The Golden Palace

The Golden Palace is an American sitcom produced as a spin-off continuation of The Golden Girls that aired on CBS from September 18, 1992, to May 7, 1993, with reruns airing until August 6, 1993. While not as popular as its predecessor, the series produced a total of 24 half-hour episodes spanning over one season. CBS cancelled the program in 1993.[1]

Synopsis
The Golden Palace begins where The Golden Girls had ended, in the quartet's now-sold Miami house. With Dorothy Zbornak having married and left in the previous series finale, the three remaining roommates (Sophia Petrillo, Rose Nylund, and Blanche Devereaux) decide to invest in a Miami hotel that is up for sale. The hotel, however, is revealed to have been stripped of all of its personnel in an effort to appear more profitable, leaving only two employees: Roland Wilson, the hotel's manager, and Chuy Castillos, the hotel's chef. This requires the women to perform all the tasks of the hotel's staff.

The series focused on the interactions between guests at the hotel and the hotel's staff, as well as between the Golden Girls and the previous hotel staff. Guest stars were frequent, including recurring characters that had previously appeared on The Golden Girls, such as Debra Engle and Harold Gould as Rebecca Devereaux and Miles Webber, and other celebrities. Bea Arthur also reprised her Dorothy Zbornak role for a two-part storyline in which she visits the hotel to check up on her mother.

Following the cancellation of the series, Sophia returns to the rebuilt Shady Pines retirement home (which had burned down in the previous series), appearing as a cast member in the later seasons of Empty Nest. What became of Rose, Blanche, and the hotel is left unresolved.

Broadcast history and reception
The Golden Palace aired on CBS, changing networks from NBC, which had aired The Golden Girls on Saturday nights for its entire run. Susan Harris, Paul Junger Witt, and Tony Thomas all pitched their Golden Girls successor series to NBC in early 1992, as a way to continue the saga of Blanche, Rose, and Sophia after Bea Arthur's departure from the role of Dorothy. NBC entertainment chief Warren Littlefield originally committed to airing The Golden Palace, with a 13-episode order for the 1992–93 season. However, CBS soon entered the picture and fueled a bidding war for the new series, offering a full season (24 episode) order. Witt, Thomas, and Harris tried to get Littlefield to improve his NBC deal, but he refused to extend his episode order, citing that the declining ratings of The Golden Girls in its seventh season made it risky to give the spin-off a longer commitment. The producers thus went with CBS, which agreed to market The Golden Palace as a show with its own voice separate from that of its parent show.

CBS used The Golden Palace as one of four comedies assembled on Friday night in an effort to combat ABC's TGIF comedy block; The Golden Palace was grouped with Major Dad, Designing Women, and Bob, all of which were either successful comedies prior to the move, or in the case of Bob, featured a previously successful sitcom star (Bob Newhart).[2] The premiere garnered solid ratings, and the show won its timeslot for its first few weeks, but viewership fell steadily for the entire block as the season progressed. CBS had scheduled the show for a second season, but cancelled the show (and the entire block) the night before they announced their 1993 fall schedule. The only one of the four aforementioned shows to get picked up for the 1993–94 season was Bob, which hired Betty White to join its revamped cast. Twenty-four episodes of The Golden Palace were produced.[3]

British comedian Alexei Sayle was originally hired for the series in the role of the hotel's chef, who initially was to be portrayed as Eastern European.[4][5] Sayle was replaced by Cheech Marin before the pilot was shot.[5][6] The Carlyle hotel on Miami Beach's Ocean Drive was used for exterior shots depicting the Golden Palace hotel,[7] while the rest of the series was taped at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, California.[8]

Syndication of the series is handled by Disney–ABC Domestic Television. Although the series has never been syndicated as a stand-alone series, Lifetime, during the time it owned the rights to The Golden Girls, carried The Golden Palace on several occasions, running the series in rotation as a de facto eighth season of The Golden Girls. (The current rights holders to The Golden Girls have, to date, not picked up The Golden Palace.)

Cast

 * Betty White as Rose Nylund is a jack-of-all-trades in the hotel. This series has Rose being of a notably stronger will than her previous incarnation (as Dorothy Zbornak noted in her guest appearance, "When did she become the strong one?").
 * Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux served as the main operator of the hotel. Her character traits, particularly her promiscuity and vanity, are significantly toned down in this series, although she retains her Southern charm and generally chipper demeanor.
 * Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo is the hotel's 87-year-old co-chef. In this series, her character is beginning to show signs of senile dementia, and is somewhat kinder and gentler than in the original series. (In real life, other members of the cast had noticed Getty's increased difficulty in remembering lines and relying on cue cards during this series and toward the end of the previous one; she would not be formally diagnosed with dementia until 2000.)[10]
 * Don Cheadle as Roland Wilson is the hotel's manager and a straight man to the rest of the cast. He is one of only two staff members retained from the previous ownership.
 * Cheech Marin as Chuy Castillos, is the other co-chef, and the other staff member held on from the previous ownership. He nearly quits after getting into a fight with Sophia over Italian vs. Mexican food, but comes back and remains with the staff for the rest of the series run.[11]
 * Billy L. Sullivan as Oliver Webb is Roland's foster child for episodes one to six, eleven and fourteen. A streetwise, arrogant preteen, Oliver was written out of the series fairly early on, with the character's birth mother (Joely Fisher) retaking custody of him in episode 14.