dorothy and Rose eat Sophia's disgusting homemade flu remedy cause they don't know you're supposed to put it on the vaporizer... as if in 60 years, Sophia had never made this before for Dorothy. What about in Season 1 when all three of them have the flu, wouldn't Sophia have made it then?

Also, why is Dorothy just finding out about the Festival of the Dancing Virgins, if it's an annual tradition for the women in their family? And why hasn't she ever learned to make the sauce for it before?

And I don't believe that Rose would just be finding out in Season 6 that Blanche's wedding dress, which she puts on every year to get her picture taken in, is red. Rose has been out EVERY single previous time Blanche has worn it? On that topic, why is Dorothy surprised in the pilot to look at Blanche's makeup laid out on her vanity and see that "she has more colors than Benjamin Moore paints" - hasn't she been in Blanche's bedroom many times before? Remember, they're supposed to have lived together for a long time before the pilot.

Wow, good call, r110 - I just Googled and found this article from 2003 that says:

"One Palm Beach merchant who isn't Jewish says the segregation shocks him. "I've never seen anything so blatant," he says. "I thought people here would've been more sophisticated. Friends of mine were suspended from [an area club] for bringing in Jewish friends."

So I guess the whole Barbara Thorndyke episode is plausible after all!

Oh, and speaking of Blanche in red - we know from Phil Petrillo's funeral episode that Blanche wears red to funerals because she doesn't believe in wearing black.

WHY then did she wear black to the funerals of Frieda Claxton, Rose's Aunt Gretchen, and Fidel Santiago??

For R102:

Here's the very original song, from 1978.

Rose fainted in the season 2 opener when Blanche went thru menopause. Yet, in season 4, in the episode where Sophia marries Max Weinstock, she mentions that she's never fainted.

Also her education was all over the map. She mentions 2x in season 2 that she went to college, then in season 4, she either dropped out of high school or went to college at St. Gustav University, depending on the episode.

Well, pretty much all of Rose's 'inconsistencies' can be easily attributed to her being a ninny.

[quote]Also her education was all over the map. She mentions 2x in season 2 that she went to college, then in season 4, she either dropped out of high school or went to college at St. Gustav University, depending on the episode.

Don't forget the agricultural college where she was a member of the Alpha Yams.

Rose never graduated from high school.

[quote]If Blanche raised her family in Miami, why do all her children live in Atlanta?

They moved there to get away from her and her screechy fag behaviour.

Do they ever really say that Blanche raised her children in Miami, though? We know they didn't grow up in the current house, since when Rebecca visits she says something like "You have a lovely home, Mama" or "I love your home" or something. Do they ever really clarify whether Blanche and George had always lived in Miami, or just moved there when the children were grown?

Blanche says she raised her family in the house in the flashback episode "We're Outta Here."

Opinions, please, since the show never tells us. Was little Roger/Lamar Zbornak:

A) miscarried

B) aborted

C) a lie made up by Michael and Lorraine to force their domineering tyrant mothers to shut the fuck up and fall in line with their marriage?

Becky ate Roger/Lamarr.

[quote]Do they ever really clarify whether Blanche and George had always lived in Miami, or just moved there when the children were grown?

This was never made clear. I don't know why, but I always assumed Blanche and George moved to Miami after the kids were grown.

Was Dorothy really supposed to be just 55 in the first season? Bea Arthur was well over 60 at the time.

"Blanche says she raised her family in the house in the flashback episode "We're Outta Here."

By contrast, in the later episode where the city inspector says she can't have three renters and Blanche is saying why she could never sell a share of the house to the other girls (before she does exactly that in the end), it seems like the writers went out of their way to specifically NOT have her say she raised her children there. She says something like, "This is my house, I lived here with my husband", I think, but with no mention of family/children.

Actually, considering that Lorraine was as old as Methusaleh, chances are they found out Roger/Lamar had Downs Syndrome and terminated the pregnancy.

I'd love to see the floorplan of the house they used in the exterior shots (which is actually in Los Angeles, I think), just to compare it with the "floorplan" used on the show, which makes no sense.

Those are fighting words, R126! Somebody hold my purse!

R123, I haven't laughed that hard in weeks. Thanks much.

Dorothy meeting Jean in college made little sense. It's assumed that Dorothy went to City College in NYC. We're supposed to believe that Jean left a dairy farm in Bumfuck to attend a CUNY

EXCELLENT point, r130, and proof that there IS reason for this third thread to exist, because I don't remember that ever being brought up in the two previous threads! And it never even crossed my mind!

Emmy fun facts just gleaned from idle perusing of IMDB:

For the first four seasons, all four of the actresses were nominated every year, with each of them winning once. However, for the remaining three seasons, Bea and Rue were no longer nominated; Betty and Estelle were nominated every time (although never won again). Estelle is different because she was competing in a separate pool (Supporting), but why was Betty singled out every year over the other two? Was it just because she was the most personally popular in Hollywood circles, or had the longest roots in the TV community? It's not like Rose was a showier role than Dorothy and Blanche.

The show's one Writing Emmy went to Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan for "A Little Romance" (the one where Rose dates the midget). They beat out Susan Harris, the show's creator, who was nominated for her script for the pilot. I've heard one of the actresses say in an interview that Harris was unhappy about this and it contributed to her pulling back from the show. (After the Season 2 premiere, she would only return to write two Very Special Episodes - the "Empty Nest" pilot and the autobiographical Chronic Fatigue Syndrome two-parter.)

The show's one Directing Emmy went to Terry Hughes (who directed the majority of the show's episodes) for "Isn't it Romantic?" (Dorothy's dyke friend Jean wants to fuck Rose).

Actors nominated over the course of the series for Outstanding Guest Actor were:

Lois Nettleton (Jean, "Isn't it Romantic?") Herb Edelman (Stan, "The Stan Who Came to Dinner") Nancy Walker (Angela, "Long Day's Journey into Marinara") Herb Edelman (Stan, "The Audit") Geraldine Fitzgerald (Anna Egerman, "Mother's Day") Jack Gilford (Max Weinstock, "Sophia's Wedding") Dick Van Dyke (Ken Whittingham, "Love Under the Big Top") Jerry Orbach (Glen O'Brien, "Cheaters") Brenda Vaccaro (Angela Petrillo, "Ebbtide's Revenge")

Damn DL formatting. Here's the Guest Actor nominee list in easier-to-read format:

Lois Nettleton (Jean, "Isn't it Romantic?")

Herb Edelman (Stan, "The Stan Who Came to Dinner")

Nancy Walker (Angela, "Long Day's Journey into Marinara")

Herb Edelman (Stan, "The Audit")

Geraldine Fitzgerald (Anna Egerman, "Mother's Day")

Jack Gilford (Max Weinstock, "Sophia's Wedding")

Dick Van Dyke (Ken Whittingham, "Love Under the Big Top")

Jerry Orbach (Glen O'Brien, "Cheaters")

Brenda Vaccaro (Angela Petrillo, "Ebbtide's Revenge")

Maybe Dorothy and Barbara Thorndyke became friends because of the great skills Dorothy showed in eating pussy.

[quote]The show's one Directing Emmy went to Terry Hughes (who directed the majority of the show's episodes) for "Isn't it Romantic?" (Dorothy's dyke friend Jean wants to fuck Rose).

I think that's how they described the episode in TV Guide back in the day.

When Rose's mother Alma visits, she mentions that she had that convict Ben living with her after her husband died. Rose is shocked, which makes no sense since she was still living in St. Olaf at the time. I think she'd know if her mother had taken in a strange man. It was clearly established in the same episode that rose's father died before Charlie.

EXCELLENT point, r136! I never thought of that!

I've never heard of a "soundboard" before, but here, for hours of fun, is a Bea Arthur soundboard:

And here, some of the prank calls it was used for:

Who was the definitive Gloria - Doris Belack (Season 1 Gloria who tried to get Sophia to come live with her in California) or Dena Dietrich (Season 7 Gloria who slept with Stan)?

Belack was a more interesting actress, but Dietrich had more of the voice and physique that made you believe she could be Bea Arthur's sister. Although is it a thing in the series that Gloria is supposed to have been prettier, or at least less physically awkward, than Dorothy? Neither Belack nor Dietrich was exactly a beauty, but perhaps Belack seemed to possess a certain glamorous appeal, and was littler, whereas Dietrich more mirrored Dorothy's mannishness, which may not have been right for the character.

My choice: Belack for the win. More interesting line readings, more glamorous, more fun, therefore more definitively right for the character so that one could understand the lifetime of rivalry and resentment Dorothy felt towards her. Granted, Dietrich was playing Gloria in a very different place in her life, down on her luck and broke, but still, just in her manner and affect, she didn't seem compelling enough as a person to instill jealousy and resentment in Dorothy for all those years when she was rich.

Your thoughts?

When they wrote the Season 1 episode where Rose's grief center closes down and she gets a job as a waitress at a coffee shop working 12-hour shifts - wouldn't you presume that a shift as major as a character's job would have been discussed extensively by the creatives before being decided? That future story possibilities involving this new job would have been discussed? That everyone involved would have been convinced this was a change worth making?

So then why the hell did they make this episode and then immediately revert back to Rose working at a grief center and never again mention the waitress job, as if the episode never even happened?

I concur, R140. You could believe Dietrich was Bea Arthur's sister and she certainly was a skilled comic actor.

But I would choose Belack too, if only because she had more range as an actress. A shame she didn't have a higher profile. Loved her as the soap producer in Tootsie.

Does Dena Dietrich's casting therefore provide definitive proof that Dorothy really was the biological daughter of Sophia and Sal, rather than Dominic and Filomena Bosco?

Or is the jury still out on that question?

I've only started watching GG recently so I've only seen Dietrich play Gloria so on that I'll reserve my judgement. However I saw an episode last night that may be one of the weakest in the series. The Bob Hope episode. Although seeing the ladies dressed as male golfers was a funny the rest of the episode was just annoying. Rose suddenly announcing, after 5 years of living with the girls, that she lived in an orphanage until she was 8 was ludicrous. Her explanation as to why she never mentioned it was weak. And then following it up with her believing Bob Hope was her father, even for Rose, was ridiculous. We know she's dim but please! I guess they got Bob Hope to agree to do an episode so they wrote a quick story line around it and it shows.

I agree, r144, that episode makes Rose like she's actually not in touch with reality - like in a clinically diagnosable sense. What would that be, schizophrenia?

But it's still not as far-fetched as the episode where you find out she's been addicted to prescription painkillers for the past 30 years.

I always preferred Gloria #1. Her mannerisms just seemed so much like Dorothy's; you could really believe they were sisters.

I love the scene when Dorothy and Doris Belack's Gloria are going to bed in full, caked-on makeup.

I know they all always do, but there's something about the close-ups in that scene, and the blaring red of Doris's lipstick, that make it especially obvious.

In the episode "Plow My Hole Until The Sun Rises Over Miami" Rose told her Dominican date "Back in St. Olaf, I loved nigga dick." But, in the episode "3 Ladies And An Old Cunt" Rose said the only man she had ever been with was Charlie.

Michael Zbornak definitely wins the Most Improved award. The first time he appeared (when he fucked Rose's daughter) he had that dorky fro and dumb moustache. But now I'm watching his third appearance (the one where he moves in and mooches off of Dorothy) and he has become one sexy stud!

In the episode where Patrick Vaughn comes to Miami to do that play, why is it only the three of them in the dressing room to welcome him, when it seems that half of Dade County was also appearing in that play? And during the auditions, when he announces that Phyllis Hammerow is playing lead, Phyllis wasn't even among the women seen in the scene trying out for the role. Near the end, when it's been revealed that he's been dating everyone in the play and that stagehand Ed raises his hand as being one of those Patrick fucked, was he joking, or did Patrick really plow him?

