The Jetsons: "Mother's Day For Rosie"

Premiered October 1, 1985.

It's the day before Mother's Day in Orbit city and the Jetson children are preparing to honor their mother Jane (Penny Singleton).  Her son Elroy (Daws Butler) has composed a poem for the occasion.  Daughter Judy (Janet Waldo) plans to give her mother a plant.  Jane tells her husband George (George O'Hanlon) she doesn't need a present from him because they need to be "sensible."  George happily agrees with Jane.

In the midst of the Mother's Day festivities, the Jetsons' robot maid Rosie (Jean Vander Pyl) feels left out.  She has no recollections or pictures of her mother.  Rosie tears up and blows a fuse when she reads Elroy's poem.

George decides to visit the robot factory so he can take a picture of the "previous model," which would be Rosie's "mother."  The factory's manager (Gregg Berger) can't find the earlier model robot, but says he will call George if it turns up.

Elsewhere, Jane and Rosie go shopping and see a synthetic stole at Spacey's department store.  Jane hopes that George will get her the stole as a Mother's Day present.  When Rosie points out that she told George not to buy her any presents, she can't recall saying that.

While George is at work, Jane calls his boss Mr. Spacely (Mel Blanc) on the visiphone.  She asks him to tell George that the stole at Spacey's is the best gift in the universe...but asks Spacely NOT to say that she said that.  This leads to confusion at both ends, so Spacely asks George to buy the stole for Mrs. Spacely.

Will George be able to get a picture of Rosie's mother?  Will he get the stole for Judy?  Will Mother's Day be a disaster for everyone?

J.A. Morris says:
This Mother's Day episode was part of the 1980s revival of The Jetsons, not the original 1962 series. All the original voice actors returned, so it feels very similar to the earlier episodes.

There aren't many Mother's Day episodes or specials, so we were glad to discover "Mother's Day For Rosie."  It might seem like a just another silly cartoon, but this episode brings up a serious topic.  Like Rosie, a lot of people have difficulties on Mother's Day because their mother has passed away or they never knew their mother, or they wanted to be a mother, but could not.  Even though Rosie is a cartoon robot, her emotions feel real.

Having said that, "Mother's Day For Rosie" has some problematic aspects that were probably outdated even in 1985.  Jane explicitly states to George that she doesn't want him to buy Mother's Day present...then she gets upset when he doesn't buy her anything.  It feels like a "women, amirite?" joke about stereotypes.

George doesn't come off very well either in this episode.  At one point he calls himself "the biggest idiot in the universe" and that's pretty accurate.  Maybe the creative team thought making both Judy and George look made things "even."  However making the mother come off as materialistic and scatterbrained isn't a very good look for a Mother's Day episode.

A note about the voice actors:
Before we watched this episode for reviewing purposes, I didn't know that Judy is voiced by Penny Singleton.  Her other famous role was playing Blondie, title character from the comic strip of the same name, in twenty-eight feature films and she also played Blondie on radio for eleven years.

Penny Singleton in a publicity still from the movie Blondie On A Budget.

I enjoyed the parts that dealt with Rosie's, and it was nice to hear the original voice actors, but the rest of the episode isn't very good.

J.A. Morris' rating:

.5

2 and a half Mother's Day bouquets

RigbyMel says:

I remember watching the 1980s version of The Jetsons but I don't have any recollection of this particular episode.   As J.A. Morris says, there are not all that many Mother's Day episodes out there, so it's nice to find this.   It's also nice to know that the voice actors are pretty much the same voice cast from the original 1960s series. 

It's kind of sweet that George decides to go out of his way to find Rosie the Robot's "mother" for her when he realizes she is sad.  The sitcom miscommunication not saying what you really want stuff re. Jane is somewhat less endearing.   There is definitely a very 1960s notion of what constitutes gender roles in the "nuclear family" of the Jetsons' future in evidence.  

