Why did Golden Palace only last one season?

Too contrived in both premise and casting.

Because of the reasons you stated. No Dorothy, new people that were foreign to viewers and just a different premise. The GG house was also a huge part of the show's atmosphere, the hotel lacked in comparison.

Well they wisely ditched the kid after a few episodes, but by then it just wasn't working for the audience who were missing Bea etc...

It was just plain un-American without Bea.

They offered me the part of Stacie-Anne, the sexy ingenue concierge, but they wouldn’t let me out of my EIGHT contract to do it. This had Barbra Streisand’s fingerprints all over it. I could have turned that show into a monster hit. Emmys all around.

It didn't help that they put it on Fridays at 8:00 against Family Matters. They should have put it on Saturday night, like the Golden Girls had been, but I'm guessing the production company, had some sort of agreement that it couldn't air opposite, Empty Nest or Nurses, which were part of the same universe.

Something about taking a leg off of a table and doing Golden Girls in the lobby. Shit, I’ve forgotten.

Why wasn't Bea Arthur on it?

People thought it was about a Chinese restaurant, then got made when their deliveries of Mu Shoo Pork never arrived.

It wouldn't have lasted more than another season anyway, thanks to Estelle Getty's alzheimers...

Damn it! That should be "... then got mad when ..."

R10 Not sure about that, since Estelle did two more seasons on Empty Nest as Sophia, after GP was canceled.

Um, no Bea Arthur. And the characters were getting tired anyway. Thread closed.

It was EASILY beaten in the ratings by the TGIF shows.

What was the point of resetting the show instead of recasting/replacing Bea Arthur’s character? That was too much change - and moving it to a different night.

The new show pretty such sucked. It wasn’t funny, the characters looked lost.

Would it have been more successful if they stayed in the GG house? Perhaps bringing in Dorothy’s sister Gloria as the fourth girl?

What happened to Bea Arthur?

The girls should have followed Dorothy to Atlanta, where they could meet Bernice from the Designing Women and take her back to Miami with them to be the fourth girl.

R18 Oh sure, . Then there would be TWO of them singing “BLACK MAN! BLACK MAN!”

The writing was actually better than the Golden Girls, but the characters and setting just didn't gel.

So...question:

Golden Girls ended cause Dorothy got married and left Miami. The remaining Girls stayed on at Golden Palace. Did Bea end GG because she wanted out?

TIA

R18 Alice Ghostley as the new roommate would make Stanley think he had a long lost sister.

I thought Stan's appearance at the Golden Palace was sweet. The ending with was perfect, with Sophia's being able to tell everyone that she had seen him.

R21, no. Bea wanted to do another two seasons, but after paying to clean the floor of Betty's dressing room, the producers thought it would be best to let Bea go.

It would've worked if they'd brought back Coco.

Bea didn't want to continue on, so they spun the rest off without her.

I think we need to do a thread about Bea Arthur's decision to leave. There's a lot of interest in that from people who weren't Golden Girls fans the first time around.

What? The Golden Girls has a sequel? OMG, I didn’t know that. What year did this take place?

Bea Arthur wanted to leave the show at the end of the 7th season. She felt the show had run its course and wanted to do other things.

The other three actresses wanted to continue, hence Golden Palace. Bea did make one guest appearance, in a two-part episode.

R28, The Golden Girls ended at the end of the 1991-92 season. Golden Palace ran for one season, 1992-93.

I was a huge GG fan but watched the first episode of GP and the writing was hideous. I remember thinking I could have written a better episode on my short train ride to work.

Very lazy.

I don’t know that it warrants its own thread, R27.

Bea was a believer in the idea that you should always leave the audience wanting more, not run something into the ground. It was the same reason she pulled the plug on Maude after only five seasons.

It’s been rumored that Bea wanted to leave The Golden Girls as early as the end of that show’s 5th season, but was persuaded to stay on for two more.

She refused repeatedly to even consider a Golden Girls reunion because she didn’t think they could top what they’d already done. It’s a philosophy I wish more people in television shared.

[quote] People thought it was about a Chinese restaurant, then got made when their deliveries of Mu Shoo Pork never arrived.

Did the Golden Palace too have a pearl white slim line telephone with last number redial?

