With Dorothy Zbornak having married and left in the previous series finale, the three remaining housemates (Sophia Petrillo, Rose Nylund, and Blanche Devereaux) invest in The Golden Palace, a Miami hotel that is for sale.

Celebrity guest stars were frequent,[1] and the series also featured the return of some recurring actors from The Golden Girls, such as Debra Engle as Rebecca Devereaux, Herb Edelman as Stan Zbornak and Harold Gould as Miles Webber.

[2][3] Less than two months after Dorothy's departure,[6] Blanche, Rose, and Sophia sell their Miami house and purchase The Golden Palace, a hotel in the city.

Rose makes a deal with the producer of a talk show to have a guest on the program stay at the Golden Palace for free, in exchange for an ad acknowledging the hotel.

When the program airs, the hotel employees are surprised to learn that Cosay is actually a psychiatrist, and they are upset when he recommends the Golden Palace as a quiet, stress-free place for former murderers to stay.

While looking through the hotel guestbooks, Blanche discovers that Rose's boyfriend Miles Webber was a frequent guest at the Golden Palace until the ladies purchased it.

Guest stars: Kim Fields as Trisha, Monte Landis as Mr. Ricchuitti Dorothy visits the Golden Palace for the first time and reunites with Blanche, Rose, and Sophia after four months.

Special guest star: Barry Bostwick as Nick DeCarlo Roland's parents, George and Louise Wilson, visit the hotel with the announcement that they are getting a divorce.

Roland decides to quit his job at the hotel over Blanche's refusal to remove the flag, although she eventually realizes that he was right about it, and that her memories are not as happy as she thought.

Rose dislikes the idea of people staying at the hotel solely for sexual activities, but Blanche and Roland tell her that it is not their job to judge the guests.

Charles intends to help his patients get over their bad memories by having them stay in a Christmas-free environment, so Roland and the ladies reluctantly remove all Christmas decorations from the hotel to accommodate them.

Guest stars: Hansford Rowe as Mr. Siegel, Joely Fisher as Paula Webb Taylor, a man who Blanche was attracted to in college, visits the Golden Palace.

Meanwhile, a relationship expert known as The Love Doctor is holding a couples seminar at the hotel, and Sophia wants to participate, so she convinces Roland to accompany her.

Special guest star: Ricardo Montalbán as Lawrence Gentry The Golden Palace is preparing to hold a stand-up comedy competition.

When city health inspector Mr. Tucker arrives unexpectedly at the hotel, Blanche distracts him while Rose stuffs the body in a large suitcase to covertly transport it elsewhere.

Ultimately, Mitchelson and the news team see Davenport's body; the hotel employees pass him off as an unconscious drunk man and promote a new designated driver program for restaurant customers.

Sophia needs money for a plane ticket to reach the show's studio in California, and after talking with Charlie, she decides to bet on dog races.

However, Stan secretly approaches Sophia and admits that he faked his death to avoid prison for tax evasion and plans to flee the country.

Special guest star: Herbert Edelman as Stan During Spring Break, the Golden Palace is overrun by vacationing college students.

[38] As a result, the show was retitled and revamped as a new series, The Golden Palace, with Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty reprising their roles.

[39][40] Like the original series, The Golden Palace was also created by Susan Harris,[41] who once again served as executive producer alongside Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas.

[43] McClanahan had suggested keeping the original series and adding a fourth roommate to replace Arthur's character, but this idea was rejected by the producers.

[44][45][46] British comedian Alexei Sayle was originally hired to play the hotel's chef, who initially was to be portrayed as Eastern European.

[48][49][50] The idea of having a Latino chef as a comic foil to the rest of the cast had originally been proposed at the beginning of The Golden Girls; the original chef, Coco (portrayed by Charles Levin), appeared in the first episode of The Golden Girls but was written out due to concerns about how to work him into later scripts with a cast of four women with strong personalities.

In 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter movement and following the murder of George Floyd, the episode "Camp Town Races Aren't Nearly as Much Fun as They Used to Be" attracted attention for how it had addressed the issues of racism and the Confederate flag.

Journalist Seb Starcevic first drew attention to the episode in a Twitter thread that became popular before the wider media began to pick up the story.

[88] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Rick Du Brow stated that Harris "deserves plenty of credit for infusing the premiere of the tired old series with new verve, drive and wit in its resuscitated form".

[41] The Orlando Sentinel wrote that the premise "seemed like one of the worst ideas of the year," but found that the premiere episode "crackles with the same energy that marked the early years of The Golden Girls," writing further, "The change of scenery, plus fresh chemistry created by the addition of new characters, relieves the numbing sense of deja vu that settled over the characters" in the final seasons of the previous series.

[90] Tom Shales of The Washington Post gave a mixed review of the pilot episode but praised White's performance, writing "she seems faster and fresher than ever.

Robert Lloyd, writing for the Los Angeles Times, applauded the cast "even if they are playing in a sequel to a show people remember better and love more".