YMMV / Designing Women

• Anvilicious: "The Curious Case of Clarence and Anita" in season 6, which makes blatantly clear Bloodworth-Thomason's sympathy for Anita Hill and her view that Clarence Thomas being confirmed to the Supreme Court is a massive injustice carried out by a male-heavy Senate that isn't conscious of women's issues.
• Awesome Music: The opening titles for season 6 was Ray Charles performing "Georgia On My Mind" while the cast sits around his piano.
  Ray Charles: "I thought that was pretty good!"
• Fandom Rivalry: With The Golden Girls. Some Golden Girls fans view Designing Women as either one of the copycat programs that emerged in its wake or at worst, accuse Designing Women of straight-up ripping off The Golden Girls' plot and characters. For their part, The Golden Girls began taking occasional swipes at Designing Women starting in Season 3. Ironically, Designing Women and Golden Girls spin-off Golden Palace aired together on CBS' Friday night block during 1992-93.
  Sophia: "Will you just drop your fake southern accent already? What is this, Designing Women?"
• Harsher in Hindsight: Marla Maples once guest-starred to comfort Allison after being shabbily-treated by a man, encouraging her to put the man behind her and become her own person. She made a point of producing Donald Trump's phone number and ripping it up in front of her. A few years later, guess who she marries in real life?
  • The episode "Oh, Brother," about Julia and Suzanne's alcoholic and mentally ill half-brother Clayton, can feel like this knowing that his actor, Lewis Grizzard, died of heart failure at the age of 48.
• Heartwarming Moments: While most of "Killing All The Right People", the Very Special Episode about AIDS, is a Tear Jerker, Kendall having his funeral done up not just for himself, but so other AIDS victims after him can have as nice a service as he did definitely counts as this.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Gas station owner Eldon Ashcroft IV in "101 Ways to Redecorate a Gas Station", played by Jonathan Banks, angrily telling Julia, "Your friend (Anthony) better not put his mitts on me ever again!" in light of Banks' now signature role as Mike Ehrmantraut on Breaking Bad and it's spin-offs.
    • Additionally, when Eldon is asked how he likes to picture himself, he responds "Attorney General of the United States". Played for Laughs given his character is literally dirt-poor with issues... but years later a man by the name of Ashcroft did become Bush II's AG.
  • In "I'll Be Home for Christmas", Mary Jo's son sets up booby traps in their home to catch Santa Claus....and ends up getting her house robbed.
  • The "Terminator" rant that torpedoed Julia's bid for a local elected office in "The Candidate" has many parallels to Hillary Clinton's now-infamous "Basket of Deplorables" speech that is believed to have played a significant role in her losing the 2016 Presidential election.
  • Julia's phone call to Donald Trump, which got a lot of circulation on social media after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.
  • In "FORE!", Suzanne quips, "Black people just don't play golf!"
  • As noted in the main page, Suzanne is portrayed in the earliest episodes as a catty Bitch Alert who regularly conflicts with Mary Jo. This begins to fade away as the first season progresses and starting in season 2, Suzanne's behavior is retooled to come across as more buffoonish than bitchy, beginning her transformation into a slapstick character that becomes fully realized in season 3. This all coincided with Delta Burke's weight gain. Watching Suzanne slowly turn from a catty gold-digger into a generally harmless buffoon as she becomes further removed from her salad days as a beauty queen and gains a significant amount of weight may lead modern viewers to see parallels in her character arc to that of Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor, albeit in reverse.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Delta Burke's weight was up and down throughout the show. The character Charlene may also qualify because of an episode where all four women go to a spa. While Mary Jo and Julia are allowed to eat anything they wanted, Charlene and Suzanne have to stick (unhappily) to the diet menu. An interesting inversion with the first-season relationship Charlene has with an overweight man—she's embarrassed to be seen with him, but he's not allowed the same sympathy as Suzanne in later seasons.
• Jerkass Woobie: Suzanne in "The Return of Ray Don" and when she attends her High School reunion in "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?"
• LGBT Fanbase: Similar to The Golden Girls, the show presented a very forward-thinking view of homosexuality at a time when such things were very provocative for TV. As a result, like the aforementioned Golden Girls, the show has found a niche on the LOGO TV network.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Excuse me...EXCUSE ME!!"
  • Social media began equating Hurricane Delta to Suzanne (playing off it sharing a name with Delta Burke) once meteorologists started projecting it was going to hit Georgia.
  • Julia's phone call to Donald Trump found new life on social media during his presidency, especially after he lost re-election.
