Picture it, 1987. In New York, the legendary houses of Abundance and Evangelista are reading each other to filth, while in Miami the house on Richmond St. is dark as night for all the shade being thrown. Pose and The Golden Girls may be worlds apart, but at the end of the day they’re both about chosen families who love each other immensely—and sometimes that love is, shall we say, a little tough. So we’re putting Dorothy and her girls against Elektra and her girls to see who has truly mastered the art of the read. The (television) library is open.

The Category Is: Bailing Your Daughter Out of Jail

Sophia: “Arrested for prostitution. I can’t believe it!”

Blanche: “But Sophia, we’re innocent!”

Sophia: “I know that, I can’t believe these dumb cops would believe anyone would pay to sleep with you.”

---

Elektra: “This one is a relation of my housekeeper. The poor woman was inconsolable about her arrest so I volunteered to be of assistance. And she’s an expert with my delicates. How could I say no?”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: Retail Therapy

Blanche: "Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping."

---

Elektra: “Look at me. Look at you. I can pass. I can strut down Fifth Avenue when the sun is sitting high as my cheek bones and be waited on at Bergdorf’s, same as any white woman, while you hide away in the shadows. You’re way ahead of yourself in the game, beast.”

Winner: The Pose girls

***

The Category Is: Hair, There and Every Queer

Blanche: “Sarcasm, Rose. That's like when I say you're so lucky to be a natural blonde.”

Rose: “Thank you.”

---

Elektra: “Your real hair is so short you could roll it with rice.”

Winner: The Pose girls

***

The Category Is: Aging with or without Dignity, Round 1

Blanche: “Now, only women in their 20s and 30s have babies, whatever is a woman in her 40s to do?”

Dorothy: “I don't know, why don't we find one and ask?”

---

Lulu: “What are you doing here? Is there a Tired Old Bitches on Geritol category tonight?”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: Beat Face Beatdown

Blanche: “What was your first impression of me?”

Rose: “I thought you wore too much makeup and were a slut. I was wrong…. You don't wear too much makeup!”

---

Candy: “I cut my hand on Blanca’s stubble. Really, Blanca, go home, shave that brick face of yours and come back when you learn how to do your makeup.”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: Luscious and Suspicious Body-ody-ody

Blanche: “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go take a long, hot, steamy bath with just enough water to barely cover my perky bosoms.”

Sophia: “You’re only going to sit in an inch of water?”

---

Elektra: "Real? Ha. These legs are real. These cheekbones are real. This whittled waist is real. I will never judge a girl for enhancements, but they need to convince a skeptical audience searching for falsities, and you are convincing no one!"

Winner: Tie

***

The Category Is: High Fashion Lady of the ’80s, Round 1

Blanche: "To the untrained eye that polyester could almost pass for silk."

---

Elektra: "You are the Cracker Barrel to my Gucci and St. Laurent."

Winner: The Pose girls

***

The Category Is: Ho-ery

Blanche: “I’m from the South. Flirting is part of my heritage.”

Rose: “What does that mean?”

Dorothy: “Her mother was a slut, too.”

---

Elektra: “I have my finger in many pots around the city.”

Candy: “Is that what they call being a slut now?”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: Date Night/Hate Night

Sophia: “I have a question for you, strictly hypothetical. Let's say a man wants to take you out on a date.”

Dorothy: “Why is that hypothetical?”

Sophia: “Check your calendar, Pussycat.”

---

Lulu: “She has a date.”

Candy: “Is Jesus returning to take you out?”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: You’re Such a Disappointment

Sophia: “This is the proudest I've been of you in my whole life.”

Dorothy: “Thanks, Ma.”

Sophia: “Can you believe it? My whole life and this is the proudest I've ever been. I'm depressed. I need a cookie.”

---

Elektra: “Look at the fruits of my labor. A foolhardy chunk who makes her living on the pole and a brainless wonder who thinks the way to get curves is to stick Charmin in her drawers or inject cement into her derriere. House of Ferocity? You two are about as fierce as my morning corn flakes.”

Winner: The Pose girls

***

The Category Is: High Fashion Lady of the ’80s, Round 2

Sophia: “Jealousy is a very ugly thing, Dorothy. And so are you in anything backless.”

---

Elektra: “You’re the last person I expected to see here. Isn’t there a sale going down at the Payless you should be attending?”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: Let’s Talk About Safe Sex

Dorothy: “Condoms, Rose! Condoms, condoms, condoms!”

---

Blanca: “You need to be safe so leave them white boys alone. Next, I want you to be healthy so make sure y’all are taking your Flintstones multivtiamins.”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: Do You Know Where You’re Going To?

Blanche: “You know what I hate doing most after a party?”

Rose: “Trying to find your underwear in the big pile?”

---

Elektra: “You think you’re on the road to being legends but you couldn’t make it from here to the door without me pointing the way.”

Winner: The Pose girls

***

The Category Is: Aging with or without Dignity, Round 2

Sophia: “Well, if he has an eye for antiques, you should be a shoe-in.”

Dorothy: “Look who's calling the vase Ming.”

---

Candy: “Abundance? Please, that name is as old as Elektra’s lace-fronts.”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: Material Girls

Dorothy: “You see what this holiday has become? You see? Everybody thinks the best way to show someone you care is by going into debt. I mean, where is the love? Where's the sharing? Where is the true spirit of Christmas?”

Sophia: “Neiman Marcus, ladies apparel, third floor.”

---

Elektra: “I suppose well-wishes no matter how late they may come are always adequate, though in the future I prefer them in the form of a gift. Preferably from Saks.”

Winner: The Pose girls

***

The Category Is: Alley-Oops

Blanche: “I won't stand for this!”

Sophia: “Take it, Dorothy!”

Dorothy: “But I bet you'll lie down for it.”

---

Candy: “Not much of a house with only one bitch in it.”

Lulu: “More like a studio apartment.”

Winner: The Golden Girls

***

The Category Is: FINISH HER!

Angela: “Why should I apologize?”

Sophia: “I'll tell you why. Because you're nothing but a backstabbing Judas in sensible shoes!”

Angela: “Oh, yeah, well you know what you are? You're a two-lira tramp with cheap bridgework!”

Sophia: “May you put your dentures in upside down and chew your head off!”

Angela: “May your legs grow old and gnarled and withered like an olive branch! You should be so lucky.”

Sophia: “May your moles grow hair thicker than Jerry Vale's!”

Angela: “May your marinara sauce never cling to your pasta!”

Sophia: “That's it! Come back here and say that to my face!”

---

Elektra: “What is that on your lips, Lisa? Oh, it's just your favorite lip gloss—sperm. Why don't you low rent, bad handjob giving hookers run back to the pier where you belong with the rest of the city vermin?”

Winner: Tie

***

Grand Prize: The Golden Girls, by a rice-rolled hair.