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Vacation is the eighth episode of the second season of The Golden Girls and the thirty-third episode overall. Directed by Terry Hughes, and written by Winifred Hervey, it premiered on NBC-TV on November 29th, 1986.
Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche vacation in the Caribbean, but find the accommodations seriously not to their liking. Back in Miami, Sophia woos the girls' Japanese gardener.
Plot[]
Dorothy, Rose and Blanche's vacation to a tropical island is a complete disaster. Meanwhile, Sophia befriends a Japanese gardener who speaks almost no English.
The Girls' room turns out to be completely underwhelming and they are forced to share a bathroom with 3 obnoxious men. When a boat ride goes astray, the girls confess secrets about what they have done, including Rose reading Blanche's diary and Rose's cousin having slept with Dorothy and Blanche.
The men return after an excursion and help the girls back to the Hyatt Regency, their new hotel.[1]
Like the island that the girls vacation on, the "Santa Juanita" does not exist in real life. This was done most likely to avoid offending real-life Caribbean governments at the time.
Rose admits to having once read Blanche's diary. In the next season, Rose gets very defensive when Blanche and Dorothy read her diary.[2]
The hotel lobby the girls enjoy drinks in is a recycled set from the Witt/Thomas/Harris sitcom It's A Living. The set was used as Louise Lasser's character Maggie McBurney's house. In this episode it's painted and decorated in a tropical theme. The set would later be recycled again as Sophia and Dorothy's apartment in Brooklyn although it was redressed in a 1940s/50s motif painted in neutral colors.
Goofs[]
When Rose first discovers the window, it is shut. It then cuts to a very brief shot of Dorothy, then to a wider view of the room, and the window is wide open.
When the various pieces of luggage are thrown into the girls' room, the suitcases move, disappear, and reappear between shots.
When the ladies are revealing secrets around the campfire, Blanche makes a comment about Dorothy having her nose done. Dorothy responds that she never had her nose done and reveals that Rose was actually the one who had her nose done. In "Whose Face is This, Anyway?", Rose states she finds plastic surgery to be unnatural, implying she had never had any work done herself.[4]
When the girls are sitting around the campfire, the amount of burned wood changes from shot to shot. First it's partially scorched, then mostly scorched, then partially scorched again.
↑The Golden Girls, Season 2, Episode 8, “Vacation”. Hervey, Winifred (writer) & Hughes, Terry (director) (November 29th, 1986)
↑The Golden Girls, Season 3, Episode 21, “Larceny and Old Lace”. Ferro, Jeffery and Weiss, Fredric (writers) & Hughes, Terry (director) (February 27th, 1988)