How about some stuff they oddly, inexplicably kept consistent throughout the seasons:

- Dorothy and Stan were always married for 38 years, despite the varying ages of their kids

- Blanche mentions at least 3x over the course of the series that she attended Miss McGuyver's Finishing School

- Blanche's weird self-comparison with Angie Dickinson

- It was often said that Rose and Dorothy answered an ad in the supermarket to share Blanche's house, though I think it's out of character for someone as intelligent as Dorothy to answer an ad she saw on the bulletin board in the market

Any others?

You are right, r151, except that your last one is also an inconsistency, because in "The Way We Met" flashback episode when Dorothy and Sophia show up to look at the house, Dorothy says she saw Blanche's ad in the newspaper - but then, as you say, at other times Dorothy says she and Rose both saw the ad in the supermarket.

Also - how come at all the various periods when one of them moves out (e.g. Rose going to live with her beach friends, Sophia going to live with the old guy with the Jackson Pollock in the john, Sophia marrying Max Weinstock when they assume she's going to move out, Sophia entering the convent, Dorothy marrying Lucas), Blanche never seems at all concerned with filling the empty room quickly, leading us to believe she'd be fine just having two tenants, as she did originally. EXCEPT for the one glaring occasion when Dorothy is going to re-marry Stan, when Blanche is so desperate to fill the room that she allows Debbie Reynolds to move into it ON DOROTHY'S WEDDING DAY!! If I were Dorothy, I'd have been pretty pissed having to get ready for my wedding with a stranger in my bedroom blathering about "handful of rice, handful of dirt."

The episode where Rose loses her job always blows my mind because the girls act like getting a job as a hospital administrator - something that people get graduate degrees at Harvard for - is something that can be achieved by bullshitting a resume.

Doesn't Dorothy also handwrite in edits on Rose's resume in the middle of the night for a job interview she has early the next morning, r153? I seem to remember you don't get the sense that Rose is going to be re-typing the whole thing before her interview, and it always seemed bizarre to me to think of Rose turning in a resume with cross-outs and write-ins.

Speaking of write-ins - how is it Rose didn't see the changes Dorothy and Blanche wrote in to her St. Olaf Woman of the Year application? She just didn't notice?

The "Here at Datalounge, it's 1989 forever!" thread reminded me that this hasn't been bumped in a while.

Did the girls ever reference Whitney Houston? Seems like most '80s icons turned up in a joke sooner or later.

When Dorothy's brother Phil dies she asks Rose if she's ever given a eulogy. A whole episode was devoted to Rose having to give the eulogy at her Aunt's funeral (although she never ended up giving it).

I didn't like the locker room scene in the Bob Hope episode. It was slightly homophobic. The show was mostly gay positive, but on a very rare occasion it lapsed into easy laughs that were a bit homophobic.

What about the midwinter night party that Blanche throws that only has 12 guests-all men that Blanche knows. Eventually she makes out with a man she doesn't know. Putting aside the fact that 12 men and 4 old ladies isn't exactly a party, isn't Blanche suspicious of the only guest she doesn't know? If I invited 12 people over and some random person showed up and started drinking the free booze I'd be asking questions!

In the fifth season Dorothy gets all PMS and says she's gonna takes Blanche's gun and kill a bunch of Muslims.

But then she clearly shoots Sikhs, which are not Muslims.

Boy I hope someone got fired for that error.

They never made any jokes about the awful clothes Dorothy wore. It was like she never had a waistline and her feet were extremely large.

R160 reminds me, are there any photos of the Golden Girls wearing turbans? I'd have thought Bea would have sported one as Maude at least once. And Rue might have, in the same way that Alexis Carrington dragged up for visits by Rashid Ahmed.

R149,Michael was played by former teen idol Scott Jacoby. I agree,he did mature nicely.

In the 80s supermarkets were common places for ads. There was no WWW yet, so yes Dorothy would answer and ad. It's also possible Blanche took out an ad and put a free one up in the market.

Rose's job is one of those many issues that is addressed once and forgotten. Like Dorothy's CFS.

NBC was king of "issue episodes"

While the continuity was poor, it's no more unbelievable than Jack living with Janet and still thinking that she's having sex in the next room. After nine years you'd think he'd know better.

The show must have been retooled after the first few episodes for, early on, they had a male houseboy/cook that worked for them. He was gone after an episode or two, however.

Regardless...it's a TV show, people, not a documentary. And, inconsistencies aside, the show is still damn funny. Well, except for the Rita Moreno episode where the show was obviously a pilot for a new show...

We know Rose, we're all aware that it isn't a documentary. And yes it's very funny. You're preaching to the choir. But you'll notice this thread is called golden girl inconsistencies so people are mentioning the inconsistencies. It's not called State the Obvious.

Blanche never raised her family in Miami and it was never stated that she did. She raised her family in the cousin-pumping, gin-drinking cross-burning deep south. It was implied that her and George may have moved to Miami later in life.

thank you all for posting your findings of issues with episodes. Some were stated in earlier threads, and some were fresh. Some of the posts had me laughing to tears. For all the years I have seen, quoted, and discussed the episodeswith family, co-workers, and friends, I know I am not alone with watching and loving the show. And, since some of the issues raised are fresh, I now know my pathetic life is not the only one.

R167 it is indeed implied that Blanche raised her family in Miami, in fact I believe she actually says it in the episode where the Japanese man offers to buy the house.

Of course, her daughters both have Deep South accents, which they would not have acquired if they had been raised in Miami.

INCONSISTENCY!

I could never really figure out Sophia's life in Sicily and when exactly she left for America.

In one episode Dorothy finds the photo of Sophia and her first husband whom she had been promised to since they were children. I always assumed that is when she left for America because she was a runaway bride.

In another episode Sophia puts a curse on the guy whose granddaughter's wedding she is attending because he left her at the altar back in Sicily.

Then there is the other guy she was in love with (the bowling episode) and goes back to Sicily with for a visit.

Blanche's initials went from BED (Blanche Elizabeth Hollingsworth) to BMH (Blance Marie Hollingsworth).

Have any of these threads yet mentioned the total unbelievableness of the teenage Stan and Dorothy not only having the money to travel from Brooklyn to Miami on their honeymoon, but then having the money to buy land while they were there?? (This is referenced in the Season 1 episode "Stan's Return (The Return of Dorothy's Ex)" when they are selling it.)

WTF??

I hate the episode where Blanche slept with a younger man, then found out he was in Florida looking for his real father, and that man was George, Blanche's husband, who had cheated on her.

Were the GGs supposed to live in Miami or Miami Beach? If they lived on Richmond Street then they would have had to live in Miami Beach, because almost all streets in Miami around numbered but Miami Beach has name streets.

r173

Blanche never slept with GEorges's son. She probably wanted to... look at his VPL!

Major VPL indeed, R175. Mark Moses's cock is obscenely, deliciously noticeable in every frame of that episode in which he appears ("An Illegitimate Concern"). He's definitely hung.

I think horny Rue must have noticed Mark Moses's bulging basket, too. In her DVD commentary on that episode, she speaks fondly of him.

[quote] The episode "The Mangiacavallo Curse Makes a Lousy Wedding Present" [/quote]

Does anyone else think that the "M-i-a-m-i spells Miami Beach" song that is one of the girls' failed attempts at a song for the contest sounds EXACTLY like George M. Cohan's "Harrigan"?

Loved the Golden Girls - and still occasionally see the odd episode on cable - and think it's held up pretty well over the years...

But every so often you'll see one and think 'hang on...' because the info you're given just doesn't fit with something they've previously said - and I have a good memory for trivial stuff like that.

I just didn't realise how many inconsistencies there were till I read this thread!

I seem to remember that there was a Star Trek writers' guide/bible - and that if there were inconsistancies that had somehow made it past the editors to the shooting script - then the cast would point errors out and mostly they were ammended. Trek was a long time before GG - so I'm kind of puzzled why the actresses wouldn't have at least spoken up and pointed out how many children their character was supposed to have had, etc.

Still - guess it was just a half-hour sitcom - and probably no one thought it mattered that much?

Interesting how rarely this kind of stuff happened in Sex and the City. I seem to remember the head writer or director saying they made a choice to not include family of the girls in it much - and it was a very rare occurrence. Charlotte's brother the once - then not seen or heard of again - and some of Miranda's family at a funeral - again not seen or heard from - even when she married. Guess just using the odd family member for a plot twist in am episode can be a trap and easily makes for continuity errors down the track...

How about Dorothy drinking champagne in at least 3 episodes (daughter's wedding, on Rose's boyfriend's boat, and in the restaurant after being diagnosed with her disorder), then when on the plane to hear Rose give her eulogy, she says she hates champagne. WTF!

No inconsistency to report, sorry. But one of my favorite episodes is on Hallmark RIGHT NOW, when the gals go to the auction to bid on the picture of Jasper DeKimmel, the dying artist. The scene at the auction makes me pee myself laughing.

And on the topic of champagne, r181, how about teenage Stan and Dorothy supposedly drinking Dom Perignon at a restaurant when he proposed (she swallowed the engagement ring he had hidden in her glass and later shit it out)?

First off - teenage Stan had the money for Dom Perignon?

Second, when a high school student in the '40s got pregnant, I doubt it usually led to a romantic evening out in a nice restaurant with a surprise proposal; it seems more likely there would have been worried conferences with family members that led to the inevitable conclusion that the kids had to get married.

This leads me to another thing that seems bizarre - Uncle Angelo coming over from Sicily for their wedding. I would think their wedding would have been a rushed affair that, for propriety's sake, they would have kept as low-key as possible, not something where they would have summoned relatives to take transatlantic voyages to be present at.

Can somebody tell me once and for all - is chronic fatigue syndrome a real thing?

Yes CFS is real, just like peanut allergies, autism, Morgellons and fibromyalgia

I don't think it was a teenaged Dorothy that was drinking the champagne and swallowed the ring. I think that was the 2nd time Stan proposed after he became rich.

Usually in flashbacks, Dorothy is played by that Greene woman

r186, the second time Stan proposed is shown in the "There Goes the Bride" episode - that time he hid the ring in a baked potato.

I'm not sure it's an inconsistency, but I always wondered, with all her knowledge about sex, why didn't Blanche figure that her brother was gay? She must have heard him singing show tunes in the past, even out of the shower.

R188, she seemed oblivious to it. As she told Dorothy, "This gay thing is just a phase. Like when Clayton was 12. We couldn't tear him away from those gladiator movies. It's almost the same thing." To which Dorothy agrees, "Almost," but Blanche doesn't yet realize that the reason her brother loved gladiator movies was not for the battle scenes.

Blanche was good at denial--she thought she was pregnant instead of starting menopause. So why wouldn't she be in denial about her brother being gay?

Didn't Clayton get divorced from a woman? So then it would have been a surprise.

R183 when I was 18, the drinking age was 18 for beer and wine, 21 for hard liqour, and that was 1982 (the laws had been recently changed and I had grandfathered in), so I am sure Dorothy and Stan could have been drinking champagne in the 50's.

[quote]it is indeed implied that Blanche raised her family in Miami, in fact I believe she actually says it in the episode where the Japanese man offers to buy the house.

[quote]Of course, her daughters both have Deep South accents, which they would not have acquired if they had been raised in Miami.

When Rose's fat daughter visits ("Blanche's Little Girl," Season 3), one of the first thing she says to Blanche is, "Mom, I love your house!" which implies that it was her first time seeing it. It is also mentioned that she and Blanche had a falling out and had been estranged for some years. So we were supposed to believe (in this episode, anyhow) that she raised her children in Atlanta (Rebecca had a Southern accent), and then relocated to Miami with her husband after the kids had grown up.

