Designing Women

Julia Sugarbaker

Julia is the president and owner of Sugarbaker and Associates Design Firm, located at her own Victorian house. Julia can best be described as a feminist who often espouses a liberal point of view. She is very quick to speak her mind, sometimes without knowing all the facts involved. Julia can be personified as a bold, independent, self-confident, no-nonsense, Southern woman who loves defends her old and sweet South. Her rapid-fire speeches and passionate beliefs earned her the nickname "The Terminator". She often quarrels with her sister Suzanne. Despite her disagreements with Suzanne, she often stands up for her against people who insult her. Early on in the series, she disagrees with her son, Payne, who dates an older woman. She was married to Hayden McElroy for several years, who died prior to the show's premier (in the 1986 debut episode, Hayden's death is described as having happened a year before, in 1985) after suffering several heart attacks. Julia has a romantic relationship with Reese Watson, also a widower, who is also known for putting her in her place. After Reese's untimely death during the fifth season, Julia tentatively begins dating again, eventually beginning a relationship with symphony conductor Phillip Russell Stuart during the show's final season. As the series progressed, Julia becomes a softer person. Though the most logical and sensible member of the group, Julia is occasionally convinced by the others to try something uncharacteristically silly (such as sticking her head through the banisters of the staircase in the Governor's Mansion), usually with disastrous results, but often, Julia was the one to convince the others to change their minds when they want to do something that can't be the right thing to do, or the most logical idea to do it. Carter is the only cast member to appear in all the episodes of the series (Potts was absent for only one). Although Delta Burke was the one who appears at first in the intro's credits (which credited the cast in alphabetical order) during its first five seasons, Carter's character has been the indicated as the main character of the show's plot during all seven seasons, which made Dixie Carter the main actress of the show.

Mary Jo Shively

Mary Jo is the main designer of Sugarbaker's. At the beginning of the series, the newly divorced Mary Jo is very shy, easily intimidated, and somewhat lacking in self-esteem. She and Charlene are described as close friends (after having been neighbors in the latter's apartment building). However, as the series progresses, she slowly becomes more independent and resourceful. Mary Jo is the mother of two children, Claudia and Quinton. With a sarcastic, and often self-deprecating sense of humor, she often pokes fun at the personal life stories told by Suzanne and later Allison. Somewhat inspired by Julia, she becomes more self-confident and also a bit more opinionated, and even supports a safe sex campaign at her daughter's school. Initially, it took Mary Jo a long time to start dating again after her divorce. Eventually, Suzanne sets her up with J.D. Shackelford, a talent scout for the Atlanta Braves, whom she sporadically dates through the show's first season. She often portrays a false persona of herself to impress old friends and clients. Throughout the course of the series, despite her off-again-on-again romance with J.D., Mary Jo is mostly unlucky in love. She sometimes goes to the extreme to impress a man, sometimes men in whom she does not have much interest. Several times over the course of the series, Mary Jo expresses feelings and actions signaling she is going through a mid-life crisis. Potts appeared in all but one episode.

Suzanne Sugarbaker

Suzanne, Julia's younger sister, is the often self-centered, somewhat silent partner of Sugarbaker's. She is a rich, flashy, beautiful dark-haired ex-beauty queen, who often denies her real age. Among her previous titles, she won the 1976 Miss Georgia World contest in Atlanta and was a contestant in the Miss America Pageant in either 1976 or 1977 as stated in the second-season episode "High Rollers" during a trip she, Charlene, and Anthony take to Atlantic City (Burke herself had been a contestant in the 1974 pageant). She is a divorcee with three previous husbands; two of them being Dash Goff(Gerald McRaney), a Southern writer, who was her first and one true love, and another being Jack Dent, who played for the Atlanta Braves and the third is J. Benton Stonecipher (unknown occupation). She has a Hispanic maid named Consuela. Though never herself appearing on-camera, Consuela's wild and crazy antics are usually revealed by Suzanne such as being into voodoo and her violent outbursts. Suzanne often shows disinterest in Anthony, but considers him one of her best friends and is often able to con him into doing things for her such as guarding her house during a rash of neighborhood robberies and teaching Consuela how to drive. Suzanne and Anthony eventually play foils to one another as the series progresses and find themselves in increasingly bizarre and comical situations such as in the season-four episode "Foreign Affairs", when Suzanne convinces Anthony to dress up as Consuela to fool immigration and gain citizenship status so she will not be deported. Suzanne also has a fascination with guns, owning several of them leading to a comical episode during season four when she accidentally shoots Anthony in the leg after mistaking him for a burglar the day before he is to graduate from college. In season one, she tried to adopt a foreign girl named Li Sing. Early on in the series, she gets a pet pig she names Noelle, which she treats as a human being, dressing her up, driving her around in her car, and taking her to the local Dairy Queen. Noelle, however, eventually runs away from her and never returns. In season four, Suzanne begins a battle with her weight after making an appearance at her class reunion. She misses a handful of episodes throughout seasons four and five, and makes her final appearance in the last episode of season five. In the first episode of season six, it is explained that Suzanne has left Atlanta to take a job in Japan to be closer to her mother, and she has sold her share in Sugarbaker's to her (and Julia's) cousin Allison. Had Burke continued with the series past season five, the Thomasons had stated a storyline involving Suzanne and Anthony eloping was to be in the works.

