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Empty Nest Article
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"It's like we say in St. Olaf, Christmas without fruitcake is like St. Sigmund's Day without the headless boy." This article is incomplete. You can help the Golden Girls Wiki by expanding it. |
Carol Weston-Millen {former married name unknown) is a central character in the 1988 NBC sitcom Empty Nest, and a minor character in its sister series The Golden Girls and Nurses. The eldest daughter of Harry and Libby Weston, Carol eventually moves back in with her father when she can no longer stand the loneliness of her post-divorce home.
Carol appeared in all seven seasons of Empty Nest, and in two episodes of its spin-off, Nurses. She also appeared in two episodes of Empty Nest's parent series, The Golden Girls. She is portrayed by Dinah Manoff.
Personality and Characteristics[]
At the start of the series, Carol is a lonely, neurotic divorcee who moves back home after she becomes tired of living on her own. Still bitter over her mockery of a marriage to her cheating ex-husband Gary, she starts out as a somewhat-stern mother hen-type character who takes care of the house and drives her sister and father crazy not only with her emotional problems, but her obsession with health foods. Having a tendency to wildly overreact to the smallest situation, every Empty Nest episode finds Carol with some new, off-the-wall problem to annoy her family with. Her younger sister Barbara views her as a “big nut,” as do many of the people who come in contact with her -- including Charley, who loves to drop in and insult her.
Carol tends to crave attention and acceptance, often trying to be the center of Harry's attention, and years of therapy only seems to have made her more needy and neurotic. By Season 3, Carol begins to loosen up more as her neurotic side becomes the focal point of her character. In "Mad About the Boy", Carol had a nervous breakdown after an extremely bad dating streak and learning that her elderly coworker was marrying a perfect man. She went into a period of depression before latching onto the first man she met -- a dangerously-bland cheese host from the local mall -- and planned to move in with him after a week of dating. This likely stems from her childhood[1]
However, as needy, whiny, dependent, or just plain crazy as she is, Carol is also strong-willed and self-confident when she needs to be.
Carol is very intelligent, with interests in such things as literature and psychology, and even mentions having a master’s degree in philosophy. However, despite her intelligence and education, Carol had trouble holding down a job and quit a series of them for trivial reasons. After almost letting herself be chased away from her job at a university library by a demeaning professor, Carol realized that she kept quitting her jobs because she was afraid she would never be any good at them.[2]
Despite Carol's seeming inability to find the perfect man, she seems to have a natural knack for caring for children. In "Barbara the Mom", she was able to not only calm the children Barbara was babysitting, but convince them to sit down and eat a healthy casserole for lunch.
Biography[]
Childhood[]
- “Dear baby, I've been sitting here at the kitchen table waiting for you to arrive. I wish you'd hurry. I can't wait to see what you look like, and your father, Dr. Please-Libby-I'm-A-Professional, is a nervous wreck. I wasn't nervous, I was eager. Okay, I was an eager wreck. We haven't met yet, but I feel closer to you than I ever knew was possible. I can't remember when it happened, but somehow, magically, you were no longer this thing growing inside my body, but my very own beautiful baby. And now I love you so much it makes me cry.”
- — Libby's letter to the then-unborn Carol the day before she was born; "Diary of a Mad Housewife" (1993)
Carol was born on July 14th,[3] 1958[4] in Miami, Florida to Harry and Libby Weston. Libby became pregnant with Carol during Harry's internship, and she began to panic as she would have to quit her job in order to have the baby. As her due date grew closer, however, Libby became excited for Carol to be born. The day before Carol was born, Libby wrote a letter to her about how she couldn't wait to meet her.[5] Because her father was constantly working at the pediatrics office, Carol grew close to her mother.
