I was watching the episode of the Golden Girls, and the roof on the house is leaking. The “girls” get an estimate of $10,000 to fix the roof. Then Rose says, “Where are we gonna get $10,000.” Then later Dorothy says, “We have to find a way to come up with $10,000.” Then Dorothy says, she has a few thousand dollars and Rose says she can come up with $4,000, while Blanche says she’ll borrow against her life insurance.
OK, I realize the Golden Girls, is full of continuity errors and plot holes but don’t Rose, Sofia and Dorothy pay Blanche rent? So it’s her problem.
They never say “lend” Blanche the money, and again, I know the show has lots of errors in plots so it they can get a good storyline, but I am thinking about this right aren’t I?
Seems like an awfully big continuity error to me.
Well, it seems to me that the “girls” have a few choices, assuming Blanche owns the house:
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Tell her “It’s your problem” and live with a leaking roof if she can’t afford to fix it on her own.
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Tell her “It’s your problem” and move out rather than live with a leaking roof.
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Tell her “You own the place but we’ll all pay for the roof together because we’re friends and nobody wants to move out or live with a leaking roof.”
I don’t think going for option 3 is that unrealistic under the circumstances.
Wasn’t there an episode where Blanche found out they were violating some law by having too many renters for the space or something like that? So they all decided to buy into the house and become co-owners rather than be separated. So if the roof episode comes after that, it makes sense.
IIRC the show started with Blanche owning and the others renting and in a later season the other three bought in. It might have been about having too many renters, or because of some other financial issue where Blanche was going to have to sell if she couldn’t come up with X dollars. In any case, at some point, they all became co-owners.
I looked up the episodes and the episode where the other girls buy into the house is in season 7. The episode I questioned was in season 4, so it appears to be just a big continuity error.
Or maybe there was more to the storyline and it was edited out or something. I was watching it from the DVDs
IIRC on the episode where she sold them a share of the house it wasn’t equal shares.
There were references to the house being mortgaged a couple of times.
How solvent the ‘girls’ were was one of the continuity inconsistencies. They could fly off to L.A. on a redeye at the last minute in one episode or one might buy an expensive car in another but in the next Dorothy might be pawning her ring or Rose telling her daughter she’s essentially broke. And of course they all wore expensive clothing.
Another inconsistency was their kids: how many they had, their ages, were there grandchildren, etc… Blanche was the youngest of them (both the actress and the characters) but she had a 14 year old grandson in one of the first episodes and in a much later episode was worried she was pregnant. Even assuming she became a grandmother in her late 30s and even taking into account her vanity it’s not likely a woman in her early 50s is going to assume “I’m pregnant” when she stops menstruating. Rose made repeated references to her children (plural) but only one daughter comes to town when she’s planning her estate. Dorothy consistently said she married Stan when she was 17 and pregnant which would make that child at least 40 when it started but the only two of her children were a son (a mess up who got a much older woman pregnant) and a daughter who was getting married and both were much younger than that; the oldest was never referred to nor were any grandchildren and apparently she wasn’t particularly close to any of them.
Sophia had the transvestite son who for some odd reason was buried in Miami even though he didn’t live there (grew up in Brooklyn and lived elsewhere from his mom). She had a daughter in California. It was said that Phil (the transvestite) had six sons and Dorothy had at least 3 children but Sophia once said she was the grandmother of five.
The show had some great episodes but a lot more that were just phoned in and they weren’t going for anything like realism at all in the final seasons. Golden Palace was complete idiocy from concept to conclusion. I think the show could have been worlds better than it was with better writers and more believable backstories.
I remember Blanche’s daughter was thin and attractive in one episode; and hugely fat, and had been fat her whole life, in another.
In another she had two sons and a daughter and she and the daughter didn’t speak. And didn’t her daughter come to Miami to get artificially inseminated in another episode?
If you think about it, though, this approach makes for perfect syndication fodder.
I think the fat daughter and the hippie daughter were two different characters. The fat one was only in one episode, but the hippie was in at least 3. The one were she got inseminated, the one were she gave birth (& Rose called her ice-skating coach instead of the lamaze coach) to a little girl named “Aurora”, and the one were Blanche pretended her baby granddaughter was her baby daughter to make her boyfriend (the future Larry from Dharma & Greg) think she was younger. The granddaughter was later rapid aged in the episode where Blanche found religion. Blance later enrolled the granddaughter in a beauty pagent where the girl froze onstage.
I’m up to the episode in season five where Blanche gets audited for failing to declare that Sofia, Rose and Dorothy have paid her rent for the last five years. So it’s definitely and odd out storyline
Thanks for the answers
In the episode where they crash a class reunion and Rose has a heart attack, Rose’s daughter is freaking out about the cost of her aftercare and rehab.
Blanche indicates that she would take out a second mortgage to pay Rose’s expenses if she ahd to and the girls reveal that they have made an agreement to support each other financially.