The exterior establishing shot for the Miami TV studio where Rose works is exactly the same exterior establishing shot previously used for the Los Angeles TV studio where "Grab That Dough" was taped.

On the episode airing right now it says they live near 135th St. Miami of course is divided into quadrants so it could be NE (North Miami) NW (Opa Locka) or SW (Pinecrest or Kendall). There is no SE.

...And since they live on the 7500 block they must live near 75th Ave. There is no 75th Ave in the NE or NW quadrant.

The Golden Girls live near SW 135th St and SW 75th Ave in Pinecrest, FL.

Well Blanche could've lived in Miami with her daughters in a different house?

If Blanche and her husband moved to Miami it seems odd they would buy such a big house with no children.

[quote]when I was 18, the drinking age was 18 for beer and wine, 21 for hard liqour, and that was 1982 (the laws had been recently changed and I had grandfathered in), so I am sure Dorothy and Stan could have been drinking champagne in the 50's.

R183's post had nothing to do with the their age, and it was the 40's.

Reading comprehension 101.

The drinking age was 18? Was that like when prohibition was first repealed?

There was a moment once, and I don't remember the episode or even the scene (I think it was the gals sitting around the kitchen table), but I distinctly remember having the sense that Betty White broke character. It was very brief--a line and/or a reaction shot--but I remember thinking, that's not Rose, that's Betty. Does anyone remember a moment like that?

Stan was in novelties and Rose's husband was in insurance, but were we ever told what Blanche's husband George did for a living?

If Money was so tight, how did Blanche afford Nancy Reagan's decorator? Or was she just trying to impress her sister Virginia? My dream is that Blanche gave a break to an up and coming decorator out of Atlanta named Julia Sugarbaker.

To the posters who questioned snow in Miami--

Obviously none of you lived in Miami during the winter of 1988 when it did, in fact, snow for a few moments for one single day.

(And of course we wear sweaters and use the heater.)

Re: "Never Yell Fire in a Crowded Retirement Home" -

1. Would the state really feel it has grounds to prosecute a negligent arson case when their only evidence is a statement given by a dead person? Are statements by dead people even allowed in as evidence? Isn't one of the principles of the legal system that the witness actually has to be there on the stand and available for cross examination, otherwise how is the accused supposed to defend himself?

2. How in hell did Dorothy come up with $5,000 bail money for Sophia within an hour, when just two years earlier, the four women pooling all their money together could "barely afford" (Dorothy's words) a couple of hundred dollars for Sid LeBass to do a patch job on the roof?

Why do you say money was tight? On most episodes Blanche was well off. She may have spent too much or not known how to budget.

Same with Dorothy she was only a substitute so on weeks where she worked a lot she had money.

Rose was the only one portrayed as on the poorer side.

I never got the impression any of them we're well off financially. So many of the stories were based on them trying to score some cash. (Grab That Dough, sleeping in the homeless shelter to find the $1000 scratch ticket, trying to buy the picture by dying artist Jasper deKimmel, keeping Rose's pig for her uncle's inheritance, cashing St. Olaf war bonds, raising minks, etc.)

But don't we remember Dorothy going without shoes to give Sophia her allowance? (The episode when she discovers Sophia's AT&T stock.)

My inconsistency:

In the episode where Sophia goes to Sicily to apologize to Spirelli for ruining his life, as she and Blanche are reading her life goals, she reveals that at some point she lost 200 pounds. Yet, in another episode, she tells Blanche that her secret to being thin is that she can eat whatever she wants, and she's never put on weight.

At the risk of being picked up by trolldar, I'll post again--

If Dorothy was financially cozy, why did she post the ad in the paper that she would do "anything" for 8 dollars an hour?

Dorothy Petrillo in high school:

Lonely outcast with no friends and no life, who Stan Zbornak was the first person to pay the slightest bit of attention to?

Or vibrant social butterfly, inseparable best friend of vivacious, outgoing Trudy McMann and therefore part of the whole tennis team social circle, apparently considered attractive enough to catch the eye of tough class hoodlum/cool kid John Noretti, and even at one point dating a member of the football team*?

Which was it?

*I can't cite a specific reference for this but I swear she says this in one episode. Maybe it's the one where she cites a previous abusive relationship she was in to try to make clear to Blanche that Blanche needs to break off her abusive relationship with Rex Huntington?

R 209,

It's the one where she says, "Strong Roman nose, and he could read."

In the episode The Case of the libertine Bell, they are staying at the Queen of the Keys hotel, which one assumes would be in the Florida Keys. However when the detective comes to investigate the murder at the end, he says he is from Dade County Homicide. All of the Florida Keys are located in Monroe County.

Dude there are KEYS all over Florida. Just one instance is the Cedar Keys

Two things about "Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself", the one where Rose is afraid to give a eulogy for her aunt:

First of all, Aunt Gretchen lived in Fort Lauderdale but "spent her winters in the Bahamas"? Why would somebody who lives in Florida specifically leave for the winter?

Also: At one point in this episode, Sophia says she and Sal were married fifty-two years, and at another point in the episode she tells a story of her and Sal being newlyweds in 1931. Thus, if Sal died in 1983, he had only been dead for two years when the series started. However, is inconsistent with "Yes, We Have No Havanas" when she says "I realized today I haven't showered with a man in twenty-two years" and Dorothy says, "Ma, Pop's been dead twenty-seven years."

Speaking of husbands' death dates: we know that Blanche never cheated on George. Thus, in the Burt Reynolds episode when she tells the story about sleeping with the president (of the Chamber of Commerce) at the 1972 inauguration, they establish that George had been dead at least thirteen years when the series began. Also, Blanche reports that she and George lived in the house together, so Blanche had to have been living there at least thirteen years. However, when fattie Rebecca returns from Paris, she says "Mama, I love your home", which she'd only say if she was seeing it for the first time. So what, Rebecca ran away from home as a high school student, hasn't spoken to her mother in thirteen years, and didn't even come back for her own father's funeral?

INCONSISTENT!!

re: the costumes being inappropriate for the Miami climate...

Notice that even in the one where their air conditioning is broken for an extended period during a heat wave and Dorothy remarks how it must be 110 degrees in the house ("Yokel Hero"), the costume designer still has them dressed in layers, long pants, sweaters, and bathrobes.

"Till Death Do We Volley":

Why, when the script has Dorothy and Sophia making multiple references to how Trudy's breast implants look, and the difference in her breast size from when she was in high school, did the costume designer put her in a jacket that covers her breasts?

What about the one where Dorothy and her mother go to NYC and it's Brooklyn?

Well, I was wondering how long it would take before someone said something incredibly stupid.

Not an inconsistency perhaps, but I wondered why Sophia kept calling her late husband "Salvador"? Wouldn't an Italian be more likely to be called Salvatore rather than Salvador, which is the Spanish and Portuguese version of the name?

[quote]First of all, Aunt Gretchen lived in Fort Lauderdale but "spent her winters in the Bahamas"? Why would somebody who lives in Florida specifically leave for the winter?

I never understood that, either, 'cause The Bahamas are like a stone-throw away from Lauderdale, so the weather wouldn't be that much different.

[quote]Speaking of husbands' death dates: we know that Blanche never cheated on George.

I'm not sure about that. In one episode, Blanche lets it slip that she may have been unfaithful. She starts telling about how just when she and George were getting serious in their relationship, he was drafted and shipped off to Korea. Wanting to do her part for the war effort (and because it had a comprehensive dental plan) she took a job in a factory that made canteens. There she befriended a young man and they began hanging out, going to the movies, dinner -- very platonic, according to Blanche. But when George came back he was furious and forbade her ever to see him again.

Then Dorothy goes: "So you lost a good friend, just because George made you feel guilty about it." And Blanche absentmindedly says, "That's right. I lost a good friend, and a wonderful companion, and an excellent lover!"

Dorothy and Rose look at each other: "An excellent lover?" Blanche tries to save face: "Did I say excellent lover? I meant excellent riveter." To which Dorothy quips, "I can understand how you could confuse the two."

Anyway, I think we can deduce from that that she wasn't as faithful as she made herself out to be and that George had reason to suspect there was more going on than just a platonic friendship.

Serious question here: Did most women really used to not shave their legs above the knee? Rose seems so shocked and scandalized to hear that Blanche shaves her entire leg. WTF? Even women who never wore a skirt shorter than knee-length presumably still wore a swimsuit at some point in their life - did they just walk around in the swimsuit showing their hairy thighs to the world? This is one of my biggest "Golden Girls" questions, so somebody please help me out here.

I assumed "shaving above the knee" was euphemism for shaving your pubic hair, especially when Blanche added that she liked to be smooth from her ankles to the top of her thigh and points to her pelvis. The pelvic area encompasses the pubic region so it stands to reason... I mean, they couldn't come right out and say, "I prefer to have a shaved pussy" so they had to be creative and word it differently. And Rose was surprised 'cause it wasn't as common then as it is now.

Here's the clip. Skip to 3:15 to see how far up Blanche likes to shave. Where she's pointing is almost in line with her navel.

How could someone be pop-culture-obsessed enough to see the Elvis movie Harum Scarum over fifty times, and yet be pop-culture-clueless enough never to have heard who starred in I Love Lucy?

Actually, forget that - how could someone know that Jane Wyatt was the star of Father Knows Best (as Rose does in the Mario Lopez episode) and not know that Lucille Ball was the star of I Love Lucy (as Rose does not in the episode where Kate Zbornak's husband cheats on her)??

R213-the old lady could spend her winters anywhere she damn well pleased. Learn what inconsistency means.

It certainly seems that the writers/producers of this show should hang their heads in shame, and the main showrunner(s) who continue to coin money from syndication, should be ashamed of themselves. This amount of inconsistencies is staggering and artistically terrifying.

r224

Most people Rose's age can't remember there way home from work, let alone a 50 year old sitcom.

I hated the one where Dorothy attended a funeral and the next episode the lady was alive again.

R226 you have certainly earned this resounding

MARY!!!

here, here, r29! Mary all the way!!!

R223, would you say that teenagers/early 20 year olds today are pop culture aware? Do you know that many of them don't know that "King Kong" was a remake and that the "Charlie's Angels" movies were based on a tv show?

Not sure if it's been mentioned already, but I think a lot of the inconsistencies are due to the fact that the show got new writers around the fifth season, and they didn't bother to go back and review the older episodes.

It probably was, but these problems were throughout the series, not just after the fifth season. sometimes it seems that they can't even keep it straight in a single episode.

A lot of the inconsistencies are easy to overlook. The ones that stand out to me are the ones regarding their children. There was never any set bio on any of the characters, beyond the ones that were used as running jokes, like Dorothy getting knocked up as a teenager, or Rose's husband dying while they were having sex.

Where did Stan live? The 1 or 2 times they showed his place, it looked like a room from a low-rent Holiday Inn. Did he live in Florida or was he still in NY?

He lived in Hawaii at the beginning of the series, but apparently moved to Miami at some point after he & Chrissy divorced.

THe first actor who played Kate's husband Dennis had BDF. The second actor didn't. Huge inconsisetency there.

r235, during Season 1 Stan lived in Hawaii (where he had moved with Chrissie the flight attendant after leaving Dorothy), and visited Miami once for his daughter's wedding and once to sell a piece of property that he and Dorothy had bought on their honeymoon (see earlier in the thread for discussion of how far-fetched this seems).

By Season 2 he was living in Miami, although the circumstances of his moving there were never addressed, he was just sort of presented as living in Miami.

Is Perez Hilton no longer hosting the Bad Girl's Club Reunions?

