The Competition (Season 1, Episode 7)
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Knowing how to speak and understand a new language can be an invaluable tool when traveling, meeting new friends, or just even to master a new skill. But it's not always simple when you're bogged down by textbooks and structure classes. That's why so many people trust Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app.

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Hi, Jenny. Jenny from the block. Smart. Hi. Hi.

I feel like I could really lean into one of those old craggly leprechauns. Yeah, and you've actually got that quint beard from Jaws helping you out, you know? And I'm looking at myself. Sorry, I know we don't usually do that, but I just caught a gander of myself in our little video. Looking gorgeous. Well, yes, but I also applied my blush in the dark. So, wow. It's definitely Blanche's 75 brushstrokes tonight.

I've recently started wearing that male makeup. Oh. Not much of it. I know the surprised look on your face. No, I just can't see it. It's like a nude hose. It's like a...

Yes, it's mostly... In fact, are you wearing a stocking? I'm wearing a stocking. I'm going to rob a bank after this. It's mostly tinted moisturizers kind of where I'm starting. A little concealer. She's not as young as she used to be. You know what I mean? The old moneymaker. I've actually started buying this great foundation called Ilia. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. I-L-I-A. You can get it at Sephora. But it's really good for you large-pored gals.

You just can't see it. It's lovely. You know, I was thinking, we should tell the people what we do here. Welcome to the Golden Girls Deep Dive podcast. Yeah, lay it on us. So on this podcast, Jennifer Simard and I, two-time Tony Award nominee Jennifer Simard and me, we recap episodes.

episodes with the Golden Girls. And then at the end, we do like a deep dive into something from the Golden Girls universe, but also sprinkled throughout the recap. We're doing like mini deep dives here and there. The idea is we just want to give you as much information as possible. Yeah. Coming from these episodes. If you're as obsessed as we are about this fabulous show, you think you

Think you'll like it. Cheesecakes, before we go one step further, I'm halting us in our tracks. Oh. I got to tell you, please join the Facebook group. It's the Golden Girls Deep Dive Podcast Discussion Group. We're in there all the time. We're up to almost 1,500 members, girl. It's so fun. I look forward to it every day. Me too. You get tagged and stuff. We talk about the episodes. Stan was prominently featured in a recent episode. I'm like, give us all your favorite Stan moments. Exactly, exactly. Or what your last meal is. Remember we did that?

If you're going to go to the electric chair, what would you choose? Chicken nuggets with hot mustard. I'm sticking by it, girl. I'm sticking by it. And listen, Cheesecakes, if you don't know what our show is about, let me just tell you a little bit about it. So each week we do a recap. We're going in order from, you know, season one and going fast.

already. I can't believe it. And we do little, I know, and we do little research deep dives throughout the episode, sprinkle throughout. But then at the end, one of us does a more extensive deep dive on something from the Golden Girls universe. In fact, Patrick, you're up to bat today. What are you doing? So today I'm doing the deep dive on Susan Harris, our goddess and creator. Oh my gosh. And she's got such an interesting life story, but she was like a

single mom. And like, basically, she had to beat success off with a baseball bat. She just kept having to turn down jobs because she was so good and talented. And it was a really amazing story about how she went from where she started to the Golden Girls and which is like the crown jewel of her career. So that's at the end of the episode. Stick around for that at the very end. Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't be here without her. Exactly. So wait, girl, you wanted to set the record.

could straight out something from last week. Oh, yeah. So you asked me towards the end of the episode, specifically a minute 40 in. Oh, my goodness. Wow. You asked me like, what is a typical like filming day like? And it was when I was talking about the continuity and how there was a mistake on the table with the food. Yeah, like on a sitcom. Right. And so I answered it with my modern brain, which is like when I did Girls 5 Eva, for example, it took like five days to film the 30 minute show. But

back then, it would have just all been on a Friday night. Oh, right. Yeah, like, you know, like, and that's what Stan was telling us, Stan Zimmerman, folks, he wrote for season one. And yeah, and when I did King of Queens, that's what it was like. So it was just probably between takes, the food was moved, you know, but I just wanted to correct that because my modern brain took over. I love you so much. You know, you don't have to be the authority. I just love that you have this vast knowledge. You know that when you catch a mistake,

mistake, you want to correct it. Yeah. Right. All right. All right. Well done. Thanks. Set us up. Which one are we covering today, girl? All right. This is The Competition, episode seven, written by Barry Fennaro and Mort Nathan, directed by an old favorite, Jim Drake. Yes, it aired November 2nd, 1985. I've got a little bit of stuff going on in the world at the time. Lay it on me. A week from the airing of this episode, the musical The News closes after only four performances at the Helen Hayes Theater on October 9th, 1985.

So normally, it's like, who cares? It's like a little blip in the universe, but we are theater people. It also is relevant because if you heard me say it, it closed at the Helen Hayes Theater, which is where Estelle Getty made her Broadway debut in Torchton Trilogy, which is where I made my Broadway debut when we did True Crime and Cust on Broadway. But I'm also fascinated

fascinated by these shows that only run for like a handful of performances. So I did a little bit of research. Can I give you some information? What if I said no? You know what? You know what? I'd really like to get into the bowling episode. Okay, let's go. I'm not ready for this. No, do it. So the musical The News is a musical about a tabloid newspaper covering a story of a serial killer and the serial killer's connection with this 15-year-old girl who's the daughter of the tabloid newspaper's

executive editor. The stars of the show were Jeff Conway. Do you know who that is? Yeah. Kenickie from the Grease movie. Yes. And Anthony Cravello. Yes. Who won the Tony Award for Kiss of the Spider Woman. Do you know him? You're Broadway. Well, I know of him. I saw him. Okay. Yeah. All right. I assume you're friends with everybody who's ever been on Broadway. Well, Patrick, even though I'm the mayoress of Broadway, I like it when they come to me. What the hell?

You know what? Yeah. Good call. I like that too. You know where I am. But none of the characters in the show have names, right? So it's a very Merrily We Roll Along situation. So like the killer is called killer. The girl is called girl. The executive editor is called executive editor, which could have been interesting, but was like way too high concept. And it was also a

Apparently, I was reading some articles about it. The whole thing was put on by people who had no experience with Broadway. So it was almost a million dollar budget. These people had no idea how to run or manage the money. And they even said in an interview that if it got a bad review, it was probably going to close the next day, which is exactly what happened. I'd be interested to read the script.

because true crime, as we know, has had, forgive me for the term, but a moment. You have to say that about the worst moment of someone's life. Totally. But it's a very popular genre to delve into. And I wonder if it's a good script, how it would play now. I think it isn't a good script. Also, it was on the West End a few years later, and it did a little bit better there. Can I read you the first paragraph of the review from the New York Times? Yeah. This was the review opening night, November 8th, 1985. So that is officially six days from when this episode aired.

Right. This episode happened on a Saturday. Six days later, the New York Times trashed this. Oh, dear. So it says when the house lights go down at the news, the new musical at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theater, an announcer informs us that the show will run 99 minutes with no intermission. As it's impossible to predict the running time of any live performance so precisely, there might be unexpected ovations. After all, we are immediately suspicious. And why are we being told the running time in any case?

Well, the answer arrives soon enough. Every minute of the news, as it happens, is agony. Ouch.

And even without ovations, there are more minutes than the number claimed. But by planting that two-digit figure of 99 in the audience's mind, the management clearly hopes to keep it patiently captive until the end, securing the knowledge that relief is the merest moments away. This is easily the cleverest stroke of the evening, and it worked at the critics' preview. Everyone stayed seated through the amplification system's final burp.

Though whether they were absorbed in the show or counting the seconds in 99 minutes, parentheses, 5,940, I couldn't say. Oh, my. A blistering review. What an indictment. And I keep thinking, how many people were in the audience thinking, 99 bottles of beer on the wall?

90 more minutes. And that, of course, reminds me of the episode with Rose. Drives you crazy, doesn't it, Dorothy? She finishes at two. Two bottles of beer on the wall, too. You take one down, pass it around. Good night, Dorothy. You're going to stop with two bottles of beer? I know. It just drives you crazy, doesn't it, Dorothy?

Well, we open. This is the first time we get no intro music. We just see an establishing shot of the house from the outside, and we hear Sophia singing and banging on a pot. La, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la, la.

La, la, la, la. La, la, la, la. Yeah. And, you know, our apron count is up to 10. I know. And this is a new one. Yes. A little pink number, I think. And it ties in the middle, not around the back. It's like a full smock almost. I mean, these ladies, they love their apes. I know.

Dorothy enters asking, Ma, Ma, it smells so great. And Patrick, I did take a screenshot for you. Yes. Because she looks like an assassin. She perfectly blends into the background. She's a perfect combination of the cabinets and the curtains. Yes. I said she is once again wearing that absolutely stunning combination of the colors diarrhea brown and mustard yellow. Yes. With little

And the thing is, the little orange circles in it, too, sort of resemble the copper bakeware that's up on the ceiling. Joan is earth tones for days. She looks horrendous. But she really does blend in. It's like that moment in Rambo where he, Rambo 2 or something like that. Rambo, right? Rose's favorite movie, if you remember from last week. Yeah, so in Rambo, there's a moment in Rambo where he blends into a mud wall. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't see him until he opens an eyeball. That's Dorothy in the kitchen right now. You know this?

thing that I will also say, they looked very inhabited. Like, she looks very comfortable. She looks like she feels good. She looks like she feels like she looks good. This is not an ugly outfit compared to other ones. Yeah, because Rose is about to walk in wearing the most stunning dress. Rose's dresses are amazing. They're always cinched at the waist. She looks like a million bucks. I told you, she looks like my grandmother. My grandmother used to make, she was a seamstress, she would make all her patterns after Rose's dresses. No way! Yeah, so every time I see Rose enter, I'm like, meh-meh? Meh-meh!

Are you alive, baby? Well, Sophia says it's just a little sauce she threw together. Dorothy says, no, this is your special 14-hour sauce. What's the occasion? Now, I am suspicious. Yeah. Because food is Sophia's love language. Yeah. But it's also her bribery language. Yeah. And it doesn't really come to that in this episode. But she always is cooking something. Her, like, pasta al forno or whatever. Whenever she wants Dorothy to pretend she's still married to Stan or whatever.

Yes, yes, yes. But it's, you know, I'm suspicious. And here's something that didn't make me suspicious, but made me laugh. Yeah. When she repeats herself that nothing's going on, Sophia says, I told you nothing. I told you nothing. And maybe for the first time, Patrick, we hear the slightest tinge. No.

of the fact that she actually is from Sicily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm trying to make her lack of any kind of accent make sense because like she was there until she was in her 20s. This is what I have here. It's like you'd think if she was there long enough to be engaged to our next guest, she might just have a sous-son, a sous-son of Italian. Well, I've decided that she has spent hours every day

every single day trying to lose the accent. I mean, it's... Spitting water at herself in the mirror, saying things like, what's wrong with you? Look, it could be Kay Alicetto moving to England. You know, she's... She's...

