Golden Girls Wiki
Golden Girls Wiki
The Golden Girls Wiki
810
pages
in: The Golden Girls, A to Z, Subpages,
and 4 more

The Way We Met

Sign in to edit
The Golden Girls article

Synopsis
Transcript
Gallery
"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 Way We Met is the twenty-fifth episode of the first season of The Golden Girls and the twenty-fifth episode overall. Directed by Terry Hughes and written by Kathy Speer, Terry Grossman, Winifred Hervey, Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro, it premiered on NBC-TV on May 10th, 1986.

It is the Season 1 finale.

Summary[]

After watching the movie Psycho, the girls reminisce about how they came to live together. Rose met Blanche in the supermarket as she put up an advertisement about her rooms for rent. Initially turned off by Rose's tame personality, she ultimately gave in after seeing Rose giving away a stray cat she had kept to a little boy who happened to lose his pet cat the week before. Responding to the ad, Dorothy visited the house with Sophia, with the former agreeing to move in. The day after Dorothy's move, they had a dispute at the supermarket, but reconciled at the dining table with the help of Rose's St. Olaf story.

Plot[]

After watching Psycho, Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose come into the kitchen, spooked. As they eat cheesecake, Rose comments on how they aren't alone. This leads to a series of flashbacks about how they all came to live with each other. The first flashback starts off with Blanche meeting Rose in the supermarket by the want-ads board. Rose had been evicted from her apartment because her landlord didn't allow pets and Rose couldn't part ways with her cat. At first, Blanche finds Rose's goody-two-shoes attitude annoying and decides to keep looking for a roommate but when she sees Rose give away her cat to a boy; whose own cat had recently died, Blanche considers showing Rose the room. The next flashback starts with Dorothy arriving at the house for an interview with Sophia tagging along. After Sophia's comments about the house, Dorothy was sure she made a bad first impression but still got the room. The next day, a trip to the supermarket brings out their differences. They decide to do their own shopping from that point on. After an argument about where they should store the Raisin Bran, the girls begin to think that they weren't meant to live together. This leads to Rose telling one of her St. Olaf stories, which causes Blanche and Dorothy to laugh hysterically. Noticing Rose with a cheesecake, they soon realize perhaps they can get along. Back in the present day, after finishing most of a cheesecake, the girls decide to go back to bed when Sophia scares the girls with a knife mimicking Norman Bates.[1]

Tall Tales[]

Back in St. Olaf...[]

Rose tells the ladies the story of The Great Herring War, a conflict between the Lindstroms and the Johannsens in Norway.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest List[]

  • Shirley Prestia as Madame Zelda
  • Edan Gross as Little Boy
  • Dom Irrera as Produce Clerk

Notes[]

  • Rose's story about "The Great Herring War" went viral on Twitter following the death of Betty White in 2021. A rumor emerged that White was improvising the story, hence Dorothy and Blanche's hysterical reactions. This was disproved when the shooting script for the episode was shared online, showing that the scene was scripted, and a script supervisor on the show later explained that there was rarely any improvisation on The Golden Girls.[2] Whether Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan were actually breaking character, however, is unclear.
  • Blanche and Dorothy compare Rose to television or film characters twice in this episode. Dorothy calls her Mrs. Rogers, referring to the show Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood and Rose's preschool tv show level of happy and friendly personality. Blanche later calls Rose Mary Poppins.

Production[]

  • Rue McClanahan was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance in this episode.

Goofs[]

  • When Rose is first seen holding the cat, her left hand is under his head. In the next shot and all subsequent ones, her left hand is on top of the cat's neck.
  • The kitchen island counter is the same in both the current scene and the flashbacks. However, the counter was different in the pilot.

Site Navigation[]