I always got the impression that Stan & Dorothy (and Sophia) had moved to Miami at some point while they were still married.

R239, you are tragic for so many reasons.

In the season 2 Christmas episode, it was amazing that all of their flights were scheduled to take off at the same time.

I also love the auction episode...here it is. And check out Bea's white ruffled-collar pants outfit with a white bowtie and quarter-sleeve maroon jacket. Hott!

I like the outfit Dorothy has on at the start of the episode, R243. I always hated her in the bowtie things. Wasn't there some green outfit she wore with a bowtie as well?

Am I the only one who found something very off about the Mickey Rooney episode? The B plot about the misunderstanding surrounding Rose's diary is resolved ten minutes into the episode. Must've had a ton of last-minute rewrites in that episode.

In the Trudy episode, why didn't Stan show up for their high school reunion?

OK, I want to modify my previous post, and say it's not so much inconsistent that Stan didn't show up, but it is inconsistent that the girls never even addressed whether Stan would or would not be coming.

I mean, throughout the entire series, the constant references to Dorothy's high school years focused on her being impregnated by Stan.... and then she happens to host a high school reunion at her house and the most towering figure from her high school years, who lives right in Miami, is never mentioned? I understand that the reason was that they didn't have room to work Stan into the Trudy plot, but they could have at least done the viewers the courtesy of having Dorothy mention "Thank God Stanley is out of town this weekend" or something like that...

Sort of like on the second-to-last episode when Rose has the heart attack... Early in the episode, prior to the heart attack, Rose says Miles is out of town, BUT once she has it, there is no mention of whether the girls have called Miles, why Miles doesn't immediately fly back to be with Rose in her hour of need, etc.

BDF????

Bangladesh Defense Force?

I hated the episode when the girls went to California and Ethel didn't know how to drive when only a week before she was seen driving a station wagon up to the lodge.

BDF = Big Dick Face, r248

Do we think proud African-American trailblazer and civil rights activist Ruby Dee was humiliated at having to take the role of a Mammy?

Or did she consider it an important political statement to make clear that even the father of America's beloved Southern belle Blanche Devereaux was engaged in a fity-year interracial relationship?

Or did she just need the money?

Why did Cesar Romero get entrance applause and bigger stars like Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds, and Mickey Rooney didn't? Did Cesar's agent negotiate it as part of his contract?

In the episode where they run the catering out of the kitchen, how the hell did they think they were going to cook enough chickens to feed the wedding guests in their oven? Why were they worried about losing their shirts when the wedding was called off when, presumadley, they had a contract? Why would the bride physically go to the caterers in the middle of the night instead of just calling on the phone? WHY?!?!

R201 He was Blanche's pimp.

Which of Dorothy's kids is supposed to be the one she got knocked up with while still in high school?

It was Michael, r255. It was mentioned many times that Stan and Dorothy were married for 38 years, and they only got married because she was pregnant, yet when Michael showed up he was only in his mid-late 20's. Yet another inconsistency.

You're assuming it was Michael, they never said it was him.

Perhaps Dorothy got pregnant, that forced the wedding and the birth resulted in a miscarriage that Dorothy never talks about because it's too painful.

I bet that is what happened.

I know a Golden Girls writer. The explanation is, the show creator did not believe in open stories. Every episode stood on its own and could create whatever facts needed to support the jokes of the episode. This was intentional. Serialized sitcom storytelling had not yet fallen into fashion and it was not part of Golden Girls' design.

So, the writers were aware of these inconsistencies and did not care. The end.

"Why would the bride physically go to the caterers in the middle of the night instead of just calling on the phone?"

This is an excellent question, r253 - don't they say it's like 2 or 3 in the morning?

I also love how the fiancé she dumped calls the girls' house looking for her. "I figured she would have headed for the caterers' house during a crisis..."

It's so odd. They could be totally inconsisent with big stuff like their kids' ages and names, yet be consistent with minutiae like several mentions throughout the series of Blanche having attended Miss McGuyver's Finishing School for Girls.

[quote]I also love how the fiancé she dumped calls the girls' house looking for her. "I figured she would have headed for the caterers' house during a crisis..."

Today they could've pulled it off believably by just having him ring her cell phone. Then Priscilla could've just handed it to one of the girls to answer.

What about the scene at Big Daddys grave with Blanche and Dorothy. He had just been buried the day before but there was no sign that anything there had been disturbed.

They were above ground tombs, r262.

[quote] Why did Cesar Romero get entrance applause and bigger stars like Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds, and Mickey Rooney didn't? Did Cesar's agent negotiate it as part of his contract?

I noticed that too. Sometimes guest stars get entrance applause, sometime not. That's not exclusive to GG though. When a star plays him or herself (i.e. Mister Burt Reynolds) they always get applause.

R258 I give earlier sitcoms like "I Love Lucy" a pass on inconsistencies (Ethel's three different middle names, anyone?), because when they were being created, no one ever imagined they'd be rerun for many years to come. But by the GG era, everyone knew about reruns and syndication, so there's no excuse for inconsistencies.

I hate the times when, for the sake of a fleeting joke, they were willing to disregard the entire character history they'd established over seven years.

Like the revelation that Rose had fifty-six boyfriends her senior year. I suppose it prompted a few chuckles to see Blanche put out or jealous about it, but come on - a few cheap laughs are not really worth shaking the core aspects of the character the audience has been loving for seven years.

I hated when the Facts of Life girls had a reunion with the first years cast and the girls that got replaced in Season One acted like they didn't know Jo, even though they clearly were around here and there for most of season two in bit parts.

I like it when Rose says: "Dorothy, how come your son and Blanche's grandson look just like each other?"

Was Stan busy?

It wouldn't be categorized as an "inconsistency", but one of my favorite nonsense moments on Golden Girls was when Dorothy updated Rose's resume (making cross-outs in pencil, no less), and presto - Rose is a hospital administrator!

"Currently seeking work in the priiiivate sectorrrrr."

I didn't know that Billy and Scott were half-brothers, R267. That was a real teaching moment.

Was slutty Lucy a Devereaux or a Hollingsworth? Who were her parents?

Slutty Lucy was a Hollingsworth. She was Virginia's daughter.

we are all hypocrites.

Americans have killed over 100,000 INNOCENT people in the last 12 years, at least half of them children. With our tax dollars, with the approval of our President, and our Congress.

There are some issues with Golden Girls episodes and suddenly people are weepy.

Get over yourselves. We are all killers, to some degree.

r268, don't forget to point out that Dorothy was hand-writing in resume edits in the middle of the night for an 8:30 a.m. interview, presumably meaning Rose definitely had no time to re-type the changes, and was turning in a resume with Dorothy's hand-written edits.

I can do it all! Conduct a late night resume workshop, and warble some tunes at The Rusty Anchor!

Why did Rose's sister have such a thick Swedish accent?!

If Rose was adopted, was the woman that was her mother her adopted mother or biological mother? Is Holly a sister by adoption, too?

What really bugs the shit about The Golden Girls for me is that a commercial would happen and everything would stop. What were the women doing during the commericial? That is so unrealistic. I have never been in the middle of my day and everything stopped for a commercial interruption. That never fucking happens.

In the opening credits, there's a shot where Blanch pulls her arm into her red sleeve. I cannot find that episode anywhere throughout the entire series. Has anyone ever seen that one?

I'm thinking, if that one is missing, maybe there's more. Please respond if you have any information.

During the episode when Blanche and Rose first meet in the grocery store, Rose was holding a cat.

A few episodes later, when the girl's found out Rose was possibly addicted to pain medication Rose said she needed the pills to help get over her beloved cat's death, then, Dorthy says "Rose, you never had a cat, you're allergic"

R277, Apparently, it's a deleted scene from the Break In episode, from what I have read.

I hate the one where Dorothy says she spend every Saturday night reading her library books, then like two or three episodes later, she was sick on a Saturday and watching TV.

What about the one where Blanche and Dorothy decide that Rose is addicted to pain killers but Rose insists she's not.

In "Adult Education", Dorothy says she got "the house" in the divorce.

But wouldn't someone who sold a house and moved into a rented room be left with a little bit of a financial cushion? Dorothy was always crying poor, and in "Job Hunting" says if she misses a couple of paychecks she's in big trouble.

With the exception of Rose, there was no attempt to explain when, why and how any of the other characters ended up in Miami.

r282

Dorothy was only poor because she was a SUBSTITUTE teacher, she didn't work full time and she didn't even know if she'd be working from one day to the next.

Why are you all so dense you don't get this? If you make $25/hour but don't know if you're working one or two days a week or if at all, you don't know what your income is.

That is why she was crying poor. So what if Dorothy got the house, it could've been mortgaged up to the hilt. Stan's income also fluctuated a lot so you can bet any alimony Dorothy may have got would've went unpaid.

Being a professional it's unlikely she got much if any and the kids were grown by the time the divorce went through so that avenue to income was also closed.

And before anyone says anything else BLANCHE ALSO worked part time. Many times she clearly states she only works a few days a week.

Which begs the question, r284/r285 - why didn't any of those lazy broads get full-time jobs like a normal person? Dorothy says that between the four of them, they can barely afford a couple of hundred dollars for a patch job on the roof - maybe if they worked more than two days a week they wouldn't be so hard up!

LOL.

[quote]If you make $25/hour but don't know if you're working one or two days a week or if at all, you don't know what your income is.

Does anyone know how much that is in drachmas?

R288, I do not know, but in rubles, it is very very good salary. I don't know why Cousin Dorothy cries poor mouth all the time.

Also Dorothy took care of her mother, and probably supported her bum of a son who was a musician. And she is the type of woman to loan Stan money so he could marry Betty Anderson from Father Knows Best.

Blanche was a status seeker so, she wouldn't be seen working a full time job. Women who work part time at fancy jobs, like an art museum, like Blanche did, only do it to occupy their time.

If Blanche got a job, that would lower her "status."

Rose was the only one that consistently seemed to be working class.

The lamest joke was when Blanche though Danny Thomas was a lesbian, instead of Lebanese. Not only is that joke, OLD, but it's not funny and there is no way in hell Blanche wouldn't know the word - lesbian. Rose, perhaps but not Blanche or Dorothy.

I didn't like the one where Dorothy's son left his wife because she was black. I was like, "Why the hell didn't he notice it sooner?"

That would be Czech koruna R289

Wasn't that Stan's cousin that was from It's a living?

Yes, she dropped the accent, stole a few beaded gowns from Blanche's closet, and moved to LA where she got a job as the manager of the revolving rooftop lounge at the Westin Bonaventure.

Remember the Christmas episode of the Brady Bunch were Mike left Cindy all alone at the mall to sit on Santa's lap and the Santa was Otis the drunk from Mayberry?

LOL I love Otis, the best Christmas episode is Dyck Van Dike one.

R291, that never happened. His wife kicked him out because he wouldn't get a job.

It would've been funnier the other way.

I disagree about the Danny Thomas lesbian scene - that was one of the funniest of the entire series, and Rue's line readings were pitch-perfect. Although it's totally unbelievable that a woman as worldly and sexually sophisticated as Blanche could be so clueless about homosexuality.

No Blanche wouldn't have been so clueless. There were countless times she tells stories about lesbians. For example:

Dorothy: That was the big secret

Blanche: No, the big secret was that the gym teacher and Miss So and So were sharing a one bedroom apartment in town.

Remember the episode where the house was broken into and Rose thinks they were after drugs and Dorothy says, "We have Malox and estrogen?"

They obviously had more than that.

I hope someone got fired for that.

[quote] It's assumed that Dorothy went to City College in NYC

You're assuming that. And that, as they say, is a HUGE MOTHA ASS FUCKIN' assumption.

One that you are not at liberty to make and one that could just as easily be wrong as right.

Mammy Watkins: "Blanche, I loved your father."

Blanche: "Well, of course! Everybody loved Big Daddy!"

Mammy Watkins: "No, Blanche - I loooooved your father!"

Anyone know their address?

The house used for exteriors is at 246 N Saltair in Los Angeles.

Thanks R305, but I meant their address on the show.

6151 Richmond St

R305, I've always wondered what the interior of that house (floorplan, etc.) actually looks like, and how closely (or not) it resembles the set used on Golden Girls.

Does anyone know who lives there?

A quick Google search reveals that the house is 1822 sq ft, with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. So none of the girls would've had her own room.

R309 So it wasn't just the gym teacher who had big secret.

Oh, scratch that. The address is 245 N Saltair. That house has 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. R305 gave the wrong address.

This makes more sense.

245 N Saltair, Los Angeles:

Any LA Dataloungers know who lives there? You know a sistah has to own it.

Didn't Blanche also bring up lesbianism is a first season episode where Rose mentions a woman in St. Olaf who needed no man in her life and she reacted by saying: Who was she...some Swedish lesbian?"

I just remembered another inconsistency: how could Rose's mother have dated race gar driver Andy Granatelli when he a) was born in Texas while her family rarely left Minnesota and b) the children would have been born and near/in adulthood at that time. Rose mentioned in another episode that she met Eva and Adolf back in her high school years (presumably late 40's).

How about the one where Dorothy tutors Slater from Saved By The Bell, then later on she is all anti-immigrant

The house in Brentwood was used for exterior shots in the first season. For subsequent seasons a replica was built -- years ago I saw it on the Studio Backlot Tour at Disney-MGM Studios in Walt Disney World.

In the first season episode where Sophia thinks she's having a heart attack, Blanche mentions that she spent a summer in Paris. In one of the later seasons (I forgot the ep), Blanche mentions that she's never been to Europe and would love to go one day.

I hate it how sometimes Sofia has dentures and other times not.

She's like what, 70? Of course she has fake teeth.

When is Dorothy anti-immigrant, r316?

Maude and Viv were the same age on Maude but on GG, Blanche was magically ten years younger then Dorothy. How they explain that?

Vivian was actually supposed to be older than Maude, I think.

When Rose had her AIDS crisis, why was it Blanche who had to confide in Rose that she too had a test? It should've been Dorothy. Surely when she was going from doctor to doctor trying to get a diagnosis for her illness, which would eventually turn out to be chronic fatigue syndrome, somewhere along the way she had an HIV test to rule out HIV as the cause? Would've been a great episode for the writers to organically work in her long-forgotten fatigue into the story.

Because Rose had to have the AIDS test because she did the anal with Miles. Dorothy wouldn't know what that was.

How come Dorothy said she lived in Brooklyn she says girl and not goil. Hmmmm?

I remember laughing when I saw Sophia as a nun.

Will someone refresh my memory about the one where she uses the expression about magnolias and ho's (referring to Blanche?) What was the storyline?

Why had Blanche taken her bra off when she got into her SOUND OF MUSIC costume anyway? Did she feel that cloistered Austrian nuns in the '30s wouldn't have had access to bras, so her unfettered breasts would be a more natural look? Still seems unlikely that Blanche would have wanted to appear on stage without her bosoms getting the maximum support to make them look their perky best.

Remember when Maude said, she lived in Tuckahoe and Blanche thought she said, "Fuck a ho"?

How could Rose's decision to take acting lessons at 17 have been influenced by the drugstore owner calling her a young Barbara Billingsley? It seems unlikely that Billingsley's undistinguished career prior to "Leave It to Beaver" had made her a household name to a St. Olaf druggist. But if he said it to Rose the year the show debuted in 1957, and she was seventeen then, that means she would obly have been forty-five when "The Golden Girls" began, and I DON'T think we're meant to think that's the case.

Billingsley WAS a big star. Big as other "b" rated actresses like Lucille Ball, Ann Sothern, Donna Reed and so forth. That is why she got top billing in Leave it to the Beaver.

r330, I still don't think the timing works out. Billingsley was un-prominent enough that she was still appearing in movies uncredited as of 1954. Even if the St. Olaf drugstore owner had heard of her by 1954, that would still make Rose only forty-eight when "The Golden Girls" began.

(Bear in mind, Betty White was seventeen in 1939.)

Just saw the ep where all the gals promise to look after each other and then Betty White has the line, "Well what happens when there's only one of us left?" Aww.

In the Barbara Thorndyke episode, I don't understand Dorothy's line, "A little of that goes a long way," to the waiter saying "You'll have the Icewater Cometh." The studio audience roared, but I never got the joke. Can someone please explain it? I've been dying to know for years.

R333, I believe it's a reference to the book, "The Iceman Cometh"...

Yeah, r333, I realize that, but does she mean by "a little of that goes a long way"?

Thorndyke was a racist, duh?

R334, "The Iceman Cometh" is a play. The script has been published in books, but it's a play. And "a little of that goes a long way" was an indication that Dorothy was finding the waiter's allusion tiresome.

Barbara Billingsley was indeed a big star (and not to be confused with Barbara Billingsley, the daughter of Sherman Billingsley, owner of the Stork Club). But her rise to the top was not surprising. It was an inside joke that despite Jerry Mathers' nickname on the series, SHE played the title role.

I love how Dorothy tries to play off her second visit to The Rusty Anchor as "Well, I was on my way to the laundromat", even though Blanche knows full well that they have a washer and dryer at the house.

Wasn't Blanche's daughter Rebecca fat in one episode and thin in the other?

Rose: What brings you here, Rebecca?

Sophia: My guess would be a small barge.

Later....

Rose: Blanche tells us you're a model. What do you model?

Sophia: My guess would be car covers.

In the episode where blond Kirsten and little Charlie visit, Charlie says that she's going to astronaut camp while in Miami. However, they're only there presumably for a couple of days before leaving.

Is anyone watching LOGO Network's "Golden Girls" marathon this weekend?

I think LOGO is showing the old Lifetime-cut versions, and they're showing them in random order.

I saw that LOGO was showing episodes, but I did't watch.

Rose's drug addiction. Seriously WTF?

In one episode rose is supposedly against plastic surgery but then when the girls think their stranded on an island she said she had a nose job for $700. Rose also mentions she is allergic to cats but in the episode "the way we met" she had a cat she then gave to the little boy in the grocery store.

Whilst "The Golden Girls" had many inconsistencies; some of these inconsistencies aren't inconsistencies at all, others can be easily explained.

It was pretty tough to swallow that Dorothy, with all her integrity, would fuck around with her married gym teacher Glenn, much less even entertain the idea of doing so, since her husband left HER for another woman. Some of her conflict about dating him should've sprung from that, but the writers totally ignored that aspect. I never thought that made sense for the character.

I had NEEDS, R437.

What about the one where Rose says she is the wife of Charlie then another episode she claims to be the wife of some guy named Charles

How about when liberal Dorothy doesn't even mention abortion as an option to Mary? A homeless, pregnant sixteen-year-old with no means of support - seems like if she's asking for your advice, abortion should at least be on the table.

[quote]Rose's drug addiction. Seriously WTF?

I know, I know.

[quote]How about when liberal Dorothy doesn't even mention abortion as an option to Mary? A homeless, pregnant sixteen-year-old with no means of support - seems like if she's asking for your advice, abortion should at least be on the table.

I can only imagine how awful a teenage pregnancy episode would be on "Designing Women".

NBC and Susan Harris were probably worried back in the 80s about mentioning a liberal character mentioning abortion.

[quote]NBC and Susan Harris were probably worried back in the 80s about mentioning a liberal character mentioning abortion.

I don't she was involved with the show by the fifth season. Maude had an abortion in the 70s.

R323

I'm pretty sure back in the late 80's it wasn't common to do a full screening when doing blood tests. I doubt when looking to see what was wrong with Dorothy they would have bothered to do an Aids test.

They probably wouldn't have even asked Dorothy if she had been sexually active because... come on. Who would think that were even possible?

Not an inconsistency, but:

Did anyone else feel cheated by "Hey, Look Me Over"? What a cop-out.

re: "Hey, Look Me Over" -

Is that even possible? Did cameras even do that - retake pictures on the same film so that half of the negative was one picture and the other half was another - and do it so seamlessly that a sensible person like Dorothy (not just retard Rose) would look at the resulting print and not notice anything amiss?

This is a sincere question, as I have no idea whether this was something that really occurred once in a blue moon or just complete "Golden Girls" fantasy.

Ending was a cop-out but it had the great B.E.D. Moment.

Yes 356, I remember having a camera as a kid in he late 70s, where if you didn't forward the film after snapping a picture, you could take another photo over The first. You could sometimes make out the ghostly images on top of each other once you had he film developed. But no, any idiot would be able to spot it. Not to mention the unlikely odds that photos 1 and 2 would overlay each other perfectly.

I agree r357, that was a great moment.

How about how Rose is often referred to as working in grief counseling, but then the one time we see her workplace, it's serving a bunch of people dealing with various degrees of mental illness all totally unrelated to grief?

What about the one where Dorothy teaches an illegal immigrant but the guy later shows up on Saved By The Bell as legal?

Why would the same Juilliard faculty members who evaluate violinists' auditions also be the ones to evaluate auditioners for the acting program? Wouldn't they have to be in one department or the other?

Do people really give that much of a shit about the age of a tree? Is it a Florida thing, because they don't have many old trees there or something? Growing up in my New England neighborhood, I don't think there was any certain tree that anyone knew or cared about the age of, let alone would have taken the time for a petition drive to save.

And why SHOULDN'T a property owner have the right to do anything with a tree on their property that they want to? As a patriotic American, I stand with Frieda Claxton!

The episode where Rose accuses Miles of being "cheap"...they have dinner in a restaurant later in the episode and as they have a conversation the camera cuts back and forth between Rose and Miles...one take Betty White must have had a purse strap over her shoulder, and removed it for the second take...due to bad continuity, as the conversation takes place, the purse strap disappears and reappears about six times.

Rose was such a sweet lady, so why did she have such cunty daughters?

I can't decide who was cuntier, Bridget or Kirsten!

[quote] When Rose had her AIDS crisis, why was it Blanche who had to confide in Rose that she too had a test? It should've been Dorothy. Surely when she was going from doctor to doctor trying to get a diagnosis for her illness, which would eventually turn out to be chronic fatigue syndrome, somewhere along the way she had an HIV test to rule out HIV as the cause?

You may not remember what it was like to get an HIV test back when this episode was on air. Even requesting the test put you at risk for losing or not being able to get life insurance and/or health insurance. Consequently it was far from standard.

I love how snotty Dorothy and Blanche are about the St. Olaf maple sugar honey molasses Rice Krispies logs, acting like they don't know how anyone could eat anything that sweet... as if those two aren't constantly stuffing their faces with any cheesecakes, cookies, and cakes they can get their hands on.

Opinions wanted:

Did Blanche have any leg to stand on in "Nice and Easy" (the one where her niece Lucy visits and is a slut), or was she just being a total hypocrite?

The one area where I think there was valid criticism is that Lucy was supposedly visiting Blanche but was spending no time with her and just using her house as a way station; I don't think Blanche would have been that rude on a visit to a relative. However, sleeping with three different men in three nights seems like something Blanche might easily have done at any age.

So, please share your thoughts - did the brief justification Blanche gives in the dialogue about why Lucy's situation is different than hers convince you? Or do you think Blanche is being totally hypocritical for not accepting that her niece has just as much of a right to be slutty as she does?