She's British, you know? I don't hear an American accent anymore. Cheesecakes. If you don't know who Keala Settle is, she was the bearded lady in The Greatest Showman. She's absolutely incredible. And she was like a friend of mine. And mine too. We traveled together. Yes. She had moved to England and now only speaks with a British accent. And like really a committed British accent. Now, I will say this. When you have a good ear and she has a great ear, she's a great singer.

I find that I tend to do that when I move to a new country, like when I vacation somewhere. Really? Like I'll start to talk a little bit with a French accent when I'm in Paris. Really? I don't mean to. You and I are going on a world tour so I can hear this. So I don't think it's an affectation, but it is hilarious. But you're like, but wait. But Keala, hang on a second. I have voicemails from you being like, girl, I'll be meeting at the bar later. Right. So it's Keala, Sophia, Petrillo, settle. Okay.

So Rose enters. She's wearing this absolutely stunning, colorful floral print dress. Her clothes look like they are made for her. Yeah. And she says the sauce smells wonderful. She asks if it's Chef Boyardee. And Sophia says, stick it in my heart, Rose, while holding a little paring knife. I know. You know. Sometimes...

I feel like Estelle Getty's community theater comes out. Because if you remember from the Estelle Getty deep dive, like her only career up until now was like community unpaid theater in Queens. That is true. Like that is what she did for acting for 30 years until she booked this gig. And sometimes you can hear the community theater the way a community theater actress might say it. You can take the girl out of the community theater, but you can't.

take the community theater out of the girl. So now Blanche walks in. I say Blanche enters face beaten for the gods. Oh, yeah. We're wearing that full purple eyeshadow that we love. She's full Tammy Faye Baker drag queen. You know what I mean? Yes, it's very good. And she's just going on about how extravagant she's been. She can't believe it. This item that she's about to show us costs too much money, but she just had to have it. And she says, look at this. What do you think about that? And she holds up a maroon bowling ball. And here is the

perfect dry delivery from Miss Beatrice Arthur. Look at this. What do you think about that? It's hard to tell, Blanche. We need to see both earrings on. LAUGHTER

My thing about this is just, hang on a second. Blanche is a bowler. You know what I mean? So much so that she would even know where to go to buy a bowl. Where would you, if you had to buy a bowling ball today, where would you go? Bowling alley. Like a sporting goods store or something? A sporting goods store. Yeah. But like Blanche loves bowling so much that she's invested in a ball. I will say this though. If you think about it, if they're making the joke about the accessory, meaning it's an earring, Blanche says over and over again, she just wanted to look cute in her bowling outfit. So this is

part of the accessorizing of the bowling outfit, right? So I kind of buy it. I do think that we should do an outing with the cheesecakes where we go bowling at Chelsea Piers or something. Wouldn't that be amazing? Oh, I'd love to bowl. Yeah, me too. Oh my God, I love that you love to bowl.

When Dorothy says we'd have to see both earrings on, I wrote, that's a solid joke, Dot. It is. It is a solid joke. There's a couple of solid jokes in this one. So Blanche goes on to tell the group that she bought the bowling ball to help she and Rose win the bowling tournament. And Dorothy questions whether or not they would have a shot at beating the unbeatable Nielsen twins, which, Cheesecakes, is a comment on the Nielsen ratings. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is like, why are you guys taking shots at the Nielsen ratings? You're doing great. Like at this point, Golden Girls is like the number one show on TV playing to 44 million viewers per week. It's interesting. You took it as a shot. I took it as a... As like an homage. As an homage. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Like the Nielsen, like Golden Girls, we are unbeatable. The Nielsen ratings are unbeatable. You know? I feel like that says something about how you and I see the world. Right?

Like, I'm Bugs Bunny and you're Wile E. Coyote Daffy Ducker over there. Sorry. The glass is half empty. Oh my God. Which is not you. You are not a glass half empty kind of person. No, I'm a half full of bourbon. But you know, Blanche is saying she doesn't care if they win or not. She just wants to have fun. She says, we had fun last year. Didn't we partner? Saying to Rose, because Rose was her partner,

This is where Rose has a very devious look on her face. Yeah. It was okay. It was okay. It was the first hint we get that there's something up. There's something up. I love it when we start to learn about the lady's dark sides. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? And thank God we make Rose layered. It would be so insipid if she didn't have something. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Yes.

Anyway, Dorothy gets the idea that maybe she should enter the tournament, that, you know, she's to be a pretty decent bowler. So I wrote, this makes a lot of sense to me. Can't you imagine like a 15-year-old Dorothy, like instead of going to the prom, going to the bowling alley? I did. And just bowling for just like string after string after string. Honestly, Patrick, I thought of the episode with Grab That Dough. I was like, well, of course she's a good bowler with those meat hooks. Yeah.

Sorry. Yes. No, it's absolutely true. Because the thing about bowling, is it a sport? Yeah. It's a sport because it's athletic-ish. It is. And we're from New England. I feel like bowling is big there. Oh, listen. I want to tell you, my dad was a championship bowler, but in New England, it was candle pin bowling. Yeah, my dad too. Okay. I don't know about championship, but he was real good. He was real good. With those little balls. With the small balls and then the pins, they were named candle pin because they looked like the shape of large candles. Yes. Basically, they were more straight. Yeah.

And yeah, he was really good at it. There was trophies everywhere in the house. For bowling? For bowling. Wow. Does he still bowl? No, in fact, he couldn't because he had to retire his championship nature because of bursitis in the hip. Bursitis, you say? Yeah, because of the motion of the bowling. Bowling was so big where I came from that it was an after-school activity that you could opt in. And I did. Yeah. And I did it three days a week. And in middle school, we did it in our socks. And one time I dropped one of the balls on Eric Bennett's foot. And I think it broke his foot.

I chose violence by accident. Oh, sorry, Eric. Sorry. Well, Ma chimes in. Sophia chimes in that she, you know, Dorothy, you're decent. You were excellent. You had an average of 180. And Rose is just shocked by that number. And Rose screams because it's elevating, really. Yeah, we're going to learn.

Right.

And then we pull out what looks like a Western Union telegram. Do we have those anymore? I don't know. I agree. Can I make one comment about something that happens here? So we're about to shift storylines here. Sophia's about to introduce a telegram explaining why she's busy this weekend. As she's walking away from the

pot to come over to the table, Blanche scooches in behind her. And when we see Blanche next, she's going to be holding a piece of bread that she's dipped in the sauce, but she never eats. She's off camera for a solid minute and she never eats the bread. You know why that is? Why? Because when you're filming the same scene over and over and over again, the amount of time it would take to re-dip

a fresh piece of bread in the sauce. It would be such a pain in the ass to actually, it's very easy to hold a piece of bread as if you're about to eat. Yeah. But chewing. And in the sauce, that's probably not real tomato sauce. It's probably food coloring and like. Yeah, but it's probably just a can of sauce, but you can't, you'd have to keep resetting for the shot. Right.

And poor Ruma Clarence eating a loaf of bread. Yeah. Most actors hate eating in scenes. Oh, really? Because the continuity is such a pain in the ASS. Yeah. That's French for ass. Thank you for... You're welcome. You really did start to sound a little French there. Just like you said. Well, just when I travel, you know. But how do they do it in theater? Like, if you have to eat a burger in a scene, like, is the burger fresh? It depends. Like, very times you'll have substitute food that's fresh.

that's supposed to look like the product. I just did Hello Dolly out of town. Yeah. And instead of turkey, we just used tortillas. Oh. Because they were like that ivory color like turkey. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? That kind of stuff. And you had to eat the tortilla? Yeah, with just a couple bites. Okay. You know. You'll do anything for your art. You know, for my comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyway, she pulls out a telegram. And Dorothy reads it. We'll be in Miami Thursday. Hope to see you. Respectfully yours, Augustine Bagatelli. She asks, who's that? And Sophia says. Nobody, just a boy I knew from my village in Sicily that I was engaged to once. What? Well, what do you know? Sophia has a path. That's right. But unlike yours, I didn't need penicillin to get through it. What?

Well, I love that Dorothy is 55 years old. And this is the part I love. I love like when you hear your parents talk or even just your siblings. I love when you love someone and you still find out something new about them that you never knew. There's something beautiful and romantic about that. Especially something that's like romantic and a little sexy. But also I have, but also an engagement question mark. I said, that's a big thing to not know about. All those. I know. Really? Okay. I never. All right.

I mean, I guess they didn't play enough card games because that's the only time they really talked. You're right. All these years later, it's been 85 years, never came up. Jesus. All right. So Blanche says, wow, look at that. Sophia has a past. And then Sophia turns around and is unnecessarily mean. Maybe Sophia is nervous to tell the story. I don't know what the motivation is behind why she says what she says to Blanche. But unlike yours, I didn't need penicillin to get through it.

Yeah, which is used to treat syphilis. Which, by the way, I better never get syphilis because I'm allergic to penicillin. Is that right? Any of the cilins. Amoxicillin. I won't die, but I get, like, hives. So you can't take, like, antibiotics of any kind? Oh, no, I can. You can't. But nothing of the cilin family. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. There's plenty of other things I can take. Well, thank God I need you, girl. We're only on episode seven. No, I know.

But, yeah, she starts to explain that, you know, Augustine went off to fight in a war and she never heard from him again until this day. So I have a little bit of a deep dive here because she says Augustine went off to fight in the war and then I never heard from him again. And I was saying, like, what war? So I'm

certainly no history scholar at all. I did a little boy math here, a little gay boy, not good in school math. I'm assuming it's World War I that he went off to fight in, right? So World War I began in 1914 and lasted four years. It couldn't have been World War II

because World War II started in 1939 and Dorothy was born in 1925. So Augustine didn't come after Dorothy was born. So it would have to have been World War I, right? Italy did fight in World War I. I was asking Steve to give me a quick dossier. I'm like, I know Germany was the bad guy in World War II. Who was the bad guy in World War I? He was like, Germany. I was like, okay.

okay, well, damn Germany, like keep your side of the street clean. But if Sophia is 80 in 1985, that means she was born in 1905, right? And remember, the war started in 1914. Assuming that Augustine is around Sophia's age now,

He would have been nine at the start of the war and 13 at the end of the war. And I wrote, either way, that's how old she was. So not sure it's appropriate that she had a boyfriend of any kind at that age. You know, though, they might have got, when we talk about her accent, she might have only been there till like she was 13 years old because they got married young, I think, right? That's what I'm saying. But he also would not have been old enough to fight in the war at 13. Well, maybe he was just delivering bayonets. He was there for the last week of the war. He was there for the fun. Totally.