R31 Yup Bea had wanted to leave Golden Girls when her original contract was up at the end of the 5th season. She allegedly agreed to return for two more years after NBC offered her a significant raise and a small percentage of ownership in the show. It's no secret Bea was unhappy on the show for basically the entirety of its run. Rue, Betty, and Jim Colucci (who wrote two books on the GGs) have all talked about Bea's unhappiness.

Because you screaming "Golden Girls" queens WEREN'T WATCHING.

Conversely, you'd make sure it was still on the air today, if only they had named it "Golden Phallus."

Always wished they had gotten Bea to just do one more season, then just completely end it there. The show was so funny in the later seasons and the characters really developed from the 1st season on. It got a little crazier at the end but like I said, it was still funny and didn't feel desperate or 'jumped the shark'. Damn Bea!

Sure, sure. Blame the kid!

IIRC Golden Palace got decent ratings and was winning its time slot against Family Matters for the first few months but the ratings steadily dwindled over the course of the season and CBS pulled the plug. I seem to remember it and Designing Women going down to the wire before their cancellations were announced that year.

R31-Maude was on the air for 6 seasons NOT 5.

They should've stayed in the house and just added another roommate. They tested Debbie Reynolds for a part quite obviously in one season and maybe should've brought her back instead of the hotel set up and all the superfluous characters they added for that setting.

Carol channing or elaine stritch would've made good house mates. Debbie R didnt fit. It needed a str8 man to react to the slur, the bimbo and the nutty granny.... love this show.

If they had called it Hot Pink Palace and brought me in as the fourth girl, the show could've whirlybirded to success!

If only Bea were still alive and cast on Shameless we wouldnt be in this mess.

The creative side of the show faced some serious challenges. First they had run out of ideas on what to tell about the three core characters. That had become a problem on the original dhow already. For a couple of seasons the characters had become more shrill. The plots became more outlandish or whimsical because all normal scenarios and the way the characters reacted to them had been covered already. Setting the girls in a new environment was somewhat helping, but the characters had already turned shrill, and they dialed that behavior rather up than down.

Related to the fish out of water idea, the characters had to fill new roles in the new setting. Blanche was tasked to fill Dorothy's role by giving the more rational head of household. But that was quite half-assed because the established character could only go that far.

It was overwhelming challenges combined with overwhelmed writing really.

[quote]Why didn't it last?

Most of the audience was dead.

This thread has been done so many times, your title has gray whiskers, Rose.

They got rid of the kid half way through the season, thankfully.

Didn't care for Don Cheadle's character, either.

Cheech Marin's character was stereotypical but he had good chemistry with Estelle Getty.

Bea thought she was going to get cast as Hannibal Lectern in Silence of the Lambs so she quit GG. Then she lost out to Hopkins at the last minute but was too proud to reverse herself.

'Do any DL Queens remember an early episode of Seinfeld when Jerry was performing for his parents Condo association in Florida and one of Jerry's parents friends say to his mother-This better be good I'm missing Golden Girls for this!-maybe one of the funniest lines in Seinfeld.

Family Matters later moved to CBS, along with Step by Step (from ABC) and The Hogan Family (from NBC)

How come it has never been released on DVD?

Same reason [italic]Empty Nest[/italic] hasn't gotten so much as a Season 1 release. Di$ney doesn't want to fork over the dough to produce anything that they won't think will make at least a 20% profit margin.

I thought they did finally release Golden Palace on DVD a couple of years ago? If not then yeah I’m puzzled surely it would sell, there are so many millennial gays who adore the show and have never seen GP people would buy it just for the curiosity factor.

It's still amazing to realize Don Cheadle (of all people) was in this.

Bea was the star of GG's but even on that show she was wasted. She was not a tough legendary feminist like on Maude, just the target of misogyny, being attacked for her looks and lack of sex life.

I disagree, r54. She got most of the great zingers and was the anchor of the show. She was the sane (if highly dry and sarcastic) center, reacting to the craziness of the other three and the ditsiness of Blanche and Rose.

I think it flopped the same reason why that Friends spin off with Matt LeBlanc flopped. Together, the characters worked, but take one out or replace one with someone else and it all comes crumbling down. Without Bea, there was no grounded, straight man character and that matters a lot in comedy. The same thing happened when Arrested Development moved to Netflix and you suddenly had Jason Bateman acting as ridiculous as the rest of his family. It didn't work. An entire show about a group of wacky people just doesn't work. Someone in the group has to be grounded voice of reason.