Does anyone else find Nancy Walker irritating as Aunt Angela? I've liked her in other things, but on "Golden Girls" I find her really grating - I usually skip her episodes.

whose kid is Robbie?(Dorothy's grandson) from the ep where Stan is homeless

"In a Bed of Rose's" - if you find a person lying there unresponsive and potentially not breathing, shouldn't you immediately call the paramedics to see if there's a possibility of reviving them? Rather than making a layman's decision that the person's dead and you can just sit around yapping about it.

Well, where the fuck is the comedy in that, r371?

[quote] However, sleeping with three different men in three nights seems like something Blanche might easily have done at any age.

Yes her explanation explains it nicely.

Blanche says (accurately) that those men don't find Lucy attractive, they find her available, and that is not a compliment. And then she says when she (Blanche) sleeps with a man, it is because she WANTS to, not because she needs to feel attractive.

In the Caribbean vacation episode, the hotel guy says "This room isn't good enough for you?" and Dorothy angrily responds "Not for $100 a night!" But that works out to $206 in today's money. I have never gone to the Caribbean so have no information on pricing, but still, if somebody told me they were going to a Caribbean island where their hotel room for three was $206 a night, I'd expect they were going somewhere pretty bottom-of-the-barrel.

Were the girls wrong to complain about the hotel since they were cheapskates for going there in the first place and should have expected very little for what they were paying?

Two costume questions about "Blanche and the Younger Man":

I assumed this blue thing was a nightgown Bea was wearing, until it's established in the scene that this is late in the afternoon. Doesn't mean it's actually a CAFTAN, like them things we hear tell of so often on DL?

Second question: the whole subplot of the episode centers around the extremes Blanche goes to in exercise, diet, and vitamins to try to make herself look as young as possible for her date with Dirk. And then she picks out THIS dress? Was this considered a young look in 1985? Because the dress says the 1930's to me!

Why did no one tell me Freda Claxton and Gina from Italy's mother were the same person!? I just noticed this today. I've seen these episodes dozens of times and never made the connection.

I did notice Dorothy's father as the waiter in a different episode, as well. And the Boxer turned News man.

r364, but what of the generous portion of slaw?

Not exactly, r347. I thought the same as you, but a relative of mine was in the same exact situation as Dorothy and many years later she got involved with a married man. Suddenly it's "complicated" and thinking dating someone who is married is wrong is "dogmatic".

r377, are you also aware that Oscar nominee Geraldine Fitzgerald plays both Anna Egerman, the nursing home escapee Rose meets in the Minnesota bus station the night before Mother's Day, and Martha Lamont, Sophia's suicidal friend?

We should also give a shout-out to Ellen Albertini Dow, whose star turn as Lillian (who the girls liberate from sub-standard nursing home Sunny Pastures) was sandwiched in between appearances as a patient at the hospital where Sophia volunteers who Sophia gives flowers to to make her feel better and as a resident at the nursing home where Dorothy tricks Sophia into thinking she's activities director. And the special shout-out is because the actress is still alive at age 99!!

But I think the champion "Golden Girls" revolving-door actor may be Meg Wyllie, who played four different characters:

-the stewardess on the episode where Dorothy is afraid to fly and they're confronting their fears

-one of Sophia's striking co-workers from Pecos Pete's Chow Wagon

-Myra, the woman who terrorizes Rose because she thinks Rose is after her ex-husband and then shows up at Dorothy and Stan's aborted second wedding

-the meddling mother of the news anchor Blanche dates played by Peter Graves

Yep @r380. I noticed that a few months back. That one escaped me for many years, as well @Sophia's suicidal friend. I never did catch on to the remainder, thanks.

I wonder why Blanche's sons never visited..not even asthmatic Skippy.

An excellent question from a YouTube commenter:

"what store puts nestle's crunch bars, dentu-grip, enema bags and condoms that close together?!"

Not necessarily an inconsistency, per se, but just wanted to remark on how even towards the end of the first season you can tell the show still hadn't fully gotten into its natural groove yet. The girls arrive back tired from tap class and injured Dorothy says she needs something to eat and Blanche remarks "There's that salad in the fridge", so they proceed to sit and talk around the table while eating salad.

Putting aside scenes that were specific meal times, I don't think after Season 1 they ever had conversations at the kitchen table again when they were snacking on anything healthy- it was always sweets, desserts, junk food, etc.

How come not a single one of Blanche's five or six children bothered to attend their grandfather's funeral? What assholes!

r385

Clayton or Charmaine didn't come either... bitches

Remember the episode where Dorothy wanted to hock her stuff and the hocker was going to give her like 10,000 dollars for a ring. What kind of hock shop pays that money for a ring?

r388, he paid her $1,200 for the ring (adjusted for inflation, that's the equivalent of $2,460 today).

r387, I think it's possible Clayton and Charmaine came to Big Daddy's funeral and just weren't mentioned on screen; Virginia may have been the only one who happened to be at the house at the time Blanche and Dorothy arrived and Blanche got into the confrontation with her.

But I think if any of Blanche's children had come, it would had to have come up - she would have had to see them or she and Dorothy would have addressed how her children felt about Blanche skipping the funeral and leaving without saying goodbye.

What's weirder is that Dorothy's kids didn't show up for her wedding to Lucas. Actually that might've been a good thing, since they were spared the sight of that wedding dress.

What is really weird is that Dorothy's son is Blanche's grandson's brother.

No, what's really weird is Blanche's niece is Millie's daughter.

No, what's really weird is Blanche's niece's father, worked for Lou Grant, and Mary who moved away from New Rochelle, after divorcing Dick Van Dike, also worked for Lou Grant.

What's really wired is that Sophia never mentioned her other son, Dorothy's brother, Sylvester Stallone.

Damn right, r395. I'm the sole heir to the Zbornak novelty business.

Sophia said in the first season hat her son Phil had 10 kids. Why would none of his children go to their own fathers funeral? His wealthy sister Gloria from California was a no show too. In addition, why was Phil buried in Miami? He and his wife lived in Jersey, after being raised in NY. It would have been more realistic for Dorothy and Sophia to fly north for te funeral. Same with Dorothy's high school reunion with Trudy.

Trudy is supposed to be from Brooklyn, but Ann Francis had a very distinct southern accent. She would've been better as a relative of Blanche's than a Brooklyn native. Also, didn't Dorothy get pregnant and marry Stan when she was a senior in high school? Did the writers forget that when Dorothy introduced Jean as her college roommate?

In the episode where Michael and Bridget fuck, I always cringe when Rose asks Michael where he goes to school. Crap, Rose and Dorothy have been living together for two years, and she doesn't know that Michael is in a jazz band??? Also, Michael is supposed to be late 20s in this episode. Wouldn't Rose have known that as well? Of course, the next season Michael is magically 22 in the episode where he marries Lorraine.

r399, are you sure that Jean was referred to as Dorothy's college roommate rather than just her college friend? (Not saying you're wrong, I just don't specifically remember the dialogue ever saying they were roommates.)

Speaking of Bridget...while not an inconsistency per se, it is physiologically IMPOSSIBLE that any offspring of ROSE was capable of being accepted at Oxford, unless it were in some special needs program.

Just who were slutty Lucy's parents? Definitely wasn't Virginia, Charmaine or Clayton. And George only had that one brother, Jamie.

Lucy's mother was Yetta from "The Nanny." I assume she put her up for adoption. Although why she kept Sylvia, I'll never know.

haha, r404.

R401 Indeed, R399 is correct and this is the most glaring and ridiculous of all "GG" inconsistencies.

Dorothy got knocked up by Stan in high school and were married 38 years. Yet, when both their kids come to visit, they're both in their 20s. And, on top of that, Jean was Dorothy's college roommate. What pregnant, married high school student goes to college and has a roommate? Did Dorothy and Stan take the bottom bunk in the dorm and Jean take the top?

Preposterous. You can look over a continuity glitch here or there, but a huge theme if the show - which they repeated over and over - was Dorothy getting knocked up in high school and being married 38 years and how she screwed her life up because of it.

This was drilled in incessantly to the audience, but any other subplot or script that conflicted with this was ignored.

Such good writing - for three seasons, at least - but wretched continuity.

The pilot inconsistencies are fun, from the bedrooms/lanai being reversed, to Blanche's married name being Hollingsworth, to Dorothy saying she's from Queens. Wonder why all of that was changed post-pilot.

r407 I wonder why too?

Can someone provide a specific citation of where in the Jean episode they say Jean was Dorothy's college roommate? Because I just watched the opening scene and they never say that.

Yes, because obviously Jean must have attended the American University of Beirut.

Oh, and here's a link to the episode:

[quote]Just who were slutty Lucy's parents? Definitely wasn't Virginia, Charmaine or Clayton

I assumed either Charmaine or Virginia was her mother. What makes you say either one of them couldn't have been?

Well when Virginia needed a kidney, she mentioned that Charmaine was not a match. No mention was made of Lucy. And Charmaine seemed too whirlwind to have a daughter.

If Blanche doesn't believe in wearing black to funerals, then why didn't she wear her red funeral dress to the funerals of Frieda Claxton, Aunt Gretchen, and Fidel Santiago?

Good one, r414.

Dorothy married Stan but had an abortion or a miscarriage and it was never mentioned, that's all. It's like the movie Come Back Little Sheep. Where Hazel had to get married to an Egyptian Doctor when she got pregnant but then the baby miscarried and the couple was not only stuck married but couldn't have any more kids.

[quote]Come Back Little Sheep

Oh, dear!

R 417 lol

r416, so if Dorothy had a miscarriage why didn't she and Stan divorce? She obviously wasn't madly in love with him, and Sophie and Sal could've had the marriage quickly annulled. Dorothy would never have had an abortion. Despite being liberal, it's obvious she still abided by much of Catholic teaching. She could've given the baby up for adoption.

One costume that doesn't ring true to me: Rose wearing a red blouse with her black suit to Aunt Gretchen's funeral. I know by the '80s there was no longer the expectation that women wear all black and only black to funerals, but I still think that for Rose, born and raised in a small town in the '20s and '30s and basically still a pretty traditional person in most matters, a red article of clothing would have been out of the question when putting together an outfit for a family member's funeral, particularly when she would be giving the eulogy and all eyes would be on her.

Why did Estelle Getty get an "and" credit, which is usually done with names who take on supporting roles. But Getty was an unknown at the time, so why?

I could understand if they switched it once she became the breakout star mid season, a la Nancy mckeon. But from the outset I have no idea.

But then again, we also had "AND Ann B. Davis as Alice."

r421 to be fair about Ann B Davis, she was quite popular in the 50s where she won a couple of emmys on the Bob Cummings show

All Estelle got was billed last. The "and" was not much of a gift. And then of course she and the character took off, so I suppose she earned the honorary "and."

r419

For the same reason Hazel didn't get a divorce from the fake doctor. Because back then once you were married that was it. Hazel and the doctor had to stay married in Sheba and that is why Dorothy and Stan stayed married until it was acceptable in the 80s to be married.

Divorce was a major no no. Look at how many divorcees you had on TV before the 80s? Vivian? Ann Romono? Maude (and even she was remarried)...

R424 has a point. Mary Richards was originally written as a divorcée, but the network wouldn't allow it.

They were going to make Rhoda a divorcee but Grant Tinker said, being a fat New York Jewess, she had enough problems as it was.

R426 fu Dear

I don't know if this has been mentioned already in the many GG threads, but I was watching the pilot episode this morning (with "the fancy man) and noticed that when the cop came to tell Blanche that her fiancé (cutie Frank Aletter) was a bigamist, he asked for "Blanche Hollingsworth." Why was she using her maiden name? Throughout the rest of the series, she always went by Deveraux.