Anyway, there's some fuzzy TV math going on here. You are a historian. You're a regular Michael Beschloss. Just a Doris Goodwin over here, ladies and gentlemen. Michael Beschloss. I only know this because I'm obsessed with Rachel Maddow. He's like the presidential historian for MSNBC. He is at Slash Patrick Hines. Yes, yes. He also has the best background. He has like that ladder that slides. Totally. Like one of those Henry Higgins, Professor Higgins ladders that slides over his bookshelf. Can we interview him for The Golden Girls? 100%. Do you think he watched it? Yes, absolutely.

Who didn't watch it? Who didn't watch it? My God. And I'm missing one of Doris's names. It's Doris. Doris Kearns Goodwin. Thank you. Oh, well, as a historian, you would know that. You know, when I see her at the historian cocktail events. Hello, Kearns. Hey, Kay. Hey, Kay. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home. Yes, cool. Or attending one live. Oh.

So I sit here, it's Augustine Day, otherwise known as Thursday.

And Sophia trots into the living room wearing head-to-toe black. And Dorothy is sitting on the couch reading what looks to be like a fun encyclopedia or dictionary. Do you think she's got like Britannica for like every volume she reads from cover to cover? She's like, you know what? I want to know more about spores, moles.

What are they? You know what's so funny? My husband is such a hot nerd and he's the kind of kid that would have read the encyclopedia. He would read the encyclopedia just like for funsies. Well, it's like Ursula Andress in Dr. No. She played, what's her name? Honey. She was like, you know, I have the dictionary. I've started at A and now I'm all the way to T. Like a word a day or something like that.

We are going to learn. Dorothy doesn't get out much. I mean, she just studies for French finals. I know. Hot girl. We learn later in this episode, she's repotting all the plants. I know. She's always working. There's chores in Brooklyn. They're coming back. Exactly. When you see a book with that foiled edge, you know it's not a light read. No.

Anyway, Rose enters wearing a primary colored bowling shirt with her name on it. Okay, so here's the deal. Sophia's dressed like head to toe in black like she's going to a funeral. Rose enters wearing a bowling shirt, which it was only on my second viewing right before you got to the studio that I was like, let me

do a little mini deep dive on the bowling shirt because I just googled the bowling shirt and it has its own Wikipedia page do it so it's enough of a thing that people are interested enough and even if you don't really know what it is like a cheesecake you're imagining one right now right so the bowling shirt is actually a thing the bowling shirt or bowler as it's often called is a distinctive and iconic piece of clothing closely associated with the sport of bowling

The fabric, color, and design vary greatly but frequently incorporate contrasting earth tones and simple geometric designs, with more expensive ones being made of silk. Bowling shirts have their roots in the 1950s when bowling became a popular recreational activity in the United States. During this time, bowling alleys were not just places for competition but also social gatherings.

So to match the leisurely atmosphere of bowling, bowlers began wearing shirts designed explicitly for the sport. These shirts were a departure from traditional attire and quickly gained popularity for their comfort and style. And they are cool looking. They are. The Wikipedia page points out that Charlie, the character from Two and a Half Men, is always wearing the Charlie Sheen character, always wears bowling shirts. They're cool. They are cool. And it does immediately think, you know, fountain sodas and shakes and sock hops.

Right, exactly. And you see like when you see Rose because it's like blue and yellow, you know right away and it has her name on the pocket, which is another feature of the bowling shirt. Yeah. You know right away it's a bowling shirt. So Rose comes in and she's so high and she sees Sophia in her black dress and she says, oh, Sophia, did your friend die? And, you know, Dorothy says, Rose, he hasn't come here yet. And then Rose makes a racist joke, which we don't have to say. I can't.

Believe it. With wild abandon, these people. I know. But anyway, Dorothy asked Rose if she got her a partner for the bowling tournament. And very casually, Rose says, sure did. You're all signed up and exits to the kitchen and saved by the doorbell. Yeah. I just want to say, if you were tasked to only watch Rose in this episode, her motivations are crystal clear. Crystal clear. Because like, yes, she has signed Dorothy up. We're going to find out who she signed her up to be her partner with later. But right now she's avoiding that confrontation.

It's so sociopathic, though. I love it. There's no commenting on it. She's like, yep, sure did. You're all signed up. And walked right in. Before Dorothy could even say who, because wouldn't that be like the obvious next question? Sure. She's like, yeah, no issues here. No issue here whatsoever. I don't know what you're talking about. She's just about to gaslight her, right? It was always going to be this way. What are you talking about? You've been saying it for weeks. I don't even know why we're even having this conversation. Why are you asking me? We've been over this. Do you like my bowling shirt? Yeah.

So the doorbell rings. Sophia says it's him. And Dorothy's like, do you want me to get it? And Sophia, it's so cute. It's like new relationship energy. She's like, no, if he sees me sitting, he'll think I have arthritis, which I guess is a thing we're going to all have to start thinking about as we age. Right now, sitting here. I know. Everything hurts. You just came from like a 29-hour rehearsal for your brand new Broadway show in which you are starring. Thank you very much. You're allowed to be achy. I'm allowed to have a little owie owie. Okay. Totally.

So, Sofia does go to the door and Augustine is there and he says with a full Italian accent. Yes. Sofia? Augustine? You shrunk.

You shrunk. Oh, how cute. Now, I gotta say, without being creepy about it, so this is an actor. His name is Ralph Manza. He is 80. If he's a day, he is still fine. Yeah, he's real cute. He's really cute. He's like dressed. He's got like a bow tie. Great bone structure. Yeah, I looked at pictures of him when he was younger. Like, oh my God. Yeah, yeah. I got a little deep dive on him. He's like,

got a really interesting little tidbit. Yeah. So he's an American character actor who made over 160 appearances in American film and TV shows. He was a pre-med student at UC Berkeley when he was drafted during World War II. And thanks to this, he discovered his real passion because in the army, serving as a medic, he was assigned to an act

Yeah. Yeah.

Our researcher, Jess, is amazing. And this was all he was able to find on this. I'm searching like World War II acting troops, Iceland, looking for any more information about what that experience would have been. But I found nothing. You know what? Could we assign the cheesecake? Someone can find this out. Cheesecake. Let us know. My sister was in the military for 19 years. This is not still a thing. They're not still assigning you. Can you imagine you go through basic training and now they're like, and you're going to go do newsies.

Well, can you imagine how many out-of-work actors would just sign right up? Listen, I'll join the army as long as I can play the lead in Pippin. In Iceland. In Iceland. That's hilarious. He did 160 appearances in TV and film, and then he died of a heart attack in 2000. Poor guy. That's what I was thinking. You just inspired me. And of course this makes sense, but

when we've done deep dives on all of the people in our show, and now they're of an age where World War II was as formative to them as 9-11 and the pandemic is for this generation. I mean, you know, like it's just, it was just there. So it doesn't surprise me that all of these people have an association with either being in the army or the military or volunteering. Totally. Like Bea Arthur driving a truck. All three of them. Right? And remember, Rue McClanahan got drafted by accident. Betty Rue. Betty Rue.

Eddie Rue McClanahan got drafted by accident. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. And then I have to say congrats to the writers, but Dorothy Spornack, Bea Arthur is so funny here, right? I know. Well, I'm sure you two have a great deal to catch up on. Nice to have met you. Oh, Ma, I'll be right here in the kitchen in case he gets fresh. Sorry.

It's the ha-ha-ha, sorry. And it cuts to them. It cuts to Augustine and Sophia deadpan. Like, they don't even understand the joke, which is great. And then it cuts back to, I'm sorry. It's the first.

perfectly delivered. I couldn't even, I mean, it's really good. I know. So our two lovebirds, they catch up on the couch, right? Very awkward conversation. Very awkwardly. They're just, what's new? What's new? Nothing. He's apologizing for the death of her husband, which was 20 years ago. 22 years ago. And his wife has been dead for 31 years. Philomena Del Nero, she, we learned, is the lady in the village who had the crazy dad who drank Chianti all day and like spun tops outside of town. I don't even know what that means. He spun a top.

It's just like one of those, like, one of those little, like, like almost like a dreidel. And then like he lived with Augustine and Philomena for two years after they got married, but then thank the Lord died of alcoholism. He said, thank God he drank himself to death, Augustine says. And I noticed here that Sophia checks her watch. Oh yeah. Before she asks, you feel like going for a walk? But she just gives her watch a little check. Yeah. And it made me think, and it wasn't quite like, what am I going to do with him? But it sort of looked like,

Because there's a seagull convention at four. If we just go now. I mean, I was just like, why are we checking the watch? Well, what's funny, too, is like they get up and they do that thing where they pretend like it's hard to get up or whatever. But like she's only in her 60s and he probably is in his like the age the character is supposed to be. Right. You know what I mean? And she helps him up. She's definitely like the young Spry one. But I got to say it again. He still looks good, this guy, you know? Yeah. But we're in the kitchen as they go out for their walk. We see that Rose is spying on them and Rose is spying.

so charmed by it. She thinks this is the cutest thing she has ever seen. And, you know, the coffee's been set out on the table in the same way it was in last week's episode, which just drove you a little crazy. It doesn't make any sense. The way coffee makers are designed is you're supposed to keep the pot in the coffee maker because it keeps

the coffee hot. If you take it out and put it on the table, the coffee's just going to get cold. Exactly. In this same moment, I do love how you can see Bea Arthur timing her sips to her cue lines to punctuate her joke. Is that right? Yeah. So Rose says, she says her line about how cute it is. Yes. And it's setting up the tight pants joke. Yes. So you can see

B sort of waiting to sip the coffee. I just think it's amazing that a man would look up to his first love after all these years. And so B's drinking around here. He's like, oh, I wonder why Italian men are so romantic. It's the tight pants rose. Sip. That's where she sips. It's the tight pants rose. And, you know, this is the B. Arthur School of Comedy. Seth Rudetsky loves this. Did I tell you? I think I might be repeating myself.

No, say it again. When I was doing Spelling Bee on Broadway, Seth was obsessed that every time I would say a joke, I would like take Purell and wipe my hands or I'd write something down. And eventually what I want to do is put a sizzle reel together of all of Bea Arthur's moments because she's the master at landing a joke and then sipping the orange juice or picking lint off her sweater. And it's just a way...

And Seth and I talk about this. The brilliance of it is that you have to land the joke and act like you don't care if the audience laughs or not.

I'm just minding my own business picking this lint off my sweater. If you want to laugh, that's on you. It's so good. My favorite joke from the whole series is when the one where Ma gets a hernia because Dorothy made her do something. And in a later scene, she asks Rose for some orange juice. I know. Rose says to her, oh, sure, Dorothy. Would you like to come and get it? Or would you like me to have your mother come in and carry the refrigerator over to you?

My favorite orange juice joke is when they all have the flu. And she says, Rose says, is there any orange juice left? And Dorothy literally pours the last drop into a glass, drinks it and says, no, we're all out. Yeah.