Charlene Frazier-Stillfield

Charlene is the office manager of Sugarbaker's. Sweet-natured, but often naïve, she is a tall blonde from Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Charlene reportedly never meets a stranger and is known for searching for the good in everyone. She remains in steady friendships with all of her coworkers (Mary Jo being her best friend from their time as neighbors), though her naïveté often results in quarrels with Julia and Suzanne. Charlene is very practical, but a dreamer. She dreamt as a child of being a preacher and is a long-running fan of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Dolly Parton. Though often guided by her psychic adviser, Charlene often finds herself in trouble while looking for a respectable man to date. She is often the target of con men. She has a short-lived romance with Shadow, a secret government agent, before romancing Mason Dudd, an overweight entrepreneur, who leaves her for Japan. Charlene meets her soul mate in widowed Air Force Colonel Bill Stillfield, whom she eventually marries. She gives birth to their daughter, Olivia, early in season four. In a dream, she was visited by entertainer Dolly Parton as Olivia's Guardian Movie Star, who confirmed to Charlene the gender and name of her child. When Bill is reassigned to England in early season six, Charlene turns over her job at Sugarbaker's to her sister, Carlene Dobber.

Anthony Bouvier

Anthony is the deliveryman of Sugarbaker's, who later becomes a partner of the design firm. Before coming to work at the Sugarbaker's, he had been raised by his grandmother, Dondi, after his mother, who was a drug addict, abandoned him. In the episode, "Papa Was A Rolling Stone", Anthony meets his biological father for the first time on his 30th birthday after the ladies hire a private investigator to find him. Anthony was unknowingly involved in a robbery of a local convenience store, which got him sent to prison. (The details behind his conviction and imprisonment are not made known—to the other characters or the audience—until fairly late in the series.) Anthony often discusses his "unfortunate incarceration", most of the time to explain his feelings and out of fear. His cellmate, T. Tommy Reed, often bullied him, but later returns as a changed man who wants to make Anthony his business partner. Anthony becomes involved in several tasks over the run of the series in an effort to improve his life. By the seventh season, Anthony is working hard to complete law school. Nonetheless, he soon takes a trip to Las Vegas after his fiancée dumped him. There, he wakes up to find he has married an alluring showgirl named Etienne Toussaint. By the end of the series, he has completed law school.

Allison Sugarbaker

Allison is Julia and Suzanne's cousin, who sweeps into Sugarbaker's at the beginning of the sixth season. Having purchased Suzanne's shares, Allison makes her petite but bossy and overbearing presence felt declaring that she has the controlling interest in the business. She also takes up residence in Suzanne's house, claiming that she holds the lease and plots to drive Anthony out of the house, despite the fact that he had been renting it since Suzanne left Atlanta. Her uncanny ability to alienate all those around her can be attributed to her Obnoxious Personality Disorder, and she enjoys an antagonistic relationship with Julia, Anthony and Mary Jo. Allison sometimes does demonstrate some self-awareness in admitting that she finds it difficult to form relationships with others. Initially presenting herself as a corporate dynamo who attended Wellesley College and was a friend of Marla Maples, it turns out that Allison has been fired from every job she has had, most notably working as a seeing-eye person for a wealthy blind lady in New York, who fired Allison after she found out that she had dyed her hair a horrible colour. Having testified against her former boss, Barry Bensfield (played by Julia Duffy's husband Jerry Lacy), which led to his imprisonment for insider trading, Allison is the victim of a revenge plot, when Barry arrives at Sugarbaker's asking her to marry him, only to leave her jilted. Allison does have her moments during her time at Sugarbaker's - paying for Carlene to go to college, dancing with a convict during a prison riot, dating Mary Jo's brother, bonding with girl scouts over manicures and pedicures, and she even once gets Julia to admit that some of her insights are correct. Despite this, Allison never really becomes one of the group. In the first episode of the seventh season, it is explained that Allison has left Atlanta, having taken her money out of Sugarbaker's to invest in a Victoria's Secret franchise.

