Line #5 YMMV/TheGoldenGirls


1	* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: “Mixed Blessing”: While it still isn’t right or politically correct for Dorothy to have a problem with Michael and Lorraine’s union due to race (even if she states that that is ''her'' own problem and doesn’t object on those grounds), another reason she could think that way is [[FridgeBrilliance the stigma mixed-race couples and children still faced]] in the 1980s (similar to what ''Film/GuessWhosComingToDinner'' touched on in the 1960s), as her later disliking the child being potentially named “Lamar Zbornak” hints at. The same thing could apply to Greta as well.
2	* AlternativeJokeInterpretation: One episode has Dorothy bemoaning several goals she had that she's never been able to accomplish, including one to become Homecoming Queen. To this, Sophia [[ConsolationBackfire consoles her by saying, "You can still be Homecoming Queen; it'll just be to a different kind of home!"]] Did she mean their home residence, a future retirement home (like the one she put her in) or an insane asylum?
3	** Sophia's "Inch and a half of water" joke. Does she mean that Blanche has small boobs or is she joking that her boobs are saggy? With Blanche being sensitive about her age, the audience could take it that Sophia's "inch and a half of water" joke being a(nother) jab at Blanche's age, though, Blanche also considers herself to be "lacking" in some areas, so it could be taken as a jab at Blanche's cup size. Or, maybe, knowing Sophia, it's both.
4	* AluminumChristmasTrees:
5	** There really is a settlement in Minnesota called St. Olaf, though it's officially categorized as a township and not a full-fledged city. More famous is St. Olaf College in Northfield, not far from the Twin Cities.
6	** Another factual small town to which Rose makes reference is Little Falls, located near the geographic center of the state.
7	** In one episode, Blanche is threatened with a huge fine by a city inspector for having too many unrelated people living in her house. Many people from elsewhere in the world would be astounded by the idea of the government thinking that sort of thing was even its business, unless it got to the point of a health and safety issue.
8	* AngstWhatAngst: Dorothy's children don't seem to care that their dad dumped their mom for a much younger woman.
9	* {{Anvilicious}}: Like a lot of shows of the era, it's given something of a pass for its occasional heavy-handedness; since it tackled such hot-button issues for the time, it didn't really have the luxury of being subtle.
10	* BrokenBase: Are Sophia's jibes funny? Or is she just too mean-spirited to be enjoyable? A lot of people get annoyed pretty quickly at her shabby treatment of her roommates, especially her daughter, while using ScrewPolitenessImASenior as a perpetual excuse. Indeed, a significant number of later episodes feature her doing something utterly reprehensible (culminating in the episode where she pretends to be channeling Rose's dead husband, which she does in order to con Rose out of money and causing Rose to break up with Miles. Sophia treats this entire event as funny and and is forced to apologize by Dorothy).
11	* CoveredUp: "Thank You For Being a Friend": More people think of the Golden Girls' theme version (sung by Cynthia Fee) than they do the original Andrew Gold version.
12	* CrossesTheLineTwice: ''Many'' of Sophia's jokes and other antics. For example:
13	-->'''Dorothy:''' ''(to Sophia, while they're visiting a hospital)'' Where were you?
14	-->'''Sophia:''' I always think it's nice when you're in a hospital to go around and cheer people up. So, after I got my prescription, I went up to Geriatrics and sang "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better". Boy, tough crowd - they threw jello at me. If you can call that throwing!
15	** Blanche's sexual nature and self-delusion as well. Granted, this example was a product of {{Flanderization}}, but in the "Beauty and the Beast" episode where her seven-year-old granddaughter is visiting, the nickname she had the girl calls her while she was parading around sailors was ''"Sis"''.
16	** "Home Again, Rose" has Rose dreaming about she and the girls being dead and having their heads frozen. Dorothy ended up dying due to being beaten or thrashed to death by a gorilla at the zoo. If that wasn't bad enough, we also learn that not only did [[NoSympathy Sophia]] submit the video of her death into ''Series/AmericasFunniestHomeVideos'' (where it had wacky sound effects added to it), but it ended up ''winning.''
17	* DesignatedVillain: Blanche's sister Virginia in "Ebb Tide". She is portrayed as being irrational in trying to block Blanche from their father's funeral, but given the latter's well-known self-centered nature and her wild libido causing her parents' heartache throughout the years, she had every right to be alarmed (especially when both women brought up her various shenanigans in several episodes and her mostly rejecting her father's younger wife in "Big Daddy's Little Lady"). Granted, Blanche did deserve sympathy for her regret in not seeing her father one last time which her sister should ''not'' have thrown in her face, but Virginia and the rest of the family weren't exactly in the wrong for fearing an incident she could have made at the services.
18	* FairForItsDay:
19	** There's a lot of jokes at the expense of Phil's crossdressing throughout the series, including him wearing a teddy at his funeral, which is attended by several other crossdressers. However, that episode treats him sympathetically and delivers the message that men who crossdress can still be kind, respectable men.
20	** "Strange Bedfellows" ends with Gil Kessler revealing he was once Anna Maria Bonaducci, which serves as a bit of shock value appropriate for a sitcom of its era. However, the other characters don't misgender Gil (with Sophia's insistence she could "tell" being a BaitAndSwitch that she knew he was Italian) and when Rose ponders how the surgery works, the joke is mostly on her.
21	* {{Fanon}}:
22	** The pilot episode introduced a live-in gay cook named Coco who was unceremoniously written out of the show when it was decided to bump the character of Sophia from drop-in character to regular. As a result, many fans like to claim after Shady Pines burned down, Coco was laid-off by Blanche so that his room could go to Sophia. Another fan theory is that the series proper takes place in a timeline where the Coco character simply never existed.
