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rachelkaser · 2 years

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Stay Golden Sunday: Son-In-Law Dearest

Dorothy struggles to be a good parent when her daughter Kate visits with a serious problem. Blanche and Rose watch an I Love Lucy marathon.

Picture It...

Blanche is setting out a spread of food as she prepares for an I Love Lucy marathon. Sophia wasn’t really a fan of the show, but Rose isn’t even familiar with it -- apparently Charlie was too cheap to buy a TV. Dorothy says she won’t have time as her daughter, Kate, is about to arrive for a visit. Dorothy suddenly gets cagey, and Blanche and Rose can tell she’s hiding something. But Sophia spills: They think Kate is pregnant. Rose and Blanche are overjoyed, but Dorothy said she wasn’t going to tell them until they were sure.

The doorbell rings, and Dorothy is all aflutter until she opens it: It’s Stan. He says Kate called him as well and told him she’d be at Dorothy’s house. They tell him what they suspect, and he’s excited as well. As they’re all speculating happily on the situation, the doorbell rings again. This time it is Kate. She hugs her parents, and then Blanche and Rose. She even asks that they stay, since they’re family and should hear the news too. Just as Stan and Dorothy are about to start weeping with joy, Kate gives her news: Her husband Dennis had an affair and she’s left him.

ROSE: Charlie was a wonderful man, but he could squeeze a nickel ‘til the buffalo pooped. SOPHIA: Boy, I’ll tell you: There’s something to the power of suggestion. Excuse me [...] STAN: Isn’t life a gas? SOPHIA: This is amazing. Excuse me again.

In the kitchen, Stan is raging until Dorothy shuts him down by reminding him of his own history of infidelity. Kate tries to get her parents to focus on her problems. Sophia comes in to comfort her granddaughter too. Kate says she feels hurt and alone, and Dorothy tells her that her family is here for her. Stan offers to cancel his business meeting, but Kate tells him to go to it. Stan and Dorothy continue to snipe at each other. Later that night, Blanche vainly tries to explain I Love Lucy to Rose. Dorothy tries to talk to them about Kate’s (and her) distress, but they’re distracted by the show. Dorothy eventually has to threaten them to get them to pay attention.

In the kitchen, Dorothy recounts how she felt after being cheated on. Rose says she felt the same way when she thought Charlie was unfaithful. Her reason for thinking so: He went to bed one night without sex. It was apparently the only time it happened in their marriage. Blanche is stunned, especially when Rose reveals that they also had sex every morning, too. The doorbell rings, and Rose goes to answer, thinking it’s Stan. When she returns to the kitchen, she tells Dorothy to stay calm: It’s Dennis.

DOROTHY: I remember when Stanley told me that he was having an affair. It was at least 24 hours before I cut the crotches out of all his slacks. BLANCHE: You didn’t? DOROTHY: I was teaching English Lit at the time. Symbolism was my life.

Dorothy angrily tells Dennis to leave, and the other Girls back her up. Kate hears the commotion in the living room, and at first she also tells Dennis to leave. He begs her just to talk to him for a few minutes. She brings him into the kitchen. The Girls hunker down on the couch to wait. An hour later, Rose and Blanche are watching I Love Lucy, waiting for Kate and Dennis to finish talking. Then Dennis emerges from the kitchen, and Kate says she’s forgiven him after their talk.

Blanche hustles Rose out so that Dorothy can talk to her daughter. Kate says Dennis explained and apologized, and she wants to fix her marriage. Dorothy angrily tells Kate she’s making a mistake, especially when she demands Dorothy forgive him too. Kate gets mad at her mother and says they’ll leave first thing in the morning. Dorothy wakes Sophia up later that night and tells her what happened. Sophia, after some difficulty waking up, tells Dorothy that it wasn’t her business and she should have stayed out of it.

SOPHIA: Alright, alright. Sit. Listen. Learn. Picture this: Brooklyn, July, 1949. DOROTHY: Ma, can’t you put a sentence together? You sound like a sportscaster. SOPHIA: Ah, shut up.

She tells Dorothy to picture it, the night of her first wedding anniversary. She recalls Dorothy was upset because Stan not only forgot their anniversary, but that he had lipstick on his shirt. She asked Dorothy if she was willing to forgive Stan, and didn’t express her disapproval when Dorothy said yes. Dorothy still isn’t sure she can hold her tongue, and as she’s walking out, Sophia tells her that the most likely consequence of putting her feelings first is that she will lose Kate and her future grandchildren.

