Designing Women
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| Designing Women | |
|---|---|
 The original cast of Designing Women. Clockwise from left: Potts as Mary Jo, Smart as Charlene, Burke as Susanne and Carter as Julia |
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| Genre | Sitcom |
| Running time | approx. 30 minutes (with commercials) |
| Creator(s) | Linda Bloodworth-Thomason |
| Starring | Delta Burke ('86-'91) Dixie Carter Annie Potts Jean Smart ('86-'91) Meshach Taylor Julia Duffy ('91-'92) Jan Hooks ('91-'93) Judith Ivey ('92-'93) |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Original run | September 29, 1986–May 24, 1993 |
| No. of episodes | 163 |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
Designing Women was a U.S. television sitcom that centered around the working and personal lives of four women in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. It aired on CBS from 1986 to 1993.
The exterior of the house seen in the series is the Villa Marre, a Victorian mansion located in the Quapaw Quarter in Little Rock, Arkansas, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
Sisters Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter) and Suzanne Sugarbaker (Delta Burke) are polar opposites. Julia is an extremely outspoken liberal intellectual; Suzanne is a sexy, flashy, wealthy, self-centered former beauty queen and Miss Georgia World. They are constantly at personal odds but have launched Sugarbaker Designs, an interior design firm. Julia manages the company while Suzanne is mostly a financial backer who simply hangs around and annoys everyone under the guise of being the firm's salesperson.
Designer Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts) and ditsy office manager Charlene Frazier Stillfield (Jean Smart)were inital investors. Later in the series other staff member Anthony Bouvier (Meshach Taylor), a black former prison inmate and the only man on staff, was made partner. (The story behind Anthony's prison sentence was not told until the third season, at which point it was revealed that Anthony was falsely accused and convicted of a robbery, but was released after being cleared of the crime.) Bernice Clifton, an absent-minded friend of the Sugarbaker sisters' mother played by acting legend Alice Ghostley, also appeared frequently.
[edit] Episode structure
Usually the plot revolved around some sort of a professional or personal crisis of one (or all) of the characters intertwined with a larger moral battle. For example, in one episode, Julia is upset about a newsstand in the neighborhood that puts pornographic magazines on open display. When the owner of the newsstand refuses to stop selling pornography, Julia runs through it with her car; the remainder of the episode is a protracted explanation by Julia about why it was not only her right but her duty to run through the newsstand, on the grounds that pornography is essentially sexist and will cause harm to women. At the episode's conclusion, after meeting with the distributor of the newsstand's pornography--who turns out to be a high-powered businesswoman-- Julia destroys the newsstand again.
[edit] Episode list
[edit] Key Episodes
- "Killing All the Right People" (Season 2)
[edit] Controversy
Designing Women also featured discussions of controversial topics such as homosexuality, racism, dating clergy, and hostile societal attitudes towards the overweight.
The program became infamous for the righteous monologues delivered by Julia in indignation to other characters whom she felt were perpetuating injustices on women (or others). Dixie Carter, a registered Republican, disagreed with many of her character's left-of-center commentaries, and made a deal with the producers that for every speech she gave, Julia would get to sing a song in a future episode.
There was great controversy surrounding the show in 1991 because of the abrupt dismissal of Burke, a pivotal part of the series. Burke was fired, and alleged that her dismissal was due to her having gained a substantial amount of weight, while producers claimed that Burke was let go due to her "argumentative" behavior and for creating discord on the set. The ensuing squabbling was covered amply in the tabloid press, but despite that, the show reached its pinnacle of popularity that year (the year-end Nielsen ratings ranked Designing Women as the number 6 show). It fell out of the top twenty next year and the show concluded its seven-year run.
[edit] Cast departures
In the show, Burke's character of Suzanne moved to Japan and sold her part of the design business to her wealthy cousin Allison Sugarbaker (Julia Duffy). At the same time, Smart chose to leave the show and was replaced by Jan Hooks as Carlene Dobber; Smart's character, Charlene, moved to England where her husband was stationed and her sister, Carlene, took over her job. The character of Carlene was very similar to Charlene; however, Allison was a prim and proper conservative who proved the bossy foil to uber-liberal Julia. Despite series-high ratings, the character was unpopular with audiences and Duffy was let go at the end of the season. The final season featured Judith Ivey as Bonnie Jean "B.J." Poteet, a rich widow who invested some of her millions in the business (the role was initially offered to Bonnie Hunt, who turned it down). Ivey's presence brought a new and well-rounded element of intelligence and humor to the show. However, a ratings slide caused CBS to cancel the series in 1993. The series received no formal season finale, concluding with an hour long special in which the principal characters, while redecorating a Plantation House, envision what their lives would have been like if they had been characters in Gone with the Wind.
Delta Burke reunited with the Thomasons and CBS to reprise the Suzanne Sugarbaker character for a short-lived 1996 sitcom, Women of the House, in which Suzanne's latest husband died and she won his seat in Congress. Burke and Carter later reunited when Burke guest starred on Carter's subsequent series, Family Law in 2002. Burke also did a guest spot on Annie Potts's subsequent series, Any Day Now.
