"Jean is a nice person. She happens to like girls instead of guys. Some people like cats instead of dogs. Frankly, I'd rather live with a lesbian than a cat. Unless a lesbian sheds - I don't know." - Estelle Getty as Sophia
The Golden Girls: The Complete Second Season DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Grab a hunk of cheesecake, soak your feet in a tub of Epsom salts, and get ready for The Golden Girls: The Complete Second Season, a mature sitcom about an incredibly immature group of friends who are living together in a beautiful Miami home to pool their late-life resources. Blanche Devereaux (Mama's Family's Rue McClanahan), is a moderately well-off widow whose demure Southern charms belie the fact that she has dated every man in Dade County at least twice. Rose Nylund (The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Betty White) is a perky widow who works as a counselor even though she could use a little counseling herself. Dorothy Zbornak (Maude's Bea Arthur) is a sharp-tongued substitute teacher whose lout of a husband, Stan (Herb Edelman), left her for a younger woman after thirty-eight years of marriage. Rounding out the housemates is Dorothy's mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty), a stroke victim who has lost the ability to censor her acid-tongued thoughts.
Even in season two, it remains a pleasant shock to view a series centered on older characters that enjoy incredibly healthy sex lives. This is true even from the first episode, "End of the Curse," when Blanche's skipped period leads her to believe that she's pregnant. And that the father is...well...any one of five men. When it turns out that she's really experiencing menopause, Blanche is at first depressed, but is soon back to adding notches to her bedpost. Sophia rejoices when the girls leave her behind to go on "Vacation" ("It'll be nice to have the house to myself. I can vacuum in the nude."), mostly so that she can seduce their Japanese gardener (played by Charlie Chan's Keye Luke). Dorothy actively pursues an undercover cop borrowing the roommates' home for a stakeout ("To Catch a Neighbor"). Even seemingly virginal Rose shocks the others with tales of just how often she and her deceased husband had sex - every day before breakfast, after dinner, and then for several hours on the weekends ("Son-In-Law Dearest").
Sometimes things are funniest when they absolutely go wrong. In "Ladies of the Evening," Blanche is given tickets to a benefit featuring Burt Reynolds (or "Mr. Burt Reynolds," as she insists on calling him). There are only two problems: the house has to be fumigated, necessitating the roomies to find another place to live temporarily, and she only has three tickets. Sophia is angered when she discovers that she is to be left out and vows revenge. Blanche finds accommodations at a cheap hotel, basing her decision on the fact that there are a lot of cute guys in the lobby. As it turns out, however, this particular hotel is usually rented by the hour, and Rose, Blanche, and Dorothy are arrested in a vice sting. It's up to Sophia to bail them out, but when they still refuse to let her attend the benefit, Sophia snatches the tickets and leaves her roommates in the pokey. This episode is funny from start to finish.
In the sweet "Isn't It Romantic?", Dorothy's college friend, Jean (Lois Nettleton), comes for a visit. Dorothy is reluctant to tell her friends that Jean's recently deceased husband Pat is actually her recently deceased girlfriend Pat. Jean is a lesbian, and Dorothy isn't sure how the others will react to the news. Word slowly leaks out (Blanche says, "I've never met one personally, but isn't Danny Thomas one?"), but things get complicated when Jean begins to fall for Rose. The delicate situation between Jean and Rose is handled quite tenderly, and it serves as a perfect contrast for the wackier subplot involving Sophia's newfound fascination with porn. Jeffrey Duteil's script for "Isn't It Romantic?" received a much-deserved Emmy nomination.
In many episodes, plot merely serves as a jumping off point for zippy conversations and jokes between the roommates. Take "And Then There Was None." In this episode, Sophia volunteers to participate in a charity walkathon. Her younger roommates don't quite feel up to that challenge, so they sign up to be the walkathon's official babysitters, caring for tots whose parents are in the event. The usual mayhem occurs - kids misbehave, babies cry - but everything basically goes well - at least until the women realize that one of the babies hasn't been picked up even after all of the walkathon participants are gone. In some series, that would be enough of a plot. In The Golden Girls, however, that basic plotline is used to explore the relationships that each of the friends had with their own children.
This same technique is used over and over again. After seeing all of the surgically enhanced bodies at her class reunion, Blanche considers getting extensive plastic surgery herself. This leads to many deep - and deeply funny - conversations on aging ("Whose Face Is It, Anyway?"). When Dorothy's daughter announces that her husband is cheating on her, Dorothy reacts negatively to her daughter's treatment of the situation. Really, though, her view of the situation is colored by her own experiences with infidelity ("Son-in-Law Dearest").
The plots also serve to set up the series' often excruciatingly funny one-liners. Rose's ridiculous stories about growing up in St. Olaf are sometimes grating, but her aphorisms can be absurdly entertaining:
"You can lead a herring to water, but you have to walk really quickly or he'll die."
"My mother used to say the older you get, the better you get. Unless you're a banana."
The writers are also excellent at crafting precise, character-defining put-downs:
Blanche: "Who knows my body better than I do?"
Sophia: "Any man in Miami not attached to a woman or a respirator."
The final episode of the season, "Empty Nest," served as the pilot for the Richard Mulligan/Park Overall/Kristy McNichol TV series of the same name. Of course, Mulligan, Overall, and McNichol are nowhere to be found - the pilot was completely reworked before it became a series. It's easy to see why, as "Empty Nest" is about as funny as heartburn. Rita Moreno stars as Renee Corliss, an unhappily married neighbor who is feeling depressed now that all of her kids are out of the house. The great Paul Dooley is George Corliss, Renee's workaholic doctor husband. How bad is this pilot? Geoffrey Lewis plays a wacky schizophrenic whose personalities include a relatively normal guy named Chuck and a handyman named Mr. Fixit. And the episode's last line is "Promise me you'll never die." Funny.
Other guests in season two include Burt Reynolds, David Wayne, Stuart Pankin, Paul Rodriguez, Terry Kiser, Lloyd Bochner, Ray Combs, John McMartin, Mario Lopez, Joseph Campanella, and George Clooney. Nancy Walker (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) also makes two lackluster appearances as Sophia's sister, Angela. The idea of Walker and Getty playing sisters is an interesting one, but neither script fully exploits the comic possibilities.
Out of its numerous Emmy nominations, season two won three awards: Outstanding Directing (Terry Hughes), Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Rue McClanahan), and Outstanding Comedy Series.
The twenty-six episodes that make up season two are divided onto three discs. Each of the three pastel blue discs are decorated with portraits of the gang - Blanche on disc one, Dorothy on disc two, and Rose on disc three. The discs are housed in a pastel blue foldout case decorated with publicity and production stills. The three discs attach to two panels - one of the panels holds two discs (one on top of the other) in a figure eight pattern. One panel of the foldout case lists the title and the writing and directing credits of each episode. Unfortunately, no plot synopses are included, making it somewhat difficult for viewers to choose individual episodes. The case slides into a cardboard sleeve.
The DVD menus - which feature full-motion clips from the series in small windows while an instrumental version of the theme song plays in a loop - are simple and easy to navigate. Viewers can play all episodes or choose an individual one. There are no scene selection menus, and the episodes do not include chapter stops.
