Like most everyone here, I don’t have one favorite (except those in which Bea, Rue, Betty or Estelle appear) but still crack up when I think of the following line deliveries from Dorothy:
Dorothy (registering a Blanche southernism a few lines later): Fiddle-dee-dee, Blanche.
Dorothy (pre-date): Okay girls, I need your help: the silver chain or the pearls?
Rose: The chain.
Blanche: An amateur’s mistake. Can’t you see that the chain accentuates the many folds of that turkey-like neck?
Rose: Yes, but the pearls draw attention to the non-existent bosom.
Blanche: Yes, but the chain leads the eye even lower, to this huge “spare tire,” jutting out over those square manly hips.
Dorothy: Why don’t I just wear a sign that says “Too Ugly To Live”?
Blanche: Fine, but where are you going to hang it from the chain or the pearls?
Dorothy: Neither, I’m going to spray paint it on my hump!!!
The house is broken into and Rose says, “Maybe they were looking for drugs!”
Dorothy: “Drugs? We have Maalox and estrogen.”
Blanche comes out in a new dress and says to Sophia, “How do you like my dress?”
Sophia (without looking up): “What difference does it make? Half an hour from now it’ll be crumpled on the floor next to a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
Blanche’s sister needs a kidney transplant, but when they test Blanche her kidney is too small (not sure if this is a real consideration in kidney transplants), and Blanche says, “Of course, it was too small… I was always very petite!”
“Picture it… Sicily… 1922…”
The ending, as Sophia, Blanche & Dorothy crack up:
Blanche: So should we tell Rose about this?
Dorothy: No, she’ll be heartbroken that Danny Thomas is a lesbian.
Trivia: Rue McClalahan was brought in to read for Rose, based on her playing Vivian to Bea Arthur’s Maude, and Betty White was brought in to read for Blanche, baed on her Mary Tyler Moore show portrayal of Sue Ann Nivens. When Betty was reading, Rue was trying to think how she could read for Blanche. The casting agent came out and told her Betty had read and gotton the role of Rose, but Bea had backed out of playing Dorothy. Rue called her and aked why.
Bea: Cause I don’t want it to be Maude and Vivian meet Sue Ann.
Rue: But I’m playing Blanche and Betty’s playing Rose.
Long pause, then Bea said: That should be interesting.
The one line that I could not believe got passed the censors. Sophia saying something like: How could I sleep with this one (indicating Blanche) playing hide the salami all night long.
I liked the one where they were writing a song to promote Miami tourism:
Rose: <sings> “Miami is nice, so I’ll say it thrice: Miami is nice, Miami is nice, Miami is nice…”
Dorothy: Thrice!?
Rose: “Thrice” is a word.
Dorothy: So is “intra-uterine”, but you wouldn’t use it in a song.
Rose thinks for a bit.
Rose: <sings> “Miami, you’re cuter than an intra-uterine…”
The girls are all up because they had bad dreams after watching Psycho. At the end of the episode, Sophia jumps in brandishing a knife. They all scream and jump to their feet.
Dorothy: Ma, don’t do that!
Sophia: I did that trick at the home. They said (some name I can’t remember) would never walk again. He walked!
They all have the flu.
Rose: Pass the orange juice, Dorothy.
Dorothy empties the remaining juice into her own glass.
Rose: Why did you do that?
Dorothy: Because I’m miserable, and being mean to you makes me feel better.
Watching it now, I’m amazed at all the really risque stuff that got by! And now that I’M a Golden Girl, I love that it was taken for granted women of a certain age were still sexy and interested in sex.
Or when Rose claimed to have never even “seen a man” before her wedding night, but “knew what to expect” because she’d grown up around farm animals. Blanche asked her “Didn’t that give you a false idea of what a man would look like?”. And Rose responded “Sure it did. Boy would that bull have been jealous!” Or when she tought Charlie was having an affair because one random night he didn’t have sex with her, Dorothy & Blanch asked her if he promised or if it was her birthday or something, and Rose just said it was the first time in umpteen years of married life they didn’t have sex (& was surprised daily sex wasn’t the norm). The constant sex being why her and Charlie never had headaches and why she’d never heard of I Love Lucy. Or how all of her kids were concieved on special St. Olaf holidays were her and Charlie apparently had sex in public places, including dressing up as a sandwhich and forgetting to put anything between them.
Thought of another great line. A plumber was going to charge the girls too much to install a toilet, so they decided to do it themselves. The supply company delivers it and leaves it sitting in the living room in front of the TV. Sophia comes in, sees it, and says, “It’s an old woman’s dream come true!”
What a joy this show was. Is. I can turn on TV just about any time, day or night, and know I’ll laugh at least once. I remember Betty White talking on Ellen, saying she and the others still get mail, every day, from around the world. Like Afghanistan. And she pondered why people in Afghanistan would be interested in the lives of mature American women! It was hilarious…An episode that has stuck in my mind: The girls are in a train station. A train stops and I guess it’s a circus train, as clowns, tumblers, trapeze artists and so forth come out. Rose’s face lights up. She approaches a clown. “Oh, Mr. Clown! Say something funny, make a joke, do a dance, do something to make us all laugh and brighten our day!” (paraphrasing here). Clown says: “butt out, lady, I’m on my cigarette break!”
That is also one of my favorites, and even have it saved on my DVR.
Also like the trip back to St. Olaf to get an award for Rose…you could get to areas of Afghanistan easier that that trip itinerary - but it was very funny.
Watching the episodes the first time through was great. Watching t hem again after I’d learned that Dorothy and Sophia were Jewish IRL made it doubly fun; there are a ton of little jokes that come to life when you learn they are.
Anything with Blanche describing the boys she dated in high school was incredible.
I liked the pizza & knish stand episode. Otherwise, my favorites are all spelled out in pepperlandgirl’s post.
This is my all time favorite episode. I love Blanche’s story about going to her high school prom with a boy named Benjamin. Everyone stared at them because in those days certain people weren’t supposed to “mix”:
Dorothy: And it´s terrible to think that the two of you were almost kept apart, just because Benjamin was black.
Blanche: Black?? Benjamin wasn’t black…He was from New Jersey! I went to my senior prom with a Yankee!
Blanche was so hilarious and lovable. Can’t believe Rue McClanahan is gone.
Or when she spoke of the St. Olaf woman who was born with no smiling muscles and was thus always frowning. Rose told her that a smile is just a frown turned upside down. After that, whenever she would see Rose, she’d stand on her head and say hi.
mmm
I started watching Golden Girls as a kid. My grandma came over to babysit my brother and me, and we kept watching after that. There are too many good episodes for me to choose a favorite. In the episode where Dorothy’s sister is out of money, my favorite line was when Dorothy told Stan that her sister was out of M-O-N-E-Y and he said, “Well she’s not getting mine (referring to the monkey that his therapist gave him as a substitute for Dorothy)!”
I also liked the one where Sophia asked Dorothy if she’d seen her teeth:
Dorothy: “Ma, they’re in your mouth!”
Sophia: “I know, but have you seen them? I ran them through the dishwasher!”
And then there was the time that Dorothy told Sophia, “You’re a furry little gnome and we feed you too much.”
