‘The Golden Girls’ Episode Banned from Hulu Over ‘Blackface’ Gag

A 1988 episode of the classic TV show The Golden Girls has been banned from Hulu. The episode involves a gag in which the girls put on mud masks and are mistaken for wearing blackface.

Season 3, episode 23 of The Golden Girls, entitled, “Mixed Blessings,” has been pulled from the Disney-owned streamer in an ongoing effort to purge society of anything produced in the past that could be considered remotely offensive by today’s new standards. In the episode, the son of Beatrice Arthur’s character Dorothy plans to marry a black woman, named Lorraine, played by Rosalind Cash. In preparation for meeting Dorothy’s future in-laws, Betty White’s character Rose and Rue McClanahan’s character Blanche put on mud masks. But the in-laws arrive early and catch the two characters in the masks, which sparked blackface concerns from the decision makers at Hulu.

“Oh my Lord,” reacts Lorraine’s mother in disbelief.

“This is mud on our faces, we’re not really black,” explains Rose.

You can watch the episode below:

Even though the scene in the episode ends up being a misunderstanding in which the characters did not mean to wear “blackface,” Hulu has nonetheless removed the episode from its streaming service.

Earlier this week, Hulu also deleted three episodes of the long running medical comedy show Scrubs, because they contain characters dressed in blackface.

On Friday, a scene from an episode of The Office, entitled, “Dwight Christmas,” was edited out because it showed a character that appears in blackface.

30 Rock creator Tina Fey has also recently asked for several of the show’s episodes to be removed from streaming services over characters in blackface. The episodes will be removed from NBCUniversal, iTunes, Google Play, and other platforms.

An episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has also vanished from Netflix over characters seen in blackface. The streaming service has also removed the dark comedy show The League of Gentleman over its use of a character that wears blackface.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.