Daily Golden Girls/Lansbury

Alright, I know that this "daily" thing is getting pretty hard to buy. Just go with it.

So, here I am, watching MSW. As I do. It's episode 15 of the first season: "Tough Men Don't Die." I always like to see the connections between MSW and the GGs, like actors who appeared as guest stars in both series. Some are now-famous people like George Clooney. And actually Herb Edelman who played Stanley Zbornak on the Golden Girls had a recurring guest star role on Murder, She Wrote as NYPD Lieutenant Artie Gelber. He appeared in 10 episodes.

But! In "Tough Men Don't Die," the connections are more than just miscellaneous. First, Barbara Babcock appears in this episode. She also plays Blanches sister in one episode of the GGs. But in this episode there is a really astounding connection because, well, there is an episode of the Golden Girls in I think season 2 or something where Dorothy begins to have an affair with a married gym teacher named Glenn O'Brien. She breaks it off, but a few seasons later Glen re-contacts Dorothy after having divorced his wife. They try to make the relationship work, but it doe not.

So, the connections. In the Golden Girls, Jerry Orbach plays the Glen character in the second episode involving Glen, and an actor named Alex Rocco played Glen in the original episode. Well, in "Tough Men Don't Die," BOTH Jerry Orbach and Alex Rocco guest star! The two versions of Glen O'Brien meet face to face! Causing a rift in the space time continuum. No, not really.

"Tough Men" also marks the first appearance of Orbach as Harry McGraw, a role that would recur on MSW and result in the short lived spin off The Law And Harry McGraw.

And to return briefly to the Glen O'Brien episodes of the GGs, the first of the two does have one of my favorite Sophia lines. Sophia does not approve of Glen right from the beginning because he is not Italian. When one of the girls asks Dorothy where she met Glen, Sophia interjects, "His name is O'Brien. 10 to 1 she met him in a gin mill." Love.