23	** Before Harold Gould played Rose's recurring love interest Miles, he played Rose's one-shot boyfriend Arnie early in the series. After the reveal that Miles was in witness protection, some headcanon that Arnie was just another one of his aliases.
24	* FanonDiscontinuity: It's popular for fans to ignore the GrandFinale -- which sees Dorothy marry a man she just met and leave to faciliate Creator/BeaArthur's exit and set up the unloved AfterShow ''Series/GoldenPalace'' -- and imagine the "real" final episode to be the immmediately preceding two-parter "Home Again, Rose", which ends with the four girls affirming their love for each other and that they are a FamilyOfChoice.
25	* HarsherInHindsight:
26	** At the end of an episode where Sophia rescues a friend from a nursing home, the girls make a pact to take care of each other, and Rose asks, "What happens when there's only one of us left?" Cut to 2010, where after the death of Creator/RueMcClanahan, Creator/BettyWhite (Rose) actually was the only one of them left. It goes even further: in the show, after that line, Sophia (the oldest character) mentions "Don't worry, I can take care of myself." In real life, Creator/EstelleGetty (Sophia), who was younger than both Creator/BeaArthur and Betty White, was the first to go. An even eerier aspect of that scene is that all four women are sitting in the exact order in which they died (with Betty White/Rose passing away at the tail end of 2021) - Sophia was sitting on the chair to the left of the couch, and Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose sat from left to right on the couch.
27	** In the season one episode "The Heart Attack," Dorothy, believing Sophia is having a heart attack (it turns out to be a gall-bladder attack), tearfully contemplates what might happen if her mother doesn't pull through and mentions the ways in which the death of a parent changes a person's life. Around that same time, Bea Arthur lost her real-life mother, Rebecca Frankel, for whom she had been caring for several years.
28	*** One of Dorothy's lines in this episode is, "If she dies, I'll be an orphan. I'm over 50 years old and I'll still feel like an orphan," referring to the fact that her father, Sal, was already deceased. This was also true of Bea Arthur, as her father, Philip, had passed away years earlier.
29	** Blanche's initial rejection of her brother Clayton for being gay might seem explainable considering the era the show takes place in, her age, and her southern Protestant background. But the possible true reasons for her reaction become evident once you consider the ''Golden Palace'' episode "Tad". In this episode, it's revealed that Blanche has another brother, Tad, who's mentally handicapped. Blanche lets Rose know that she and her family never spoke of Tad because he was considered an embarrassment. With an upbringing such as this, is it any wonder that Blanche would be horrified at her seemingly "normal" brother suddenly coming out as gay after years of heterosexual marriage?
30	** The first season episode "Break-In" features Rose predicting that one of the girls will get cancer, as she'd read somewhere that one out of every three people will get it. In real life, one of them ''did'' get cancer -- Bea Arthur, who passed from lung cancer in 2009.
31	** A running joke through the whole series is that Sophia's memory is slipping. Toward the end of her ''The Golden Girls'' run and the beginning of her role in the spin-off ''The Golden Palace,'' actress Estelle Getty was suffering from undiagnosed dementia - much to the consternation of her costars, who suspected something was wrong when she began forgetting her cues and lines.
32	** An InUniverse version is seen in an earlier episode when Blanche's younger sister/sometimes rival Virginia is coming to town. When Blanche complains that she detests Virginia, Rose chides her in disbelief and absolutely refuses to believe that she hates her sister. A few seasons later, we meet Rose's own younger sister [[BitchInSheepsClothing Holly]], of whom Rose admits, "I feel terrible saying this, but I don't really like her." Holly's terrible treatment of Rose is ''not'' PlayedForLaughs, and she makes Virginia look like a Girl Scout by comparison.
33	** Another in-universe example. In the pilot, after Blanche's plans to remarry fall apart, Dorothy suggests they make a pact that, even if they all get married, they stick together (complete with Rose commenting how they'll need a bigger house.) The finale involves Dorothy herself getting remarried, and how her moving out is breaking up "the family." It's especially noticeable in syndication, since the two episodes are often shown back-to-back.
34	** The Creator/RobertFrost poem Rose reads aloud (from a book Miles left her as a parting gift before being relocated in the Witness Protection Program) at the end of "Miles to Go" becomes a lot more painful to hear when you know that in the spin-off series, ''Series/GoldenPalace'', Miles cheats on her and then marries the other woman.
35	--->''And when to the heart of man''
36	--->''Was it ever less than a treason''
37	--->''To bow and accept the end of a love''
38	--->''Or of a season''
39	** In an episode of the sixth season Blanche tries to gain entry into a Confederate heritage foundation celebrating the former Confederacy, one that rejects anyone with the slightest ties to anyone of the Union. In the wake of the increasingly controversial nature of Confederate memorials and symbolism in the years since, particularly in the wake of the worsening racial tensions seen in 2020, such testaments to the Confederacy and its legacy regarding prejudice, racial or political probably would be seen in even worse taste today.
40	** In the pilot, while discussing Sophia's stroke, Rose notes that she's known many women who have suffered strokes but were able to push through without it changing them too much. This line is more eerie knowing that Rose's actress, Betty White, died from complications of a stroke.
41	** The RunningGag where Sophia would talk about how bad her retirement home was and how she was mistreated there was always {{played for laughs}}; but in a later episode in which the girls deal with actual elder abuse ''not'' played for laughs, Sophia admits that she wasn't all too serious with her complaints about Shady Pines.
42	** Jokes about Sophia's [[ScatterbrainedSenior forgetfulness]] felt very different after Creator/EstelleGetty was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.
43	** Blanche's constant lying about her age is always played for laughs. Then comes an episode where we find out that she is suffering from depression out of fear of growing old, after her mother died of Alzheimer's. Knowing this [[CerebusRetcon makes all those jokes about her age seem more sad]] than funny.