Strangely enough, I remember the two episodes Bea guest starred on being the best of the show. The chemistry was still there and it genuinely felt like old times. It really went to show you how much Bea brought to that dynamic.

Golden Girls + Golden Palace Trivia = Susan Harris, Paul Junger Witt, and Tony Thomas all pitched their Golden Girls successor series to NBC in early 1992, as a way to continue the saga of Blanche, Rose, and Sophia after Bea Arthur's departure from the role of Dorothy. NBC entertainment chief Warren Littlefield originally committed to airing The Golden Palace, with a 13 episode order for the 1992 to 93 season. However, CBS soon entered the picture and fueled a bidding war for the new series, offering a full season (24 episode) order. Witt, Thomas, and Harris tried to get Littlefield to improve his NBC deal, but he refused to extend his episode order, citing that the declining ratings of The Golden Girls in its seventh season made it risky to give the spin-off a longer commitment. The producers thus went with CBS, which agreed to market The Golden Palace as a show with its own voice separate from that of its parent show.

Golden Girls + Golden Palace trivia 2 = CBS used The Golden Palace as one of four comedies assembled on Friday night in an effort to combat ABC's TGIF comedy block; The Golden Palace was grouped with Major Dad, Designing Women, and Bob, all of which were either successful comedies prior to the move, or in the case of Bob, featured a previously successful sitcom star (Bob Newhart). The premiere garnered solid ratings, and the show won its timeslot for its first few weeks, but viewership fell steadily for the entire block as the season progressed. CBS had scheduled the show for a second season, but cancelled the show (and the entire block) the night before they announced their 1993 fall schedule. The only one of the four aforementioned shows to get picked up for the 1993 to 94 season was Bob, which hired Betty White to join its revamped cast. Twenty-four episodes of The Golden Palace were produced.

And Finally——The tried to lure Bea Arthur back after she quit———>>”The production team of Golden Palace were so desperate for Bea Arthur to return for the second and third seasons, that they offered to cut down the episode number, and work around her schedule. Arthur declined the offer several times. Had Arthur returned, the second season would have seen the girls return to their Miami house, and The Golden Girls would have resumed.”

Spin-offs from successful sitcoms after their run is over, with only some of the original stars, almost never work. Lots of people tune in to the first episode out of curiosity just to see what it will be like, but then don't want to watch it again when they see the magic is gone. This happened with "After M*A*S*H*" as well as with "Joey" and "Golden Palace."

The kid looked like Priscilla Lopez.

[quote] Spin-offs from successful sitcoms after their run is over, with only some of the original stars, almost never work. Lots of people tune in to the first episode out of curiosity just to see what it will be like, but then don't want to watch it again when they see the magic is gone. This happened with "After M*A*S*H*" as well as with "Joey" and "Golden Palace."

There are exceptions to that rule, you know.

R55, Bea was very sensitive despite her tough exterior, and she did let the writers know that their jokes were hurting her personally. The other actresses' characters had jokes based on their characters' personas: the "slut"; the "moron", and the "old lady". But none of the actresses were like those roles in real life. The jokes against the Dorothy character were often based on her--and therefore Bea's--appearance. I cringe at the "ugly" jokes directed at Dorothy/Bea when I watch the show. They should have targeted the jokes solely at Dorothy's bookishness, sarcasm, and skepticism (and of course the fact that she got knocked up by Stan).

To me, the biggest problem with GP was that it broke the all-female bond. You got something very real when these ladies were together, away from the influence of men, and talking with each other candidly about men, love and sex. GP brings men into the inner circle. I liked the male characters, but the show was no longer centered on "sisterhood". This was the biggest change.

I remember a funny scene where the GP was hosting a bachelorette party, and Don Cheadle's character was mistaken for the stripper. Later, because no one had hired a stripper, Cheadle's character actually had to replace the stripper. It was funny seeing him run from all the aggressive women, a reversal of roles, of sort.

The scenes of Chuy and Roland without the girls rarely gelled. [italic]Empty Nest[/italic]'s writers were better at writing that kind of hetero male buddy bonding-type humor, but they were still on that show.

Doing it on CBS instead of NBC also threw a wrench in Touchstone's plans to have crossovers between the original show and [italic]Empty Nest[/italic] and [italic]Nurses[/italic].

Two years earlier, [italic]The Bradys[/italic], which was just a string of hour-long very special episodes of [italic]The Brady Bunch[/italic], aired on CBS in that exact same time slot. This show at least got a whole season there. Would they have gotten that from NBC?

