In today’s installment of The Great Golden Girls Marathon, Rose strikes up a one-night-stand with a man who, unbeknownst to her, is actually married. The real kicker, though, is that he dies after their encounter (in her bed!), leaving Rose to deal with the consequences.

Of course, it ultimately becomes apparent that Al is in fact a married man, and that Rose–who has always considered herself the most morally upright of the four women–has become the very thing she had condemned Dorothy for being. She has become the other woman. That being said, she deserves kudos for being willing to meet Al’s wife face-to-face to tell her not only that her husband has been carrying on an affair, but that he also died in her bed. The conversation between the two women, in which Al’s wife reveals that she has long known of his infidelity, is one of the richest and most compelling in the entire first season, as the women commiserate over their shared relationship with a man who was, all things considered, something of a cad.

It’s particularly striking that this episode comes after one in which Dorothy also has to contend with the moral consequences of adultery. Rose, however, has to deal with the other side of that equation, in that she has to do the right thing and actually confront the wife of her paramour. As always, The Golden Girls shows just how complicated, messy, and sometimes unpleasant life can be. Even when we think we’re just having a bit of fun, sometimes our actions have unintended consequences with which we then have to contend.

Furthermore, Rose also has to contend with the fact that Al, like her husband Charlie, died while making love. She clearly has a great deal of emotional guilt that she carries around as a result of Charlie’s death, and she has to accept that sometimes bad things happen, and that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with her that leads to men happening to die while in her amorous embraces. (There’s also a great joke near the end of the episode, in which she says that her next date also dies, as well as the police investigating the case. Truly one of the funniest moments in the first season).

All in all, this is one of my favourite episodes of the first season, because it truly does allow Rose to finally begin breaking out of her prudish shell and engaging in the same sort of romantic escapades as the other women.  As such, it stands as one of those points where we do see some character development and, frankly, I have always found the later Rose much more appealing and charismatic than her iteration in the first few episodes of the first season.

Rose will also be the focus of our next entry. In the next episode, we’ll discover some deeply-held secrets about Charlie, as Rose has to contend with her desire to protect Charlie’s memory with the demands and judgment of her daughter Kirsten.