44	** After Dorothy makes a parting crack about Rose in "Dateline: Miami", Rose responds by saying, "I've never liked her." It turns out Bea Arthur and Betty White were not friends in real life.
45	** Remember Dorothy's speech about Dr. Budd dismissing her symptoms? Sadly, things haven't really changed from 20-30 years ago as [[https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180523-how-gender-bias-affects-your-healthcare Jackie's]] experience will tell you. Like Dr. Budd, other real-life doctors have dismissed their (female) patients' concerns as psychological, weight based, and the like and, unlike Dorothy, some weren't so lucky——''They got diagnosed too late''.
46	* HeartwarmingInHindsight: Of all the girls, Dorothy was the biggest ButtMonkey when it came to her eligibility among men, receiving snide comments about her looks, fashion sense, and her personality from all corners of life, including her mother. While it served as a large source of humor in the show, it was clear that Dorothy struggled the most when it came to finding love with another again, especially as she was still coming to terms with her bitter divorce from Stan. Come the series finale, Dorothy is the first of the four to remarry and to permanently resettle into her new life, in spite of all the mockery and put-downs she received in her efforts, and with the full blessing of her friends, her family, and even her former husband.
47	* HilariousInHindsight:
48	** In a special two-part episode, Rose (Betty White) had a heart attack and had to stay in the hospital and was looped out ([[TheDitz moreso than usual]]) on prescription medication. In a scene with her daughter, Rose yells "[[Series/SaturdayNightLive Live from New York, it's Saturday Night]]!" in her delirium. Fast forward to 2010, when, thanks to publicity from a Facebook petition, Betty White ''did'' get to host ''SNL'', becoming the show's oldest host (at age 88 and a half), the first ''SNL'' host to be picked via online petition[[note]]but not the first to be picked by viewers; that honor goes to Miskel Spillman, who won the "Anyone Can Host ''SNL''" contest -- ''and'' was the oldest host the show ever had until Creator/BettyWhite usurped the title -- back in 1977[[/note]], and the second cast member from ''The Golden Girls'' to host ''SNL''. (Bea Arthur was the first, hosting a season five episode in 1979, but this was before ''The Golden Girls'' was created.)
49	** With all the jokes about how masculine Dorothy was, it's funny to hear about Bea Arthur's stint in the [[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/bea-arthur-was-truck-driving-marine Marine Corps]].
50	** This quote from "Fiddler on the Ropes":
51	--->'''Dorothy''': "Blanche! Everlast is a brand name, [[{{Music/HouseOfPain}} not a nickname]]!".
52	** Dorothy and Sophia's musical act as Sonny and Cher provided a double-whammy. Sonny Bono would guest-star in a sixth season episode. Also, Blanche asked them which one was Cheech and which one was Chong; Cheech Marin would later costar on ''Series/GoldenPalace''.
53	** The show's first ChristmasEpisode, aired in the second season, was titled "'Twas WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas."
54	** The show ''Series/HotInCleveland'' is essentially a SpiritualSuccessor[=/=]SettingUpdate of ''The Golden Girls''. Creator/BettyWhite plays a character who is basically [[{{Expy}} the Sophia of the group]], which is amusing to people who mostly know her as Rose. In addition, the final episode of ''The Golden Girls'' had Rose planning to move in with her daughter and her family and commenting that she herself will be "the Sophia of that household".
55	** All of Sophia and Dorothy's talk of Brooklyn as being such a bad neighborhood is becoming this thanks to Brooklyn undergoing a controversial development/gentrification which is quickly turning it into a trendy hipster hot-spot.
56	** In the episode "The Operation", Dorothy's doctor is played by Creator/RobertPicardo. What's more, he's a [[Series/StarTrekVoyager replacement doctor]].
57	** In a season two episode, Dorothy scoffs at Sophia's story about a 72-year-old woman giving birth to a child. Fast-forward to 2019, when a ''seventy-three-year-old woman'' from India gave birth to twins with her eighty-year-old husband.
58	** Greta’s comment about Diana Ross marrying white men in “Mixed Blessing”, considering Ross’ marriages to Robert Ellis Silberstein and Arne Næss Jr. resulted in four children, two of them being Evan Ross and Creator/TraceeEllisRoss
59	** In Season 6, Blanche objects to Becky naming her daughter Aurora. In 2020, a survey of UK parents showed that Aurora was the female name that parents most regretted giving their children. Looks like Blanche was right all along.
60	** Creator/DickVanDyke played Ken Whittingham, Dorothy's attorney boyfriend who wanted to become a full-time circus clown, in the episode "Love Under the Big Top". 15 years after the episode aired, Van Dyke took part in a reunion special for [[Series/TheDickVanDykeShow his iconic television series]] that was directed by a prolific television director named... Ken Whittingham.
61	** In "Fiddler on the Ropes," after the boxer Kid Pepe performs a monologue, Sophia remarks that every fighter wants to be an actor, and she'd like to see it the other way around for a change. Actors fighting each other in the ring would become the premise of ''WesternAnimation/CelebrityDeathmatch.''
62	** In "The President's Coming! The President's Coming!", then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush visits the girls briefly. Bush's voice is provided by Creator/HarryShearer, and it sounds almost identical to the voice he'd begun using as [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Ned Flanders]] just a few months prior ("The President's Coming!" aired in May 1990, and ''The Simpsons'' had begun in December of 1989). Even better, six years later he would get to use the same exact voice when he played Bush in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E13TwoBadNeighbors Two Bad Neighbors]]".
63	** Flo Di Re played Gina Bosco in the season four episode "Foreign Exchange", with the premise being her character may actually be Sophia's real daughter (and not Dorothy) because of [[GenerationXerox how similar she looks to Sophia]]. Fast forward a season, and Flo Di Re would make a second appearance on the show, in the episode "Clinton Avenue Memoirs", in a flashback sequence... as a younger version of Sophia.
