About Thirty years ago, “The Golden Girls” ended its cheesecake-fueled seven-season run with an unforgettable finale that involved an awkward date, a savage prank, an unexpected wedding and a tearful goodbye.
In the two-part episode, “One Flew Out of the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which aired May 9, 1992, Blanche (Rue McClanahan) has plans the night her Uncle Lucas (Leslie Nielsen) is visiting and pawns him off on Dorothy (Bea Arthur), telling each that the other is eager to meet. But when Dorothy and Lucas realize they were lied to, they scheme to teach Blanche a lesson by pretending they’ve hit it off and are getting married. During the elaborate ruse, they decide to wed for real, and Dorothy ends up moving out of the foursome’s Miami home to live with Lucas in Atlanta.
While Arthur had opted to leave the hit NBC sitcom, McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty went on to reprise their roles in the spinoff “The Golden Palace,” which premiered on CBS in September of that year.
“We knew we wanted to kind of give her a fitting tribute and a fitting departure from the show,” recalled Mitchell Hurwitz, who served as a writer and producer on the series’ final seasons, including the finale.
“I remember, she was very moved by the last episode,” Hurwitz said of Arthur. “And she wrote me this lovely note about it. And that was really a privilege. I always felt lucky to be there at all. And to be given a chance to write something that was meaningful for her was really special.”
“There were just tremendous writers over the seven years of the show, at every stage of it,” added Hurwitz, who noted that “Golden Girls” creator Susan Harris and her partners Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas were “really responsible for the soul of that show.
“I really wanted to go even further,” he recalled. “I wanted to have the credits start to play and kind of pull them really quickly when she came back in, and then as you know, she comes back in one more time, presumably having scaled the lanai wall.”
“It really kind of mirrored reality. I remember there were a lot of goodbyes said that week,” he said. “And she didn’t want to leave. I think Dorothy didn’t want to leave and I think Bea Arthur didn’t really want to leave.”
“Bea was a very deep person and a very warm person, but it was all kind of hidden in this kind of stern exterior,” Hurwitz added. “So you know, it was kind of amazing to be part of something where so much emotion came out of her. … As you can see, when you watch it, Bea is really moved trying to say goodbye to these people. And I think they were surprised that she was as moved as she was. I don’t think she was surprised, because you know, she was a very deep person. But she didn’t show it often. And so the ending, I think, ended up being very affecting, because we really saw, you know, not only the character leaving, but Bea Arthur dealing with the fact that she was leaving.”
THE GOLDEN GIRLS
In the episode, Dorothy and Lucas pretend to be engaged as a prank on Blanche before deciding to tie the knot.
Hurwitz also reflected on guest star Nielsen’s casting as Dorothy’s future husband.
“I think it was a great match with Bea Arthur because they’re both such formidable presences, and they looked good together,” he said.
Hurwitz pointed out that the finale has several departures from a typical “Golden Girls” episode, such as the voice-overs revealing the inner thoughts of each character during Dorothy and Lucas’ wedding.
“The idea of finally hearing what was going on in the Golden Girls’ heads was kind of interesting,” he observed. “And, you know, there was this magical realism moment, where Bea Arthur is thinking, ‘God, I love this man so much, and we’re so in sync, and I feel like he can hear every word that I’m thinking,’ and then inexplicably, Leslie Nielsen thinks, ‘Yes, Dorothy, I can.’”
The “Golden Girls” finale’s wedding scene included voice-overs revealing all the characters’ thoughts.ABC Photo Archives / Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
However, he still considers the finale a classic episode at its heart, “because it really was about their relationships.”
“They’re having to say goodbye to someone they love, which is a very real thing that you have to deal with at that age,” Hurwitz said. “We got to deal with it in a much