Carlene Frazier Dobber

Carlene is Charlene's younger sister, who has moved to Atlanta for a fresh start after divorcing her husband Dwayne Dobber in Missouri. Carlene takes over the office duties at Sugarbaker's when Charlene moves to England. Lacking the worldliness of her sister, Carlene is a country girl at heart, with an almost childlike innocent way of looking at the world. Mary Jo strikes up a close sisterly friendship with Carlene, while Allison funds Carlene's college studies. When not imagining that she is the star of "the sitcom of her life", Carlene is also an aspiring songwriter and is often seen strumming on her guitar, but shows more enthusiasm than actual talent.

Bonnie Jean "B.J." Poteet

Bonnie Jean, or B.J., meets the girls at Sugarbaker's at the beginning of the seventh season when she calls to hire them to decorate her house just as Julia decides to go out of business. A warm-hearted Texan widow, B.J. was married to millionaire James Poteet and inherited his business, Poteet Industries, when he died of a heart attack. Despite winning Julia's shares of Sugarbaker's in a poker game, B.J. offers Julia a chance to win back her shares in a game of BlackJack. After realizing that B.J. let her win, Julia offers her a chance to buy into the business, saying that they need someone "with some air in her hair". B.J.'s willingness to invest in Sugarbaker's provides a much needed financial lifeline to the business after Allison's departure. Despite her millions, B.J. is a down-to-earth lady who is always tickled by life and by the people around her. She enjoys pushing other people's buttons, most notably Julia's liberal leanings, but always knows how to defuse a situation with her own brand of good-natured humor.

Recurring

Cancellation

The introduction of Judith Ivey on the series received a better reception than Julia Duffy's debut had a year earlier when the show was at its most popular, but despite this change, ratings soon plummeted in part due to a network decision to move the sitcom to Friday nights at 9:00. Only a few weeks into the show's seventh season on the "Friday night death slot", despite receiving no competition from the other networks, the series had drastically slipped from 6th to 67th place in the Nielsen ratings.

Designing Women was canceled in the spring of 1993, due to declining ratings and diminishing network interest. The hour-long final episode, "Gone with a Whim", aired on Monday, May 24. Only Dixie Carter and Annie Potts remained for the show's entire run. Carter appeared in all the show's episodes, while Potts appeared in all but one. In total, the series aired seven seasons and 163 episodes.

Reruns

CBS ran reruns of the show in their daytime lineup at 10:00 a.m. (EST) from April 1991 to June 1992. Subsequently, Designing Women aired on the Lifetime cable network for over a decade. Despite its popularity, the show left the network on August 4, 2006. A 90-minute retrospective special, The Designing Women Reunion, aired on Lifetime on July 28, 2003, reuniting Burke, Potts, Smart, Carter and Taylor in which they shared memories from their time on the series, and also featured interviews with the Thomasons and various writers. Actors Alice Ghostley, Hal Holbrook, Gerald McRaney, and Richard Gilliland also took part in the special.

The series also aired on Nick at Nite beginning October 2, 2006; however, it quickly left and later appeared on its sister network TV Land, airing at various late-night and morning times occasionally until the network lost the rights to air the show in 2008. The series also aired on ION Television in 2007, Monday through Thursday at 7:00 & 7:30 pm ET.^[6]

The program currently airs on the Comedy Gold (formerly TV Land Canada) in one-hour blocks every day at 11 am and 5 pm EST. TV Guide Network also began airing a one-hour block weekdays at 11 am EST in October 2011 and currently airs a two-hour block, weekdays from 3:00 pm (EST & PST) to 5:00 pm (EST & PST).

As of May 2014 reruns air on the LOGO network. In recognition of the show's 30th anniversary, GetTV began running "Designing Women" in June, 2017 with nightly blocks featuring 30 fan-favorite episodes. The show will go into a regular time slot after these 30 episodes. Also in June 2017, FETV is also showing reruns of the show.