"Ebb Tide" is an episode in the fifth season of The Golden Girls.
Blanche and her sister Virginia clash at Big Daddy's funeral, which Dorothy also attends. Meanwhile, Sophia takes advantage of their absences to rent their rooms out to boarders.
Tropes:
- Broken Treasure: A lodger inadvertently breaks a commemorative plate Blanche received for a ball. Rose and Sophia spend part of the episode trying to get a replacement so Blanche won't find out (because she didn't know that they were running the weekend rental scheme)
- Estranged Soap Family: Averted with Virginia's reappearance, they even brought back Sheree North to play her. However Blanche's brother Clayton (whom we've already met and who would appear again later on), and her long-storied sister Charmaine (who finally appears in a subsequent episode) are both unseen. It can be inferred that the whole family have chosen to shun Blanche for not visiting Big Daddy on his deathbed and Virginia has been chosen to communicate this to her. It's also possible that Clayton, having come out of the closet the previous season, wasn't allowed to attend at all. However, this doesn't explain why none of Blanche's children (Big Daddy's grandchildren) are being shown to attend the funeral and console their mother, beyond the blanket excuse that most of them aren't very close with her.
- Funeral Banishment: Blanche gets a call from her father Big Daddy about coming to visit, but she's too interested in a festival she's organizing to go and blow him off—only to learn that Big Daddy was actually quite sick and wanted to see her before he died. When he does pass away, a grieving and guilt-ridden Blanche travels to Atlanta, where her sister Virginia calls her out for her selfishness and refusal to be there for her family, heavily insinuating that she shouldn't be at the funeral. She angrily declares that she won't go, which leads to her having to say goodbye to Big Daddy in private and in turn realizing that she has been selfish.
- Virginia: To tell you the truth, I'm surprised you even made it to the funeral at all.
Blanche: Maybe you would be happier if I hadn't!
Virginia: Maybe not happier—but at least this family would be able to grieve for Big Daddy without wondering what is in it for Blanche!
- Laser-Guided Karma: When Blanche and Dorothy travel to Atlanta for the funeral, Sophia turns the house into a temporary bed-and-breakfast in an attempt to raise cash for a big-screen TV. During the weekend, an expensive ceremonial plate that Blanche received for the Citrus Ball ends up broken; Rose and Sophia manage to find a new one, but it ends up costing Sophia all of the money she's made. They have the new plate with them just as Dorothy and Blanche return, and the latter, having realized how selfish and inconsiderate she has been lately, proceeds to smash it on the floor. Sophia lampshades the situation:Sophia: (looking heavenward) What is this, sarcasm?
- My God, What Have I Done?: Blanche gets this big time. First, when she realizes she passed up her last chance to see her father alive so she could be the belle of the Citrus Ball, and then when she refuses to attend the funeral after she's called out for her selfishness by her sister Virginia, and has to regretfully settle for a brief graveside farewell.
- Parting-Words Regret: One of Blanche's regrets in this episode is the realization that the her declination for invitation to meet her father turns out to be the last words she ever said to him, once Dorothy informs her that her father had just passed on.
