The Engagement

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The Engagement (Pilot)
Episode Information
Series	The Golden Girls
Season	1
Episode Number	1
Network/Country	NBC-TV / United States
Air Date	September 14, 1985
Production ID	1.1 / 001
IMDb link	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0589801
Written by	Susan Harris
Directed by	Jay Sandrich
Episode Chronology
←Previous	N/A
Next→	Guess Who's Coming to the Wedding?
Series Links

The Engagement, also known as Pilot, is the first episode of the first season of The Golden Girls and the first episode overall. It is written by Susan Harris and directed by Jay Sandrich.

The episode premiered on NBC-TV in the United States on September 14th, 1985. It is the series premiere.

Summary

Blanche announces that her latest boyfriend, Harry, has proposed to her after a week of dating. Rose worries over where she will live, and later worries that there is something off about Harry. Meanwhile, Dorothy is more than excited for Blanche's engagement, but must also contend with her mother, Sophia, who comes to live with the ladies after her retirement home burns down.

Plot

On a fine June evening, Dorothy Zbornak returns home from a long day of teaching, venting her frustrations with the students to Coco, the girls' cook. Rose Nylund arrives soon after, similarly dissatisfied with her day at the counselling center. The only exuberant one in the home is Blanche Devereaux, who comes into the kitchen for a bag of cucumbers to put on her eyes, and to ask if she can borrow Dorothy's mink stole. Coco informs the other ladies of Blanche's date with her new beau Harry, and after a brief debate, Rose and Dorothy realize that they know very little about Harry, and ask Blanche about him when she comes to ask Rose if she can borrow her earrings. Blanche is eager to gush about her beau to her friends, and shocks them with the news that he has proposed to her. Dorothy and Rose are shocked, as Blanche had only been dating Harry for a week, but Blanche makes it clear that she hasn't made up her mind yet. Rose worries that she and Dorothy will end up homeless, but Dorothy reassures her that everything will be fine.

At that moment the doorbell rings. It's not Harry but Sophia, revealing that Shady Pines has burned down. Then Harry arrives and Blanche leaves with him on their date. That night while Dorothy and Rose talked about their own marriages, Blanche returns she said yes and the wedding is next week.

The wedding day comes and Rose reveals to Dorothy she is unsure about Harry and so she wants to tell Blanche. Dorothy manages to stop her in various ways and the minister arrives before Rose can say anything. However as the wedding party waits for the groom, a police officer greets Blanche with the bad news Harry was arrested for bigamy (proving Rose’s “crazy hunch” about him). Blanche is told she had a lucky escape. Blanche is crushed and she refuses to leave her bedroom but at the end of the episode, she realizes that life goes on. The girls promise even if they do get married again they will stay together.

Cast

Main Cast

• Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak
• Betty White as Rose Nylund
• Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux
• Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo

Guest List

• Charles Levin as Coco
• Frank Aletter as Harry
• F. William Parker as Minister
• Meshach Taylor as Police Officer

Notes

• For an unknown reason, this episode is titled "The Pilot" instead of "The Engagement" on the complete first season DVD set.
• Shots of the group hug, Dorothy throwing Rose into the bathroom, the girls vowing to stay together and a close-up of Dorothy and Blanche are used in the opening.

Production

• Rue McClanahan doesn't have a Southern accent in this episode because Jay Sandrich told her he didn't want to hear one. After the show was picked up from the pilot episode, McClanahan went to producers and offered to play Blanche as a modified Mae West-style character. The producers asked her why she wasn't doing it with a Southern accent to begin with, and from then on Blanche was played with a Southern accent.
• Meshach Taylor, who plays the policeman, is best known for his long-term role as Anthony Bouvier on Designing Women which ran on CBS from 1986-1993.

Coco and cut scenes

This episode is the only appearance of Coco, who had been planned to live with the Golden Girls as their houseboy and confiante. Charles Levin had been suggested by then-NBC president Brandon Tartikoff based on Levin's groundbreaking portrayal of a recurring gay character, Eddie Gregg, on NBC's Emmy-winning drama Hill Street Blues. However, Coco was written out of the show before the second episode was taped. Charles Levin initially left the episode's taping with high hopes for the show's pickup, but two days before the option deadline, Paul Junger Witt called him and said that it wasn't going to work out. The writers observed that in many of the proposed scripts, the main interactions between the women occurred in the kitchen while preparing and eating food. They decided that a separate cook would distract from their friendship. As said by Levin, "They didn't want to have to give me less just to keep me on the show; it wouldn't be fair to me."

In an interview with Jim Colucci in Golden Girls Forever, Levin revealed that Coco had been given more scenes than had made it into the episode, but many of those scenes ended up being cut. One scene in particular included Coco talking to Sophia about his lackluster love life, exclaiming "That's the last time I date a cop!", which provided context for Sophia going out to the dog track with him. According to Levin, "Susan wanted to write a character who gave you insights as to what gay guys do - their love lives, their private lives ... Well, word came down that this was offensive to NBC, who did not want any reference to what Coco was doing with other men ... Nobody wanted to know what he did on the outside. His only function was to be within the house, dealing with the women." Additionally, Levin believed that the death of Rock Hudson, the first major American celebrity to die from AIDS, attributed to Coco's removal from the show. "I think it threw everyone for a loop, especially those in TV. Because now, how do you deal with gay characters when there's this threat of a horrible death hanging over their heads?"

Continuity

• This is the first mention of Stanley Zbornak and his second wife Chrissy.
• Near the end of the episode, Dorothy takes a mirror out of her bag and checks to see if a sleeping Sophia is still breathing. This would reappear in "The Case of the Libertine Belle". Dorothy does it to one of the victims, stating she does it every time Sophia takes a nap.

Goofs

• The opening shot of the house is shown in the daytime, but the next few scenes are set at night.
• The house's layout is different in this episode. The entrance to Blanche's bedroom is usually where the entrance to the lanai is and the lanai is shown to be on the right side of the house later in the episode.
• According to "Never Yell Fire in a Crowded Retirement Home", the beginning of the episode takes place on September 4th, 1985. In this episode, however, Dorothy explicitly says that it's June when Blanche asks to borrow her mink stole.
• Blanche tells Harry that Sophia's home burned down, but she was not in the room when Sophia shared this piece of information and thus would have no way of knowing it.
• The police officer asks if there is a "Blanche Hollingsworth" there. Hollingsworth is Blanche's maiden name; this is the only episode where it is implied to be her current last name.
• This is one of several episodes in which Charlie is said to have been dead for fifteen years. It is stated, more than once, that Rose and Charlie were married for thirty-two years. If that was true, then Charlie and Rose would have been 9 and 8 years old, respectively, when married.