With series star
Bea Arthur announcing that she did not wish to continue playing fiftysomething teacher Dorothy Zbornak any longer, it was decided that the seventh season of the NBC sitcom
Golden Girls would be the last. Perhaps for this reason, the series' ratings plummeted from tenth to 30th place -- though even with a diminished viewership, the series remained one of NBC's most popular and profitable offerings. In the course of this final season, Dorothy's roommate Rose (
Rue McClanahan) concludes that her relationship with former Mob accountant Miles Webber (
Harold Gould) is not going anywhere, though this hardly means that Miles is completely out of her life. One piquant season-seven episode, "
Old Boyfriends, reunites
Betty White and
Rue McClanahan (as Rose and Dorothy's roomie Blanche) with the actresses' former
Mama's Family co-star,
Ken Berry. The two-part "The Monkey Show" is built around Dorothy's sister Gloria, played in an earlier season by
Polly Holliday and herein enacted by Dena Dietrich; this episode also features
Dinah Manoff, playing her Carol Weston character from the
Golden Girls spin-off series
Empty Nest. In another
Golden Girls/
Empty Nest crossover, David Leisure (as Charlie Dietz) appears in "
Questions and Answers," the centerpiece of which is a takeoff of the game show
Jeopardy, featuring that series' host
Alex Trebek and producer
Merv Griffin. And the two-parter "Home Again, Rose" marks the one and only appearance of Blanche's daughter Janet, played by Jessica Lundy. In the hour-long season finale, Dorothy marries Blanche's uncle Lucas (
Leslie Nielsen), thereby launching a set of circumstances that would ultimately lead Rose, Blanche, and Sophia into another
Golden Girls spin-off series, The Golden Palace, in the fall of 1992. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide