"It's like we say in St. Olaf, Christmas without fruitcake is like St. Sigmund's Day without the headless boy."
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Miles to Go is the fifteenth episode of the sixth season of The Golden Girls and the one-hundred and forty-third episode overall. Directed by Matthew Diamond and written by Don Seigel and Jerry Perzigian, it premiered on NBC-TV on January 19th, 1991.
After learning of the death of a mob boss, Miles reveals he was an accountant from Chicago who had entered the Witness Relocation Program. When he learns the mobster faked his death, Miles must leave Miami. Meanwhile, Blanche must find a way to pay for the expensive dress that she bought, having hit a snag in her plan to simply return the dress after wearing it.
Gladys calls Sophia "faccia bella," which is Italian for "beautiful face."
The episode's title is a play on the phrase "miles to go", which implies the amount of distance one must travel in order to reach a destination.
Cultural references[]
When Miles leaves his Robert Frost poetry book behind he asks Rose to read Page 73 and think of him. The lines she reads aloud are a bit of a paraphrase of Frost's poem "Reluctance", the last stanza of which is, "Ah, when to the heart of man / Was it ever less than a treason / to go with the drift of things, / To yield with a grace to reason, / And bow and accept the end / Of a love or a season."
Continuity[]
This episode created a plot hole in the Miles storyline that was never resolved. It's established in past episodes that Miles Webber is a college professor who had widowed for about a year[2] with a daughter who lives out of town.[3] However, "Miles to Go" reveals that this was all a lie, and everything about his life was part of his new identity given to him by the Witness Protection Program. Rose is shocked after learning all of this and even refers to him by his real name. However, when Miles returns to the show after the capture of the gangster, nothing about his true past or identity as Nicholas Carbone is ever mentioned again. It is also never explained why Miles's daughter still had contact with him, as Witness Protection members must cut off all contact with family and friends when they go into hiding.
Goofs[]
In a set-up for a joke, Rose tells the ladies that it's the 117th anniversary of the birth of Robert Frost. This was almost true -- the show aired on January 19th, 1991, and Robert Frost, born in 1874, would have been 117 on March 26th, 1991.