Oh my God, it's so funny. Erin, our friend and social media guy today was saying the cheese ball joke from episode two. He's like, I am crying editing these videos. Because of the quart cheese. What the hell is quart cheese? We discovered in that moment what quart cheese was. I know, I know, I know. All right. Oh God. Blanche enters. She's stunned to Patrick. Oh my God, this is so good. So she says, well, I am stunned. Just stunned. Stunned.

Stunned is the only way to describe how stunned I am.

Stunned. I am. And by the way, I've always hated this next joke. Oh, yeah, I know. I hate it. It's not a funny joke. It's no. Because Dorothy says, wait a minute, Blanche. Are you trying to tell us that you're stunned? It's not funny. It's not funny. Because it's one of those Blanche things where she enters like tits and shoulders first in full narcissism. And she's standing in the doorway holding it open. She just cannot catch her breath with how stunned she is. Yeah.

So Blanche informs basically the betrayal that she has seen, which is that she saw the sign-up sheet down at the bowling alley and that Rose dumped her as her partner and then the two of you signed up together. Because at this point, she doesn't know that Rose is the culprit. Exactly. Exactly. And I have to say, if I may continue, I love this next moment because it's another example of a shot

we've never seen in the show. Totally. Rose pinned against that column between them is really good for Betty, the actress. Yes, yes. It's very good for her to be between them because she looks so guilty. Yes. And it's just an interesting camera angle, too. We never used that spot in the kitchen. You're absolutely right. That is such a keen observation because she's standing there between them and she just comes clean. I did it.

Dorothy's a better bowler than you are, and I want to win this year. Rose, how could you do a thing like this? I admit it. I have a problem. I'm too competitive when it comes to athletics. I've never told anybody this, but I had to transfer high schools because of a field hockey incident. Oh.

And this is where we all are let in on what's going on here, which is that Rose is psychotically obsessed with winning this bowling tournament. I have here. We learned that Rose has layers. Not just a closet full of beautiful dresses. No, she says, I admit it. I have a problem. I'm too competitive when it comes to athletics. Yeah, yeah. And this is my question, Patrick. She tells them that she had to transfer high schools because of a field hockey incident. Now, I'm like, this must have been a violent hockey. This must have been a stiff.

to the neck. You know, like... She, like, is transported back in time. She makes a scowl with her face like she's reliving whatever the trauma was. It was Ted Bundy's blue eyes turning black. Like, that's... It must have been. Right? Yes! I mean... And then we don't get the story. I don't understand. We don't find out what happens, but Rose is stuck in the moment. It's like Orquint's speech from Jaws. You know, his eyes roll back. Yeah. Like a doll's eyes. Yeah.

So Dorothy does the right thing. And she just says, like, that was a terrible thing to do, Dumping Blanche. I'm not going to be your partner. But then Blanche surprises all of us. Yeah. She's still kind of mad at Dorothy. I don't think that she believes that Dorothy's innocent here. Yeah. She says, no, I want you all to stay partners. I've already got another partner that she signs up with Olga Nielsen. Yes. And Rose loses her mind. She does. She does. Olga Nielsen. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha.

Right? It's perfect. Rose screams. She can't believe it because that's impossible. Olga always plays with her twin sister, Sonia. That's right. And Blanche lets everyone know that that's before Olga found out that Sonia had been stooping her boyfriend Lars and not telling him that he had the wrong sister. And then she says, because I have to do this because you know you love my Blanche. She's like, oh, Rose Nyland, I can't wait to whip your butt. Right?

Right? Yeah. Just that purse lip. Lip your butt. Lip your butt. And then she leaves. So FYI, this episode dropped, as we know, in 1985. But we can clearly see the calendar on the door behind Rue. And I did a deep dive. And this calendar is a 1984 calendar.

calendar. No way. I feel like in January, I looked up the year. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. Wow. It's from 1984. Look at you, Inspector Gadget. You know what? I'm a regular Jessica Fletcher, which was also out around this time. That is true. And I loved it on Sunday nights. We're going to have to do something with that.

So Rose turns to sit at the table with Dorothy. She says to Dorothy, Olga's an amazing bowler. They could beat us, Dorothy. And Dorothy's like, you psycho. There is no us. I'm not bowling with you, crazy. That's right. And Rose begs her. And I have to say here, Bea Arthur steps on Betty White's joke. She does. So because it is really funny. Betty White says...

Blanche has somebody to bowl with. You want somebody to bowl with. I need somebody to bowl with. Please. Just say yes and nobody will get hurt. All right. Unless we don't win.

Please just say yes and nobody will get hurt. Right. She's like stroking her neck. But nobody will get hurt is really funny. But B comes in too early, in my opinion, on like, oh, well, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if this were a moment, like, you should have waited a little bit. And then because she has this follow-up joke, unless we don't win. Right. And then that crazy face that she makes. It's funny because I feel like sometimes the punchlines are written, but like then the other characters in the, like, that's why we get,

so many ad-libbed lines. Yeah. Because it's like, it's funny for the person who says the punchline, but then like the camera lingers too long and someone's got to say something. Yeah. And I will say this though, again, with the rings on Betty White, like she's not only wearing that blue sapphire and leopard, but she's got this, she's got this huge diamond. You know what I mean? I'm like, Saint Olaf is wealthy. We're going to find out that her dad was like a monk or something. I mean, I don't know, but she is rolling it, you know, in her jewelry.

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So it's a few days later, and we're out on the lanai. Dorothy is pretty in peach. So I wrote, she's wearing wall insulation pink sweater. Like, it looks like, you know...

It is like I went back and forth and all the times I watched it, I'm like, it's a cute sweater. What color is it? It's like orange creamsicle meets that Pink Panther wall insulation. And you mentioned this earlier. She's doing what, Patrick? She's repotting all of the plants on the lanai. And I make this note for the end of the scene, but I'll say it here. Yeah. The lanai is lush with plants and flowers. So many flowers. I know.

Like, I think she's letting out her sexual frustration. I had the exact same thought. Look, and I said, as much as it makes sense to me that Dorothy spent her teenage years bowling and that's why she's so good, she can get that nine pin on a spare any day of the week. Just ask her.

I feel like she's now taken to repotting the plant. Like, the lanai is just covered in greenery. Right. And this next thing made me laugh. Now, Sophia enters, as usual, in a Miami heat sweater. It's like the middle of summer. She's wearing eight layers. But she inexplicably starts pushing around the soil with a trowel on the table. Just for a glimpse. She picks up a trowel, like, just to have something busy to do to justify going to the table. And there's just some soil on the table. She's just kind of...

you know what, I'm going to... God forbid I should help my daughter repot the plant. But I'll just maybe mush it around a little bit. I'm going to mush it around. Sophia says she's been hanging out with Augie a lot. She took him to the cafeteria at the mall that day. And Dorothy is saying, like, you all have been spending a lot of time together. Like, that's so great. It's too bad he has got to go back to Sicily so soon. And this is when Sophia says, like, well, now that you mention it, he wants me to go with him. That's right, to the San Gennaro Festival, which is where they met 65 years ago. And this is where

This is where we get the introduction of the power imbalance in Sophia and Dorothy's relationship that I don't understand because it's not like Sophia is asking permission, but Dorothy takes it that way. And Dorothy just says, I'm sorry, honey, I can't allow you to go. What? Well, I do. I dare Daisy to talk.

to me that way when I'm 80. Oh, I know. But think about it this way, because she does say she follows it up with, you know, you had a stroke, you had blood. I mean, Dorothy had to on her newly divorced, you know, substitute teacher income, put her mother in shady pines. And then in future episodes, we learn that Sophia's like, you know, you let me live here. Yeah. Like, like Dorothy is...

footing the bills for both of them. So I understand. And she's scared. I think it's a daughter's love of her mother and fear for her health. And also, we'll learn later that, like, Dorothy's got that sister, Gloria, who's, like, totally rich. Like, where's Gloria in all of this? Oh, jeez. I know. You know what I mean? Fucking Gloria. Fucking Gloria, who lives on the West Coast, who married for money, literally. Yeah. But for that, to your point, she says, Ma, look, I absolutely forbid it.

Yeah. That's where it gets a little crazy. Yeah. Because my thought is like, Doc, what do you think they're going to do over there? Like they're taking an airplane. They're going to stay in a hotel. They're going to go to the San Gennaro Festival. Like what's the diff, you know? She comes around. She's like, yeah, you are. You're a grown woman. I can't tell you what to do. But Sophia needs the money. She needs $1,200 for a plane ticket. I looked it up. $1,200 in today money is $3,460, which on a substitute teacher salary, when she's footing the bill for two rents at Blanche's, which you know can't be cheap. Yeah. So it is a lot of money. And Dorothy says,

something in Italian that our researcher just says translates into don't even think about it. That's right. But this makes me sad because it's a late and light love. You know, his wife's been gone for 33 years. Her husband's been gone for 22 years. But it's so the show can happen. It's so the conflict can happen. Maybe I'm taking it all a little too literally. They don't actually know each other. They probably didn't even speak to each other on the set that day. Probably. But your sexy girl Rose enters in a flaming red dress.

Looking amazing. Cinched at the waist. So she overhears Sophia say, I can't believe you're denying your own mother. Rose says, denying her what? And Dorothy says, Springsteen tickets, Rose. Will you please stay out of this? And so Sophia is trying to get some sympathy from Rose, which she does. Dorothy is trying to keep Augustine and me apart. Absolutely adorable, man.

That is such a funny line. I wrote Yas, Barry, and Mort. I know.

That is funny. I know. That is such a few are in tall disappointment. And then she comes in right behind it with, I can understand why Rose is dumping you as her bowling partner. Now, this is some drama because Dorothy is saying, no, she's dumping Blanche. And Sophia is saying, no, she's dumping you. I overheard her on the phone. She drops this bomb and then walks away. It's like Sophia is such a shit starter. She just wants them all fighting. She just thrives on chaos. If I can't be happy, none of you will.

But it's also just like, Sophia, you got to live with these ladies. You know what I mean? If I'm Rose, I am pissed that Sophia, you know what I mean? I hadn't thought about that. Like, here's Rose being really sympathetic to her and hugging her. And then she's like, I'm going to shiv you the minute you turn around to get what I want. We made this observation in episode one. Sophia is a straight up sociopath. She does not have feelings. She doesn't care. She doesn't care who she hurts. But Dorothy is, of course, you know, enraged. And Rose goes on to explain in her competitive craziness that you were...

You and I could never beat Blanche and Olga Nielsen. That's why I had to team up with her sister, Sonya. I need to win, Dorothy, and let's face it, you are no Sonya Nielsen. Rose, get professional help.

And this is another brilliant Beatrice Arthur moment because she takes a full pause because you know she could go full Dorothy and flip the tables and episode one or two, Dorothy just screaming at the top of her lungs. She just kind of whispers in Rose's face, Rose, get professional help. Yeah, so good. And the writers, bravo. It's great. So our girl Blanche enters. Full narcissism. Yep, full narcissism. And she starts to do a callback to the previous joke that doesn't get finished because Dorothy just can't stand it. Wait.