When Carol was four and a half years old, her sister Barbara was born.[6] Carol quickly became jealous of Barbara after the adults constantly called Barbara adorable and seemed to favor her over Carol. She frequently fought with Barbara over trivial matters, and these fights often escalated severely. One Easter, Harry got the girls a pair of identical baby chicks, but the next day, Barbara came running into the house crying that Carol's chick was dead. If Carol's implications are to be trusted, Barbara killed her own chick so she could take Carol's chick for herself.[7]
When Carol was nine, Harry promised that he'd be home to take her trick-or-treating. Carol got dressed up in her banana costume and waited for hours, but Harry became tied up at the office and never came home.[8]
On December 24th, 1969, Libby told the eleven year-old Carol that Harry may not be able to make it home for Christmas because he was busy with a "very sick kid" at the hospital. The next morning, Carol and her sisters came downstairs to find Harry and Libby sitting under the tree together, whereupon Harry announced that he was taking the family on a two-week road trip. For the first week, they went to visit their grandparents in Atlanta, Georgia, and the second week they went to Disney World. One night in the hotel, Carol overheard her mother telling her father that there was nothing more he could've done and he couldn't run away forever -- leading Carol to realize that the "very sick kid" had died.[9]
First Marriage and Divorce[]
In 1981, Carol eloped with her first husband, Gary. At one point during their marriage, Carol walked in on Gary and his secretary having sex on the couch in his office. According to her, Gary raised himself up on one elbow, exclaimed "This is not what you think." and Carol believed him.[6] In 1986,[10] Gary left Barbara for a young blonde named Rita.[8] Carol refused to take any alimony from Gary, but her parents allegedly forced her to take two years in alimony payments during the divorce proceedings.[10] They also had a party at the house to celebrate the divorce.[6]
Post-divorce Carol was able to successfully find a foothold in the workforce, but she would bounce between jobs as she quit them for trivial reasons
Coming Home[]
After Barbara lost her apartment, Carol allowed Barbara to live with her after she left Harry's house. Barbara didn't have a better time living with Carol, as Carol began to act like a neglected wife. Carol eventually decided to follow Barbara back to Harry's house, as she was lonely enough on her own.[11]
Carol appeared on two episodes of The Golden Girls. In the two part episode "The Monkey Show", Carol is dating Stan Zbornak's psychiatrist Dr. Halperin. In A Midwinter Night's Dream, Carol attends Blanche's full moon madness party.
Carol found love with Patrick Arcola, an artist who was employed as the Westons’ sprinklerman. Harry, who is annoyed by Patrick right from the start, isn’t thrilled when Patrick announces that he and Carol are dating. When Patrick's apartment was condemned, Carol persuaded Harry to let him move into the garage, which became Patrick's new home and art studio.
Pregnancy[]
About a year into their relationship, Carol pushed Patrick to apply for a job so he could have some steady income. When Patrick turned down the job, Carol realized that Patrick was never going to grow up and accept responsibility in his life, so she broke up with him and kicked him out of the house. However, she learned later that night that she was pregnant with Patrick's child.[12] Carol briefly wrestled with telling Patrick about the baby, eventually trying to rekindle their relationship before she realized that they truly wouldn't work out. She decided to break up with Kevin and raise the baby on her own.[13]
Motherhood[]
In November 1993, Carol went into labor while at a charity opera show and gave birth to her son. She named her son Francis Scott Weston, after one of her favorite authors F. Scott Fitzgerald.[14]
In the end Carol does find her Mr. Right. She meets airline pilot Kevin Millen in an art gallery during the final season. They hit it off and (after overcoming a few obstacles) become engaged. The couple wed in the series finale.
Family[]
Template:Westonfam
Career[]
Despite Carol's intelligence and education, she has trouble holding down a job and quit a series of them for trivial reasons. She finally finds a job in a university library during Season 2, where she works throughout that season and the next. At the start of Season 4, she buys her own catering company called the Elegant Epicure. She does that for a few years and in the final season embarks on a promising journalism career as a reporter at the Dade County Crier.