Bea will always be Maude. Dorothy paid the bills but it was not a legendary character. That is why even though Bea was the star of GG's, Sophia was the hands down favorite of most people because she had the most biting and funny lines.

R12, Getty's parts in Empty Nest were tiny. She had been reading off cards for four of the seven years on Golden Girls because of her failing memory...

R47 - Oh. please. Everyone knows Bea was going after the role that eventually went to Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Bea's audition tape for it is on YouTube even.

With 6 you get egg roll !

Because viewers only tune in to watch Bea Arthur

[quote] Because viewers only tune in to watch Bea Arthur

All the guest stars they had and they didn't have me on it, but they did have someone from that knockoff of the show I did after [italic]Maude[/italic]?

It was exhausting trying to watch three old ladies run a hotel. No one wanted to see that.

We already did it better for eight years on the same network.

Bea Arthur already tried to run an inn in 1983's [italic]Amanda's[/italic]. It flopped even harder, so much so that ABC shelved the last few episodes.

They kept Estelle Getty around because the Sophia character was so popular. One of the most popular TV characters at the time.

I remember reading around the end of the run of the show, a TV went to several different cities and would ask random people to identify well-known people and characters. The Sophia character was the most recognized, even moreso than George Bush, who was president at the time!

Bea had a good sense of when it was time for a series to end. [italic]Maude[/italic] ended because Gene Saks walked out on her for another woman and Bea didn't want her to get any of the money, but it's also the time that Norman Lear started to become a backseat driver for his own production company's sitcoms.

Why did was Bea unhappy doing the Golden Girls? That show was insanely funny, and an enormous hit. She should've been thrilled.

They were a hit by doing insults at her expense.

R47/R69: Go away. You're not funny. Posts like that are intrusive and interrupt the fun of good, legit gossip.

Now run off to an Ina Garten thread so you can make a fart joke, or a SJP thread so you can make a horse joke. That's about how fresh and funny you are.

The best part was the theme song. They should have used that for the last few season of Golden Girls. Love the original theme, but by the 90's, it didn't sound as fresh and current.

Bea wasn’t in it.

When NBC tried to continue a hit sitcom without two of its stars, the result was [italic]The Sanford Arms[/italic], a four-week flop. Then they were going to reboot [italic]The Facts of Life[/italic] with Blair running Eastland, but Lisa Whelchel pre-emptively ended that by becoming a minister's wife. That is probably what made them hesitant to give them more than half a season to start off with. But might that have created a greater incentive for a better show? It got better without Oliver (and the actor playing him truly was horrible), but the audience they lost still didn't come back. The only point of that character was to get kids to watch, but real kids seemed more interested in [italic]Family Matters[/italic] which was winning its time slot.

FUCK BEA ARTHUR.

R84 = Jeffrey Ross

In addition to the loss of that “sisterhood” dynamic we were privy to, I also felt we weren’t, as viewers, allowed to be as close to them in GP. Maybe because the action was happening in a lobby, restaurant, huge kitchen but it had an odd “distant” feel to it.

R86 It was too big and distant, it might have worked better, if instead of a big Miami Beach hotel, they had instead bought a small B&B in the Keys.

Actually, Bea was in the running for the lead in Desperate Housewives. But they waited so long to make it that she finally aged out. But in the early '90s she would have been perfect in the Nicolette Sheridan role.

I know it's a troll post but a role for Bea in DH would have been fucking incredible.

Bea thought Maude was high art, while the Golden Girls was just a sitcom.

I wish Bea hadn't left Maude when she did, the final episode where she becomes a Congresswoman, looked like a great setup. They were retooling it to go forward, when she quit.

She did become a congresswoman and the show did take place in DC for a while. I may be wrong but I do believe her and Walter divorced, or at least separated, due to the relocation.

R92 you are wrong the last episode, was about her first day as a Congresswoman, in DC.

my favorite Rose joke was courtesy of Golden Palace

It had a dirty name.

[quote] This happened with "After M*A*S*H*" as well as with "Joey" and "Golden Palace."

Don't forget us!

They should have had The Golden Girls Brides.

While the last couple of seasons of GG were funny, the women were increasingly mean to each other, undercutting the life be that drove the show.

