What is the single greatest continuity error on The Golden Girls?

Oh look, another Golden Girls thread! 🥳

Better that than another Dump thread.

Why is that the greatest continuity error, OP?

I think Dorothy’s multiple back stories and children’s ages were pretty tangled.

Because it was so layered, r3. Why would someone in the Witness Protection Program be given a job as a college professor? What happened to his daughter? Why was he placed in an Amish community? Why did he keep his fake identity after the Cheeseman had been caught? Etc.

I think it was even worse on Golden Palace, where he again appeared, but I can't remember the details.

On Golden Palace it was revealed that Miles had been cheating on Rose for years with a woman named Fern played by Nanette Fabray. And to add insult to injury, Fern and Miles wind up getting married at the hotel. It was an awful storyline.

Even worse was Stan faking his own death so he wouldn't go to prison for tax evasion and he could flee the country. But only Sophia knows the truth. There's a brutal final scene with Sophia bursting into tears as she admits she loves Stan.

That's it, r6. Thanks.

And I'd forgotten about Stan's Golden Palace storyline.

Changing Blanche’s middle name. And the two Rebeccas, two Dorothy’s sister, and two Dorothy’s daughter.

How many kids did Blanche have?

The greatest continuity error is the finale. It went against the entire premise of the show, that they'd all be together no matter what. Dorothy meets a man in one episode, and dumps everyone so she can get some Freddie Peterson.

I remember watching it with friends, and one had to leave the room at the wedding scene because he was so overcome with emotion and another one screamed at the television that she was breaking up the family.

What's even worse is that Sophia winds up back at Shady Pines after Golden Palace wraps and spends her days at the Westons on Empty Nest. No mention is made of Rose or Blanche on Empty Nest, which gives you the impression that the hotel is sold and both just left her to rot away.

Tragic on so many levels.

Rose, the high school valedictorian who never graduated.

[quote]I remember watching it with friends, and one had to leave the room at the wedding scene because he was so overcome with emotion and another one screamed at the television that she was breaking up the family.

MARY!!!

I agree it has to be Miles being in The Witless Protection Programme. Not a typo. His snotty daughter came along for the ride?

This could have been explained by saying he was estranged from his daughter during his former life and asked to be relocated to Florida in the hopes of reconnecting with her. He already held a degree in literature but became an accountant to make more money for his family, before his wife up and left with their daughter

R10 are you one of the guys from the Diana Dead scream video?!

For me it’s always been how Rose refers to her parents as the Nylunds instead of the Lindstroms. That’s the error I can’t believe no one caught — not even the actors.

R10 You’re one of the queens from the Diana death scream video, aren’t you?

R14 I love you.

R17 feeling the same about you!

Stan and Dorothy bought some Florida land on their honeymoon, not as broke teenagers, but much later when they could actually afford a honeymoon and had some spare cash

That Rose's children weren't traumatised by their parent's non-stop fucking

As mentioned above, Dorothy’s 38-year marriage to Stan due to being knocked up when both of her kids are obviously in their 20s.

Oh, and her lesbian college roommate Jean. What young mother and wife lives in the dorms?

It’s like they weren’t even trying to pay attention to the backstories.

For goodness sake R21 it's quite obvious their first baby died. Stan went off to Korea while Dorothy went to college and doomed with Jean. They later had the hottie son and boring daughter.

“ Dorothy …. doomed with Jean”

Yes. And they both died of AIDS.

That none of them had Alzheimer's.

r14 and r16 thank you for mentioning that video, I was unaware of it until now.

2:44 "UUUHHH-AHH-UUHHH!" LOL

R25 I don’t want to be presumptuous and speak for R14 but I will say it’s our pleasure. That video never gets old.

All the backstories of the girls and the children they had or were supposed to have.

Is Tosh 2.0 still on TV? He needs to revisit the Diana scream video and interview the surviving participants.

Back to the original thread topic. One great example of the lack of continuity was the absence of any mention of Michael and Lorraine’s baby when the former shows up after being thrown out by the latter. Michael needs to borrow forty dollars from his mother in order to “treat” his father to a night out. Why wouldn’t Dorothy have berated Michael for being a dead-beat dad?

The continuity with the actors playing family members was terrible except with Michael and Sheree North as Virginia though she was so underutilized in her second appearance.