64	* HollywoodHomely: Dorothy's looks are frequently mocked on the show, with some people even reacting to her like she's downright ugly. (One example: when on a boat about to set sail, she mentions how a couple of glasses of champagne will make her kiss any man in sight; the next sound we hear is the splash of a man ''jumping overboard.'') She's actually pretty average-looking.
65	* HollywoodPudgy: Blanche and Rose are frequently the target of barbs about their weight, even though they look exactly the way two middle-aged women who have had several children would look. In another episode, when Blanche's daughter Becky visits, she ''is'' overweight, but the others react as though she's morbidly obese. (Of course, her weight issues are later retconned when the actress is replaced.)
66	* HoYay: [[HoYay/TheGoldenGirls Has its own page.]]
67	* LGBTFanbase: Thanks to several episodes covering related topics which have maintained very impressive ValuesResonance. Especially popular is Blanche’s brother threatening to cut her out of his life entirely if she can’t accept him being in a committed relationship with a man, which is typically regarded as a hard but very necessary step for many members of the community even today. Additionally, drag queen parodies of the show are quite common.
68	* MemeticBadass: Sophia. While her HistoricalRapSheet, NoodleIncidents, and [[TheMafia Sicilian "connections"]] could be written off as ramblings of TheMunchausen, her [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome Offscreen Moments Of Awesome]] during the series and her constant (and frequently effective) [[TheChessmaster scheming]] and [[BatmanGambit manipulation of others]] suggest there might be at least ''some'' truth behind them.
69	* NightmareFuel: In "Stan Takes a Wife," Sophia has a cold and, in the middle of the episode, starts coughing. As the other girls urge her to sit down, the coughing becomes more and more violent, and her body starts shaking. She finally manages to choke out the words ''"I can't breathe!"'' as she's gasping for air, and a panicked Dorothy tells Rose to call the paramedics. It's a sobering reminder of Sophia's advanced age and how even a regular illness can be deadly as time passes. It also doesn't help that it's a case of MoodWhiplash, as the girls were exchanging jokes just minutes before Sophia starts struggling to breathe.
70	* OneSceneWonder:
71	** Stan's much-discussed second wife appears once in the entire series for all of five minutes, where she acts like the epitome of a DumbBlonde, gives him {{Embarrassing Nickname}}s like "Big Stan" and "Stick Man", and throws a drink in his face.
72	** The woman who showed up at Frieda Claxton's funeral and gave a beautiful eulogy thinking the service was for someone else, then kicked the coffin when she learned who it was really for.
73	*** Frieda Claxton herself, who's barely in the episode for five minutes before she dies but does a supremely good job at convincing everyone she's a bitter, spiteful old hag.
74	** At Sophia's wedding to Max Weinstock, the CampGay caterer who tells Dorothy off for holding things up with her disapproval. For once Dorothy had [[SarcasmFailure no idea how to respond]] aside from telling him to butt out. He [[TheBusCameBack came back]] two seasons later for Dorothy and Stan's (failed) re-marriage ceremony.
75	--->'''Caterer:''' Whatever the problem is, ''overlook'' it! My mother did with my marriage! ''[Dorothy looks at him]'' [[LampshadeHanging And if you say something smart, I'll slap you silly.]]
76	** Technically in two scenes, but Yvonne the hyperactive aerobics instructor from "Rites of Spring" is also quite memorable. It probably helps that her actress, Hilary Shepard, would go on to have memorable recurring roles in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' and as the BigBad Divatox of ''Series/PowerRangersTurbo.''
77	** The unseen [[ScreamingBirth screaming mother-to-be]] in the birthing center in "Blanche Delivers". The ungodly sounds she makes set her scene apart from the rest of the episode.
78	--->'''Midwife:''' Sounds like there's a mommy in the making!\
79	'''Rose:''' Sounds like there's a mommy on fire!
80	* PeripheryDemographic: This show was -- and continues to be -- very popular with young people. Betty White, when asked why that might be, gave the simplest (and probably most accurate) explanation: "It's funny!"
81	** Many younger viewers likely grew up watching the constant reruns of ''The Golden Girls'' on Lifetime Network with their own moms and became fans themselves.
82	** The series also has a huge [[LGBTFanbase gay following]], but that's probably because the show was very gay-conscious [[FairForItsDay even at a time when it wasn't acceptable]]. Besides Coco in the pilot, there are entire episodes dealing with AIDS, crossdressing, gay marriage, coming out, accepting gay family members, and one that addressed non-family members trying to see their loved ones in the hospital. On a less serious note, the snarky dialogue and Blanche's proud promiscuity didn't hurt, either.
83	*** All of this gives [[UnusualEuphemism "Friend of Dorothy"]] a whole new meaning.
84	*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeW-G1vBKkY According to Betty White]], the music and the dancing at all the gay clubs would cease for half an hour every Saturday night just so everybody in attendance could watch the show.
85	* ProductionRelatedPeriodPiece: Near the end of "Yokel Hero", Harry Weston from ''Series/EmptyNest'' comes over to bring the girls their mail when Blanche proceeds to come on to him; she later comments to the other girls that Harry is finally available for her to date after the death of his wife. This subplot then continues in the ''Empty Nest'' episode "Fatal Attraction", which aired the same night as "Yokel Hero" during its original airing. However, since ''Empty Nest'' is far less seen than ''The Golden Girls'' today[[note]]as of 2022, the series has never had an official DVD release, is not available on any streaming platform, and has been rerun far less frequently than ''The Golden Girls''[[/note]], the scene from "Yokel Hero" appears to lead nowhere in the series itself and seems unnecessary.
86	* RetroactiveRecognition:
87	** A very young Creator/GeorgeClooney played the junior police detective in the Season Two episode "To Catch a Neighbor." At the time, he was a up-and-coming actor.