One interesting thing I learnt recently was that Betty, Rue and Estelle had one last on-screen reunion in 2000, as part of the CBS sitcom Ladies Man starring Alfred Molina, which Betty was in at the time. Betty and Rue played different characters who were sisters but apparently Estelle still played Sophia? It was Estelle's last acting appearance. Has anyone ever seen it? All I can find is a pic.

For hotel based laughs, GP just couldn't compete with Isabel Sanford's Honeymoon Hotel...

[quote]Bea thought Maude was high art, while the Golden Girls was just a sitcom.

Nothing says high art quite like shouting “God’ll get you for that, Walter”.

When Bea guested on Golden Palace, did she shit on Betty’s room floor for old times sake?

No. She pissed in her coffee.

Don Cheadle is overrated and homophobic.

How do you know he is homophobic R104?

Or overrated?

R104 is a troll. Cheadle is a great actor and an LGBTQ ally. Get your facts straight before you post dumb shit fucking idiot.

Fuck you R107 Cheadle is not an actor and uglier than a dark black turd. I have always hated him. Mainly for being uglier than sin.

"LGBTQ ally" = supports misogynist, cocks-in-frocks straight guy fetishists, but throws gays, lesbians, and women in general under the bus.

No thanks.

Are Cheadles dark turds even darker than the ones Bea left on Betty’s dressing room floor?

It’s not just Bea remove any one of them and it would never have worked. I guess of the 3, Estelle would have been the most disposable, but still would’ve been very missed.

Rose would have been the most disposable. Estelle was the most popular. A lot of times I fucking hated Rose.

Agreed. Sophia was most popular, followed by Dorothy, then the slut, and finally the moron.

She was a nitwit, not a moron.

Bea was set to star in Making Love, but the producers wouldn't let her out of her contract, so she was very bitter.

Don Cheadle is indeed an overrated, virtue signaling gasbag without a hint of star quality which is why he is basically unknown to the masses.

Did Blanche get some of his BBC?

The Bradys did not get a whole season as I recall. It was a eight episode mud season replacement I believe.

It seems like Betty White took over top billing from Bea in GP. She's front and center in OP's promo photo above and is also introduced first in the opening credits. Did she deserve it over Rue?

What a stupid name for the show. It sounds like the name of a Chinese Restaurant.

It was so incredibly contrived. Sophia, who required nursing home care before moving in with Dorothy, was now living with non-relatives in a hotel, and working? Really? And Dorothy, who couldn’t stand her morther living with another sibling, was okay with her working and living in a hotel with her former roommates?

Ridiculous.

[quote]I remember reading around the end of the run of the show, a TV went to several different cities and would ask random people to identify well-known people and characters.

Why would a transvestite be conducting a poll?

It was such a poorly conceived and contrived show. Why would three elderly women buy a hotel and go to work running it? So stupid.

Bea was such a miserable old cunt.

R123-Sophia was certainly elderly but I did not consider Blanche ELDERLY.

r119 Betty had second billing on GG, so I assume they just moved her up to first after Bea left.

Netflix just announced they are re-booting Golden Palace. And get this...Glenn Close will be playing the Dorothy role!

How did they afford to buy the hotel when, even selling the house, their savings could never have extended to a large hotel with all fixtures and fittings close to the beach. Makes no sense.

If the other women wanted to continue, Bea should've been simply replaced. Moving to a whole new location on top of losing Bea, was a doomed idea from the get go.

Glenn Close shitting on Bettys dressing room floor!

Gorden Parace?

I wonder where the hotel idea came from, maybe trying to capitalize on the success of Newhart that had recently finished its run?

A hotel setting is the easiest way to get plots. Anything and anyone could stop by and bring drama.

It was like Love Boat, but on land.

and with a walker.

The premise of the show was just ridiculous - three old women, one of whom is supposed to be close to NINETY years old, buy a hotel? And then go to work running the place? At their ages? Even for a tv sitcom it was so fucking stupid.

Blanche would have never sold her house. She was ready to throw Dorothy out so she could keep it.

Too much wicker!

I fucking hate wicker.

Rue said in her Archive of American Television interview that the premise was I’ll-conceived. She thought they should’ve just found another roommate to replace Dorothy.

What actress would’ve been most likely to play a replacement roommate for Dorothy? Would Debbie Reynolds have done it? Elaine Stritch? Doris Roberts?

Gabrielle Carteris

R141 Apparently, Elaine Stritch had already auditioned for the role of Dorothy, originally, so I could see her doing it. I would have liked them to go with someone different, though, maybe someone like Jayne Meadows.

