#‘Golden Girls’ episode with blackface scene pulled from Hulu

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A scene from Season 5 of “The Golden Girls”
Touchstone Television/Courtesy of Everett Collection

“The Golden Girls” is the latest sitcom to have an episode pulled from a streaming service due to a scene depicting blackface.

Hulu has pulled “Mixed Blessings” (Season 3, Episode 23), which sees Dorothy’s son Michael planning to marry an older Black woman named Lorraine. Bea Arthur’s character worries about the nuptials due to the age difference, while Lorraine’s family disapproves of their daughter marrying a white man, and attempts are made on both sides to call the whole thing off. Lorraine’s family arrives just as Rose (Betty White) and Blanche (Rue McClanahan) are trying a new mud facial treatment, and as the two greet their new guests, Rose states, “This is mud on our faces, we’re not really Black.”

The episode’s removal is the latest in a string of shows that have seen episodes taken down or significantly edited due to blackface scenes or jokes. Earlier this week, three episodes of “Scrubs” were removed from Hulu for their depictions of blackface, following the removal of four episodes of “30 Rock” for scenes featuring blackface. The British sketch show “Little Britain” was also removed from Netflix and other streaming platforms earlier this month for its pervasive use of blackface.

Additionally, “The Office” removed a scene featuring a character in blackface from a Season 9 episode, but left the rest of the episode intact. An entire episode of “Community” has thus far been pulled from at least Netflix’s library. In the Season 2 episode, Chang (Ken Jeong) is seen in blackface while showing up to a Dungeons & Dragons game, as he proceeds to explain that he was cosplaying as “a dark elf.”