- Assistant Director of Rare Books Library: In "Overdue for a Job", Carol finds a job at a university library. She was able to last a week, but quit after continued harassment from a rude professor. A week later, Carol returned to pick up her final paycheck and once again fought with Professor Brooks, but decided that rather than run away, she would go back to working at the library to spite him.[15]
- Information Booth Worker: Carol previously worked at an information booth, but quit after people kept asking her "the most moronic questions".[15]
- Public Relations Manager: In "Tears of a Clown", Carol has a brief stint as the PR manager of the Community Medical Center. She was fired from the position after accidentally leaking confidential information about celebrity Poko the Clown.[16]
Appearances[]
Empty Nest (1988-1992)[]
| Season 1 | |||||
| 1. "Pilot": | Debut | 12. "Full Nest": | Appears | ||
| 2. "The Check Isn't in The Mail": | Appears | 13. "Here's A Howdy-Do": | Appears | ||
| 3. "Barbara Gets A Shot": | Appears | 14."Strange Bedfellows": | Appears | ||
| 4. "Fatal Attraction": | Appears | 15. "Tears of a Clown": | Appears | ||
| 5. "Father of the Bride": | Appears | 16. "Blame It on the Moon": | Appears | ||
| 6. "Harry's Vacation": | Appears | 17. "Dumped": | Appears | ||
| 7. "Tinker to Evers to Tucson": | Appears | 18. "The More Things Change": | Appears | ||
| 8. "What's a Father to Do?": | Appears | 19. "Man of the Year": | Appears | ||
| 9. "Harry's Friend": | Appears | 20. "Cyrano de Weston": | Appears | ||
| 10. "Libby's Gift": | Appears | 21. "My Sister, My Friend": | Appears | ||
| 11. "The First Time, Again": | Appears | 22. "A Life in the Day": | Absent | ||
| Season 2 | |||||
| 1. "Settling": | Appears | 13. "Harry's Choice": | Appears | ||
| 2. "Harry Snubs Laverne": | Appears | 14. "Complainin' in the Rain": | Appears | ||
| 3. "On The Interpretation of Dreams": | Appears | 15."M.D., P.O.V.": | Appears | ||
| 4. "Between a Cop and a Hard Place": | Appears | 16. "Everything But Love": | Appears | ||
| 5. "Just You And My Kid": | Appears | 17. "Timing": | Appears | ||
| 6. "Rambo of Neiman Marcus": | Appears | 18. "It Happened Two Nights, Four Costume Changes": | Appears | ||
| 7. "You Are 16 Going on 17 and I'm Not": | Appears | 19. "Love Is Blind": | Appears | ||
| 8. "The R.N. Who Came to Dinner": | Appears | 20. "Goodbye, Mr. Dietz": | Appears | ||
| 9. "Green Eggs and Harry": | Appears | 21. "Lessons": | Appears | ||
| 10. "Overdue for a Job": | Appears | 22. "Take My Mom, Please": | Appears | ||
| 11. "A Christmas Story": | Appears | 23. "Did You Ever See a Dream Dying?": | Appears | ||
| 12. "Change of Heart": | Appears | 24. "Still Growing After All These Years": | Appears | ||
| Season 3 | |||||
| 1. "A Flaw is Born": | Appears | 13. "A Shot in the Dark": | Appears | ||
| 2. "Harry's Excellent Adventure": | Appears | 14. "Sucking Up Is Hard to Do": | Appears | ||
| 3. "There's No Accounting": | Appears | 15."The Man That Got Away": | Appears | ||
| 4. "Barbara the Mom": | Appears | 16. "The Mentor": | Appears | ||
| 5. "The Tortoise and The Harry": | Appears | 17. "The Dog That Knew Too Much": | Appears | ||
| 6. "Mad About the Boy": | Appears | 18. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?": | Appears | ||
| 7. "Honey, I Shrunk Laverne": | Appears | 19. "All About Harry": | Appears | ||
| 8. "The Boy Next Door": | Appears | 20. "Drive, He Said": | Appears | ||
| 9. "A Family Affair": | Appears | 21. "The Last Temptation of Laverne": | Appears | ||
| 10. "Someone to Watch Over Me": | Appears | 22. "What's Eating You?": | Appears | ||
| 11. "Harry Knows Best": | Appears | 23. "The Cruise": | Appears | ||
| 12. "Whenever I Feel Afraid": | Appears | 24. "The Way We Are": | Appears | ||
| Season 4 | |||||
| 1. "50 Million Men and a Baby": | Appears | 13. "The Son of a Preacherman": | Appears | ||
| 2. "Almost Like Being in Love": | Appears | 14. "Ex-Appeal": | Appears | ||
| 3. "Her Cheatin' Heart": | Appears | 15. "The Great Escape": | Appears | ||
| 4. "Food for Thought": | Appears | 16."The Mismatchmaker": | Appears | ||
| 5. "Harry's Got a Gun": | Appears | 17. "The Return of Aunt Susan": | Appears | ||
| 6. "The Dreyfuss Affair": | Appears | 18. "The Unimportance of Being Charley": | Appears | ||
| 7. "Country Weston": | Appears | 19. "Sayonara": | Appears | ||
| 8. "Windy": | Appears | 20. "Dr. Weston and Mr. Hyde": | Appears | ||
| 9. "Talk, Talk, Talk": | Appears | 21. "Charley for President": | Appears | ||
| 10. "Lonely Are the Brave]]": | Appears | 22. "Good Neighbor Harry": | Appears | ||
| 11. "If You Knew Andy Like I Know...": | Appears | 23. "Final Analysis": | Appears | ||
| 12. "My Nurse Is Back and There's Gonna Be Trouble...: | Appears | 24. "Roots": | Appears | ||
Template:ENSeason5Appearances
Template:ENSeason6Appearances
Template:ENSeason7Appearances
Nurses (1991-1993)[]
To be added.
