Dixie Carter (Brandy, EON) has passed away

[All My Shadows]

Aaah, that's it. I completely got the condition wrong. Dixie sold the hell out of it, though!

[MichaelGL]

This is very saddening. As a kid I was exposed to alot of strong independent vibrant women both from my life experiences and simply from watching television. Dixie was one of those women (the other being Candice Bergen and a few others), who were hard to forget and always stuck out in my mind from how talented they were. May she rest in peace knowing that she had a truly flawless career, where you could obviously tell she put a 110 percent in any role she received.

[DeliaIrisFan]

RIP, Dixie. This is so sad to hear, and really takes me back to my childhood. I grew up watching Designing Women, and Dixie Carter's Julia was an inspiration and taught me so much about the world (I'm a little embarrassed to say, long before I read about some of the issues that she commented on each week in the newspaper). Years later, I was kind of disappointed to learn that the fiery political monologues that Dixie had recited as Julia were not necessarily Dixie's own viewpoints. But, we can never fully know who celebrities are in their real lives - all I really know for sure is that Dixie was one hell of an actress and brought to life a character that I looked up to growing up, and I have to believe that some of Julia's compassion and wisdom came from Dixie herself.

I think the image that I will always associate most with Dixie Carter and Designing Women came from the episode in which the women were helping their (gay) friend who was dying of AIDS plan his funeral, and some client/longtime frenemy of Julia overheard and made some hateful comment about those kind of people getting what they deserve. Julia threw her out, exclaiming, "Norma Jean, I have known you for 25 years, and if God were giving out sexually transmitted diseases as a punishment for our sex lives, you would be down at the free clinic every day!" Then Mari Jo later gave an equally compelling but more subdued speech at the PTA about why they needed to give out condoms in her daughter's high school ("We know how to prevent AIDS now, and I am sure my friend's mother would give anything for the chance that we as parents all have today"). That kind of frank discussion about AIDS at a very early point in the epidemic was unlike anything I'd seen on tv as a kid at the time, and throughout my life, as a gay adolescent into adulthood, the episode has taken on new meanings each time I've seen it in reruns over the past 20 years.

On another note, I have to say that I think it speaks to how much the portrayal of women in the media has regressed in the past 25 years that we are actually discussing whether Designing Women was a ripoff of the Golden Girls. First and foremost, the Golden Girls was about senior citizens. It portrayed them as three-dimensional, independent women who were full of life, and in the process showed that we have nothing to fear of growing older. But Designing Women was about women who still had half of more of their lives ahead of them - or should have, in Dixie's case. They were single for various reasons (divorce, widowhood, or they just had not chosen to marry yet) at a stage of life at which TV had not traditionally depicted women as being independent and sexually empowered, which was in some ways as groundbreaking as what the Golden Girls did. I'm sure today if someone pitched a show about women in their 60s-80s to a network and someone came right in after them to pitch a show about women in their 30s-40s, the network executives would have trouble distinguishing the two (and would probably reject them both in favor of a trashy reality show about people in their teens or early 20s). But even as a kid I think I knew that both shows were capturing very different experiences. I would like to remember that there was a time in my lifetime (barely) when women of nearly all ages had strong, vital roles on television.

I also don't see the Marc Cherry/Linda Bloodworth Thomason comparisons, either. Granted, all I really know about Cherry is from the first season or two of Desperate Housewives, which was entertaining for a while but ultimately lost any credibility. I'm not even sure what his role was in the Golden Girls was, except that he came along later in the series. I don't really see the comparison between Desperate Housewives and Designing Women, except (as others have mentioned) the four female co-star framework. I think that is just a formula of sitcoms, much like the two-core-family half hour soap formula in the 60s and 70s. It's a proven, functionary method of balancing a show without the audience ODing on any one character but without losing all momentum trying to juggle an unwieldy number of characters. But it's what the writers and actors do within that formula that make or break the show, IMO. To me, Designing Women was a slice of life and on the cutting edge of politics and current events (yet still strangely timeless as we're still grappling with many of the same issues today). I would say at it's prime it was more like the Colbert Report than anything else on tv today. Desperate Housewives, on the other hand, even when it was still fun (before there had been half a dozen convoluted murder mysteries taking place in the same house), was always something of an anachronism. There are no housewives anymore - even most of the characters on the show have had jobs of some sort for much if not all of the show. And their silly problems seemed more and more hollow to me as the McMansion lifestyle that the show did seem to capture in some ways has itself ceased to exist with the recession and the foreclosure crisis and the growingly apparent problems of suburban sprawl.