[edit] Political influence
Show creators Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason were strong supporters of longtime friend and then-Democratic nominee for President of the United States, Bill Clinton. One episode revolved around Julia getting stranded in the airport while attempting to attend Clinton's first inauguration. Another Clintons-related joke was the introduction of the prissy character, Allison Sugarbaker, who makes it quite clear to rest of the Designing Women cast that she attended Wellesley College (Hillary Clinton's alma mater).
Julia also expresses her admiration for former president Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, and is very upset in one episode when her service for jury duty prevents her from attending a function for Habitat for Humanity at which the Carters were to appear. She is later very flattered to discover that the Carters have sent her a videotape that they made specifically to thank her for her support of Habitat.
[edit] Title theme
The theme song of the program was "Georgia On My Mind". During the first five seasons, the theme was instrumental including a version by trumpeter Doc Severinsen; for the sixth season it was performed vocally by Ray Charles. The song was dropped in the seventh season and the credits rolled over the episode's first scene instead.
[edit] Ratings
The series immediately attracted critical plaudits and a fiercely devoted cult following, but the ratings were poor. CBS nearly cancelled the series, but was bombarded with letters and phone calls and gave the show another chance. The second season was a hit and the program remained successful for many years.
[edit] Reruns and syndication
From 1991 to 1992, CBS aired reruns of Designing Women on its daytime schedule at 10am (EST). With the networks programming less and less in the daytime, it was most likely the last show ever to be rerun in the daytime by one of the "big 3" networks.
Designing Women was rerun continuously on the Lifetime cable network for over a decade. The ratings were so strong that finally in 2003 Lifetime reunited Burke, Potts, Smart, Carter and Taylor for a reunion special, which also featured interviews with the Thomasons and various writers. However, despite its popularity on Lifetime's schedule, the show left the network on August 4th, 2006. As of October 2, 2006, It now airs on Nick at Nite.
[edit] Discrepancies
- In the pilot episode, Charlene mentions that she has three sisters... Marlene, Darlene, and Harlene but she does not have a sister named Carlene.
- A number of changes to Julia Sugarbaker's house were seen over the years. During the pilot, the entry foyer had a closet and the main stairway was separate; in subsequent episodes, the closet was eliminated, and the stairway opened up onto the foyer. The door behind the kitchenette to the left of the set was sometimes described as leading only to a store room, and at other times, was said to lead to the storeroom, as well as Julia's kitchen and dining room. (The dining room was shown in a couple of episodes.)
- During the pilot, Julia, Suzanne and Charlene addressed Mary Jo as "Jo", but for the rest fo the series, they called her "Mary Jo".
[edit] Main cast
- Dixie Carter as Julia Sugarbaker McIlroy
- Delta Burke as Suzanne Sugarbaker Goff Dent Stonecipher (Seasons 1-5)
- Annie Potts as Mary Jo Jackson Shively
- Jean Smart as Charlene Olivia Frazier/Stillfield (Seasons 1-5)
- Meshach Taylor as Anthony Bouvier
- Julia Duffy as Allison Sugarbaker (Season 6)
- Jan Hooks as Carlene Frazier Dobber (Seasons 6-7)
- Judith Ivey as Bonnie Jean 'B.J.' Poteet (Season 7)
[edit] Recurring cast
- Alice Ghostley as Bernice Clifton
- Hal Holbrook as Atty. Reese Watson (Julia's boyfriend, Seasons 1-5)
- Richard Gilliland as James Dean 'J.D.' Shackelford (Mary Jo's on-again off-again boyfriend, Seasons 1-5)
- Douglas Barr as Colonel William 'Bill' Stillfield (Charlene's boyfriend and later husband, Seasons 2-5)
- Sheryl Lee Ralph as Etienne Toussaint-Bouvier (Anthony's wife, Season 7)
- Priscilla Weems as Claudia Marie Shively (Mary Jo's daughter)
- Brian Lando as Quinton 'Quint' Shively (Mary Jo's son)
- Scott Bakula as Dr. Theodore 'Ted' Shively (Mary Jo's ex-husband, Seasons 1-3)
- George Newbern as Payne McIlroy (Julia's son, Seasons 1,2,4,6)
- Olivia Brown as Vanessa Hargraves (Anthony's on & off-again girlfriend, Season 4)
[edit] Notable guest stars
- Dolly Parton guest starred as herself, appearing in Charlene's dream, in an episode that aired January 1, 1990, entitled "The First Day of the Last Decade of the Entire Twentieth Century."
- Gerald McRaney made a couple of appearances playing Suzanne's ex-husband, novelist Dash Goff. (He and Delta Burke would subsequently marry.)
- Sherman Hemsley portrayed Anthony's father-in-law in a 1993 episode.
- Kim Zimmer played Charlene's cousin Mavis Madling, who was a victim of spousal abuse in the episode "The Rowdy Girls".
[edit] External links
- Lifetime TV- Designing Women site
- Designing Women at Project 80's TV