I am devastated. Just devastated. Devastated. Oh, knock it off. You are not going to believe what happened. Those Nielsen twins are back together. What? Lars Lindquist, the man they were fighting over, he's dead. Found slumped over a desk at his Volvo dealership. When the girls found out about it, they decided to forgive each other. No!

back together in the tournament. Gee, Blanche, it's too bad you won't have anybody to bowl with now. Which is funny because this is news to Rose, who, remember, has just like Dorothy has just found out that Rose has dumped her. So now Rose is inching back towards Dorothy and says, gee, Blanche, it's too bad you don't have anyone to bowl with now. And she looks at Dorothy, we better get down to the bowling alley for some practice, partner. And unsurprisingly, Dorothy dumps her and asks Blanche if she would like to be her partner. Now,

this is genius. And Steve, my husband, was saying to us before we started recording, his favorite episodes are the ones where they all sort of gang up on each other. You know what I mean? Like, this is when you get to really see their personalities come out. Yeah. You know, like sisters, you know, totally in competition. But that's what he said. The competition episodes. Yes. Yeah. First, agreed. I was last week. I was saying, while I'm not a

a huge fan of the very special Golden Girls episodes. I really love ones like this. Grab that dough. Oh, grab that dough. We need to celebrate when we get to grab that dough. Grab that dough or, you know, singing at the rusty anchor. Shit music. All right. So Rose is terribly upset. She's like, you can't do this to me. Now I don't have a partner. And what? Sophia chimes in. Yes, you do. I'll be your partner, Rose. Right.

And then she looks at Dorothy and she's saying, no, we've been seeing, remember in the pilot episode where everybody can't believe that Sophia managed to get from Shady Pines to the house and she's mad that they think she couldn't figure out how to take a cab on her own. She does not like being condescended to or treated like an old lady. I would say that most older gentlemen and ladies don't appreciate that either. To have your autonomy stripped away, you've worked a

whole life. Yes. And to be infantilized. Yes. No, thank you. No, thank you. Yeah. So she says, you think I can't take care of myself. You think I'm too feeble to go to Sicily. I'll show you who's not the woman I used to be. And then she says to her partner, Rose, come on, Blanche. I'm Rose. Simple mistake means nothing. Very funny and very finally delivered.

So some following morning at 6 a.m., we have an excellent comedic moment. Blanche is asleep with her head down on the kitchen table. This is a joke moment for the ages. Oh my gosh. She's clearly dreaming. She's moaning. She's having a full sex dream. Blanche, let's go. Come on, Blanche, let's go. Oh.

Lunch, wake up. My wife will be home any minute. Oh, Dorothy, that was a terrible thing to do. I mean, how long should I do this for the listeners?

Blanche jumps out of the chair screaming, where are my shoes? Oh, Dorothy, that was a terrible thing to do. Oh my God. Anyway, Dorothy's like, no, we got to go practice. And Blanche is protesting at 6 a.m. Why are you making me do this? Dorothy's telling you, you have to go. The tournament's tomorrow.

Yeah. And, you know, she finally convinces Blanche by telling her. And rightly so. She's like, you know, are you forgetting that you were dumped? Rose dumped you. Yeah. Because remember, neither one of them even care about this competition. Blanche just wants to look cute. Dorothy's just doing it because she used to enjoy bowling. But now they're on a mission to humiliate Rose. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And she gets right to the heart of Blanche's deepest insecurity because she's just saying, Blanche is like, you're right. I hate being dumped. I haven't been dumped since Wade Honeycutt threw me over for Rebecca Wilkinson, a girl who did not value her reputation. Yeah, unlike Blanche. Right.

And Dorothy says, like, did you let him get away with it? And Blanche says, hell no. And Dorothy says, what did you do? And Blanche says, slept with his brother. So I have a note here, too. She says, come on, partner. Let's go get even. And the way she moves her body on let's go get even was just like Dolly Parton in 9 to 5. Oh, my God. Really? I have to find that because there's one clip I'm like, it's just like.

that. Oh my God. Yeah. Ruben Clannahan does a lot of acting with her shoulders. Yeah. It's where she finds her sexuality. Yeah. I agree. I agree. It's very good. So they're in the living room and now Dorothy is saying to Blanche, we got to be quiet. We don't want to wake up Ma and Rose and tip them off. That's right. That we're doing all this practicing. And I was like, wait, do you not want them to know because you don't want them to

also be practicing? Or do you want to win and have them think that you're just like naturally that good? Oh, I think the first one. The first. The first one. Only to have our other competitors walk in. They've obviously been practicing earlier. And now Rose is back in her bowling shirt. And now Sophia's wearing her bowling shirt. And Dorothy is very surprised.

Like, oh my God, you guys are up early. So Rose is saying like, because Rose knows what they're doing and Rose is making it like kind of a snide, like, oh, you guys are up early and Dorothy's, well, not as early as you. And then Dorothy's like, oh yeah, but you all are the ones that need to practice and we're going to win. And so Sophia's like, well, Dorothy, if you're so sure of yourself, how about a little side bet? If I win, you lend me the money to fly to Sicily with Augie. No.

All right, fine. But if I win, I get those antique silver earrings that you never let me borrow. You're on. Come on, Blanche. Blanche, do you want to have a side bet with me? Well, I would, Rose, but everything you own is so damn ugly. Oh, I can't wait to whip your butt. Well, I would, Rose, but everything you own is so damn ugly. Ah!

I wrote, why did that make me scream laugh? It's just her delivery and the way she's looking at her. She's looking at it with such amused disdain. And Patrick, I did text you a picture just now where Rose's bowling outfit looks like Dorothy's everyday wear. You're absolutely right. Just that art teacher tied in the knot. Yes. Oh my God. And like the pink collar over the pink jacket. Oh God, that's so funny. But Blanche's exit line is, oh, I can't wait to whip your butt. I know.

Just the U's. It's the U's, Val. Also, like, Rose arguably has the most beautiful clothes of any of them. Like, I've really been seeing her dresses and how amazing they are. So the joke isn't real, but it's still so funny. So funny. Everything you own is so damn ugly. Like, when I think about my best friends, I wouldn't say that to them on my meanest. They get such a mean thing to say. I know. It's so funny, though.

So, folks, we're about to go to the boning alley. Sorry. Folks, folks, we're about to go to the boning alley. Let's go to the boning alley. You know what? Keep it. All right. So, folks, we're about to go to the bowling alley. But I wanted to take this moment, Patrick, to give you a small deep dive on bowling. Oh, yeah. Oh, please. I mean, it is the center theme of the whole episode. And your dad was a champion bowler. He was. Candlepin bowling. Oh, my God. All right. So the earliest known forms of bowling date back to what? Ancient Egypt. What?

I know. Wall drawings depicting bowling that can be found in a royal Egyptian tomb dated back to 3200 BC. I mean, if you think about like if you were bored, like what else was there to do back in the Egyptian day? You know, get a couple of sticks and a rock. Bowling and slavery. That's all there was. Sorry. I know. It's true. You know what? You guys, you're not busy. Could you build us a backbreaking pyramid? Yeah, actually make it three. And while you're at it, make a weird looking sphinx-y thing. Oh, and don't talk. I don't think we're allowed to talk while we do it.

Anyway. Yeah. So in modern history, Henry VIII was apparently an avid bowler. Really? He had a bowling shirt and everything. It said Henry. It just said Hank. It said Hank. So in 1511, this little fucker banned bowling. Yeah.

He did. Why did he lose a game? That's something I would do. I'm not the best one here. Because the women were better at it than him. That's how come he killed all his wives. No, he banned bowling for the lower classes. What? Yeah, he posed a levy for private lanes to limit them to the wealthy. Because bowling is so fancy. He earned everything he had. Let's face it.

He gets a pass. Yeah, absolutely. Now, the early Dutch settlers came to what became the United States in the 17th century, and they brought the game with them. Uh-huh. And evidence of the importance of this is that you can see that in the naming of what? Bowling Green Park. Oh, my God, you're right. Which I never put it together. That's at the very lower tip of Manhattan Cheesecake. That's like where you get the little boat to go to the Statue of Liberty. Oldest park in Manhattan. Bowling Green.

Yeah. By the way, by the late 1930s, New York's Knickerbocker Hotel... I love that name, Knickerbocker. Me too. The Knickerbocker Hotel housed a bowling alley. And in 1846, the oldest surviving bowling lanes in the United States were built as part of Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut, not far from here. What? And I say that, Patrick, because the lanes are now part of...

Historic New England's Roseland Cottage House Museum, which contained Gothic revival architectural elements in keeping with the style of the entire estates. Like, we can go there. Oh, my God. We have to make a trip. We should. We should. Now, regarding the tournaments, like in our episode, the first Women's League in America was developed by St. Louis proprietor Dennis J. Sweeney, who held the first informal national tournament in 1907.

Wow. And in 1917, the Women's International Bowling Congress was formed and the first official tournament was held in Cincinnati in 1918 for women. Amazing. Yeah. So it's the day of the tournament. And the most expensive sandwich on the menu, by the way, is a club special beef and cheese or a super beef for $1.49. You were able to see that? I was. Oh, my God. I got to say, they brought in a lot of background actors. It still feels like a soundstage, but it feels like they really went all out for this

That's right. But based on those sandwiches, Patrick, I think every time you and I have a disagreement, we should call it a super beef. Yeah.

Well, hopefully we will never, ever experience that. I don't think we'll ever have a super beast. I can't imagine it. Yeah. So Blanche is, she's in her pink satin shirt with her name embroidered. And Dorothy also has a personalized shirt. But hers is yellow and baby blue. And it's still blousy. It's a blousy blazer with shoulder pads. It's just ugly. It's just, whereas Blanche looks cute, but isn't really wearing a bowling outfit. Like that would definitely, based on the definition that I looked up earlier, that would not qualify as a bowling outfit. Agreed. And these,

things in the show makes you think yeah and this moment did make me think of how many tv shows they just love a bowling alley i know that's true like liver and shirley yes rosanne yeah even mind hunter bowling scene in it that's so interesting yeah there's a lot to visually to work with there i feel like you know we haven't even gotten into bowling shoes i was obsessed with bowling shoes yeah and now i guess it makes sense that they look like what they look like because it's all that yeah

vintage-y, vibey, Americana-y thing that was intended to look different and weird. All right, well, take it away, partner. So they're in lane seven, and Blanche is saying, oh, lane seven is her favorite because you can see inside the men's locker room where the door opens and doors, it says, oh, who cares? And then she gets stuck looking in the locker room. To which I was like, what do you think the men in the locker room at the bowling alley really look like? Probably a bit like me, I would imagine. Well, there's lots of beer at bowling alleys. Yeah.