[YRBB]

I loved her as Gloria Hodge and always hoped she would eventually wake up from her coma and wreak havoc in Bree's life. Alas, it was not meant to be.

RIP.

[ReddFoxx]

Rest in peace, Dixie Carter. My favorite Julia Sugarbaker moment was when she ran for some office and told off a politician, that was great episode.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Oh, and just to bring this topic back to soaps, in some way (I know nothing about DC's time on Edge of Night): This thread reminded me that Beverlee McKinsey said in her infamous TV Guide interview when she left GL that the only way she would act again was if Linda Bloodworth Thomason called her up and offered her a role in a sitcom. I did some digging and BM left GL in the summer of 1992; it turns out Delta Burke left Designing Women in 1991 and then the Julia Duffy character was on during the 1991-92 season, and then Judith Ivey came in for the (final) 1992-93 season. So there was an opening for a new "rich bitch" character on DW at that time. My inner 11 year-old geeky soap/sitcom fan cannot stop imagining what might have been if Beverlee McKinsey had been the one to step in to fill Delta Burke's shoes on Designing Women after Julia Duffy didn't work out. Of course, Beverlee was another incredible actress who brought to life strong, complex female characters whom we lost all too soon, in recent years, which was what made me thinking of that quote now and realize that she would have made the perfect foil for Dixie Carter. Soap fans could have told the Thomasons at the time that BM was one of the only actresses on the planet who could have played a vain, self-absorbed character who said outrageous things and still made viewers love her, even as they were rooting for Julia to tell her off.

Nothing against Judith Ivey - I actually liked her DW character and thought she was a good addition, but she was too likable to "replace" Suzanne. Julia Duffy's Allison didn't work out, but at least the general dynamic of the show was preserved (albeit too harshly, because the character wasn't likable and none of the others had the affection for her that they had for Suzanne, which always tempered their frustration with her, no matter how offensive she was being). With Judith Ivey's BJ, there was just no conflict because they all got along and they all agreed with each other whenever they would talk politics. That character should have been the new Charlene "type," which would have worked for me because by the end I thought Jan Hooks' character (Carlene, I think was her name?) was the most awkward fit in the final cast.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

What most turned me off about Designing Women were the "very special episodes" where they would bring a character in and attempt to tell some contrived socially relevant issues by preaching and listing a whole bunch of facts in the overall dialogue of the episode. I have no problem with one or two of these episodes, but this show sure had a great deal of them, as far as I can remember. A number of shows during this time were doing episodes like this, and when I became an adult and started watching these shows again, they had a very pedestrian approach to these issues and I would just roll my eyes at the execution of them on many of these sitcoms.

The politics talk is what ages it terribly, IMO. Like Murphy Brown, even though some of the political situations are still relevant today, it relied a lot of political humour, and I'm afraid, if you weren't living during that time period and don't know the specifics about what really happened, you won't be able to reach a broad new audience in syndication. That's where I think The Golden Girls excelled, they would work in the occasional jab at Reagan-era politics, but it was nothing too specific, and they spaced their "special episodes" far in between and the issues were handled a bit more delicately and not in a way where I felt I was being talked down to.

Political humour is nice while you're living in the present, but really, in the end, it has some terrible long-term effects on a television show, IMO.

Is Designing Women still in syndication? I know the show was pulling in some horrendous ratings on Nick @ Nite and eventually TV Land.

[Soapsuds]

I havent seen DW anywhere but GG is all over the place from WE to HallMark Channel.

