Designing Women: A Half-Hour Spent Dishing with Friends

My parents liked Designing Women (1986-93)  so much that they bought a paintingof the house used for exterior shots,  It hung in the foyer of their house in Rock Island, so it was the first thing I saw when I flew home for a visit, and the last thing I saw on the way back to West Hollywood.

We also liked it in West Hollywood -- maybe not that much -- but I remember watching after Murphy Brown on Monday nights.

It was about four women who work as interior decorators in  Atlanta, but actually spent most of their time dishing.  Sort of like The View, or The Golden Girls without the cheesecake.










1 Wealthy Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter), who owns the company, is Dorothy, the sane, stable center of the storm. She champions an endless array of liberal causes. Dixie Carter was actually conservative, so she made a deal with the producers: for each liberal tirade, she got to do something conservative, like sing "Amazing Grace."  Julia eventually marries an eccentric millionaire (Hal Holbrook).

2. Her sister Suzanne (Delta Burke), a former Miss Georgia,is man-hungry (so Blanche), elitist, and bigoted. She gets all the snarky lines, and so was a favorite of drag queens.  Her ex-husband (Gerald McRaney) appears a few times.

3. Charlene (Jean Smart), their secretary, sits at her desk reading magazines and making Rose-like non sequiters.  She eventually marries (Douglas Barr, top photo).

4. Mary Jo (Annie Potts) must be Sofia. She's a no-nonsense single mother, with two sons (Brian Lando, George Newburn), an ex-husband (Scott Bakula), and eventually a boyfriend (Richard Gilliland).

5. Anthony (Meshach Taylor), an ex-convict, does deliveries and manual labor.  He feels emasculated from spending all day in a feminine environment.

When I read through the plot synopses, I wonder if I actually watched this show, or just heard about it.  Nothing seems familiar:

Mary Jo's father visits and hits it off with Charlene.
Mary Jo goes on a date with a much younger man.
They all go on a wilderness survival weekend.
They take a self-defense class.

The only episode I actually remember is "Killing All the Right People," which aired during the second season, on October 5th, 1987.

 Their friend Kendall Dobbs (Tony Goldwin) has AIDS, and faces prejudice and paranoia.  Suzanne is bigoted, but Mary Jo gets all fired up with protective maternal ferocity (I don't remember how Julia and Charlene reacted). He asks them to design the room for his funeral, which struck me as strange -- his friends and family would only be there for a couple of hours. Why not donate the money to a hospice or something? But it was one of the first times that AIDS appeared on network televsion.

I think that was the only time gay people were mentioned on Designing Women.

It was just a fun half-hour spent dishing with friends,

And about the only thing I could talk about in both West Hollywood and rock Island.