88	** Creator/QuentinTarantino played an ElvisImpersonator in the episode "Sophia's Wedding."
89	** Mario Lopez made an appearance on the show before ''Series/SavedByTheBell'' aired.
90	** A young Paul Rodriguez, at the time just barely hitting the comedy circuit, played a disgruntled bellhop in the S2 episode "Vacation."
91	** In the episode [[VerySpecialEpisode "Brother, Can You Spare That Jacket?"]], Sophia donates a jacket that Blanche has placed winning lottery tickets in to the Salvation Army. Music/MichaelJackson happens to pop by the Salvation Army and wears it for his show, and they must find where it is located. Michael himself joked about this show with his friends for years later, and recorded instances can be seen on Website/YouTube.
92	** Jenny Lewis (Music/RiloKiley) played the evil [[ScoutOut Sunshine Cadet]] who wouldn't give back Rose's teddy bear.
93	** Voice actor Creator/ScottMenville played Sophia's dickish teenage boss in "Blanche's Little Girl".
94	** Future ''Series/FamilyFeud'' host Ray Combs and actress Ariana Richards (of ''Film/JurassicPark'' fame) appeared in the episode "And Then There Was One".
95	** Meshach Taylor (of ''Series/DesigningWomen'') appeared in the first episode, "The Engagement".
96	** Joe Regalbuto (who later became famous for ''Series/MurphyBrown'') played Rebecca's mean-spirited boyfriend in "Blanche's Little Girl".
97	** Valente Rodriguez played the air conditioner repairman in "Yokel Hero", over a decade before he took the role of Ernie, George's HeterosexualLifePartner in ''Series/TheGeorgeLopezShow''.
98	** Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan wrote 24 episodes. Both men are best known as creators and executive producers of ''Series/TheSecretDiaryOfDesmondPfeiffer''.
99	** Winifred Hervey wrote 15 episodes. Hervey is best known as creator and executive producer of ''Series/TheSteveHarveyShow''.
100	** Tracy Gamble co-wrote 14 episodes. Gamble is best known as creator and executive producer of ''Series/EightSimpleRules''.
101	** Christopher Lloyd (no, not [[Creator/ChristopherLloyd that one]]) wrote 11 episodes. Lloyd is best known as co-creator and co-executive producer of ''Series/ModernFamily''.
102	** Marc Cherry co-wrote 11 episodes. Cherry is best known as creator and executive producer of ''Series/DesperateHousewives'' and ''Series/DeviousMaids''.
103	** Mitchell Hurwitz wrote seven episodes. Hurwitz is best known as creator and executive producer of ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'', as developer and executive producer of ''WesternAnimation/SitDownShutUp'', and as co-creator and co-executive producer of ''Series/RunningWilde'' and ''Series/LadyDynamite''.
104	** Kevin Abbott wrote four episodes. Abbott is best known as developer and executive producer of ''Series/MalibuCountry''.
105	** James Berg and Stan Zimmerman wrote three episodes. Both men are best known as creators and executive producers of ''Series/RitaRocks''.
106	** Russell Marcus also wrote three episodes. Marcus is best known as creator and executive producer of ''WesternAnimation/BrandyAndMrWhiskers'' and co-creator, co-developer and executive producer of ''WesternAnimation/CornAndPeg''.
107	** Eric Cohen wrote two episodes. Cohen is best known as co-creator and executive producer of ''Series/SoLittleTime''.
108	** Jeff Abugov wrote an episode. Abugov is best known as creator and executive producer of ''WesternAnimation/FuggetAboutIt''.
109	** Don Reo also wrote an episode. Reo is best known as creator and executive producer of ''Series/WizardsAndWarriors'', ''Series/{{Blossom}}'', and ''Series/TheJohnLarroquetteShow'', and as co-creator and executive producer of ''Series/MyWifeAndKids'' and ''Series/TheRanch''.
110	** Blanche is Apparently the aunt of [[Series/LizzieMcguire Lizzie [=McGuire=]'s mom]].
111	* SpecialEffectFailure: As a sitcom largely based in reality, it didn't have many special effects moments, but occasionally, this shows up.
112	** In "One for the Money," the girls reminisce about [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4hNLNuysl4 participating in a dance marathon]]. Dorothy and Blanche do a solo dance with their partners, and Rose tries a few steps all by herself--namely, cartwheels and splits. However, despite the cameras pulling back and the choreography largely hiding the actress's face from view, the woman doing the dancing is ''clearly'' not Betty White: her legs are longer, the wig she's wearing is the wrong color (a fact that becomes obvious when the camera cuts back to White sitting on the floor), and the brief times we do see her face make it obvious that it's a young woman.
113	** In "Room 7," Sophia [[ItMakesSenseInContext climbs to the roof of Blanche's grandmother's old home]] to jump into a haystack. The "Sophia" who leaps off the roof is plainly a dummy dressed in Estelle Getty's costume. To add insult to injury, its wig gets caught on a tree branch.
114	** In "Ebb Tide", the episode where Dorothy's brother Phil dies, there are a few camera shots which make it obvious that the casket is empty.
115	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: For many fans who first viewed the show in syndication, Creator/{{Lifetime}} treated the show the best in respect to it being the closest to how it was seen during its original run. For many others, the first year or so of its airings on Hallmark Channel and [=WEtv=] treated the show ''better'', reinserting scenes that had been removed from the Lifetime versions plus reinstating each season's respective opening credits[[note]]with ''very'' rare exceptions, the Lifetime episodes only used a shortened version of the opening credits used from seasons 3-4[[/note]]. In the years since, however, the series changed hands from [=WEtv=] to Logo and TV Land, whose treatment of the series has mixed-to-negative results due to [[EditedForSyndication being chopped down to fit in the commercial breaks]], often at the expense of a crucial part of the storyline, a joke, or an overall bit that helped keep the flow of the scene going. Hallmark Channel's treatment has also declined in quality over the years, coupling all of the above mentioned errors with [[{{Bowdlerise}} unnecessary censorship of words and phrases like "crap" and "go to Hell".]]
116	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
117	** "Mixed Blessings" ends with Michael revealing he and Lorraine are expecting a baby, which is what finally gets their mothers to bury the hatchet and accept the wedding for the sake of the grandchild. In Michael's next appearance, not only has he unceremoniously broken up with Lorraine, no mention is made of their child despite how endeared Dorothy was to have a new grandchild and the potential for more stories about mixed-race families. By contrast, when Blanche's daughter Rebecca became pregnant and later had a baby, Blanche did have an episode with her granddaughter.
118	** More than a few fans expected “The Artist” to end with ''Sophia'' being Laszlo’s chosen model for his statue, rather than the actual ending (a mix of his favorite traits about Rose, Blanche, and Dorothy). Not only would fans’ expectations probably be set by the later episode “The Auction” (where Sophia does indeed provide the episode’s resolution by saving Jasper [=DeKimmel=]’s life), but it would also arguably provide a better punchline to the episode.
119	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The clothes, hair, technology, and topical references all ''scream'' UsefulNotes/TheEighties.
120	** "Sisters and Other Strangers" aired after the 1989 fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, but ''before'' the "Velvet Divorce"[[note]] (Czechoslovakia's split into the UsefulNotes/CzechRepublic and UsefulNotes/{{Slovakia}})[[/note]] in 1993, so Dorothy's mentions of the former and not the latter will likely confuse younger viewers.
121	** “Three on a Couch” has Blanche mention a busload of Greek sailors wondering how many Drachma are in eight dollars. Greece would officially switch over to the Euro in 2002.
122	* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Stan. Yes he's often shown to be a pathetic deadbeat who wrecked his and Dorothy's marriage by cheating on her, but the show frequently went out of its way to present him as having ''some'' redeeming qualities (being a good father, sometimes showing a spine, and in the finale, [[spoiler: bringing Dorothy to her wedding in a limousine and granting her his blessing to make up for how miserable he made her]]). Modern viewers find those redeeming qualities hard to take seriously once Dorothy revealed she was unconscious throughout the tryst that led to her pregnancy, with her belief Stan gave her something to knock her out. In other words, the implication is that Stan ''raped her'' and [[KarmaHoudini never got punished for it in any serious way]]. Of course, since this is ''The Golden Girls'' we're talking about here, it's worth noting that we were given [[NegativeContinuity several different stories]] about the events that led to Dorothy's pregnancy, so we're not exactly sure ''what'' happened that night.
123	** Not helping Stan's case is his relentless pursuit to win back Dorothy's heart and constantly butting into her life, despite her vehemently protesting that she hates him and will never forgive him for the misery he's caused her; modern viewers are looking at this in a time when the DoggedNiceGuy trope is becoming less and less tolerated. Stan becomes less of a schlub to be laughed at and more of a creepy stalker who's constantly harassing a woman who doesn't like him to sleep with/marry/go out with him. Many modern viewers who've gone through the same thing don't appreciate him being given so many second chances.
124	** A great runner up for this is Kristen, Rose's eldest daughter gets this for her actions in her appearances on the show, the first has her nearly disowning Rose for her gambling Charlie's hard earned estate until Rose admits that she lied about Charlie's success in fear that her children would be disappointed. Then in Home Again Rose she refuses the girls to see her after the surgery, as they didn't seem to care that she had a heart attack, she was clearly upset and looking for blame, however seeing how the girls would help pay for her possible rehabilitation and to hear Rose before surgery talk about them made her realise they cared for each-other allows her Mother's "family" to visit her. While both times Kristen had good reasons for her characteristics, the overall feeling nowadays is to see her as greedy or dismissive.
125	* ValuesDissonance: For all its progressive approaches to things like AIDS and homosexuality, there are a few things that come across differently nowadays where (perhaps ironically, for a show centering on the lives of women) feminist and women's issues are concerned. It's both in-universe and meta, since the Girls would have grown up during TheForties and TheFifties.
126	** The "Mother's Day" story about Rose helping a pensioner sneak past the police to go see her dead daughter's grave in a town neighbouring St. Olaf might have seemed heartwarming back then and maybe to some people now, but Rose effectively ''kidnapped'' an old lady and lied to law enforcement who had come to bring her back to her care facility. (Clearly there's a reason she's living in a care facility.)
127	*** Similarly, there's an episode where Sophia illegally takes her friend out of a lower-tier nursing home to live with her. Even though she also did it for sympathetic reasons, she was clearly incapable of taking care of her, let alone herself (and unlike the previous example, we see that her friend is partially senile, even accidentally breaking a lamp and crying to Sophia "I don't know this place!")
128	** Blanche cheerfully mentions several relationships she had as a teenager with older, middle-aged men, including one with the father of one of her fellow cheerleaders, and it's presented as just Blanche being her energetic, oversexed, egocentric self, just younger and sillier. Today, that's considered statutory, and a felony.[[note]] From 1918 until 1995 -- in other words, both during Blanche's adolescence and for the entire duration of production -- the age of consent in Georgia was 14, although it is unclear if the writers actually knew that. (They probably did, since Georgia was ''the only state in the country'' with an age of consent that low for over 75 years.) It has since been raised to 16.[[/note]]
129	** Blanche's SouthernBelle persona sometimes brushes up against some uncomfortable racism, such as when she casually mentions her family owned slaves and that she had a black nanny (whom she calls Mammy). Blanche is shown involved in Daughters of the Confederate South-type organizations, one of which rejects her upon learning that her great-grandmother was Jewish (and a Northerner). On another occasion, she tells a story about her high school sweetheart Benjamin and the controversy surrounding Benjamin taking her to a dance. The other girls assume Benjamin was black; the "punchline" is that Blanche, horrified, explains that he was a ''Yankee.'' (She also makes a few remarks confirming that BlackIsBiggerInBed, which at least proves that she doesn't seem prejudiced about ''dating'' black men, though it does perpetuate the stereotype -- especially since we never see her in an actual ''romance'' with a black man, just speaking of them as sexually superior.)
