Golden Girls Epsiode: Clinton Avenue Memoirs

"The Golden Girls" was a comedy series set in Miami, Florida (it wasn't filmed in Miami) and originally telecast on the NBC network from 1985 through 1992. The basic gist of the show is that four women, 3 widowed and 1 divorced, share a house together and develop such a strong family-like friendship, they deal with and overcome their differing personality conflicts, as they support each other in life's challenges, including that of aging. 

 

This episode originally aired on NBC in February 1990.

 

Episode Cast: 

Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak

Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo

Betty White as Rose Nylund

Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux 

Sid Melton as Sal Petrillo (Sophia's deceased husband, Dorothy's father)

David Correia as Mr. Hernandez (the tenant in the Petrillo's former apartment)

 

Sophia forgets that Dorothy is taking her out to eat for her wedding anniversary, something Dorothy does every year since Sal died. Dorothy is concerned that her mother is getting more forgetful, and this concern only increases when she sits down with Sophia to look through her mother's photo album of pictures from the past. At one point Sophia says that her late husband Sal had carved a heart and "Sal loves Sophia" on the inside of the kitchen pantry door at their former apartment in Brooklyn. Dorothy corrects her mother by saying that the kitchen pantry door was where her mother and father kept the children's height marked. Sophia gets upset that she can't recall everything. Dorothy takes her mother to the doctor, who tells them Sophia may have a nutritional imbalance that is causing her memory problems. Dorothy also suggests that they talk about old times to refresh her mother's memory about the past. 

 

Sophia decides to go back to Brooklyn to help stir her memories of Sal and her earlier life. She makes a poignant statement to Dorothy, Blanche and Rose, "I hate getting old, you always seem to be losing something. First it's your eyesight, then people tell you to turn down the TV set, when you can barely hear it, and you could live with that, but this, they're trying to take something from me I just won't give. I can't let this happen, Dorothy. I can't lose my Sal, not again." 

 

Sophia and Dorothy travel to Brooklyn and go to their old apartment. They explain to the current tenant that they once lived there and that they would like to look around, for old times' sake. He agrees and they enter the apartment. Sophia recognizes some of the old wallpaper that is still on the wall, but when they go to the kitchen and open the pantry door, there is no heart carved on the inside of the door, but rather the height markings for the Petrillo children. Sophia is discouraged and she decides to go upstairs to the bedroom. She takes a photo of Sal out of her purse and sets it on the nightstand. When she asks the photo "What's wrong with me," Sal appears and cracks a one liner. At first, Sophia wants sympathy from Sal, but Sal tells her she is losing her spunk and that he originally liked her because she was a survivor. When he then mentions one of Sophia's deceased female friends, Sophia warns Sal that he'd better not be messing around with the woman in heaven. Sal tells Sophia she still has some fire and he tells her that when the time is right, he'll be waiting for her. Sal disappears. 

Dorothy comes into the room with the tenant and when he opens the bedroom closet door, there is the carved heart with "Sal loves Sophia." Now Sophia is reassured about her memory, as she tells Dorothy she got the kitchen pantry mixed up with the bedroom closet, because Sal used to hang salami in the bedroom closet. haha 

       

 

Photo is from the 2006 Buena Vista Home Entertainment & Touchstone Television Fifth Season Set

WORD HISTORY:

Die-This is the verb meaning, "to lose life, to pass into a state of death," not the noun meaning, "little cube with dots on it," most commonly used in the plural "dice" in English. The verb "die" goes back to Indo European "dheu," which meant "to die, to pass away." This gave Old Germanic "dawjanan," which seems to have meant both "to die," but also, at least in certain contexts, "to kill." Now, some believe Old English had a form derived from the Old Germanic word which either died out (no pun intended), or remained in use among the common folk, and therefore was not written down.^ The common "written" word for "to die" in Old English became modern English "starve," now meaning the more specific "die from hunger;" compare close relative German, "sterben," which still has the more general meaning "to die." By the 1100s the word began to spread in usage, either through reinforcement of an existing, but unwritten form of "die," with the reinforcement coming from Old Norse "deyja," or by a direct borrowing of "deyja." Various spellings were used: dege, dien, and then deien, before the modern spelling. The pronunciation likely emphasized the "e" sound, rather than the more common long "i" sound of modern times, although in Scotland the pronunciation "dee" is still common. Forms of the word died out in many of the other Germanic languages, but Danish and Norwegian still have "dø," Icelandic has "deyja," Frisian has "deagean," Swedish has "dö." 

 

^ Old Saxon, the close relative of Old English, had "doian," and another close relative, Old High German, had "touwen," for example, which would suggest that English too had a form of the word, perhaps "diean" or "diegan."