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The Golden Girls article
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Blanche and the Younger Man is the ninth episode of the first season of The Golden Girls and the ninth episode overall. Directed by Jim Drake and written by James Berg and Stan Zimmerman, it premiered on NBC-TV on November 16th, 1985.
Summary[]
Rose's mother, Alma, visits and friction results when Rose coddles her too much. Blanche goes on an exercise frenzy when a young man in her Jazzercise class asks her out and is embarrassed when it turns out he is interested in her in a different way than she thinks.
Plot[]
When Rose's dynamic mother comes to Miami for a visit, it becomes apparent to everyone that Rose needs to lay off and stop smothering her energetic mother who just wants to live life. Rose eventually goes overboard, scolding her mother for her lifestyle choices in front of a large group. Alma, enraged, says that she plans to leave and go to Texas to visit Rose's brother sooner than planned. However, after Rose admits her behavior is out of fear of her mother's death, Alma forgives her and they reconcile. They briefly fight again when Alma admits she dated and moved in with a much younger man, a farmhand named Ben, for three years. However, Rose takes her mother's happiness into consideration and they reconcile almost immediately. Meanwhile, Blanche is shocked when her Jazzercise instructor, Dirk, asks her out on a date. She is concerned because he is half her age and she does all she can to make herself look younger in order to keep up with him, including vitamin regimens and exercises that she is too old to safely perform. However, when Blanche goes on her date, she realizes that the age gap is too wide for the relationship to work; she and Dirk have nothing in common and Dirk admits that Blanche reminds him of his mother, who lives far away.[1]
Tall Tales[]
Tales from the Old South[]
When Blanche was seventeen, she was working at the cosmetics counter at the Rexall Drugstore. She was restocking the Maybelline display when a booming voice asked her where the cuticle scissors were. Blanche insists that if she had followed her heart and gone out with the man, today she would've been Mrs. Andy Griffith.
However, as she walks away, Dorothy and Sophia reveal she's told them that story before --but Blanche had worked at a Woolworth's and met John Cameron Swayze asking for toenail clippers.
Back in St. Olaf...[]
Alma tells the ladies about the time she was involved with a younger man. After Rose's father died, Alma hired an ex-con as a farmhand to help around the farm. He raved about her cooking and showed her how to count cards and carve a pistol out of soap. The two were involved for three years before he eventually left the farm, and she insisted that she never could've gotten through her husband's death without Ben.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak
- Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux
- Betty White as Rose Nylund
- Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo
Guest List[]
- Jeanette Nolan as Alma Lindstrom
- Charles Hill as Dirk
Notes[]
Production[]
- Bea Arthur and Betty White's mothers both died before the taping of the episode. According to Golden Girls Forever, Bea Arthur's mother Rebecca Frankel, died two days before the episode's taping, and Betty White's mother Tess died the week the episode was filmed. This made the filming of the mother-daughter scenes very difficult for both actresses, as they were both very close with their mothers.
- Alma and Rose are mother and daughter, but Jeanette Nolan was only ten years older than Betty White.
Cultural references[]
- Dorothy mentions the 1981 psychological drama film Mommie Dearest when talking about Rose.
- Dorothy makes mention of unfreezing Walt Disney. The Golden Girls was produced by Touchstone Television, the adult arm of The Walt Disney Company.
- Dorothy also mentions that Blanche thinks she's Peter Pan, whose story was adapted into a bestselling animated feature by the Walt Disney Company.
- Sophia says that Dorothy thinks she's Josephine the Plumber. Josephine the Plumber was a character featured in a 1969 advertising campaign for Comet.
Continuity[]
- Blanche is over fifty years old.
- In this episode, Sophia mentions that Dorothy never treats her like an old lady but rather as a person. Dorothy briefly goes against this in the episode "Older and Wiser", when she tricks Sophia into becoming an "activities director" at a retirement home. In the episode, Sophia says Dorothy made her feel like "an old fool."[2]
Goofs[]
- There's no mention of Rose being adopted in this episode.
- When Rose goes to leave to get her mother at the police station, Dorothy follows her holding a pencil. When Rose leaves and Dorothy turns around, the pencil is gone.
[]
References[]
- ↑ The Golden Girls, Season 1, Episode 9, "Blanche and the Younger Man". Berg, James and Zimmerman, Stan (writers) & Drake, Jim (director) (November 16th, 1985)
- ↑ The Golden Girls, Season 6, Episode 18, “Older and Wiser”. Gamble, Tracy and Vaczy, Richard (writers) & Diamond, Matthew (director) (February 16th, 1991)