130	** In one episode, Blanche's younger brother Clayton comes out as gay and leaves to let her take in the surprising news. Blanche initially has a hard time believing it, but comes to embrace it when she goes to meet Clayton in what she incorrectly assumes to be a gay bar. Although it's PlayedForLaughs and may be considered a case of InnocentlyInsensitive, Blanche proclaims she'd be proud to have any one of them date her brother only to have one of them say he'd rather date her, to which she exclaims "I ''converted'' one!" Given all the controversy to come out about the psychologically harmful effects of gay conversion therapy, this line may be a tad contentious for some.
131	*** Speaking of conversion, in the episode in which Dorothy and Blanche are MistakenForGay, a man comes to take Blanche out, insisting, "You're only like this because you haven't been with a ''real'' man." To this day, many people have this offensive belief regarding homosexuality.
132	** Dorothy describes her first time with Stan [[CanonDiscontinuity a few different ways]]: being unconscious and waking up to him carving a notch in his dashboard after being drugged (and her mother says she never believed it), or being coerced because Stan said he was being shipped off to Korea and "it would mean so much", and various jokes about Stan being a bad lover in general, but Dorothy always ends up pregnant at 16 from her first time with Stan, in the backseat of his car, and it was terrible for her. In the show, it's played for laughs, but today, we call that ''date rape''.
133	---> '''Rose''': Maybe we should sign Mary up for some natural childbirth lessons.\
134	'''Dorothy''': You know, that's not a bad idea! I wish I'd known about them when I was pregnant. I didn't know what to do, except scream at Stan never to touch me again, and call him every name in the book.\
135	'''Rose''': Rough labor?\
136	'''Dorothy''': Rough ''conception''.
137	** When Rose loses her job at the grief center, she struggles to find a new one, and eventually settles on applying as a hospital administrator with nothing on her resume but a community college degree in home economics and 32 years as a housewife, and with some careful rephrasing, Dorothy declares it fit for submission, and now Rose's biggest hurdle is... ageism. In today's much more competitive and narrow job market, the idea of anyone with Rose's qualifications even managing to get an interview, much less the job, seems much more like a dream than a possibility.
138	** A big contention in the first act of "Blanche Delivers" is Blanche's daughter Rebecca wanting to have her baby in a birthing center as opposed to a hospital. None of the girls think its a good idea, and the entire place is played off as new-age nonsense run by a [[SoapboxSadie moralistic]] [[GranolaGirl hippie]]. Becky opts out when she hears a woman screaming while in labor. Nowadays, more women are coming forward about poor treatment and outright abuse by their obstetricians, and the number of women giving birth at centers almost identical to the one Becky visits is on the rise.
139	** The earlier episode with Rebecca conceiving her child has a RunningGag where all of the girls cringe with disgust at the idea of artificial insemination. Even at the end, when they've accepted Rebecca's decision, they still go "Ew!" at the idea. While sperm donation is still controversial in some areas, it's become much more accepted in the mainstream, especially with the increased acceptance of single mothers and lesbian couples, so the disgust (even if it’s DeliberateValuesDissonance given the girls’ ages) comes across as disproportionate to modern audiences.
140	** One episode had Rose telling one of her St. Olaf stories about how some creepy soda jerk in her town used to arrange the scoops of her ice cream sundaes in a sexually suggestive manner. Even though her story took place in the 1940s, and she couldn't tell her father since by the time he got there the evidence would have melted (which begs the question of why not just tell the little bastard's boss), if he were to do that nowadays, he would have been fired and possibly arrested/fined for lewd behavior[[note]]as some jurisdictions consider something like that to be a form of indecent exposure[[/note]] or at the very least labeled a pervert and unlikely to find other employment due to his preceding reputation.
141	** "The Case of the Libertine Belle" has Blanche get framed for murder while attending a murder-mystery weekend at the Maltese Falcon Club, and the real culprit pull a gun on Dorothy before being restrained by police... until it's revealed that the entire scenario was set up by the club without Blanche or Dorothy's knowledge. If this happened today, the club would probably get sued out of existence for the emotional trauma they put Blanche and Dorothy through.
142	** Some jokes about Phil's cross-dressing could be considered homophobic or transphobic now. Even though "Ebbtide's Revenge" did have the characters accept that Phil was a good man despite his feminine tendencies -a touching message, especially in 1990 - it still never really denied the idea that Phil's cross-dressing was some sort of mental problem and still made it the punchline of several jokes in that very episode.
143	** In "Mixed Blessings", Dorothy's son Michael announces he's getting married to Lorraine, an African-American woman in her forties while he himself is in his twenties. This causes a huge row between their respective families, with Dorothy taking issue with Lorraine's advanced age despite harboring no other hard feelings towards her, and Lorraine's mother loudly objecting because Michael is Caucasian. While there are arguments for both sides of the age question despite Michael being of age and a consenting adult, all the fuss over a biracial couple likely would raise a few eyebrows today, even more so than it might have in 1988. Of course, this is made HarsherInHindsight now that the episode was pulled off the air not just for this issue, but for the fact that Rose and Blanche wore what appeared to be {{blackface}} (it's actually mud masks).
144	** In one episode, Blanche's delinquent grandson David comes to visit, and when he mouths off to his grandma's friends, Sophia slaps him across the face. Despite some objections, this has a positive effect on David, as he's never gotten discipline at home. Nowadays, many people would consider that child abuse, and not appropriate in any situation.