[quote] I remember watching it with friends, and one had to leave the room at the wedding scene because he was so overcome with emotion and another one screamed at the television that she was breaking up the family.

This must have been that same group of men in Iowa where the one shrieked when he heard "Princess Diana... dead."

R15 I was surprised they had actually mentioned she had been adopted several seasons before that (godawful) story about Don Ameche being her monk dad. Surprisingly they respected that

Oh speaking of Michael, they had him marry the older black lady and made a huge deal 9f it, then 3a couple of seasons later he shows up, deadbeat as always but they only mention a divorce in a throwaway line and don't mention the kid at all.

[quote]Changing Blanche’s middle name.

It happens.

No, Ether Mertz is MY drag name!

The radio silence re the reason for Coco's abrupt exit after Episode 1. Sophia would never have shut up about it.

Apparently, many posters don’t actually read the thread before posting. Seems like some kind of representation of today’s America, actually. Make of that what you will.

Sophia's mother. She was dying back in the old country, yet in another episode it's mentioned she and her mother made the boat trip to America. Her mother also popped up in a 50s flashback in Brooklyn.

Sophia's sister Angela was the last of Sophia's nuclear family until she disappeared, and Angelo showed up.

Sophia's love life. So many variations on how she and Sal met. Arranged marriage depending on the episode. Sophia's many boyfriends before Sal which makes no sense since she would have been promised to Sal quite young, and the timeline just doesn't work.

How Dorothy came about. One episode has Sophia tell the story how she and Sal had a fight then they made up and little Dorothy came along nine months later. Another time she tells Dorothy she and Sal got frisky behind the garbage cans at a San Gennaro Festival and that was how she came about.

r28 and r30, all the now eldergays in that video are still alive. Alan the camcorder-man verified it in the comments just last December! 😀🤸

The best thing about the scream -- which you can see in the reflection behind them -- is that not only does he scream, but he physically jumps up out of the chair.

I assume that Dorothy informed or reminded doctors (and of course, Nurse DeFarge) of Sophia's stroke when she was hospitalized or otherwise tended to (getting hit by that baseball, the hernia operation -- "Please, it's wicker.", etc.). I'll even give her a pass with Elliott because she was thirsty. But why was the stroke not mentioned when they all feared Sophia was having a heart attack after that one dinner party (and it turned out she just eats like a pig)? It ticks me off because Susan Harris wrote both the pilot and that episode.

They totally dropped the Sophia had a stroke deal after the first two seasons. She acted more demented early on. Then she simply a wise-cracking old lady.

Remember when Rose was addicted to pills and recovered after one episode? The writers stole that from the Mary Tyler Moore show and later made fun of it. Rose was a drug addict for a half hour. lol

Are we forgetting about Empty Nest? The neighbors? They were a totally different family. Then there was that episode with the pregnant girl they helped that was never spoken about again.

The 80s never foresaw people having streaming and VHS and DVDs and Blu-rays.

And nothing better to do.

[quote]there was that episode with the pregnant girl they helped that was never spoken about again.

That was another backdoor pilot.

R42, she went off to rehab then returned by the end of the episode. The last scene of the ep made the rounds when Betty White (passed away, died, went to Jesus, croaked and whatever other acceptable/non-acceptable term DL allows.)

R46 if she had used the backdoor she would have never gotten pregnant.

R48=Blanche Devereux

[quote]Her mother also popped up in a 50s flashback in Brooklyn.

And spoke perfect unaccented English.

r44 VCRs were very common in the 1980s.

How did Kirsten go from being an elegent sophisticated, Deirdre Hall knock-off with an adorable daughter living in Minnesota to a white-trash hick with a mullett living in central Florida? The only explanation is a meth habit...

How could these continuity errors escape the writers and producers?

R48 comment if the week!

*of

Phil and his family. They wrote them as literal trailer park residents. They also said his wife worked some blue-collar manual labor type of job. Yet when Phil passed away, Brenda Vacarro showed up as his widow - a makeup artist who didn't come across as someone who lived in a trailer park.

I’ve heard most long running sitcoms have a show bible that new writers have to study because of the continuity errors like on GG.

For me it was Rose being from St. Olaf, the land of idiots, but everyone in her family that visited were intelligent and well spoken. Her mom, daughters, sisters and granddaughter. One of her daughters was a Rhodes Scholar.