Casting and Development[]
Some of Carol's character, such as the background of a cheating partner, may have been derived from Jenny Corliss from the original Empty Nest pilot. In the pilot, Jenny comes home from college and wants to avoid going back, as she followed her high-school boyfriend to school and he broke up with her for "a thin blonde goddess".
Trivia[]
- Her birthday falls on the anniversary of the French Revolution.[17]
[]
| V - E - H Empty Nest characters
| |
|---|---|
| Main Cast | Barbara Weston • Carol Weston • Charley Dietz • Dreyfuss Harry Weston • Laverne Todd • Maxine Douglas • Sophia Petrillo |
| Recurring Cast | Ben Braxton • Doris • Emily Weston • Fred Dietz • Jeffrey Millstein • Kevin Millen • Lurlene Moss • Matt Kane • Miss Bingham • Mr. Garrison • Nick Todd • Patrick Arcola • Scotty Weston • Ursula Dietz |
References[]
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 3, Episode 6, “Mad About the Boy”. Dougherty, Pat (writer) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (October 27th, 1990)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 2, Episode 10, “Overdue for a Job”. LaZebnik, Rob and Sacks, David (writers) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (December 9th, 1989)
- ↑ In "Drive, He Said", Carol mentions that her birthday falls on the anniversary of the French Revolution. The French Revolution is celebrated on July 14th, commemorating the day that revolutionary forces stormed the Bastille.
- ↑ In "Harry's Friend", Harry expresses that there is a twenty-five year age difference between Carol and his fifty-five year-old friend Leonard.
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 6, Episode 6, “Diary of a Mad Housewife”. Tischler, Bob (writer) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (October 30th, 1993)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Empty Nest, Season 1, Episode 5, “Father of the Bride”. Harris, Susan (writer) & Cooper, Hal (director) (November 12th, 1988)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 1, Episode 3, “Barbara Gets Shot”. Reo, Don (writer) & Cooper, Hal (director) (October 25th,1988)
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Empty Nest, Season 1, Episode 1, “Pilot”. Harris, Susan (writer) & Sandrich, Jay (director) (October 8th, 1988)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 2, Episode 15, “M.D., P.O.V.”. King, David Tyron and LaZebnik, Rob and Sacks, David (writers) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (February 3rd, 1990)
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Empty Nest, Season 1, Episode 2, “The Check Isn't in the Mail”. Jacobs, Gary (writer) & Cooper, Hal (director) (October 22nd, 1988)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 1, Episode 12, “Full Nest”. Beavers, Susan (writer) & Cooper, Hal (director) (January 15th, 1989)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 6, Episode 2, “Bye-Bye Baby…Hello, Part 1”. Dougherty, Pat (writer) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (October 2nd, 1993)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 6, Episode 3, “Bye-Bye Baby…Hello, Part 2”. Dougherty, Pat (writer) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (October 9th, 1993)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 6, Episode 10, “The Girl Who Cried Baby”. Beavers, Susan (writer) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (November 27th, 1993)
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Empty Nest, Season 2, Episode 10, “Overdue for a Job”. LaZebnik, Rob and Sacks, David (writers) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (December 9th, 1989)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 1, Episode 15, “Tears of a Clown”. Squerciati, Therese Marie (writer) & Cooper, Hal (director) (February 6th, 1989)
- ↑ Empty Nest, Season 3, Episode 20, “Drive, He Said”. Sacks, David (writer) & Zuckerman, Steve (director) (March 16th, 1991)