I did go to my brother's hockey game once, though, in high school. A whole different story. And let me tell you, that door opened and I just, I mean, this guy's business was big. Oh, my God. You saw the business? I saw the business. Oh, my God. And it was enormous. Oh, my God. And I didn't hate it. I'm telling you, I never got naked in the locker room in high school. When we had to change for gym, it was like everybody turned around and like did it as quickly as possible. And you kept your boxers on and you just like didn't look anybody in the eye, you know? Yeah, I do. Okay, great. I do. I do.

So Rose and Sophia show up there in lane seven as well. And Dorothy and Blanche are like, wait a second, this was supposed to be the Nielsen twins. Like we're supposed to be sharing. We're supposed to be bowling against them. Right. And Rose tells them that they had to drop out to go to Lars's funeral. Yes. It was supposed to be yesterday, but he requested an authentic Viking funeral. And every time they tried to, you know, set him and his ship on fire, the Coast Guard kept putting it out. Absolutely.

So I looked into Viking funerals and what they actually are because they make it sound like a Viking funeral is like setting a body on a boat and sending it out to sea and setting it on fire. That's not the case. No. Apparently, a traditional Viking funeral is when a body is burned on a pyre out in the open air. And they say a pyre, it's basically like putting a body on a flammable thing and burning it outside. Yeah, it's like a picture of twine and twigs wrapped, making like a platform bed that you would put the body on top of.

And honestly, it seems like a pretty good way to handle a body if that's what a person wants. But there's only one place in the entire United States where this is legal. Crestone, Colorado. Crestone, Colorado. If you listen to True Crime Obsessed, it's where the Mother of God, that cult documentary. Crestone is apparently a very interesting place where like the veil is very thin and like people see ghosts and aliens and stuff there all the time. But even in Crestone, they only allow a few of these a year. You need a permit for it.

Do they have to be dead to do the lighting? I would hope so. There's a couple of people I can think of. We could get started on that a little early. Great. So at this point, Rose and Sophia knowingly time the removal of their overcoats to reveal the exact same top that Blanche has spent the entire episode talking about. I'm not going to call it a bowling shirt because we know that it isn't. It's a black undershirt with like a pink vest. And it is kind of cute. And Blanche totally loses it.

Look at that! I don't believe that! Look at what they have on! Oh, calm down, honey. They're just trying to get to you. Oh! Rose! Take that off. What? You are wearing my bowling outfit. Well, I do believe you're right. Oh, don't worry about it, honey. Nobody will notice. It looks so different on a woman with a full bosom. Don't you throw your bosom in my face!

The shade from Rose? But again, she looks away innocently after she says it. It's just a fact. Because the truth of the matter is, like, not to objectify Betty White, but she's got a great set. And you would think, when you imagine Rue McClanahan, don't you think of a vast bosom? But when you look at her in this moment, you're like, oh, no, I guess not. No, she's a little...

petite pear-shaped beauty. She couldn't donate her kidney to her sister because her blood vessels were too petite. She's so tiny. She's so little. She's cold all the time. I relate, girl. Yes, and excuse me, this is where Dorothy does the head shake. Blanche, Blanche, don't you see what's happening? It is that community theater acting to the back row. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And lo and behold, Rose ruins that for her by saying, Oh, did you find a ball that's comfortable, Ma?

Now, this is like quite a moment because I think that Rose and Sophia know they're not going to be as good as Blanche and Dorothy. So they've got to pull out every trick in the book they can to throw them off their game. So they're wearing Blanche's outfit. Now, Rose calls Sophia ma in front of Dorothy. And I got to tell you, whatever comedic element is to the scene gets sucked out real quick when Dorothy gets in Rose's face and basically threatens to beat her ass. Now, listen.

No one calls her ma except me. You got that? Have I made that clear? Did I make myself clear? She's going to slit her throat here in the bowling alley. I know. And then go buy a $1.49 sandwich.

Yes. But then like Sophia is in on it, which is just so cruel. She's like, I told you we'd get under her skin. What did I tell you? What did I tell you? So the game starts. Sophia's up first. Of course, she walks the ball down to the top of the lane and pushes it with one hand, turns around and says, strike, mark it down. And the camera shot gives us a slow-mo version of the ball.

They slowed down the video. It's clearly like it's B-roll from some other thing. You know what I mean? Like they're definitely on some soundstage. But like Dorothy is just saying like the ball's not even down. And she's watching the ball like edge slowly towards the pins. And she's like, Ma, you only got one, two, three, four, five, six, eight. She gets a strike. Then it's the other team's turn. Dot is up. Dot is up. And Blanche is like, go get him, darling. Yes. Like there's nothing to it. All you have to do to win is just stay calm.

cool and collected. And you hear Rose in the background. And whoa, the ball just flies behind Dorothy's hand right on cue. So it's later in the tournament. Rose is very upset that, oh darn, she left three pins. She can't believe it. Because Rose has been a little too calm. Remember, Rose is the psychopath who like has to win or else. So we see Rose having a fit that she left three pins standing. And then Blanche says, I can't believe you can swing that ball past your hip. Like they are really.

are really coming for each other now in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Oh, I know. So Sophia runs in and says, listen, everyone's finished. I checked the score, but if you can pick up a spare rose in the last frame, we'll be leading the tournament. I have to say here, Rose says, consider it done, Ma. Go to it, Sophia says. And here, Patrick, in the background, I just have to say, one of the background actors, she's a Nancy Marchand lookalike. I texted you the picture. Yes, yes, yes. You know that character actress? Yes. Yeah. The picture you texted me is a picture of her with an Emmy, and under it, all it says is died. Yeah.

She began her career in theater in 51. She was most famous for her television portrayals in Lou Grant. Oh. And she was in The Sopranos. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just this great character. But I was like looking at this background actress going, Nancy Marshall. It's so funny because I'm watching these background actors. These background actors are really committed. They're talking to each other. Here's a question for you. When background actors are doing this and you can see that they're actually talking. Yeah. Are they in character or are they like? Yeah, generally they're in character. And honestly, your director,

will put the kibosh on something if you're pulling too much focus. But it is a great way for actors to get a piece of real. Yeah. Like, because you never know how much you're going to be in the frame, how much you're going to be in the shot. So you'll see actors trying to do stuff sometimes just to be that lucky person who got that extra good frame and that extra good, which can help get you an agent or a manager or more work.

Because there's so many background actors in this episode, and they're all, like, really committed. Yeah. And I think you know this, because I think I heard you and Jillian talk about it on an episode. Like, I think, like, background... You can make quite a living as a background actor. Oh, yeah. There are people who are just, like, their whole job is being a background actor. Yeah. And so those folks I would take out of this equation, too. Like, that's the gig. And they might have a very strong opinion about people trying to... To pull focus. To pull focus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we see Rose. She bowls. So she does it. She's convinced this means they're going to win. And this is where she says...

Rose, Rose, aren't you forgetting something? We haven't bowled our last frame yet. We can still win, and we will. Oh, I don't think so. You see, I've bowled with Blanche before. Maybe this isn't the best time to mention it, but when the chips are down, Blanche chokes. Don't you, sweetheart? Eat chalk, Nyle.

Don't you, sweetheart. Oh. Psychopaths. The savagery. But, you know, Blanche is like, eat chalk, Nyland. Right. You know, and this next section is probably one of my favorite things ever as well. So, of course, you know, Blanche gets up to bowl and you can see it start to happen. She starts to have the anxiety panic attack. She's like, I'm fine. I just feel a little cold and clammy. Just a little short of breath. And

And Dorothy's telling her to settle down. Yes. And Blanche says, don't make me do it. The ball feels like it weighs 100 pounds. And Dorothy's behind her, you know, comforting her and says, oh, honey, I sympathize with you. I mean, anyone who's ever competed understands what you're going through. So listen, sweetheart. It

If you don't feel like bowling, you don't have to. You just hold on to the ball and I'll throw you down the alley. And then she gives a good solid smack to her left shoulder. That's to button the moment. It's so good. And then to button the button, Blanche takes the ball and toss

it from her chest and runs to sit down. And Dorothy just, she's screaming at her. Like, at this point, Dorothy doesn't even care. She's embarrassed. Everyone is staring. She's like, get back out there, Blanche. She's like, no, I just hate bowling. I just wanted to look cute in my outfit, to which Savage Rose says, We all look cute in your new outfit. And then

And then shimmies their boobs. They shimmy her and Sophia's shimmy. They shimmy their breasticles. Their ample bosom. So Blanche is pissed. Oh, that does it. She jumps up and struts with full narcissism over to them all. She throws it. She's like, ha, I did it. I did it. And Dorothy's like, you did what? You knocked down two pins. It's a personal trial. Ha ha ha.

It's a personal trial. With the pouty lip. It's so perfect. Oh, gosh. Oh, God. And then good old high school championship bowler Dorothy says, well, we're not out of it yet. All we need to win is a spare. And now Augustine comes in. Yeah. Augie enters and he's saying to Sophia, like, did you win? Can you go? And Sophia doesn't know yet. So Dorothy throws the ball. She thinks she gets a strike, but it's a spare. She left the nine pin. And Dorothy says, yeah, easy spare. I've made the shot a hundred times. To which I was like, I can honestly see it.

You know what I mean? Like she knows which every, every number of every pin, the nine pin and a spare is her best move. She knows she can do it. And we're back with Augie and Sophia and they have this like sweet little scene together. This is very well directed. I know. And they're just standing there just like. Your daughter is a very good player, Sophia. She must've picked it up from you. How do you know I'm a good bowler? Because you were so good at bocce ball. Remember we played together once?

Oh, yeah, after the grape harvest. Boy, that was a nice afternoon. Very nice. And you know what else was nice about that day? That was my first kiss. Mine, too. And it was their first kiss for both of them. That is. And Dorothy observes this moment. Yes. Between them. Dot's got a decision to make, Jen. She does. And Blanche says, go get them, Dorothy. Whip their butts. Right. Yeah.

And, you know, we know what Dorothy's going to do. Yep. Drop. Throws a gutter ball. It's so good. And I have Rose here in full Patrick Hines losing his voice. I won! I won! You lost! And I won! I won! Gutter ball! Gutter ball! I won! You lost! I won! It's like, okay, we get it, everyone. Winifred, we get it. Now, my thinking here is like, Dorothy, you still could have won and let your mom go on the trip. That is true.

true. However, they made a bet. Yeah, that's true. You're right. You can't be a welcher. You're right. You're right. Yeah. So Sophia says you lost. That means I'm going. And she says with my blessing. And Sophia says I'm touched. But do I have your twelve hundred dollars? You have my blessing and you have my money. Once again, show me the bank statement that shows twelve hundred dollars in a bank account with Dorothy Spornak's name on it. Show it to me. I'd like to see it. I'd like to see it. And then Sophia says for another thousand, I could go first class.

