Trivia / Empty Nest

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• Directed by Cast Member: Dinah Manoff directed seven episodes.
• He Also Did:
  • Richard Mulligan (Harry Weston) is also best known for playing Burt Campbell on Soap.
  • Dinah Manoff (Carol Weston) also co-starred on Soap as Elaine Lefkowitz and is also best known for playing Marty Maraschino in Grease.
  • Marsha Warfield (Dr. Maxine Douglas) is also best known for playing Roz Russell on Night Court. She joined the cast of this show right on the back of that show's cancellation, in fact.
  • At the time he was cast, David Leisure (Charley Dietz) had risen to fame for playing Joe Isuzu in a series of late 1980s Isuzu commercials.
  • In addition to her work on The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and Nurses, creator and executive producer Susan Harris is known as creator and executive producer of Soap and Benson.
  • James Widdoes directed an episode. Widdoes is best known for playing Stan Pembroke on Charles in Charge and Robert Hoover in Animal House.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: In addition to Mulligan & Manoff, several of their old Soap co-stars guest starred on the show including Donnelly Rhodes, Jennifer Salt, Richard Libertini, Randee Heller, & Jim Johnson.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Surprisingly considering the show's popularity, longevity, and relative recency, it has never received an official DVD release, and is not available on any streaming service. It's also much harder to find in syndication than parent series The Golden Girls; in the new millennium, it aired only briefly on Hallmark Channel in 2011 (pairing the show once again with The Golden Girls, which was and remains a Hallmark Channel mainstay), and then for a slightly longer stretch on the broadcast digital subchannel Laff for three years (2015-18); virtually all available bootlegs of the series appear to be from this later run.
• Reality Subtext: Barbara moving to Arizona is because her portrayer, Kristy McNichol was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and needed time off for treatment.
• Real-Life Relative: A subplot of an episode had a neighbor accusing the family dog Dreyfuss of impregnating his dog, and as proof, presenting the Westons with three puppies that were indeed clearly his, as they looked like miniature versions of him. They were in fact Bear's (the dog who played Dreyfus) puppies.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Kristy McNichol and Dinah Manoff resemble each other strongly enough that — depending on their costumes and hairstyles — it can be hard to tell which of them is which. A perfectly reasonable expectation of two actual sisters, but quite surprising in two unrelated people.
• Written by Cast Member: Dinah Manoff also wrote two episodes.

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