145	** A minor example comes in “There Goes the Bride”, when Stan wants Dorothy to enter into a pre-nuptual agreement with him prior to their remarriage. This is treated by Dorothy (and the episode) as a sure sign Stan doesn’t believe in their union as much as he seemed. Putting aside his past infidelities and irrresponsibility with money, Stan’s choice to implement such an agreement would be seen as a ''very'' smart idea today (and one of the wisest decisions he ever made on the show, given his recent success as a businessman), as many new marriages have them in place to prevent more contentious divorces financially. (Many prenups even have financial penalties if one partner has an affair!)
146	* ValuesResonance: Despite the long list of Values Dissonance directly above this, the show ''was'' surprisingly progressive for its time, especially given it was both starring and aimed toward people who would've grown up in the 1940s and 1950s.
147	** When Blanche's brother Clayton comes out of the closet, he's in no way treated in a stereotypical or insulting manner, and even the above-mentioned joke about Blanche "converting one" is at ''her'' expense rather than his. His second episode even ended with him getting married, and despite skepticism and worry for his safety ended with Blanche happily attending his wedding. Gay marriage wasn't even legal in Florida when this episode aired, and wouldn't be until 2015, so having a wedding being portrayed as a happy ending and the right decision to make was pretty far ahead of its time.
148	** The episode "Ebbtide's Revenge" went out of its way to humanize Phil Petrillo after making so much humor of his crossdressing, showing that he and his wife Angela loved each other very much and that Angela gladly supported his crossdressing because it made him happy. It's thanks to Rose, of all people, that a message is dropped on how there was nothing wrong with Phil, nor was he suffering from some mental problem that made him want to wear dresses instead of suits. [[spoiler: Too bad all this happens after Phil passes away.]]
149	** Many episodes dealt with the difficulty of seniors seeking healthcare and affordable housing. The girls frequently encountered less-fortunate people their own age living in inadequate assisted living facilities (or even homeless shelters) that make them realize their own comfortable circumstances are the exception, rather than the rule. Other episodes addressed various serious senior issues such as end-of-life care, dementia, and euthanasia.
150	** The girls have active sex lives and romances, particularly Blanche, and while they take jabs at one another, they are never presented as "evil" or bad in anyway because of their sex lives.
151	** Sexual harassment is treated with the utmost seriousness than most sitcoms in this show's day. When Blanche and Rose are sexually harassed by one way or the other, they are ''never'' seen as wrong in any way and all fault lies with the predator. For Blanche, her teacher propositions a passing grade for sex -- Blanche decides to report him, and when that didn't work, she refuses to sleep with him and studies for the test in spite of him; Rose was fondled by her dentist who used his position to gaslight her into thinking it was an accident, and when Rose learns it wasn't, she's rightly furious and goes to report his inappropriate behavior. Dorothy also discusses being sexually harassed by a principal, and is proud that she reported him and kept other women from going through the same thing, especially after the subsequent investigation revealed that Dorothy was not the first women he targeted; this was decades before the [=#MeToo=] movement called attention to how seldom men like that stop at just one victim..
152	** When the girls volunteer at a soup kitchen, they have a frank discussion about the causes of homelessness, with the manager focusing on the increased cost of living without a matching increase to the minimum wage. The fight to keep the minimum wage on the same level as the cost of living is still ongoing forty years later.
153	** In 1990, less than a decade into the AIDS epidemic, this was one of the first mainstream shows to forcefully make the point that AIDS, and sexually transmitted infections in general, are not some sort of punishment for immorality.
154	---> '''Blanche:''' AIDS is not a bad person's disease, Rose! It is not God punishing people for their sins!
155	** "In A Bed of Rose's," a first-season episode, has a progressive view about what we'd now call open marriages. Rose discovers that her new boyfriend Al was secretly married, but when she goes to tell his wife Lucille about the affair--and, more importantly, that Al [[OutWithABang died in the middle of sex]]--Lucille is completely unfazed by the fact that Al was cheating (although the revelation of his death absolutely destroys her). She explains that the first time Al slept with another woman was ''on their honeymoon'', and that he's been running around with every beautiful lady that crossed his path ever since. But given her stunned reaction to the news that Al died, she clearly loved him deeply and didn't begrudge him for his affairs, instead accepting them as part of their life together. As discussions of polyamory and open relationships become more commonplace, Lucille and Al's marriage stands as an extremely early example of how having multiple sexual partners while being in a serious relationship is not inherently a bad thing, so long as everyone involved is informed and agrees to the arrangement (especially because other cheaters on the show ''aren't'' treated kindly for their deception).
156	* TheWoobie: Phil Petrillo, Dorothy's brother and Sophia's only son, who [[TheUnseen never appears on screen]] but is often mentioned. The show repeatedly made jokes alluding to Phil being a WholesomeCrossdresser, but then came the episode "Ebbtide's Revenge" where [[spoiler: he's KilledOffForReal]] and we learn more about his relationship with Sophia that [[CerebusRetcon made a lot of the jokes about him unfunny]]. It turns out Phil's relationship with Sophia was strained for years on account of his crossdressing, and for the longest time Sophia made it seem like this was because of Phil's wife Angela. Angela mentions how difficult it was for Phil to be estranged from Sophia and how, in the process, their kids never really got to know Sophia as a grandmother. As it turns out, Sophia hated Angela because Angela "didn't stop the dress thing," which meant Sophia was afraid people would blame her for it. For years, Sophia feared that [[ItsAllMyFault she had somehow abused or did something to Phil]] that made him the way he was, and poor Phil can only get his mother to understand nothing was wrong with him nor had she hurt him [[spoiler: after he dies and isn't around to hear it for himself]]. What's especially painful about all this is Phil was often considered to be a perfectly happy person, a good husband, and a loving father who provided for his kids, who just happened to prefer dresses.

Context YMMV / TheGoldenGirls