Blanche's Little Girl

S03-E14 of "The Golden Girls", co-written by series mainstay Terry Grossman and Kathy Speer, is so badly misconceived from the get-go that I can think of no way to fix the problem except for throwing out this script altogether. Blanche's long-estranged daughter Rebecca--a real beauty who once worked as a professional model--comes to visit. She's still a pretty girl, only now she's vastly overweight, causing Sophia to go into a barrage of 'funny' fat jokes (which the studio audience eats up, no pun intended). Blanche works hard avoiding the issue until Rebecca introduces the ladies to her fiancé, who also makes fat jokes (and this time the audience doesn't laugh). There's such a double standard at work here that it makes one wince. In the end, Blanche talks her daughter out of marrying the jerk and to accept herself as she is--although, ironically, when the character of Rebecca returns in later episodes, she is played by a different, much thinner actress.

I love Golden Girls, but this episode is tied for absolute worst with the Empty Nests episode. I'm surprised it has such a high rating! I've been rewatching the show for the hundredth time and I guess I blocked this one out, because I didn't remember it at all. I wish I'd left it that way. Pretty gross that Jeremy is made to be THE villain when the girls are just as bad. They all treat Rebecca like garbage because of her weight. Of course many episodes of the show have cringe moments, but this entire episode is cringe. Very hard to sit through and not entertaining. The fat jokes ain't even good, they're all extremely basic. "I love all of you, every pound!" My eyes about rolled out've my head at every low blow. Totally lacking the usual wit of Golden Girls.

The point that this episode was trying to make would've worked just as well had it only been the lousy guy who Rebecca was dating hurling the insults. Adding Sophia to spew the same insults was unnecessary and just made her look mean.

I think it's also out of character for Sophia to be so outright insulting towards Blanche's daughter the way she was because she's been shown to be a protective mother to her own children, and I believe she would also be just as protecting and respectful to the other girl's children too.

Yet from the moment she opens the front door to greet Blanche's daughter she hurls fat jokes right in front of the woman's face. It's shocking and makes you cringe at how mean and disrespectful she's being to not only someone she's just met, but to Blanche's own daughter.

And it's odd that later on in the episode she sits in the kitchen with the girls agreeing what a jerk the boyfriend is to be so insulting to Rebecca when she was doing it herself and within only 2 seconds of meeting the poor girl. She's such a hypocrite here.

Blanche is an incredibly vain character, so having her daughter arrive after 4 years and be surprisingly overweight is a good story to do where we can see Blanche overcome her shallow vanity and accept Rebecca the way she is.

It just didn't need so many fat jokes to get there. We can already see she's overweight so I believe that could have spoken for itself without all the hurtful insults written intended to get laughs. And none of them were even remotely funny.

There's not even a good St. Olaf story from Rose to save this episode because Dorothy has reached her limit with them and cuts her off before she could say helderberlderflergen-nursurblrgen. I can't think of any other GG episode I would give 1 star to, but this one deserves it.

This episode is cringe worthy, hurtful and degrading for someone who has weight problems. Lowered my self-esteem and brought back a lot of bad feelings from my weight condition. The man she was engaged to slams her a lot, he's the only one they seem to talk about insulting here. But, Sophia insulted her when she opened the door to greet her. The only words coming on so if he is known before the man was even in the picture were insults. During this episode there was no time that Sophia said anything acceptable about Blanches daughter during this show the whole time. Moreover, they just let her keep on and on with the awful slams. I was cringing every time she went through another one and I thought to this after having a stand in the doorway and take it. To me that was the worst part and the most unbelievable that they actually sat down and wrote that in the script and it was acceptable. This episode is why I stopped watching Golden girls.

I absolutely adore The Golden Girls, but the fat shaming in this episode is too much. I'm not overweight, but all I kept thinking while watching is how upsetting this episode must be to someone who struggles with their weight or has body image issues. It's like insult after insult about obesity and was cringeworthy. I hope the actress who played Blanches daughter was highly compensated.