The Golden Girls: Season 07 (1991)

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, Rovi