User Reviews

In this episode girls have a winning ticket for $10, but they put into the jacket that Sophia donates to the guy who comes collecting items for used things shop. When they find out they go on a quest to find the jacket but it keeps on escaping them until they get to a homeless shelter, where they hear all the stories of the people staying and end up donating the ticket at the end.

What a great episode. I was laughing through most of it, until the very end when they end up in the homeless shelter and it isn't so funny anymore. A great balance between comedy and getting people aware of a serious matter. The stories at the end are so well done and told, showing different ways one may end up on the street and what variety of people is there. Good acting by everyone. I ended up having tears in my eyes. Well done, Golden Girls for keeping people's attentions on the world problems besides entertaining us.

Writers Kathy Speer and Terry Grossman (supervised by Susan Harris) wrote an excellent episode. Although a sitcom, The Golden Girls were a series not being afraid of bringing social injustices to the attention of the public -as this episode proves. We start off light as the girls buy -what turns out to be- a winning lottery ticket, it gets misplaced though and the search for it is funny and well written. And then we get to the better part -the girls end up in a homeless shelter and decide to stay the night. The dialogues they have with the guests are eye-openers. Sometimes life is cruel -and without any warning there you are, in a shelter, homeless. As a friend of Sophia says: no-one told me it costs money to get old... And so she had to leave her retirement home -a nice punishment for becoming a senior citizen.

When 'Brother, can you spare a dime?' is sung as the girls look for their ticket, it is heartbreaking. In the end what else can they do but only the right thing?

I'm touched every time I watch it. Excellent writing, excellent acting, excellent directing (Terry Hughes) and as a topic still very ongoing, even 25 years after taping.

Pieter

This episode really took me by surprise. It begins ordinarily enough when Blanche purchases an aviator jacket, and places Dorothy's winning lottery ticket in one of the pockets for safe keeping. Sophia accidently gives the jacket to a man who calls at the house, collecting donations for a thrift shop. The girls go to extrordinary lenghts to retrieve the jacket and end up somewhere quite unexpected. There are many highlights in this episode, not least is the great acting from the guest actors, who make you instantly care about their characters. A very moving and brilliant episode.

Of the 200 or so episodes of "Golden Girls", there are a handful of episodes that are dull or funny or too depressing to watch over and over again. Among my many "Golden Girls" fan friends, this episode and several others dealing with issues of the elderly (comical here and there in spite of serious themes) are not ones that they will watch over and over again, and indeed, these episodes are depressing. At least it isn't the "Mr. Terrific" episode or the one involving Paul Dooley and Rita Moreno that was later re-tooled as "Empty Nest". Those episodes among aficionados are considered the worst of the series. With this episode, I am inclined on occasion (depending on my mood) to fast forward or skip directly to the next episode on my DVD set because it isn't sunny and cheerful or even Shady Pines.

The girls end up in a homeless shelter run by a church, not the type you'd see in New York City or other big cities, because it is a mixture of family and single people. The girls ending up there is almost a selfish journey because of their search for a lottery ticket that ends up in an old jacket that Michael Jackson buys then donates to the shelter after wearing it in a concert. The girls encounter an alcoholic young man who is tempted to steal from Blanche's purse, while Dorothy befriends an older black man who is filled with wisdom and spirituality. Sophia runs into an old friend, an elderly woman who has been rejected by her family simply for being elderly. Then there's a sudden blues version of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" where the girls come to a sudden decision that will have you cheering them for their big hearts and possibly tearing up over the plight of the people they encounter.