And Dorothy says, arrivederci. And this is before we know that Dorothy has a rich sister. Why is Dorothy paying for any of this? Truly. You know. Thanks, Gloria. Thanks for helping out.

And cross-dressing Phil. Yeah, exactly. We'll learn about it later. He's got issues of his own. So it's post the trip to Sicily and Sophia is telling Dorothy about the trip on the couch. And Dorothy is back to wearing a nightgown from her 1910 baseball uniform collection. I said this nightgown weighs 700 pounds. I think I had a real moment of revelation today because you were saying those sound stages are really cold. And like maybe that's why they put them in these heavier costumes or whatever. One of the things...

things about the Golden Girls and why I think we all love it so much, they look comfortable. Yeah. And especially, like, we always think about the cheesecake scenes or the scenes where they're sitting around the living room. They're wearing these, like, frilly, over-the-top nightgowns. But, like, Dorothy in this moment is sitting in this... You cannot see her body anywhere in it. It's enormous. If she got thrown in the ocean, she would sink.

If she, like, wanted to close to a fireplace, it is curtains for Dot. But she looks really comfortable sitting on the couch, you know? But that nightgown is just outrageous. So, Sofia just tells her about the trip. They took a bus to Palermo where they looked up their old friend, Teresa DeFino. They spent an hour looking for her house, only to find out that she died that morning. Do you know that I tried to find a Teresa DeFino in Palermo this morning? Yeah.

Are there any descendants of Teresa? I'm sure there are. Oh, my God. Because the thing about these relationships is we never see, we're never going to see Auggie again. So she's just saying going home brought back a lot of memories. And at my age, it's nice to have someone to share that with. And she pulls a box out of her purse and it's the antique earrings. It's very moving. It's very sweet. Your antique earrings. They're yours. You want them fair and square. Oh, come on. What are you talking about? You and Rose won that tournament.

Please. You blew it on purpose. The nine pin for the spare is your best shot. You could make that shot all day long. Here, enjoy them. It's very sweet. Sophia's got to go. She's got to unpack. She's got a valise full of clams about to go bad. I had to look up what a valise was. It's like a little suitcase. It's a suitcase. She brought a suitcase full of clams back from Italy. Right, which you could never do. You could never.

Never make it through customs. They really are counting on a lot of just institutional ignorance. So the show could happen. Exactly. So this is the part that gets me. Rose enters, says hi to Dorothy. Dorothy says, don't talk to me. Blanche enters and says, don't talk to me. Sophia's got to have been gone for at least two weeks. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because like we're seeing Sophia back from her trip. Yeah. You're telling me that Blanche and Dorothy have been icing Rose for two solid weeks.

See it? I can see it. That's true, though. You know? It's that whole thing where it's like in TV land, it's only been two minutes. Right. But it has been two weeks. At least two weeks. That is a Michael Beschloss observation if I've ever seen one. We've got to get Beschloss on the podcast. Beschi. We've got to get Beschi. We've got to get Beschi. I have to point out, too, that Blanche here, when she enters, she's wearing Sophia's apron from episodes two and six. Oh. Heretofore known as Big Yellow. Oh.

We have to name them. Absolutely. Oh, my God. Big yellows back. Oh, my God. Can we call Dorothy's nightgown from the previous scene Gone with the Wind? We could, but it does resemble that pinstripe baseball uniform from a few. All right. We'll call it Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth. She's wearing Babe Ruth.

I love it. Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth 2. We have Babe Ruth 1. Now we have Babe Ruth 2. So Rose acknowledges. She's like, look, I know you're both still angry with me. No one's mad at Sophia. Okay. I guess all is forgiven when you're 80. You can do anything. That's right. She shook her boobs at her too, but fine. And so she says, you know, like, look, we all bowled well. And, you know, because of that, I had all of our names engraved on this trophy. In my opinion, we're all winners. And then Dorothy B does a great delivery again because she says it. Rose.

Can I ask you a question? Sure. Why is your name three times larger than ours? Exactly. Rose, who's a psychopath, says, because I'm the one who actually won it. If you ever want to look at it, it will be in my bedroom. And the parentheses there is like where I will eye it every night as an object to beat an intruder to death with. Honestly. I just feel like Rose has murder in her soul. But the thing about Rose is she's going to be the one with the gun in the upcoming couple of episodes. Rose is a little unhinged. She is. I mean, later we're going to find out. Remember her pill addiction? She's got colors. She's got layers. I know.

So, Cheesecakes, when we come back, my darling Patrick is going to give us the deep dive of our queen, Susan Harris. Am I your darling? You are my darling. Cheesecakes, I cannot wait to tell you the story of Queen Susan Harris. I loved researching this. There's so much fun stuff here, so don't go anywhere. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be.

Are you ready for a di-pi-di-di-pi-di-di-di dive? I'm ready for a di-di. On Susan Harris. I'm so excited to learn about her. Listen, she created this magical thing that we love so much. Let's do it. She's so interesting. So Susan Harris was born Susan Spivak in 1940 in Mount Vernon, New York. Up until the day she went to college, she said she lived what she called a pretty normal Westchester upbringing.

You know, like upper middle class. Her dad was an accountant. Her mom was a stay-at-home parent. She was a cheerleader in high school. Everything was very typical. And she says when she turned 18 and went away to college, she, quote, got a little weird. She went to Cornell and then NYU where she studied English literature. And she describes becoming very tortured. And this description that she gave, I felt myself in this to a very deep level. She says, quote,

I began writing tortured poetry and standing on a bridge overlooking a gorge and feeling very tortured and, of course, loving every minute of it. Isn't that every adolescent? Took me right back to my junior year of high school where I was coming out of the closet listening to a lot of Sarah McLachlan. Yeah. You know what I mean? But also, I love that she's like, you know, I got weird at Cornell and NYU. Yeah.

I know. Jesus Christ. I know. My life's hard. I know. A lot of time to be existentially filled with angst, I'm sure. Yep, absolutely. So in 1965, she married an actor named Berkeley Harris. And the couple moved to L.A. the same year and had a son.

The marriage falls apart pretty quickly. And by 1970, she's a single mom with a two-year-old. And her husband was only paying her $500 a month in child support, and he only paid it for four months. So she needed a job. She was like a broke, single mom who hadn't worked in a really long time, even though she was educated at some of the world's greatest universities. But she was wondering what she was going to do for work. And what she says, one day she literally sat down and like, just to give a

think to her life. And she turned on the TV and she's watching TV shows. And she like was not impressed with what she saw. And she literally thought I can do that better. Wow. This is where the story gets kind of crazy because it's like her writing career in television was just meant to be. It's my sister said to me once, when you're doing what you're meant to be doing, the door is just open for you. Right. So she had taken one writing class in L.A. at UCLA, a short story writing class. And she had written one short story after taking this class.

And one day she's at the supermarket and she runs into a woman that she knew named Elizabeth Hush. And this woman was an actress. And she ended up showing Elizabeth the short story she had written, the one that she had written after that writing class. And Elizabeth suggested that she turn it into a teleplay. Elizabeth being an actor, she had a friend who was a producer on a show called Then Came Bronson. Don't know what it is. Never heard of it. But

Who do you know? Exactly. And Elizabeth thought this teleplay based on this short story was so good, she showed it to the producer. They needed one more script for that season of that show. And they decided to take this teleplay and make it the season finale. Now, they paid Susan Harris $4,500 for the script. This was 1970. This doesn't make any sense to me, but I did the math. I did like the inflation calculator. Thank you.

It's late, everybody. It's Matt. So $4,500 in 1970 money is the equivalent of $35,000 in today money. She got paid $35,000 for this one script. But then things just started to happen for her. So she kind of quickly becomes frustrated.

friends with Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley creator Gary Marshall. Oh, that guy. Oh, that guy. She meets Gary Marshall, becomes friendly with him. He likes her. He likes her work. He vouches for her, gets her a writing gig on a show called Love American Style. Do you know this? She wrote 10 episodes. Get it. So that was 1970. Then in 1971, after contributing scripts for shows, a show called The Courtship of Eddie's Father, which my mom was obsessed with, and The

Partridge family, she connects with Norman Lear. And Norman Lear invites her to come write for his hit show All in the Family, which she did from 1971 to 1973. But the thing is, during this time, she's juggling being a single mom and really wanting to be present for her kid, but also wanting to work. Like, she really is a parent who never put

her career above wanting to be a mom. She really tried to figure out how to be able to do both. Yeah, but it's like, that's such an age-old problem. Exactly. For, you know... For everybody, but obviously, especially for women and especially for women in the 70s in entertainment. Like, oh my God. So she has said that at the time she was the only woman writing for All in the Family and she would bring her son to story meetings in his stroller. Yeah.

And she said she had to do this out of necessity. There was just nobody else. She didn't have the time to find care for her kid. She would just bring him. And when Norman, she was so great writing on the show, Norman Lear asked her if she wanted to join the full-time writing staff and she turned it down because she wanted to have more time with her kid. One of the things we also learn about Susan Harris in this time is that she hated writing rooms.

It's not that she wasn't collaborative. She's like, I wrote things on my own. And she's like, you think about writing rooms of today and there's like 15 people in these writing rooms. That's not my gig. So she didn't really want to be on the writing stuff, mostly because she wanted to be a mom, but also because she was just like, let me give me an episode and let me write it. So after All in the Family, she transitioned to writing for Maud, which was a spinoff of the show. She only wrote four episodes for Maud, but

Two of the four were the double episode called Maude's Dilemma, which is like we casually know now as the abortion episodes. We're going to do a whole deep dive on Maude and the abortion episode. So I'm not going to get too much into it here. Our researcher, Jess, is so great. He gave me so much information that I didn't know about these episodes. But I'm going to hold until we do that deep dive cheesecake. So stay tuned. But Susan Harris was really thrilled to...

to be given the opportunity to write the abortion episodes because she really believed in writing about important issues in an entertaining way. And what a great venue to be able to do that. What a platform. What a platform. So now we jump to 1975 when Susan Harris teams up with Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas for the first time. And together they created a show called Femme.

And despite the fact that like the Susan Harris, Paul Junger, wit, Tony Thomas trio would go on to become one of the most powerful, like producing trios in like TV history. This show, Faye did not last long. It was a comedy starring Lee Grant about a newly divorced 40 something woman reentering the workforce and dating and that whole life. And it just did not catch on. It was canceled after 10 episodes and it's,

Susan Harris has these really funny stories about like just not handling that well. Like it was her first big like not success. And she said that like it was like she found out on a Tuesday that the show was canceled and she drove onto the lot on Wednesday and her parking space was gone. And she went into like the vice president of NBC's office and started throwing ashtrays. Like she was not taking it lying down. Do you believe in this though that you learn from your failures, not your successes? Well,

I think I've learned from both, but the failures are always the best lessons. And I think that you, for me, my journey has been like, you have to be in a place where you can understand. It's what makes failure bearable is the idea that you're going to learn something and be better in the future. Yeah, I do. But after Faye collapses, she creates another show in 1977 called Loves Me, Loves Me Not, another show that did not catch fire. But later that same year comes Soap.