[DRW50]

Designing Women was a big hit on Lifetime for years and years. I think it ran for about ten years. It was a better fit for that network than something like TV Land or Nick at Nite.

I don't think the topical humor is the biggest problem with Designing Women as much as some of the unpleasantness of the characters might have been a problem. Suzanne balanced her selfishness out with vulnerability and humor but otherwise it was mostly just Charlene who was the heart of the show. It was never quit the same after she left. I liked Julia Duffy (sorry!) and I liked Judith Ivey but the format of the show worked mostly with the original women.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Yes, there was a time when it seemed all Lifetime aired was The Golden Girls, Designing Women, a movie of the week, and two original series'.

[DRW50]

The other thing is that Designing Women wore its heart on its sleeve. They were not afraid of schmaltz, like the episode where Jean Smart gave birth and at the same time Dolly Parton helped the little old black woman go to Heaven. Or the WW2 dream where Charlene met her husband. Or some of the heart-on-your-sleeve, all out emotional speeches, like when Suzanne heard other women at her high school reunion calling her fat, and gave a very heartfelt speech about how much she and everyone else had changed and how she wasn't ashamed of that.

That type of open emotion is not popular today, when everything is very cynical, and people are terrified to work beyond a sour one-liner.

The Golden Girls was generally a less emotional show and more of a humorous show -- there was some schmaltz but it was generally rooted in comedy and there were only a handful of episodes which went for straight drama. Sophia was usually there to bust up any saccharine. For that reason it probably holds up better. Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty did what a lot of "comedians" today try to do, and they did it a thousand times better.

[All My Shadows]

I miss those days terribly. Their lineup was built around GG, DW, and the movies, and there'd also be stuff like Any Day Now and that show with Debbi Morgan, as well as Supermarket Sweep and Intimate Portrait. Lifetime sucks now.

That's pretty much it. I've always thought that DW and Knots Landing probably had the exact same audience.

[DRW50]

I'm so ancient that I remember watching endless episodes of Supermarket Sweep, Shop Til You Drop, and Unsolved Mysteries. The one about the couple who put out a want ad to sell their computer, only for the man who answered the ad to hit them both on the head repeatedly with a hammer and kill the wife, haunts me to this day.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I loved the politics on Designing Women, and yes, the "very special episodes." The latter, I think, actually worked better than on other 80s sitcoms because they created minor but well-drawn characters who, even after the final laugh-track, you knew did not necessarily have an easy road ahead of them. The character with AIDS died; Kim Zimmer's battered woman character got away from her husband but still had to rebuild her life; etc. It wasn't like one of the main characters had some crisis that came out of nowhere and was resolved in 30 minutes.

I also don't see why longevity in late-night reruns on Lifetime is a measure of a show's success. Did Lifetime exist when either Golden Girls or Designing Women premiered? I doubt that was the primary thing on the writers' or producers' minds at the time, and I doubt any show today is being written with that in mind, as the future of basic cable - and TV in general - is very much in question. It's lovely that Golden Girls has lived on, but I think valuing it for its ability to seem comparatively less dated than other shows from that era in syndication takes away from some of the far more important things it accomplished, right from the beginning. This may sound bad and I don't mean it to, but I think a big part of the reason that the Golden Girls doesn't seem as dated to me as most other sitcoms is because the characters are still so much older than me; I watch it expecting a bit of a generational gap. Designing Women, for its part, must have done pretty well on Lifetime for a long time, since it aired continuously from the time I was an adolescent until at most a year or two ago. All old shows become dated at some point, and even as someone who was born during the Reagan administration I could usually extrapolate from the current events references in the reruns where the characters would stand on current issues.

That said, I maintain that some of the political references on Designing Women do hold up. In fact, on the Huffington Post article about DC's passing today, someone posted a link in to a YouTube video of Julia's speech when she was running for office against some family values politician. He was questioning whether she was a true American and a true Christian, rather than debating the actual issues, and her rebuttal could be said pretty much word for word about Sarah Palin today, IMO.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I miss Unsolved Mysteries.