Blanche Devereaux is a woman of many skills—most notably, some that are impolite to discuss publicly—but it’s fair to say exemplary parenting and grandparenting weren’t among them. She acknowledges strained relationships with her (many) children more than once in the course of The Golden Girls, but we rarely see her do anything about it.

In “Even Grandmas Get the Blues” (S6E20), she pretends granddaughter Aurora, Rebecca’s baby, is her own to impress a potential suitor (Alan Rachins). A few episodes later, in “Beauty and the Beast” (S7E03), granddaughter Melissa comes to visit and Blanche forces the resentful child to participate in a pageant for her own vain reasons. As in her dealings with sister Virginia, Blanche focuses on herself to the exclusion of others, but it wasn’t always that way.

In the awkwardly titled “On Golden Girls” (S1E06), an On Golden Pond takeoff plotted like a Berenstain Bears book, she’s tasked with hosting her rebellious grandson, David (Billy Jayne, formerly Jacoby) for two weeks while daughter Janet rehabilitates her marriage. Melodramatically bemoaning her plight to the girls, she asks “Why do these things always happen to me? I’m just a wreck. I don’t know what I’m gonna do!” (Unaware of David’s impending visit, Dorothy replies “Blanche, we go through this every morning. Now admit it, you have cellulite.”)

On the day of his arrival in Miami, the troubled teen is AWOL at the airport, having made his way to the Bahamas as a stowaway in the plane’s bathroom. He’s deposited on Blanche’s doorstep by a state trooper who catches her eye. “Oh, I just don’t know how to thank you, officer,” she tells him sweetly while David looks on. “But I would like to try. I’m usually at Wally’s for happy hour on Tuesdays.”

David’s misbehavior upsets his grandmother, who is quick to add, “But then what can I expect? His father’s a Yankee.” He swiftly takes off again without Blanche’s consent, causing her to wring her hands and say “I guess I really should’ve given him some money.” Her permissiveness spurs the first of several parenting conversations that allow each roommate to reminisce about her childhood.

Sophia: You should’ve given him a smack.

Blanche: I don’t believe in hitting children.

Sophia: Personally, I like to lay into a kid with a melon baller. It’s got a nice weight, good balance in the hand. And it’s portable.

Rose: My father used to punish us by sending us to the dairy barn to milk Alice.

Dorothy: What’s so terrible about that?

Rose: You had to milk Alice sitting on a stool.

Blanche: I thought you always milked a cow sitting on a stool.

Rose: No, no. Alice had to sit on a stool. You see, she was involved in this nasty plowing accident. It was during spring planting and Daddy had hitched her up to the plow, ’cause poor old Toby had gotten a fever and gone deaf—

Dorothy: Rose, Rose, Rose… Sweetheart, save the story. When David comes back, tell him. That can be his punishment.

David’s 2 am return is heralded by loud music as he holds court with new friends in the living room. The girls break up the party, but not before David and a buddy hurl a few ageist insults at them, including “Take it easy, ladies. Don’t get your support hose in a knot.” Afterward, when David continues to mouth off, Sophia slaps him. In a dated but amusing touch, her act of violence is met with rapturous approval by the studio audience.

Blanche angrily asks “Is that all you Italians know how to do, scream and hit?” (“No, we also know how to make love and sing opera,” Sophia replies.) Dorothy admonishes her mother and apologizes to Blanche, who tends to David while Rose, an emotional weathervane, reels from the evening’s excitement. “This is like The Long Day’s Journey Into Light” she exclaims. “Night, Rose,” Dorothy corrects her, leading to a predictable gag as Rose replies, “Night, Dorothy,” and retires to bed.

On the lanai, a shaken David, who has never been hit before (Janet’s clearly no Patty Duke), wants to go home, but Blanche points out there’s no one there to take care of him. He responds “I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it long enough,” confessing that all his parents ever do is fight. “They don’t even know I exist,” he says, and stalks off before she can extract more details.

In the morning, the girls present Blanche with a list of chores David can do over the next two weeks as punishment, but she’s reluctant to comply. Dorothy, a high school teacher who knows a thing or two about keeping kids in line, offers some advice. “Look, Blanche, the one thing that David has never had in his life is structure. Doing chores will give him a bit of responsibility. He might even start feeling good about himself.” But Blanche’s primary concern is for herself, and whether he’ll hate her if she lays down the law.

“Listen, Blanche, you do what is best for David, not what is easiest for you,” Dorothy counsels, and the girls discuss their childhood chores. (“Crossing the street without getting pregnant was a chore in Sicily,” Sophia recalls, adding “Cheap chianti and narrow streets” when Rose asks for clarification.) Listening to everything her roommates were expected to do, Blanche has a “Circle of Life” moment of realization. She wasn’t expected to do anything for herself as a child and raised Janet the same way. “So that’s why David is the way he is now,” she theorizes.

Unhappy about the chore list, David stages his 87th escape attempt, only to be thwarted by Dorothy. “Why should I stay here when I got all this crappy stuff to do?” he asks. “And no one likes me anyway.” She assures him that isn’t the case, saying even Sophia’s a fan. (“She doesn’t hit anyone unless she really cares. Take it from me.”) As for his chore list, she’s unsympathetic but offers to negotiate, saying “You know, first of all, buddy boy, life is full of crappy stuff to do. It’s everywhere, so you better get used to it. The President has crappy stuff to do.”

Dorothy’s no-nonsense approach resonates with him and they begin to commiserate about his problems at home. “My life stinks,” he tells her plainly. “But you have a choice,” she observes. “You can tough it out or you can let it beat you. But right now you’re here, and this doesn’t have to stink.” With that, the tenor of David’s entire visit changes, and by the time it’s over he’s so happy that he proposes staying indefinitely. Before he leaves to rejoin his parents, the girls tell him he can always visit when things get rough.

In several subsequent episodes, including “End of the Curse” (S2E01), “And Then There Was One” (S2E16) and “Bringing Up Baby” (S3E03), the roommates fantasize about getting a second chance at motherhood. This time around, Rose doesn’t feel that way, opining “It wouldn’t be fair to be this old and have to raise children.” Blanche disagrees, seeing the opportunity to raise David as a chance for redemption after her failures with Janet.

“On Golden Girls” is one of the least memorable episodes featuring a relative’s visit, partly because David’s so thinly drawn and partly because there’s little weight to Blanche’s supposed investment in his emotional development. But it’s a great example of a Dorothy-as-voice-of-reason episode, because her pragmatic focus, unlike that of his parents or grandmother, is solely on David from start to finish.

Its B-plot is also notably bizarre, as Dorothy crams for a French exam while Sophia, her bunkmate during David’s stay, insists Dorothy’s getting sick. It’s unclear why Dorothy was studying French, which isn’t referenced in other episodes. And she never gets sick, leaving viewers to assume something ended up on the editing room floor.

Additional screen caps are available on Instagram.

Introduction: Thank You for Being a Friend

Previous Episode: “The Triangle” (S1E05)

Next Episode: “The Competition” (S1E07)

Where to watch

All seven seasons of The Golden Girls are available on DVD. You can also stream it at Hulu and Fubo with subscriptions, or buy it by the season (or episode) on platforms like Amazon and YouTube.

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