![]() After she arrives from Shady Pines, Blanche makes sure to remind Rose (and alert the audience) that Sophia survived a stroke that disabled the part of her brain that self-censors, which is why she's always popping off insults. The most noticeable rough edges are on Sophia, though. And while Dorothy's short fuse at Rose's meandering thought process is present, Arthur hadn't quite yet perfected the snap of Dorothy's comebacks. ![]() Blanche's southern accent isn't as pronounced as it will later become, for one thing. But their characters aren't quite refined yet. The four main characters are all essentially who they are: dim-but-sweet Rose, wise-but-caustic Dorothy, hot-to-trot Blanche. And there are too many years left, and I don't know what to do." Sure, Sophia cuts into the sentiment by snapping "Get a poodle," but it's still the essence of The Golden Girls right there: these women whose life circumstances left them alone, banding together to help each other make the most of all those years they have left. Is that some kind of a test? You don't work that hard, you don't go through everything you go through to be left alone. We get married, we have kids, the kids leave, and our husbands die. Rose gets a monologue that pretty much lays out the show's theme as plainly as you could want: "It's not fair. Dorothy talks about trying to relate to her twentysomething co-workers only to be shocked by the old-lady reflection in her mirror (this leads to the episode's biggest laugh with the classic Rose line, "Who was it?"). ![]() As a result, this episode focuses more heavily and explicitly on their feelings about aging than the show would moving forward. Show Thesis on DisplayĪs is the case with many TV pilots, The Golden Girls' pilot is thick with explicit nods to the show's theme of older women pressing on with their lives and seeking second chances at love, finding fulfillment in their jobs, and taking comfort in their friendships. ![]() In the end, Harry is revealed to be a bigamist (by guest star Meschach Taylor as the cop, a year before the premiere of Designing Women), and Blanche takes comfort in the friendship of her roommates. It's not exactly the most suspenseful situation - the writers obviously aren't going to blow up the central premise in the very first episode - but it lets the show depict just how much this living arrangement means to its central characters, and it gives Dorothy plenty of frustrated moments with Rose as she tries to keep her from telling Blanche not to marry Harry. Dorothy and especially Rose begin to worry what will happen to their living situation if Blanche gets hitched. The development that really threatens to upset the applecart is when Blanche tells the girls that the man she's seeing (isn't she always) has proposed to her, and she's considering saying yes. First is that Dorothy's mother, Sophia (Estelle Getty) shows up, her retirement home (RIP, Shady Pines) having burned down. Rather than tell the origin story of how Blanche (Rue McClanahan), Rose (Betty White), and Dorothy (Bea Arthur) became roommates (that would be handled in the Season 1 finale/faux clip show "The Way We Met"), the Golden Girls pilot begins as the girls have already been living together, though two rather momentous events occur that threaten to shake up that arrangement, in good and less-good ways. In this new Primetimer feature, we'll look back at pilot episodes of some of the most culturally sticky TV shows in recent memory and see how their initial offerings hold up. The fun thing about revisiting the pilots of long-running shows is in seeing which elements changed and evolved from the original concept, and which were present from the jump. Even more so when the show goes on to be a huge hit and continues for years, embedding itself in the cultural consciousness. Often written and filmed long before the rest of the series, and subject to tinkering by networks and creators before the show can continue, the TV pilot is a fascinating creature. Everything good has to start somewhere, and for beloved TV shows, that usually means the pilot episode. ![]()
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