R428 Blanche also had a minimal accent in the pilot episode. I didn't see it today but I know they were on the last episodes like a day or two ago, so I suppose they showed the pilot today/tonight. I actually get sad when the last season is over - I love most of those episodes (except for the couple of very last ones). It's such a fun, shamelessly broad season - I love it.

On the upside, Hallmark is now showing season one of Cheers, which is about as close to perfection as you can get.

"On the upside, Hallmark is now showing season one of Cheers, which is about as close to perfection as you can get."

Not accordin' to me and Sophia! We hate that thin, uppity white woman!

Which of the Facts of Life girls should be:

I think Tootsie should be Blanche

Blair should be Rose

Jo should be Mother Jefferson

Natalie should be Coco

Mrs Garrett should be Dorothy

Cousin Jerri should be Stan.

[quote]Blanche also had a minimal accent in the pilot episode.

Apparently, the director of the pilot (Jay Sandrich) didn't want Rue to use a Southern accent.

When the show was picked up, there was a different director, and the producers (Paul Witt and Tony Thomas) told Rue to use the Southern accent (which is what she used in her audition to begin with).

Here is Rue talking about her time on Golden Girls. This site also has extensive interviews with Bea Arthur and Betty White, in addition to Rue.

Rue apparently hated doing Mama's Family. She also worked with Dabney Coleman in a short-lived sitcom just after Maude ended. She basically calls him an asshole in this interview.

Get a load of this:

Does anybody remember the dance contest flashbacks where Rose was doing gymnastics on the dance floor. People make fun of Dorothy's wardrobe but that blue sequin dress they put Blanche in was awful. She had no waist and emphasized her long torso and short legs.

Also the episode where Charlie's fake friend visits and tries to con Rose, Dorothy and Blanche have the same dress, but Dorothy looks much better in it because it's made for someone her height. Blanche looked like a peach stump.

To be fair, r435, the writers gave Judy Evans the costume designer an impossible task on the "Charlie's Buddy" episode - to come up with a dress that looked like something both Dorothy and Blanche might pick out for themselves, despite the fact that their personal styles, body shapes, etc. etc. were so wildly different that there was really no way in hell that scenario would ever have happened. So she ended up having to come up with something sort of in the middle that neither one of them would actually have ever picked out (though you're right, it looks better on tall Dorothy than short Blanche).

[quote]I think Tootsie should be Blanche

Which one was Tootsie?

[quote]Which one was Tootsie?

Teri Garr.

Getty only got an "and" credit because she was last in the billing.

[quote]Dorothy looks much better in it because it's made for someone her height. Blanche looked like a peach stump.

I always thought Blanche looked better in that dress. It just sort of hangs off of Dorothy. Blanche has a curvier figure, which makes most outfits look better on her.

[quote]One costume that doesn't ring true to me: Rose wearing a red blouse with her black suit to Aunt Gretchen's funeral.

She was planning on changing when she got there.

Remember when Joan Davis played Blanche's momma?

Dorothy is giving Dr. Budd what for right now on Hallmark, with Bibi Besch looking on.

Not really an inconsistency, but pretty random that a doctor she visited in New York suddenly appears next to her in a Miami restaurant. Do you think he was stalking her?

[quote]Not really an inconsistency, but pretty random that a doctor she visited in New York suddenly appears next to her in a Miami restaurant. Do you think he was stalking her?

Yes. Although since they're at the best restaurant in town and doctors are such jet-setters that lowers it's improbability.

[quote]R442

Oh, c'mon you know that was Jeanette Nolan and that Joan Davis died back in 1961.

[quote]Do you think he was stalking her?

He was probably trying to get her to finally pay her bill.

The Joan Davis Troll!

Relax. It's just a television program. There are no rules.

Essentially everyone here is correct regarding the inconsistencies. Not to mention lets not forget that in one episode big daddy supposedly sold There family home, yet when Dorothy marries blanches uncle she moves there. It's very unclear as to whether Hollingsworth manor and twin oaks are the same thing or if Hollingsworth manor is the only mansion on the property of twin oaks or if there may be other mansions on the property as well. Essentially I've cracked these inconsistencies up to being cute quirks. I like to think that each episode is uniquely designed as purely individual with little connection to other episodes. I think in part that's what made this show so funny, because they didn't feel the need to follow a strict plot. If the writers thought up a funny plot that deviated from a prior episode they simply went with it regardless. It's the only show I've ever watched that's ever done that. Perhaps that's why nearly 30 years later we are still talking about this show. :-)

In the Bob Hope episode when Rose says "Gunter and Alma NYLUND [emphasis added] were my adoptive parents."

I guess her husband was her brother. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

[You do realize that this is a troll, right? It does not believe what it posts. It just craves attention. You might want to stop talking to it.]

And the asshole thread bumper is back. If you don't have anything to add, why the fuck do you feel the need to bump old threads?

[You do realize that this is a troll, right? It does not believe what it posts. It just craves attention. You might want to stop talking to it.]

The other interesting thing is that Michael visits in '86 and is 29 and not settled down and moves from job to job and relationship to relationship (the episode with Rose's daughter). Yet two years later he visits unannounced to announce that he is getting married and now he is only 24. So even though two years have passed he became 5 years younger.

If Dorothy and Stan married in New York because they were young and knocked up, why (and how) would they ever buy swampland property in Florida on their honeymoon?

R452 I know! They were seniors in high school. Plus, they came from working class families. And back then (1940s), a honeymoon to nearby Niagara was considered a luxury, never mind a honeymoon in friggin' Miami.

So they wouldn't have been able to afford to honeymoon in Florida, never mind buy land there.

Why did they have the highschool reunion for Dorothy in Miami when she and Trudy went to school in Brooklyn?

What nunnery has their head nun come to people's houses and give them Rorshach tests to weed out unsuitable candidates? Pure artistic license on that one.

I also don't believe that the juvenile delinquents would accept anything other than cash on the barrel head to exonerate Blanche and Rose. That didn't ring true for me but it was not an inconsistency per se.

Also unbelievable to me is the girls handing the jacket with the lottery ticket without explanation. Hoe would Father Day Player even know there was a winning lottery ticket in there? He may well have just put in the clothes bin at the shelter without redeeming it. Wouldn't it have been better if on the way out, Sophia uttered, "Look in the pocket, Padre." Bad writing.

not an inconsistency but it bugged me that when the old guy who lost his wife when Rose was a candy striper at the hospital didn't seem even a little bit grief stricken when telling the news to Rose.

Moreover, the scene played out with it being more about Rose grieving over the dog she gave up to the old geezer then the loss of the guy's wife. How long did she know the dog anyway, a week?

Not sure if this is really an inconsistency or just plain ridiculous...

In, "The Days and Nights of Sophia Petrillo," Dorothy talks about how active her Grandmother was up until she died, at age 94. She goes on to say she was 6 years old when her Grandmother, Sophia's mom, died.

Um... didn't ANYONE bother to do math on the show?

In the, "Mangiacavallo Curse," Dorothy's Goddaughter is marrying the Grandson of Sophia's former fiancee, who left her at the altar, yet when they show the man that left her, he appears to be at least 15 years younger than her.

Also in that episode, why are Blanche and Rose invited to a wedding for family members of Dorothy's?

And then later in the episode, the Bride calls Blanche, "Aunt Blanche." Seems odd for an adult who would have known Blanche less than 5 years.

I've been watching "Empty Nest" on LAFF and it's odd when guest stars like Jerry Orbach show up playing different characters than they did on "GG," even though both shows are supposed to take place in the same place and time.

Was there ever any mention of Dorothy's daughter after she got married to the podiatrist?

How did Blanche's daughter Rebecca go from being obese to skin and bones?

R457 not an inconsistency but Howard Duff playing a Sicilian in that episode is about as far fetched as Herb Edelman playing a Gentile.

[quote]When Rose's fat daughter visits ("Blanche's Little Girl," Season 3), one of the first thing she says to Blanche is, "Mom, I love your house!" which implies that it was her first time seeing it.

Bull shit Blanche remodeled the house after the first episode and moved her own bedroom to the other side, replacing it with the oft mentioned "lanai"

R459, yes. A couple years later they come back and are about to split because he cheated. Dorothy gets upset because Kate agrees to take him back.

I don't remember the order, but there was an episode where Dorothy discovers Sophia was supposed to marry someone besides Sal. Sophia explains it was an arranged marriage and she ran off to the disappointment of her whole family. There was another episode where Sophia tells the 3 others that her marriage to Sal was arranged, but they learned to love each other. Then in the hurricane episode when her brother Sal comes to visit, Sophia says her mother wanted her to marry the town's organ grinder monkey trainer (or something like that). Then in the Mangiacavallo curse episode we learn Sophia was left at the altar by Mangiacavallo, hence the curse. Just how many fucking times was Sophia engaged to be married?

[quote]Just how many fucking times was Sophia engaged to be married?

Irrelevant. I was her one true love!

And I was Sophia's rival

Did the inconsistencies started pretty much right away or did they sneak in or went off the roof when the writers of the first (4-5?) seasons got replaced by the writers of the later seasons (Marc Cherry a.o.)?

[quote] Maybe the Golden Girls was a make believe show. Maybe the writers didn't think 20 years later a bunch of queens with no life would be worried about such stupid shit.

They worked for Disney; they should have anticipated it!

[quote] Did the inconsistencies started pretty much right away or did they sneak in or went off the roof when the writers of the first (4-5?) seasons got replaced by the writers of the later seasons (Marc Cherry a.o.)?

There were some doozies in the Kathy Speer/Terry Grossman/Mort Nathan/Barry Fanaro era before the new writers came in. Rose got her high school diploma in season 4…even though she mentioned her college fraternity, the Alpha Yams, in season 2. And then later that same season, not much later in fact, she said she took Latin in college!

The new writers/producers came in season 5 and they at least seemed to form a consensus on a consistent backstory by that point. They also let Stan grow a bit with him finally seeing some success and almost reconciling with Dorothy. Season 5 also had the most "Very Special Episodes," which they (mercifully) got out of their system as soon as possible.

"she took Latin in college" -- first in her class, orothy-Day!

We never did find out if Dorothy ate shiitake mushrooms.

A few thoughts:

Perhaps rose's aunt Gretchen lived in Minnesota most of her life and that's when she obtained the habit of wintering in the Bahamas

Dorothy's high school reunion was specifically for the tennis team which presumably didn't involve Stan in any way. If everyone knew about the ugly divorce, they may not have even mentioned him out of respect

The first Kirsten was 90210's Samantha Sanders. Why no mention as Steve as the adopted grandson of adopted granny rose?

Did anyone mention that in addition to Gloria, Kirsten, and big daddy, the role of Dorothy's extra marital affair was also played by 2 actors? Before Lenny Briscoe it was Moe Green/mr. Polnacheck

Would 85 year old Sophia really be making regular references to current pop culture such as Ishtar, molly ringwald, and Steve garvey's bastard child?

Are 60 year old women really that active on the dating scene to have a new partner every week? Blanche maybe, but the other 3?

What substitute teacher tutors those same students in her home? This was anachronistic even in the 80s

In addition to Angie Dickinson, Blanche also had a stalkerish obsession with Ms. Susan Anton

How did George Clooney go from hocking chachkis made in Taiwan in Peekskill to working diamond capers in Miami?

R471 re Sophia, one thing old ladies know about is their pop culture. My grandmother read everything and watched everything - she had nothing else to do. She watched everything beginning with the shittiest shit like Full House.

So I know many didn't find that part believable but I did - very much so.

Why did they dress like they were living in a colder climate?

Why weren't Dorothy's grown children at her wedding? Who were all the others in the church?

[quote]Why weren't Dorothy's grown children at her wedding?

