"And Then There Was One" is an episode in the second season of The Golden Girls.
Dorothy and Rose agree to baby-sit a group of children, but one set of parents fails to claim their child.
Tropes:
- Babysitting Episode: Rose, Blanche, and Dorothy run a temporary day care for the children of individuals participating in a walkathon for charity; Sophia herself participates in the walkathon. By the end of the day, all of the children have been picked up except for baby Emily, whom the girls begin to fear has been abandoned. Emily's father eventually shows up and explains that he couldn't come earlier because his wife had gone into labor, and Emily is now the big sister of triplets. He says that when he phoned to explain, whoever answered the phone had muttered something about a sports award and hung up on him. Sophia says she thought he was calling from Sports Illustrated about her walkathon performance.
- Paparazzi: When Sophia participates in the walkathon, she becomes convinced that she is a celebrity athlete and falls under the delusion that she is being hounded by journalists. This leads her to tell off a caller and hang up on them, without realizing that the caller was actually Emily's father, trying to inform the other girls that he would be late picking up his daughter due to an emergency.
- Parents for a Day: Sophia runs in a marathon, while the ladies babysit several children of runners; the parents of one child, a little girl named Emily, do not return. The ladies must then contemplate whether or not to keep the baby and raise it themselves or hand it over to child services. This especially affects Blanche. Reluctant to even hold the child at first, Blanche becomes overly-attached, which brings up issues about her own daughter at the end of the episode. Emily's father, who previously tried to call and couldn't get through because Sophia mistook him for someone else, eventually turns out to have been late because he was with his wife in the hospital as she gave birth to triplets.