To those who suggest replacing Bea with another actress:

Would you recommend the replacement having basically the same personality as Dorothy, or do you think it should be someone completely different, à la Diane vs. Rebecca on Cheers?

Unless the new character was another sibling of Dorothy’s, I can’t see how the premise of Dorothy leaving Sophia behind would ever work. For me it’s the biggest problem with the premise of Golden Palace.

The mother-daughter dynamic of Dorothy/Sophia was one of the defining elements of GG for me.

it was so shitty.

[quote]The mother-daughter dynamic of Dorothy/Sophia was one of the defining elements of GG for me.

I completely agree. And tempering with that dynamic in the last couple of GG season messed up that show already. It was mostly Sophia who played with her daughter's insecurity. I don't know why a mother would do that, but I hated that aspect in their later mother/daughter relationship. In the later years it became almost the defining factor between these two.

R109 called it. He is to them as George Clooney was to [italic]The Facts of Life[/italic].

[quote]Unless the new character was another sibling of Dorothy’s

Actually, they probably should have had Gloria move in to replace Dorothy. She lost all her money in season 7, so it would’ve made sense. I don’t know much about the second actress who played her. Was she a strong enough actress for a leading role?

No, she wasn't. And I don't think she was supposed to. With Debbie Reynolds coming in you noticed the producers were testing the waters for something new. But Dorothy's sister was always just a plot device that serviced the relationships Dorothy/Sophia and Dorothy/Stan. The story with her in season 7 was terribly contrived and not suitable to re-introduce Gloria as a long term companion.

You can't put lipstick on a pig.

Thank you for fucking my end

Blanche's booty will not offend

Rose and Sofia may not be so confident

And if you threw a party

Invited everyone but Dot

You would see, That damn bitch Bee

Would not attend

Thank you for fucking my end

At least it wasn't as bad of an idea as Sanford Arms. I mean who the fuck was going to stay at a falling apart house in the middle of a junkyard? That one boggled my mind when I was a kid.

I dunno, R150, they could’ve made it work. With a different actress, they could’ve fleshed out the character. And it’s not like show would’ve gone on more than another season anyway.

They should have replaced Bea Arthur with Jan Hooks and Julia Duffy.

They should have replaced her with someone really sarcastic who didn't quite like the other girls but they all financially needed each other to keep the house. Someone like Duffy who was a little younger than them. They could also have played off of that. So Duffy isn't as funny as you might think.

This is all just surface bullshit.

Let's go deep with this. Let's really hash this out.

Lucille Ball was being wooed to replace Bea but unfortunately her heart attack put an end to those plans. She would have brought a refreshing dose of light-hearted slapstick to the proceedings.

They could have just propped her up in a chair.

Did Bea really shit on Betty’s dressing room floor?

[quote]Lucille Ball was being wooed to replace Bea but unfortunately her heart attack put an end to those plans.

Lucille Ball died in 1989. Bea would’ve needed replacing in 1992.

Face it, Dorothy, Golden Palace is limited.

[quote]What actress would’ve been most likely to play a replacement roommate for Dorothy?

I always thought Howard Cosell

[quote]Lucille Ball was being wooed to replace Bea but unfortunately Lucy's addiction to Poppers and PNP sex made her too unreliable

There I fixed it for you.

Lucy no do-a the poppers wis me.

She didn't need the poppers to enjoy young Desi's pigna

In his prime, Desi Arnaz was said to be so darkly handsome and sensual that he had a glow that was almost golden

Does anyone else think Desi and Ben Affleck have a similar look?

that was just fajita grease

[quote]Actually, they probably should have had Gloria move in to replace Dorothy. She lost all her money in season 7, so it would’ve made sense. I don’t know much about the second actress who played her. Was she a strong enough actress for a leading role?

Dena Dietrich was naturally very funny and was great on All My Children as the well-meaning and curmudgeonly Wilma. She would have been perfect as a Dorothy "type". Her scene starts at 1:35.

Did they move their wicker furniture into the lobby of the hotel? Wouldn't it stink of Sophia?

Did the girls have a communal room where they meet, like staff quarters?

Did they originally intend to be ladies of leisure or they wanted to work hard on the project?