So Soap was Susan Harris's first big hit. And again, we're going to do another whole deep dive on Soap, so we're not going to give too much here. Now, you loved Soap. Yeah. So the show tells the story of two sisters. It's Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell. And it's basically about rich people and their antics, which included infidelity, prostitution,

murder, alien abductions. Do you remember the alien abduction? Demonic possessions. And just like lots and lots of drama. And that, you know, they say that it was created as a nighttime parody of daytime soap operas, which it sounds like like a TV version of Soap Dish, which is like one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah, I will tell you that I was forbidden to watch it because it was a little it was known for being kind of risque and like sexual and sexual. It was not

you know, so I remember having to sneak to watch it. And my parents didn't really censor what we watched very much. So it made it all the more curious because I was like, well, they never. Yeah. So what is it? I know my mom who like, same, we didn't have a lot of restrictions. My mom did not want me watching Golden Girls, which is what I was like. I mean, I was like in middle school, you know, but like, it seems that like a theme in Susan Harris's work is that she's like sexual liberation, that whole thing. So, and of course, one of the things that

I know well about Soap, even though I've never seen it, is that a then-unknown Billy Crystal played Mary's gay son, Jody. And what makes it really special is that the character and his sexuality was treated with, like, humanity and humor. He wasn't, like, always the butt of the joke. And the thing about Soap was that it caused a lot of controversy even before it ever even aired. And we're going to get into all of this.

It's so fascinating, the controversy. But because of the controversy, the ratings were good, but they could never really attract advertisers. And so even though the network went to bat for the show and really fought for the show, it only lasted four seasons because it was very hard to attract advertisers. And Susan Harris has said that if advertisers hadn't been a problem, that show would have run for 25 years because people just loved that show.

One of the things to come out of Soap was the spinoff Benson. So I grew up watching Benson, which is Robert Guillaume, like famously, you know, he was a butler. So apparently Robert Guillaume, the Benson character, was, quote, the sharp-witted butler to one of the two families. And Benson was very successful. It went on to run for seven seasons, so three seasons longer than Soap, which it was a spinoff of.

Do you know that Robert Guillaume was a musical theater actor? You know what? I forgot that, but I think I did know that. I have a picture of him in one of my musical selections, vocal selections from Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Oh, wow. Yeah, he was a singer. So on Soap, she wrote every single episode for the first year and a half. They tried to bring in writers to help her. She couldn't ever find anybody that worked with her that she thought was good enough. So she wrote every single...

single episode for the first year and a half. She eventually found another writer she trusted. His name was Stu Silver about a year and a half in. But at the end, she was still heavily involved in Soap all the way through its run. And then at the end, when Benson happened, she wrote the pilot for Benson, but then kind of went away.

And that kind of became a thing that she did where she would like conceive and create the show and sort of write the pilot for it and then kind of like step away. That's good. That seems unsustainable. Yeah. And she talks a lot about the exhaustion of like the toll that working on soap took on her. And it really did take her away from her son. And she has this great story where she was saying to her, like she sat her son down and said like,

hey, we've got a choice to make. They lived in a nice house, but she's like, I can work really hard and you're going to see me a little bit less for a little bit and we can get a pool or I can work less and be more home and present for you. And we just won't get a pool. And he's like, mom, I want a pool. So, you know, like that's how you explain to a little kid, like what the workload is going to be like. And I think that she suffered the guilt of a working parent. Of course. You know, it's a win, win and lose, lose. Exactly. At the same time. So in 1983, Ida

I didn't know this. She married her producing partner, Paul Junger Witt. Did you know they were married? No, I also didn't know it was Junger. I always want to say Younger. Maybe I'm saying it wrong. No, I bet you're saying it right. But it's like Carl Jung. Totally. So you've said that. I was like, oh, it's Junger. I've always said it like that because it's J-U-N-G-E-R. Right. I'm the idiot. I'm probably saying it wrong. Should we look it up? No. No. Because we're tired. It's really late. Yeah, yeah, I know. I love that we could look it up. No, it is really late. Who knows even what episode this is.

is going to go on, but Jen's been in rehearsal all day. It's almost nine o'clock. Anybody who knows me knows I'm well in bed. We're both in bed by eight. Yes. Oh my God. But it's at this time, like right around when she decides to marry Paul Younger Junger Witt, that she decides to take a break from TV. And of

course this always happens her deciding to step back and take a break from TV coincides with NBC deciding they wanted to find somebody to create a show that they were then calling Miami Nice and the idea was that it would be about four older women and the friendship and the companionship that develops between them at that stage of life and Susan

didn't even know that this was in the air. Her husband, Paul, was at a meeting where NBC was talking about it and was kind of like, do you think Susan would... And he's like, I'll talk to her. And he goes home and he's like, babe, here's the thing. And she writes saying to him, like, don't do this to me. Like, I need a break. I need a break. And he's like, well, hear me out. It's about...

women and older women. And she said that was the thing that intrigued her was that the idea of writing about older people really appealed to her because she says that like older people have stories, whereas younger people don't. And there's like a richness to writing about older people. And she was like, OK. Because how old was she at this point? She was in her 40s, I think. And she was like, OK, I can do that.

So the thing is, in her mind, she was thinking she was going to be writing about people between the ages of 60 and 70. That to her is what older was. Right. Not her age. Exactly. And when she went to the network, she realized that older to them meant 40s. And she's like, well, that's me. I'm not older. But they came to a compromise that it would be between the 50s and the early 60s, but the ages would never really be mentioned. So it'd be in that sort of nebulous zone, like 50s to 60s, which

we covered it in the pilot episode is kind of like where we know they kind of landed, you know, so she does it. She's all in. And, you know, we, we know how the, all the women got cast. So we don't need to do that here. But what is amazing that we haven't really discussed before is like, what a,

smash Golden Girls was right out of the gate. It premiered at number one with an estimated 44 million viewers. Holy, that's 44 million swimming pools. 44 million. So absolutely. And, you know, she was saying that it was it was really the relationship between the women that really resonated with people right from the start. And what she had to

I'm totally crying. I know. You softie. Well, it's a little...

Of course. You know? I mean, that's the thing. Like, these women find each other at that stage of life. And, like, we forget now because there's been so many shows. They took a chance writing a show about four older women coming together in chosen family. And, of course, we've seen that model recreated so many times now. But, like, they invented that. They really took that. I'm sure she was really excited to write this because there's so many people who have felt marginalized in one way or another. I know just speaking for myself as a woman, you know, it was...

so thrilling to see a woman of a certain age, let's say, too. That is thrilling. Like never, never do they get to be the center of the story. And I feel like we're back to that. I feel like it would be really hard to get Golden Girls made with women who look like that. I'm so glad you said that because I think about that all the time. You know what I mean? Like if they were to make Golden Girls now, it would be you.

You know what I mean? Literally. Literally, because you're like, I mean, you're not the age of the older women, but like you're gorgeous and sexy. Thank you. And that's like what it would have to be like. Can you imagine like Doris Roberts as well? You know what I mean? Like it just wouldn't happen, you know? So anyway, you know, obviously we know the stunning success of the Golden Girls. And then after the Golden Girls, she went on to create so many more shows. Of course, there was the Golden Palace that was only on for a year after. We're going to do a whole deep dive on that. Then there was Empty Nest, which I was obsessed.

Did you watch Empty Nest? Only in pieces. I watched every episode. It was a spinoff of the Golden Girls. It ran for seven seasons. And it ran during the Golden Girls, the beginning of it. So there would be crossover episodes where characters from Empty Nest would be on the Golden Girls and Golden Girls would be on Empty Nest. Richard Mulligan. And he was my favorite actor in Soap. Oh, really? So I'm sure he had a...

good relationship with her. Yes. It was such a great show. There was a show called Good and Evil that only aired six episodes. But then there was Nurses. Did you watch Nurses? No. Nurses was a spinoff of Empty Nest, which was a spinoff of Golden Girls. That's right. Nurses only ran for three seasons, but I absolutely

Absolutely loved it. There's another show called The Secret Lives of Men that only aired seven episodes. And then, you know, in 2007, Susan Harris was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. The most recent, like, significant profile on her was from 2018. It was from Entertainment Weekly, and it describes her as being sort of a Hollywood recluse. Like, she doesn't like to go to the cocktail parties, and she likes to just kind of

do her own thing and be around her family. Do you think she's most like Dorothy? She sounds like a Dorothy. For sure. Yeah. I mean, like the story of her like storming into the office and throwing the ashtrays, like definitely Dorothy. And she talks about that. And the illness that she suffered. Right. Because she wrote the two episodes about chronic fatigue syndrome for Dorothy. And that was a thing that she battled with most of her adult life. So anyway, that's my deep dive on Susan Harris. That was so good.

That was so good. I learned so much about her. It's so interesting to learn about these people, these names that we've read all these years. You know, it makes me like her even more. Totally. Like everyone that we do, I find something to just fall in love with. Yeah, yeah, me too. And I love... I wonder if...

if this would have been her path, you know, had she not had the difficulty of going through her divorce and all of that, you know, like just like, hey, I can do that. And she never studied TV writing. She only took one short story writing class. Absolutely meant to be. Look how many people study and train, you know, for something and it just doesn't work out. Doesn't work out. Not for Susan Harris. That wasn't her story. No.

Cheesecakes, thank you for joining us for another great episode. Hey, before we get out of here, can I remind you, really keep those Apple Podcasts and Spotify reviews coming. We're up to like almost 600 now. I want to get to 1,000. Oh my gosh. You just click on that little thing that says write a review and just leave a review. It really helps people find us. Yeah, like just a sentence would do it. Yep, just say like, you think that Jen is so pretty or whatever. Actually gorgeous would be better. I would like gorgeous. All right, I'm going to stick with gorgeous.

Also join the Facebook group Cheesecake. It's the Golden Girls and Deep Dive podcast discussion group. We're in there all the time. It's a great place to make new friends, talk about the episode, meet like fellow Golden Girls fanatics. Everyone's so nice and respectful. Like even if we have disagreements or different opinions, I actually love that. And everyone's been so nice. It really is true. And like, I love watching the Facebook group grow and just seeing people like meet each other and just

like make new friends and to like finding like-minded people on the internet is not a thing that happens very often but it's happening in that group yay please join please join and lastly thank you for being a friend by telling a friend about our podcast you love it I love it one of the questions when you join the Facebook group is like how did you hear about us and a lot of it is word of mouth it's like oh my boyfriend sent this to me or my sister sent this to me you know what one of my favorite things is is all the children who are now watching with their parents I know it's like a new generation little mini little

mini cheesecake. Oh, mini cheeses. We love you, cheesecakes, and we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.