V - E - H
List of The Golden Girls episodes

Season 1 The Engagement • Guess Who's Coming to the Wedding • Rose the Prude • Transplant • The Triangle • On Golden Girls • The Competition • Break-In • Blanche and the Younger Man • The Heart Attack • The Return of Dorothy's Ex • The Custody Battle • A Little Romance • That Was No Lady • In a Bed of Rose's • The Truth Will Out • Nice and Easy • The Operation • Second Motherhood • Adult Education • The Flu • Job Hunting • Blind Ambitions • Big Daddy • The Way We Met
Season 2 End of the Curse • Ladies of the Evening • Take Him, He's Mine • It's a Miserable Life • Isn't It Romantic • Big Daddy's Little Lady • Family Affair • Vacation • Joust Between Friends • Love, Rose • 'Twas The Nightmare Before Christmas • The Sisters • The Stan Who Came to Dinner • The Actor • Before and After • And Then There Was One • Bedtime Story • Forgive Me, Father • Long Day's Journey into Marinara • Whose Face is This, Anyway? • Dorothy's Prized Pupil • Diamond in the Rough • Son-in-Law Dearest • To Catch a Neighbor • A Piece of Cake • Empty Nests
Season 3 Old Friends • One for the Money • Bringing Up Baby • The Housekeeper • Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself • Letter to Gorbachev • Strange Bedfellows • Brotherly Love • A Visit from Little Sven • The Audit • Three on a Couch • Charlie's Buddy • The Artist • Blanche's Little Girl • Dorothy's New Friend • Grab That Dough • My Brother, My Father • Golden Moments, Part 1 • Golden Moments, Part 2 • And Ma Makes Three • Larceny and Old Lace • Rose's Big Adventure • Mixed Blessings • Mister Terrific • Mother's Day
Season 4 Yes, We Have No Havanas • The Days and Nights of Sophia Petrillo • The One That Got Away • Yokel Hero • Bang the Drum, Stanley • Sophia's Wedding, Part 1 • Sophia's Wedding, Part 2 • Brother, Can You Spare That Jacket • Scared Straight • Stan Takes a Wife • The Auction • Blind Date • The Impotence of Being Ernest • Love Me Tender • Valentine's Day • Two Rode Together • You Gotta Have Hope • Fiddler On the Ropes • Till Death Do We Volley • High Anxiety • Little Sister • Sophia's Choice • Rites of Spring • Foreign Exchange • We're Outta Here, Part 1 • We're Outta Here, Part 2
Season 5 Sick and Tired, Part 1 • Sick and Tired, Part 2 • The Accurate Conception • Rose Fights Back • Love Under the Big Top • Dancing in the Dark • Not Another Monday • That Old Feeling • Comedy of Errors • All That Jazz • Ebb Tide • Have Yourself a Very Little Christmas • Mary Has a Little Lamb • Triple Play • Clinton Avenue Memoirs • Like the Beep Beep Beep of the Tom-Tom • An Illegitimate Concern • 72 Hours • Twice In a Lifetime • Sisters and Other Strangers • Cheaters • The Mangiacavallo Curse Makes a Lousy Wedding Present • All Bets Are Off • The President's Coming! The President's Coming!, Part 1 • The President's Coming! The President's Coming!, Part 2
Season 6 Blanche Delivers • Once, In St. Olaf • If At Last You Do Succeed • Snap Out Of It • Wham, Bam, Thank You Mammy • Feelings • Zborn Again • How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sophia? • Mrs. George Devereaux • Girls Just Wanna Have Fun... Before They Die • Stand By Your Man • Ebbtide's Revenge • The Bloom Is Off the Rose • Sisters of the Bride • Miles to Go • There Goes the Bride, Part 1 •There Goes the Bride, Part 2 • Older and Wiser • Melodrama • Even Grandmas Get the Blues • Witness • What a Difference a Date Makes • Love for Sale • Never Yell Fire in a Crowded Retirement Home, Part 1 • Never Yell Fire in a Crowded Retirement Home, Part 2 • Henny Penny — Straight, No Chaser
Season 7 Hey, Look Me Over • The Case of the Libertine Belle • Beauty and the Beast • That's For Me to Know • Where's Charlie? • Mother Load • Dateline: Miami • The Monkey Show, Part 1 • The Monkey Show, Part 2 • Ro$e Love$ Mile$ • Room Seven • From Here to the Pharmacy • The Pope's Ring • Old Boyfriends • Goodbye, Mr. Gordon • The Commitments • Questions and Answers • Ebbtide VI: The Wrath of Stan • Journey to the Center of Attention • A Midwinter Night's Dream, Part 1 • A Midwinter Night's Dream, Part 2 • Rose: Portrait of a Woman • Home Again, Rose, Part 1 • Home Again, Rose, Part 2 • One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest, Part 1 •One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest, Part 2

References[]

  1. ↑ The Golden Girls, Season 1, Episode 25, "The Way We Met". Speer, Kathy and Grossman, Terry (writers) & Hughes, Terry (director) (May 10th, 1986)
  2. ↑ Showbiz Cheatsheet, ‘The Golden Girls’: Did Betty White Really Improvise the ‘Great Herring War’ Scene?" https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-golden-girls-did-betty-white-really-improvise-the-great-herring-war-scene.html/
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.