The next morning, Rose and Blanche finished the marathon. Dorothy says she’s going to express her feelings, despite Sophia’s continued warnings not to. Stan enters, and the Girls tell him what’s going on. He’s not pleased about the situation either, but he doesn’t outwardly express that when Kate enters the kitchen. Dorothy says she has something to say -- not to Kate, but to Dennis. She ushers him out onto the lanai over Kate’s objections, and Stan tags along.

DENNIS: I promise you that nothing like this will ever happen again. DOROTHY: Good, good. *taking Dennis’s hand* Because, if it does, I will break every bone in your hand. You’ll spend the rest of your life selling newspapers out of a wagon. STAN: *aside to Dennis* Keep it zipped, buddy. She’s not kidding.

Out on the lanai, Dorothy tells Dennis how it felt when Kate came to her, upset: Seeing her child so hurt is the worst kind of pain, and she only wants to protect Kate and make her problems go away. Stan concurs with the feeling. Dennis apologizes again, and says he’ll do everything he can to make it up to Kate. Dorothy gives him one last threat, then they go back to the living room, with everything at the least settled. Kate and Dennis leave, and Stan prepares to go, saying he’s glad he and Dorothy can be a team again. When he makes an ill-timed crack about his own infidelity, Dorothy makes sure he hurts for it.

“What’s so entertaining about a Cuban beating a drum?”

This will probably be one of my most unpopular SGS ratings, but oh how I hate this episode. It’s got some great lines, and the B-plot is alright. But the main story just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That is primarily a matter of bias on my part, not to mention my inability to relate to any of the characters. However, I will point out some parts where I feel the episode’s writing weaknesses let the story down.

BLANCHE: Come on, Rose. ROSE: But what about Lucy? BLANCHE: We’ll watch it on the portable in the kitchen. ROSE: But that set’s black-and-white!

I’m not a fool: I know what the episode is trying to say with regards to Dorothy’s parenting. And it’s a good lesson: You have to let your children make their own mistakes. Dorothy’s big problem as a parent is a desire to over-involve herself in her kids’ lives -- we already saw that in the episode with Michael. She’s making the same mistake here, but it feels like the episode is being too harsh on her.

According to Golden Girls Forever, the idea for this episode came from an incident in writer Harriett Weiss’s life, where she got in the middle of an argument her daughter was having with her son-in-law, which made her daughter angry after she (the daughter) made up with the husband. And I can see how that evolved into the current plotline.

ROSE: Who did Lucy play? BLANCHE: Lucy. ROSE: I know, but who did she play? BLANCHE: Lucy! ROSE: Right, but who did she play?! BLANCHE: Lucy played Lucy! ROSE: Well, then why didn’t Desi play Desi? BLANCHE: He wasn’t tall enough.

But here’s the problem: It feels like Kate is way more angry at her mother than her philandering husband -- to the point where I don’t think even Dorothy’s meddling is an excuse for the way Kate reacts. I’m not trying to pass judgement on Kate for taking Dennis back. Even the episode itself implies it’s a mistake, but that it’s not anyone’s business but her’s and Dennis’s. That’s fine -- and I’m going to overlook my belief that Kate made it her parents’ business by going to them for help.

Let’s look at it just through the lens of what Kate actually does in the episode. Part of the problem is that the writers didn’t really give Deena Freeman, who plays Kate, enough space to show how hurt she is. She has exactly two scenes before Dennis arrives, and only one in which she gets to express her feelings. Her only line is a plaintive “He really hurt me” that she says to Sophia, and she’s otherwise very placid and unresponsive.

DOROTHY: *to Stan* Is your name Dennis? STAN: Hey, I want to be there. I have a right. DOROTHY: One sperm with a sense of direction and I’m paying for it for the rest of my life.

Even after Dennis arrives, she’s more stiff than she is angry, and she literally only says four words to him before allowing him into the kitchen to talk. She displays way more passion and anger at her mother, which is why it felt like displacement to me -- it’s literally after the talk that she’s all smiles at Dennis and rage at her mother. The episode also tells us how Kate feels rather than shows it. Dorothy goes back and forth: In one scene she says she’s never seen Kate so upset, then just a few minutes later, she acknowledges that Kate seems to be handling the situation well, though she attributes this to shock.

