Three on a Couch S3E11

Synopsis: The girls are randomly at each other’s throats and decide that counseling is their only option.

80s Flashback

Sophia, to Blanche: “You know what I can’t stand any more, that phony accent of yours. What is this Designing Women?”

Let's Get Political

Blanche: “Dorothy, I have been waiting for Larry to ask me out ever since our eyes first met at Del's Route 1 Chevron. And I climbed on the hood of his LeBaron and wrote my phone number on his windshield with the heel of my Pappagallo pump.”

Dorothy: “Isn't that how Mrs. Simpson met the Duke of Windsor?”

St. Olaf Vocab

Gerkanenaken – the precise moment when dog doo turns white

Tutenbobels – the buttocks

That’s What She Said

Blanche: “Everyone says what a giving person I am.”

Sophia: “She’s talking about when you’re in an upright position.”

Lewd Ladies

Blanche: “She’s always harping on us to do everything just right. I’m surprised she doesn’t check our underwear before we leave the house.”

Dorothy: “Those of you who wear underwear.”

Product Placement

Dorothy: “Oh Rose, this is the personals column… You put an ad in the personals column that says that I will do anything for eight dollars an hour? And look it’s right under an ad that reads ‘History professor seeking non-smoking oriental woman who is into Wesson Oil and bears a resemblance to Florence Henderson.’”

Sassy Sophia

Dorothy: “Blanche, I am miserable!”

Blanche: “It is mind over matter Dorothy. Now, you can do it. You can get up off that couch. You feel better already. You're not sick anymore. Dorothy, you can heal yourself! Walk, Dorothy! Walk!!”

Sophia: “Hey, just because you put your makeup on with a butter knife doesn't make you Tammy Bakker.”

Picture It

Sophia tells the girls a story about a young peasant girl whose pepperoni goes missing. She comes to a raging river with pepperoni swimming upstream (even though pepperoni is a land meat). This supposed “act of god” is revealed to have been the result of a disgruntled factory worker who had blown up a nearby pepperoni factory causing the meat to rain all over the place. Which is where that old Sicilian saying, “It’s raining cats and pepperoni” comes from.

Sweet, Single-Digit-IQ Rose

Blanche: “But you see what we put up with. She's an airhead.”

Rose: “Oh, yeah? Well, you're a barbell.”

Dorothy: “That's a dumbbell, you twit!”

Zbornak Zingers

Dorothy, apologizing to a priest: “I’m terribly sorry. I promise that I will say Hail Marys until Madonna has a hit movie.”

Oh Shut Up, Rose

Blanche: “I'm 41 years old, I'm 5'6", I weigh 108 pounds, and my hair is its natural hue.”

Rose: “Sure, Blanche. Yours and Lucy's.”

Dr. Ashley: “What about you, Rose?”

Rose: “Well, to be perfectly honest, I use a touch of peroxide.”

Dorothy: “Oh shut up, Rose.”

Insult Watch

Blanche: “Rose and I rented that movie Aliens and it just scared us half to death.”

Sophia: “Scared me too. That Sigourney Weaver is a sweet girl but she really shouldn’t go without makeup.”

Best of B.E.D.

Blanche: “I’m Blanche Devereaux and I know it’s not pertinent at the moment, but I’m double-jointed.”

The Boob Tube

Blanche: “Dorothy, you've looked much worse than this. Remember that time you gave yourself a home perm, burnt your hair right down to the roots and ended up looking like Buckwheat?”

Reel References

Dorothy: “I didn't expect people to actually come here. I just figured, you know,, that I would be going to them.”

Man: “That's the way it'll work in the future when my video camera gets back from the shop.”

Dorothy: “So tell me, what type of work is it that you need done, Mr um-”

Man: “Toto.”

Dorothy: “Mr. Toto.”

Man: “Oh, no 'Mister.' Just Toto. You're Dorothy, and I'm Toto. At least for the next $8.00.”

Golden Quotes

Dorothy, who is sick as a dog on the couch: “Blanche, please please my body aches!”

Blanche: “Well so does mine, honey, that’s why I wanna go out on this date.”

Critique: Another episode, another Tammy Faye Baker reference. The Golden Girls writers were notorious for giving us “flashback episodes” but these were not “clip shows.” They featured flashbacks to different past situations (with a wrap-around story) that we as viewers had never seen before (see “One for the Money”). Many of these “flashbacks” contain some of the series’ flat-out best moments. One of which is the scene where Blanche is trying to get an under-the-weather Dorothy to attend their planned double date. Bea and Rue are just so darned good in this scene (“Dorothy, how long have you been inhaling this VapoRub??”). The “Want Ad” scene is particularly hilarious (“How would you like your rear-end kicked across the street!”). Overall, the episode is odd in that we’re forced to believe the girls would be bickering enough to actually want to split up, but I never bought it for a second. It just offered those moments when the girls are insulting each other which tend to be when the series is in top form. GRADE: A