The Days and Nights of Sophia Petrillo

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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.

The Days and Nights of Sophia Petrillo
Episode Information
Series	The Golden Girls
Season	4
Episode Number	2
Network/Country	NBC-TV / United States
Air Date	October 22, 1988
Production ID	4.02 / 077
IMDb link	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0589839
Written by	Terry Grossman, Kathy Speer
Directed by	Terry Hughes
Episode Chronology
←Previous	Yes, We Have No Havanas
Next→	The One That Got Away
Series Links

The Days and Nights of Sophia Petrillo is the second episode of the fourth season of The Golden Girls and the seventy-eighth episode overall. Directed by Terry Hughes and written by Terry Grossman and Kathy Speer, it premiered on NBC-TV on October 22nd, 1988.

Summary

Sophia plans to go to the market and buy a nectarine, which she does every day. The other girls worry that she is too old and frail to enjoy life. However, the tables are turned: Sophia has a full, active day of rallying fellow seniors to fight return policies at a supermarket, leading a charity band on the boardwalk, and volunteering at a hospital, while the other girls sit around the kitchen table talking about how to pass the time.

Plot

The girls plan to spend the day house cleaning, while Sophia tells them that she is going to buy a nectarine, Dorothy worries that Sophia isn't doing enough in her life and it turns out she is very wrong. At the Store, Sophia argues with a staff member over the ripeness of the nectarines but finds one, then her friend Claire is having a problem, she tried to return some lamb meat but because she had opened the package they can't return it but Sophia pretends to be a member of an group for protection for Seniors and they give Claire her money back and Sophia gets money off. After this, Sophia is working as a conductor for a band of older musicians, the rain has put the people off going out but Sophia gives the ladies a reason to play as best as they can and they do. Later that afternoon Sophia is working as a candy striper at the local hospital where despite her insults she does show kindness to one old lady asking if somebody has sent her flowers, realizing she hurt the woman's feelings allows her to take the flowers on the cart. Then her friend Sam appears, he is in hospital and Sophia gives him the nectarine, where it is revealed he has either HIV or AIDS but Sophia reminds him to eat healthier as he might make it. Sophia returns home while the girls haven't done anything but lies to them, Sophia tells them that she brought a nectarine nothing more.

Tall Tales

Tales from the Old South

To be added.

Back in St. Olaf...

To be added.

Cast

Main Cast

• Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak
• Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux
• Betty White as Rose Nylund
• Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo

Guest Stars

• Frances Bay as Claire
• Nick DeMauro as Clerk
• David Selburg as Store Manager
• Allen Bloomfield as Abe
• Ellen Albertini Dow as Mrs. Leonard
• Peggy Gilbert as Esther
• Marian Wells as Wanda
• The Dixie Belles as The Band
• Kokko Burnaby as Sam
• Darlene Kardon as Woman
• Ruth Cohen as Woman in Grocery Store

Notes

• The music playing on the television set before Rose turns it off is the theme music for Grab That Dough, the fictional game show the girls compete on in Season 3.
• Alan Kalter can be seen as an extra watching the band perform. He went on to be the announcer on the Late Show with David Letterman for 20 years.

Production

• Ellen Albertini Dow, who plays Mrs. Leonard, later plays Sophia's friend Lillian in "Sophia's Choice".
• Ruth Cohen, the woman in the tan raincoat and pink blouse shopping by bananas, is the same actress who sat next to Blanche in "The Actor" in Season 2 when Blanche revealed her "enhanced" bosom at auditions.

Cultural references

• When Sophia says the line 'I got a better case than Valerie Harper!' in the supermarket scene, she is referring to actress Valerie Harper winning a court battle against her former employers: Lorimar and NBC-TV. The case involved dispute over the 1986 TV series Valerie, in which Harper was fired in 1987. Lorimar and NBC-TV claimed Harper threw tantrums and was difficult to work with. Harper claimed they fired her without reason. The case would eventually last for over a year, with Harper coming out victorious in September 1988.

Goofs

• In one scene, Dorothy mentions that her grandmother was ninety-four when Dorothy was six. Yet, two episodes ago, a flashback showed Dorothy as a grown woman wheeling her very alive grandmother around in a wheelchair. This means her grandmother would have had to be well into her hundreds at the time of her death.
• When Blanche starts to tell the story about the boy with the big ears, her cookie disappears between shots.
• When Sophia argues with the store manager, she takes the lamb chop from Claire twice.