Because they got an advance preview of her wedding dress.

If only fancy man Coco and Raye Burke as Sophia's caterer who was the Susan Hayward fan had been there to fix Dot's wedding gown. It looked like she was wearing Rambo's ammo belt after spray painting it white...

....

How come Dorothy was tall but Blanche was from the South?

R299, R300 & R314. I seem to recall Blanche was going to see Dorothy & Sophia in the middle of the night.

She seemed to be half awake which is why she said lesbian a couple of times, trying to rally all her faculties until she connected to it at end with her deep growl "LESBIAN".

To me she seemed to be wide awake at that point. This explanation is the best way to interpret the "Lebanese" mix-up after Blanche has made at least 1 earlier reference to lesbians.

To me another inconsistency is how did Blanche ever get a stable good night's sleep with all the men that she spent the night with? She must have constantly been up at all hours of the night because she surely had to adapt to their work hours/sleep hours but she never seemed to be drowsy during any of the daytime moments (& to the contrary always appeared quite vibrant) with the possible exception of the egg yolks/little balls of sunshine joke.

Someone said this thread was closed. It is not!

R176 I remember that episode solely for Mark Moses' VPL and ass. Looks like they had to sew those jeans on him.

Would Dorothy really have been such a huge Beatles fan at her age?

She references missing that concert at Shea stadium in the 60s.

Wouldn't she have been a mom in her 40s at that point?

It just didn't ring true to me...

R482 Dorothy's son Michael's age was off too. He was stated as being the oldest and we know Stan knocked Dorothy up sometime in the late 1940s. In Michael's appearance in Season 3 he stated as being 22 which means he can't be the oldest child and in fact he would have been a teenager when Dorothy moved in with the girls.

How was Freida Claxton both their miserable, next door neighbor AND Dorothy's mother???

R484:

By the same magic that transformed Pepe the Cuban prize fighting violinist into the local consumer reporter Enrique Mas

dorothy was the least convincing in a lover tryst episode. she did not suit the part .

This concept begins & ends with blanche's net worth

Blanche did say early on that she "married money". Maybe she was just cheap and didn't really want to pay for things even though she could afford them. I know people like that.

Blanche also came from money...

I get the concept of a cheap 1%er, but honestly:

A diva bride from old money marrying money who lines in that house, takes in 3 roomies, & has a part time job in her menopause??

^^^Living in THAT house??

What's wrong with their house?

The house is pretty average for someone with money

R479 BECAUSE THEY PLACED HER IN THE WITNESS RELOCATION PROGRAM TWICE ROSE !!!

Sorry R479. I meant R484.

I am oddly turned on by 'noticeably irritated Dorothy'

[quote]Would 85 year old Sophia really be making regular references to current pop culture such as Ishtar, molly ringwald, and Steve garvey's bastard child?

She lives in a house with roommates who read People magazine and National Enquirer and watch TV. And the financial failure of [italic]Ishtar[/italic] was pretty well-publicized at the time.

I never liked the fact that one minute Rose an oblivious idiot and the next she knew exactly what to say and do.

Did they have a pool or not? In the Rita Moreno episode, Dorothy was mad at the Joe Isuzu guy because he came over to the house on New Year's Eve and threw up in their pool. In another episode, Sophia mentions that they have the only house on the block without a pool. So which is it, Ms. Harris-Witt?

They didn't have a pool.

If they did, they would have thrown Rose into it numerous times.

I'm sure this has been mentioned before but....

Why didn't Dorothy recognize her (supposedly dead) father when he waited on her at the restaurant her former prom date takes her to in, "What a Difference a Date Makes?"

Watching it all for the first time in my 30s (although I remember it running when I was a kid)I love the running inconsistencies. The whole point is to laugh. I love that you just suspend all belief while noting the floating reality "thanks for the medicare..." I'm singing that in my 30s lol.

How come Blanche is a grandmother but never breast feeds them?

Why did nobody propose the idea of Clayton & Doug as a spin-off? That honestly sounds better than [italic]Nurses[/italic] apparently turned out to be.

Why did Sophia say Esther Weinstock and she grew up together? Esther Weinstock grew up in Palermo?

Have you Elder Gays always been obsessed with this show or does is resonate more now that you are approaching the Golden Girls age?

[quote]Why did they have the highschool reunion for Dorothy in Miami when she and Trudy went to school in Brooklyn?

This has been mentioned a few times in this thread, it wasn't a high school reunion, it was a tennis team reunion celebrating the year they won the league championship.

[quote]I remember that episode solely for Mark Moses' VPL and ass. Looks like they had to sew those jeans on him.

Fuck yes. Also, this thread may be of interest...

'The Hottest GG Guest Stars'

Ooops, I didn't see R471.

R502 What??

Morothy's reunion was with Barney Miller in Miami but regardless she and Trudy went to Brooklyn in High School.

Actually, R510, the Hal Linden (Barney Miller) as John Noreti episode wasn't a high school reunion either, he was in Miami on business and accompanied Dorothy to a prom she was chaperoning.

The abusive boyfriend R209 & R210 mentioned was Michael Tortelli; he was captain of the football team, "he was beautiful, black wavy hair, strong roman nose, and he could read."

I never get tired watching Bea, she was so brilliant. As were the other girls.

[quote]how did Blanche afford Nancy Reagan's decorator? Or was she just trying to impress her sister Virginia?

She was just trying to impress Virginia. First, she told Rose she wished she could afford Nancy Reagan's decorator, then when Virginia arrived, she lied and said she used NR's decorator.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Ha. never noticed that, R514. Good catch. What were everyone's favorite Golden Girls fashions? Of course, Dorothy's ridiculous linebacker shoulder pads in floor length lamé dresses is hard to beat. I distinctly recall one look from one of the last two seasons that looked really good on her and, somehow, not too dated. It was this grey outfit - blouse and pants - with pink/fuchsia elements that actually looked really nice on her.

Nothing tops Dorothy's horrific wedding dress.

R512 I love Betty in that clip. That's the kind of humor and timing she does that has kept her career going for a thousand years.

[quote]Speaking of Miles, at one point his daughter comes for a visit. And a year later it is revealed that he is not really Miles Webber and that he is in the witness protection program.

This one always bugged me.

Then Miles goes back to being a professor without a care in the world after Barbara Weston arrests the Cheeseman.

R516 It was really something.

Why would Barbara Thorndyke, a well-known author, start hanging out with a 60 year old substitute teacher? The only rational response is that Barbara thought she could get some play.

How come Coco never says he's gay but Sofia does? That's blatant racism and homophobia.

[quote]Why would Barbara Thorndyke, a well-known author, start hanging out with a 60 year old substitute teacher?

Rose answered that by saying the only reason Barbara liked Dorothy because she fawned all over her.

I'm watching on Hulu now for the first time in 20 years.

Accents... oh boy. Angelo has a thick Italiam accent, Sophia has none, and neither does her mother (played by Bea in the Mother's Day episode).

I'll never understand their taste in men. They go gaga over the most average men, describing them as gorgeous. In what world?

Just watched the episode from season 7 where Blanche is dating the baseball player whos looking to break into the majors. The character is clearly pushing 40.

[quote] How come Coco never says he's gay but Sofia does? That's blatant racism and homophobia.

Rose says it, too, but how is it racism if they're the same race?

[quote]This one always bugged me. Then Miles goes back to being a professor without a care in the world after Barbara Weston arrests the Cheeseman.

I have a theory: Miles Webber, Nicholas Carbone and Arnie Peterson were all the same person all along, and Arnie Peterson was just another one of his Witness Protection Program nommes de plume. Consider that the last time we saw Miles/Nicholas/Arnie was on [italic]Golden Palace[/italic] where we learn he had been cheating on Rose with a woman he would go on to marry; if he would go to those lengths to lie, that's not out of character for him.

Here's a real-life inconsistency regarding the Blanche's pacemaker episode: they made up two contradictory excuses for why that long-lost scene about the microwave being given away wasn't on DVD. First they said the master tape was damaged and no copy good enough for a DVD master had the scene in it. The second was that they cut it because by that time they had new microwaves that didn't interfere with pacemakers (and vice versa). Jim Colucci said it was the second, but I still am skeptical of that because that same season [italic]The Simpsons[/italic] did an episode called "Krusty Gets Busted" that revolved around it.

[quote]Rose says it, too, but how is it racism if they're the same race?

The same way Arabs and Jews are both semitic, but antisemitic means anti-Jewish NOT anti-Arab

[quote]Speaking of Miles, at one point his daughter comes for a visit. And a year later it is revealed that he is not really Miles Webber

The same way Becky, is fat and thin.

r509

Back in those days women didn't breastfeed unless they were poor.

Remember, Carnation evaporated milk, great for nursing babies, in coffee just as it is, or mix with equal portions of water for a delicious milk.

Why didn't they tell the priest there was a lottery ticket in the jacket?

I love this show and Estelle Getty as Sophia, but let's get real. How could anybody take her seriously as a NYC Italian grandma, when she's obviously an old NYC Jewish granny? That accent! And the words - yutz, schnozz, schmuck? C'mon now!

Isaac Q. Newton.

When he shows up he says the other boys at the boarding house gave him a good natured ribbing about having a date. At the gala (they attend a charity event or gala at least twice a month), Isaac says he gets to store the chocolate clusters for the school fundraiser in his garage. THEN he makes a comment about his mother not letting him have his own phone until last year. Rose got his number out of the phone book.

Where in the hell does Isaac live?

This is one of those "only on DL" threads lol

r530: Sophia hands the priest the lottery ticket, not the jacket.

Blanche found the lottery ticket. In this photo Blanche gives the ticket to Sophia, and Sophia then gives it to the priest.

You're right, r514. In the "Libertine Belle" episode, the old man's spinster daughter Gloria is wearing Rose's dress.

How come she's called Morothy in some episodes?

[quote]Dorothy was all wabout the wetlands, but seasons later, she tells a telemarketer taht she couldn't give a flying fig about whooping cranes.

Yeah, it's not like anyone ever changes their minds or gives up on a hopeless cause in real life.

[quote]Dorothy tells Rose to go into the kitchen and she says she won't because she's afraid of big dogs and has been since she was terrified by a cocker spaniel as a kid and that to a kid cocker spaniels are big....Rose is full of crap because in later episodes, she brings home a big, fuzzy stray dog that she sleeps with and carries around the house with her. Also, in another episode, Sophia dog-sits the neighbor's dog Dreyfus and Rose is completely fine around the dog. She enters the garage where to look-alike dogs lie and calls Dreyfus to her. But this is impossible! you say. Dreyfus was a St. Bernard mix and those are the biggest fuckin dogs on the planet.

I agree, in real life people NEVER get over their phobias or fears

[quote]I like when the cop comes about the Shady Pines fire and arrests Sophia. He actually pulls out handcuffs! As if she could really resist or run! Not really an inconsistency, just an idiocy.

This is similar to the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode where Mary's arrested and the cop puts her in handcuffs and Lou says "Good idea, she may try to overpower you."

At least MTM writers knew what to do in a situation like this.

[quote]Why would Barbara Thorndyke, a well-known author, start hanging out with a 60 year old substitute teacher? [quote]Rose answered that by saying the only reason Barbara liked Dorothy because she fawned all over her.

Rose answered that by saying the only reason Barbara liked Dorothy because she f̶a̶w̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ licked her labia all over

Why wasn't Doris Day cast to replace Morothy?

In a 1991 episode Dorothy is described as being 55 years old. Since she got a divorce sometime before 1985 after 38 years of marriage, I think that makes Stan something worse than a "yutz".

Why did the refuse to talked about their murdered houseboy? Just like the Ramseys