GG was an old school sitcom. Whatever worked for that week's episode or for the sake of a joke, was used even if it contradicted some fact already established about the characters and their past history.

GG really was a joke centric show...it's not really noted for brilliantly plotted scripts. They had a few here and there (the Dr. Jonathan Newman episode; the lesbian friend episode, etc) We really mostly remember and revere the classic one liners.

r58 I think my favorite episode is Triple Play, where Blanche rents a Mercedes to lure potential dates. It juggles three concurrent plots quite well.

And the punchline is also a favorite: "I'd like to report a stolen Mercedes ..."

Rose meetibg Charly. In one episode it was at a USO dance (or something similar) and on another they were childhood and highschool sweethearts, and yet in another she had a million boyfriends all through high school abñnd never mentioned Charly.

R58 = Linda Bloodsworth-Thomason

R44 People very much had VHS in the 80s. Betamax too!

In what Blanche? Dog years?

Dr. Jonathan Newman, obvious cookie sniffer.

The episode where past, it explored a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged and they did!

Dorothy getting knocked up by Stan in high school....but also having a college roommate. Did she abandon her young family to become a carefree co-ed?

Michael being Dorothy and Stan's eldest child works if it was Dorothy's senior year of COLLEGE when she got knocked up. Though, then the math for "we were married for 38 years!" doesn't math out right.

Michael wasn't the oldest child, he was in his 20 during his first appearance. I choose to believe that Dorothy and Stan's first child died of SIDS.

R68 A bit of a downer for a sitcom but then it kinda makes sense. Dorothy gets knocked and she marries Stan. She either loses the baby or it dies not long after birth. Dorothy then goes to college. Stan gets drafted and goes to Korea. He comes home and Dorothy graduates and then they have Michael.

When Michael married Lorraine he was only twenty-three. When he was caught two years earlier schtuping Rose’s poor, stupid, flat-chested daughter he was somehow twenty-nine.

Maybe the Michael episodes were intended to be extended dream sequences, like when George Devereaux returned from the dead. Perhaps the Michael character(s) was just an avatar for Dorothy’s dreams for the infant son she’d lost 38 years ago? Or maybe he never existed at all like and the whole 38 year marriage was a Come Back Little Sheba deal.

r70 I think you're providing us with an alternative "If David Lynch had directed The Golden Girls" scenario.

R69 but didn't Dorothy say her 1st time with Stan (when she got knocked up) it was right before Stan left for Korea ("it was my part of the war effort")??

The house layout.

The hallway doors on the left side would have opened into the sideyard.

The side yard, which was the lanai in the pilot.

The back door of the kitchen would have opened into the hallway yet somehow led to the garage which was on the other side of the kitchen.

The interior of the house makes sense if the hallway is long enough. The outside doesn't match the inside though.

I always thought Kate was supposed to be older than Michael. The first Kate of episode 2 first season definitely looked to be in her 30s, but she also gave major Brenda Vaccarro vibes, so who knows. The second Kate, aka off-brand Didi Conn, Deena Freeman also looked older than Michael, though more like mid-to-late 20s.

In my mind, Dorothy and Stan's oldest, "Sally Zbornak," is played by Jennifer Salt.

[quote]aka off-brand Didi Conn

😂

[quote[Dr. Jonathan Newman, obvious cookie sniffer.

His favorite was SHORTbread.

The only time I’ve ever heard of the term lanai is in this show. Do any of you guys have a lanai?

Yes, it's where I wear my earrings and caftan, r79!

The Lanai is my Golden Girls-themed bar. I think we had a thread on it once.

r79

it is definitely a Florida thing

I looked up “lanai” once and traditionally they are screened in. That was more like a patio.

We used it on Dynasty

K-R-Y-S-T-L-E

In the flashback episode “How We Met” Dorothy and Rose were both moving in and Dorothy says to Rose “You must be Mrs. Rogers”. Rose says no, but there’s a Mrs Rogers across the street. How the fuck would Rose know that on her first day of moving in? Sloppy writing.

R86 maybe researched the neighborhood? Or went to the wrong house first of all? Or said hi when she was walking around? Or was yanking Dorothy's chain as she was in on the joke? Or Blanche mentioned Mrs Rogers as someone to be wary of? Or "Rogers" was on their mailbox?