Again, maybe it’s hard for me to relate, because I’m not a mother and I never put my own mother in that position. But in general, none of the Girls’ daughters have impressed me thus far (barring Dorothy, obviously), and Kate is no exception.

STAN: Think about it. Part of me will be passed on to that child. DOROTHY: I’m sure we’ll learn to love it anyway.

The other problem I have is that the episode doesn’t seem to know what to do with Stan. It makes sense that he’s here: Kate needs both of her parents for support. But the writers also want to draw parallels between Kate’s situation and Dorothy’s reaction to Stan’s infidelity, if only to explain why Dorothy is “overreacting.” However, this leaves Stan in a sort of quantum state where he’s both the archetypal philanderer and a doting father.

For example, he and Dorothy are sniping at each other in the kitchen, for which they are shown to be in the wrong as they’re not focusing on Kate’s problems. Sophia also brings up Stan’s frequent infidelity and Dorothy’s forgiveness of it as a way of demonstrating how she (Sophia) kept out of Dorothy’s business. However, in the same scene she mentions that, if Dorothy alienates Kate, she’ll be hearing about her grandchildren from Stan. Why wouldn’t Kate be equally angry at Stan, who threatens to kill Dennis when he is told he returned? Why is he off the hook?

SOPHIA: *at Blanche’s spread* A few more snacks like that, and the only thing you’ll be able to fit into is a saddle.

To me this is especially jarring in the final scene, in which Dorothy sits Dennis down and confronts him on the effects of his behavior on Kate and how that made her parents feel. It’s staged almost identically to the scene in “Guess Who’s Coming to the Wedding” where Dorothy tore an epic strip off of Stan for his hurtful and insensitive behavior during their divorce. And yet here, Stan is an ally -- they even hug while she’s explaining her anger to Dennis.

This is mere minutes before Stan makes a very insensitive crack implicitly blaming Dorothy for his own cheating. I know Stan straddling the line between likeable and unlikeable is kind of his whole deal, but still . . . I don’t like it, I don’t know how else to say it. Again, it just feels like the whole episode is straight-up beating Dorothy with the short end of the stick. Maybe this is something I just don’t get but eh, it’s my blog so I’m satisfied with my own slice rating. If you liked this episode, more power to you.

DOROTHY: Rose, Blanche, this is the part where my good friends are supposed to shut off the TV and run after me. So either shut off the TV or I’m gonna hurl it through the window. *the other Girls quickly shut off the TV and run into the kitchen* DOROTHY: Thank you, I’m touched. BLANCHE: How are you holding up, Dorothy? DOROTHY: I just threatened to throw a TV through a plate glass window. That should give you some indication.

I’m not going to say much about the B-plot, where Blanche and Rose have an I Love Lucy marathon, and the former must explain the series to the latter. It’s cute and harmless, but the biggest takeaway from this plot is the revelation that Rose and her husband Charlie were very sexually active. Assuming Rose is correct, they apparently only got about 5 hours of sleep every night for their entire married life.

That is pretty amusing -- if only because it’s unexpected -- by itself, but Rose’s line about how people who talk about sex a lot must be compensating for not having much of it is even more perfect. Especially when Dorothy immediately turns and pins a shocked Blanche with a stare.

DENNIS: Mother Dorothy-- DOROTHY: And do not call me Mother Dorothy. I hate it when you call me Mother Dorothy. I feel like I should be handing out rice on the streets of Calcutta.

Also, one last thing: From what I’ve heard, the producers sent a script to Lucille Ball as a courtesy, and she thought it was hilarious. She may never have been able to guest on the show, but she definitely seemed to love The Golden Girls as much as the rest of us do.

Episode rating: 🍰🍰 (two cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite part of the episode:

Sophia puts Stan in his place:

STAN: Do I smell waffles? BLANCHE: No. STAN: Could I smell waffles? SOPHIA: What does this look like, the House of Pancakes?

#golden girls #stay golden #stay golden sunday #dorothy zbornak #s02e23 #sophia petrillo #blanche devereaux #rose nylund #son-in-law dearest #picture it

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