The Golden Girls (TV Series) Blanche and the Younger Man (1985) User Reviews

Sweet and moving.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 7/10 · 10 November 2022]

Rose's mother Alma comes to stay for a week, and Blanche starts dating aerobics teacher Dirk, a younger man.

Blanche thinks she's Peter Pan, the detail is in the title, very funny, nice to see Blanche The Cougar, such a fabulous femme fatale, no denying Dirk was a hot guy. Great episode for Blanche, she comes out with some great lines.

It's not side splitting, but it is funny, and does have the usual chuckles, and as you'd expect, it had the heartfelt too, the scenes between Rose and Alma were genuinely touching. Dorothy's stares of sarcasm are as wonderful as ever.

I love the way that Alma is dressed, she literally ticks every old lady box, the brooch, the hat, the sensible suit.

Moving and funny, the acting is incredible. 7/10.

Blanche and the Younger Man (#1.9)

[ComedyFan2010 · 7/10 · 8 January 2014]

Blanche is asked out on a date by a much younger man. She gets very excited for it and gets ready but then it turns out that he sees her as a mother. In the meantime Rose's mother comes over to spend some time and is not happy because Rose treats her as a child.

An older woman dating a younger man. Our society has so many bias against it. I think they handled the story well considering that it was filmed almost 30 years ago. While they don't show him being attracted to her as a lover they handle this situation well by having Blanche being happy at the end.

And a good story on how not to treat parents as children. This is often an issue.

It's more about Rose and mom.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 21 January 2020]

While this was probably titled for Blanche's story rather than Rose's because of the presence of young Charles Hill as the muscle bound Dirk whom Blanche thinks wants to date her, the more serious story involves veteran actress Jeanette Nolan in her one time appearance as Rose's mother, Alma Lindstrom, a feisty country woman as old as Sophia whom Rose treats as a child out of concern for her health. Yes, Alma did break a hip, but as she claims, it was from ice skating. She also knows how to play cards, a gift taught to her by her old boyfriend, a younger man with a prison record who also taught her how to make a gun out of soap. ("Nook!", to imitate the ever feisty former "Dirty Sally" of "Gunsmoke.")

Nolan, who had been around for decades, played a very dramatic Lady MacBeth opposite Orson Welles in the 1948 version of the Shakespeare play and had a variety of character roles which often cast her as women much older than Nolan herself. (She played Kaye Ballard's feisty Sicilian grandmother on an episode of "The Mothers-in-Law") Alma quickly is furious over Rose's treatment of her and threatens to pack and leave because of how Rose babies her. Sophia notices this and quickly comments to Dorothy about how she never feels that Dorothy treats her as if she is old, although in some later episodes, Dorothy obviously does. Rose has to face several facts about how she degrades her mother, and that leads to a touching reunion that gets the final freeze frame over the closing credits.

As for the Dirk story, young Hill certainly is handsome and charming, but what Blanche sees in him is never made clear other than the ego that makes her think a young man her son's age (she had two, only one seen later on "Golden Palace") would be interested in her. Hill isn't a bad actor, but the condescending manner in which his real feelings are revealed would get walked out on by anybody with sense, especially when he tries to show off his deltoids by lifting up the restaurant table. There are funny moments for this story (particularly Sophia's retorts at Blanche's expense), but it is not one of the better stories for her presented on the show. There would be a lot of stories involving Rose's family over the years, but Alma was never mentioned again outside a few obscure references to Rose's parents.