They should have made it like Chralie's Angels. Dorothy could have called in the hotel's mission every week. "Girls I hear there is a hard to kill mold in the bathroom in room 117. It's going to get dirty this week." Cut to Blanche squirming. Maybe they could have just called in Shelley Hack as the replacement? Not the whore Tonya though.

R172 Dorothy was too busy getting banged by Lucas' 9-incher every which way to care about a mole in the bathroom of room 117..

This discussion is getting good. But let's go deeper.

Let's really hash this out.

I believe in the pilot the ladies thought that the hotel practically would manage itself. Only when they arrived they noticed that things weren't that well and that money would be tight.

Cybill Shepherd

Thanks for that, R170. I think she would’ve worked just fine and Sophia staying in the house instead of moving with Dorothy would’ve made sense.

Was anyone else a fan of Rue's series of TV-Movies in the early 90's Children of the Bride, Baby of the Bride, and Mother of the Bride? I think she should have developed them into a weekly series, as her follow up to Golden Girls/Golden Palace. It could have been a charming weekly comedy drama.

It was horrible that's why. No one cared about new characters.

Bea was the only good, funny thing about GG's. That's why.

Vic Tayback would have added the magic that show desperately needed.

This was released on DVD guys

[quote]Maude ended because Gene Saks walked out on her for another woman and Bea didn't want her to get any of the money

Maude ended because its ratings were atrocious—it ranked #75 for its final season—and Bea Arthur quit before the show was canceled.

They should have made Lee Grant (who was, apocryphally, going to be Dorothy until Bea Arthur said yes) the widowed owner of the hotel, whom the other girls decided to support by buying shares.

Then Lee could have fulfilled the straight-woman Dorothy role.

She still looked good and not like a burn victim yet.

They should have hired Delta Burke, changed the name, but made it very clear she was Suzanne with a change of identity. She could have bitched about her highfalutin cunt sister Moolia and her lesbian lover Mary Joseph who were decorating call girls in Atlanta.

Barbara Billingsley or Glynis Johns should’ve took over.

[quote] Witt, Thomas, and Harris tried to get Littlefield to improve his NBC deal, but he refused to extend his episode order, citing that the declining ratings of The Golden Girls in its seventh season made it risky to give the spin-off a longer commitment. The producers thus went with CBS, which agreed to market The Golden Palace as a show with its own voice separate from that of its parent show.

The ratings of GG would not have gone down if they had not moved it back to Saturday night at 8:00 PM where ABC left the godawful-from-the-get-go [italic]Who’s the Boss[/italic], a show so bad my dad cried “hooray” when he learned it was canceled, to die. The year before that, it was still on at 9 o’clock and still in 10th place. That was also the last year Brandon Tartikoff was in charge of programming at NBC.

There is another reason I think NBC did not want a full season for the new show: [italic]The Nutt House[/italic]. That 1989 Mel Brooks-produced show with Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman was hyped up to be a hit but it turned out to be a very costly flop for both networks and for Touchstone Television.

R185 That same TV season (1992-1993) Delta Burke had her own eponymous sitcom, which was supposed to be her comeback vehicle after being unceremoniously dumped from DESIGNING WOMEN the previous year.

DELTA was about a discontented housewife who divorces her husband and moves to Nashville to make it big as a Country singer, following in the footsteps of her idol Pasty Cline. In the meantime, she waits tables at a bar where hilarity ensues and she gets to perform on amateur night. The show was canceled after one season of 17 episodes.

Gee, where have I heard that before?

R178 I recently rewatched the movies on YouTube. They originally aired when I was 10-13 and recall how popular they were. Anyway, I hadn't seen them since then and I still found them quite charming. Perhaps even more so because it was such a nostalgic trip. If you want to get an idea of what the early '90s were like (no Internet, no cell phones, the last vestiges of the '80s) then you should definitely watch. But they're also pretty good movies and I agree that it would have made a good series.

[quote]It's no secret Bea was unhappy on the show for basically the entirety of its run. Rue, Betty, and Jim Colucci (who wrote two books on the GGs) have all talked about Bea's unhappiness.

[quote]Why did was Bea unhappy doing the Golden Girls? That show was insanely funny, and an enormous hit. She should've been thrilled.

I think the death of Bea's mom a month after the show premiered may have had something to do with it. I understand they were close.

Frasier was a good sequel/spin-off... r93

Maybe needs its own thread or has already had one...

[quote]Why did Golden Palace only last one season?

Psssssst....c'mere shhhhhh because it sucked.