"The Operation" is an episode in the first season of The Golden Girls.
Dorothy's old foot injury is reignited when she practices for a tap-dancing routine with Blanche and Rose, but her fear of hospitals causes her to escape before her scheduled operation is due. Meanwhile, Blanche and Rose try to carry on with their scheduled tap-dancing routine performance at hand.
Tropes:
- Afraid of Doctors: Dorothy's fear of doctors and hospitals causes her to refuse to get a surgery initially and prematurely escape from the hospital before her scheduled operation later on. It takes Sophia guilt-tripping her at first and talking things out about her phobia later on before Dorothy becomes willing enough to go through with the surgery.
- …And That Little Girl Was Me: Blanche tells Rose about a case of stage fright she'd dealt with while performing in a dance recital with a group of twelve other girls.Blanche: They opened the curtain and the music started and twelve little girls started to dance. And one little girl wet her pants. That girl in the puddle was me.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Dorothy's retort to Rose about fear of doctors and hospitals has this trope in the format.Rose: Nobody likes hospitals, but there's nothing to be scared of.Dorothy: Oh, really, Rose? What about blood? What about death? What about those nighties that don't close up in the back?
- Hospital Visit Hesitation: Dorothy is scheduled for surgery for a Morton's neuroma, a kind of benign nerve tumor that has been causing her intermittent foot pain and interfering with her daily activities (including an upcoming dance recital). She reveals herself to have a phobia of hospitals that started when she was five—she'd had an emergency tonsillectomy and circumstances kept both of her parents from being there, and she never got over the childhood fear. Her doctor's casual discussion of all that could go wrong doesn't help, either. A conversation with her hospital roommate, who's in for her second mastectomy and is facing it stoically despite her very real fear, snaps her out of it. (And, to top it off,
this time Sophia makes sure to stay by her daughter's side until she wakes up from the anaesthetic.) - The Patient Has Left the Building: Dorothy escapes from the hospital before her scheduled operation is due, though admittedly the surgeon talking about death in the hospital with a remarkably flippant attitude and a rabbi administering the last rites on her by mistake (he was supposed to do the rites on someone else but went into the wrong room) does no favor for Dorothy, who's already Afraid of Doctors in the first place.
- The Show Must Go On: Rose's reaction to Blanche's Stage Fright towards the upcoming tap-dancing routine performance boils down to this.Rose: Look, Blanche, we've practiced for six weeks, we've paid for our costumes, we told everybody we'd be there, and now you're not going to wimp out on me; you're going to go to that recital. And if you end up in the puddle tonight, well, you'd better just break into Singin' in the Rain! *drags Blanche out of the kitchen*
- Stage Fright: Blanche suffers from this right as the scheduled tap-dancing routine looms near. Rose, however, isn't about to let her off so easily.