Considering that "Mother's Day for Rosie" is a 22 minute cartoon, there is a fair amount of filler in the episode that has little or nothing to do with the main story.  There's a scene that focuses on a robot dog at the robot store and another extended scene showing Jane and Rosie experiencing several virtual reality type travel scenarios at a travel agent's office.  

"Mother's Day for Rosie" is certainly an enjoyable bit of retro-futurism with a Mother's Day theme,  but it's probably not a classic for the ages. 

RigbyMel's rating:  

2 Mother's Day bouquets

The Golden Girls: "Mother's Day"

Premiered May 7, 1988.

It's Mother's Day and Dorothy (Bea Arthur), Rose (Betty White) and Blanche (Rue McClanahan) are waiting for calls from their children before they take Dorothy's mom, Sophia (Estelle Getty) out to brunch.

While they wait to hear from their children -- much to Sophia's dismay (she wants to get to the buffet before the good shrimp is all gone) -- the girls reminisce about Mother's Days past.

Dorothy recalls a time when she was still married to her ex-husband Stan.  They chose a Mother's Day visit to ask Stan's mother (Alice Ghostley) if she could lend them money.

Rose remembers spending a Mother's Day in a bus station with someone else's mother, a woman named Anna (Geraldine Fitzgerald).

Blanche remembers the last time she spent the holiday with her own mother, in a nursing home, and Sophia chips in with a story about a visit from her own mother, Dorothy's Grandmother Petrillo in 1950s Brooklyn.

RigbyMel says:

This episode from season three of The Golden Girls is both funny and rather sweet.

Each of the women's stories about past celebrations of Mother's Day feel like little one-act plays.  Every story plays on stereotypes a bit (the annoying mother in law, asking an elderly relative to move in or dealing with one in a nursing home, etc), but puts an interesting spin on each scenario.

Rose's story is probably the most touching, but also contains some very humorous repartee regarding the ... rustic simplicity of the residents of her hometown of St. Olaf. Anna, the lady Rose meets at the bus station is played by Oscar nominated actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, who appeared in films like Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory and Arthur during the course of her career.

We learn that perhaps Dorothy's mother in law doesn't hate her quite as much as she thought.

In Sophia's story,  we see a young Dorothy (played by Lynnie Greene -- best known now as the producer & writer of shows like Nip/Tuck) and meet Sophia's mom, who is played by Bea Arthur -- very meta!

My favorite line in the episode belongs to Blanche -- I don't want to spoil it, but it has to do with her unabashedly owning what people think of as her defining characteristic.

If you are a fan of The Golden Girls series, this Mother's Day episode is well worth revisiting.  If you're not, you should check it out to see a classic and sassy sitcom featuring feisty older women.

RigbyMel's rating:

.5

3 and a half Mother's Day bouquets.

J.A. Morris says:
I'd never seen this Mother's Day episode until this year, but it's a great episode of The Golden Girls.  I generally agree with my co-blogger, but I think I liked it even better.  It's very sweet, but contains just enough of the series' trademark sarcasm to keep from ever feeling treacly.

Rue McClanahan gives a particularly great performance as Blanche here.  The scene with Blanche's mom gives Mclanahan the opportunity to deliver a monologue about Blanche's attempt to get married at age 17.  It's an Emmy-worthy moment.

Betty White is also very poignant in Rose's train station flashback sequence.

The flashbacks that focus on Dorothy and Sophia are played more for laughs, but that's okay.  They help balance out the sentimental parts, keeping "Mother's Day" from ever getting corny.

It should be noted that when she portrayed Sophia, Estelle Getty was made up to look much older than she was in real life.  Sophia's Brooklyn flashback gives us a chance to see how Getty looked when not wearing her "Sophia" makeup.

This episode streams on Amazon and it's also available on The Golden Girls: The Complete Third Season DVD set.

There aren't many Mother's Day episodes out there (this is the first we've reviewed) and this one contains the perfect combination of humor and sentimentality.  "Mother's Day" is an excellent episode of The Golden Girls and gets my highest recommendation.

J.A. Morris' rating:

4 Mother's Day bouquets!