• Replacement Scrappy: When Delta Burke decided to leave the series in 1991 (or was forced out by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, depending on which version of events you believe), the writers brought in Emmy-nominated actress Julia Duffy to play the role of Julia and Suzanne's wealthy cousin Allison Sugarbaker to fill the void. But the audience never warmed to the character, who was basically Duffy's Newhart character Stephanie Vanderkellen with a southern accent, and Duffy was replaced after one season by stage veteran Judith Ivey, who played wealthy Texas widow Barbara Jean Poteet until the show's cancellation.
  • Also in 1991, Jean Smart vacated the role of Charlene and SNL alum Jan Hooks was brought in to play Carlene (Frazier) Dobber, who moved to Atlanta to be near her sister and eventually took over her job as office receptionist.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Suzanne, as Flanderization turns her from a bitch into a buffoon. It stands out as one of the most successful rescues, as it lead to Suzanne becoming the series' Breakout Character.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Sugerbaker's redecorates Mike Ehrmantraut's dilapidated gas station and Anthony better not put his mitts on him ever again.
  • A then-unknown Bill Engvall appeared as a rival interior designer named "Bill" in "Tough Enough".
  • Harry from the hardware store is Mary Jo's brother.
• Seasonal Rot: Many fans opine that the last two seasons aren't up to par with 1-5 because the series just wasn't the same without Delta Burke (Suzanne).
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Killing All The Right People", the episode about a friend of the Sugarbaker's crew dying from AIDS, is a MASSIVE one, particularly the Sugarbaker's crew's faces after being told and Anthony's absolutely heartbroken reaction to them telling him later.
  • "One Night With You", where a former classmate of Julia's who had a crush on her comes back to visit because he's terminally ill and it is his dying wish to spend an evening with her. While initially reluctant, Julia warms to him and they end up spending the whole night slow dancing. It is overflowing with "aww" moments.
  • A lot of Anthony's scenes qualify as this with Meshach Taylor's passing in 2014 from colorectal cancer.
  • Ditto for several of Julia's scenes after Dixie Carter's passing in 2010.
  • "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?" has Suzanne being insecure about attending her high school reunion due to her weight gain, and she's later proven right as her former classmates' reactions range from Innocently Insensitive to sexist to downright cruel, with the remarks causing her to leave the reunion prematurely. Furthermore, the episode was made in response to the immense tabloid coverage and criticism that Burke had received about her own body.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • All the women are always dressed absolutely to the hilt in the latest styles, thus their appearances are hilariously dated today and make the era of the show's run unmistakable.
  • In the 1989 episode "One Night With You", Charlene remarks that she knows Bill Clinton. None of the other women know who he is, forcing her to explain that he is the Governor of Arkansas. Also Hilarious in Hindsight given what we now know about him.
  • The 1991 episode "FORE!" revolves around Anthony getting invited into an all-white golf club by means of a diversity initiative. So much of the episode's humor revolves around Anthony's unusual presence as a black man in an exclusive golf club, clearly dating it to before Tiger Woods joined the PGA.
  • "The Curious Case of Clarence and Anita" revolves around the cast debating the Clarence Thomas hearings and shows archive footage of both the hearing and George H. W. Bush nominating him.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Some of Suzanne's attitudes and behavior towards Anthony would be considered racist by today's standards.
  • Suzanne being a member and supporter of the NRA, as the organization is much more controversial today than it was in the late 1980s.
  • Suzanne once performs in blackface alongside Anthony.
  • The episode "FORE!" may go completely over the heads of younger viewers who don't have any memory of the how the sport was pre-Tiger Woods. Today, the idea of a black man being present in an exclusive golf club is not unusual at all.
  • The season 3 finale "Julia Drives Over the First Amendment" revolves around Julia driving her car into a newspaper stand to knock down the billboard for a pornographic magazine that offended her, landing her into legal trouble. In the 2010s, vehicle ramming attacks became a common tactic used by terrorists and extremists worldwide, with a number of high profile attacks occurring in the United States over the past few years as they became commonly utilized by far-right extremists against left-wing protest movements such as Black Lives Matter. Not only would a modern viewer fail to find any humor in the situation or garner any sympathy for Julia's position, they may straight-up view her actions as a form of domestic terrorism.
    • Further, we learn that the ad in question is for a bondage magazine, which Julia sees as morally repugnant and antithetical to feminism. Later, the magazine's publisher is revealed to be a woman who considers herself a feminist pornographer, which Julia considers as an oxymoron. In the 2020s, in which both S&M and sex work are looked upon more favorably, viewers would probably tend to side with the pornographer (who's depicted as the villain of the episode), who reasons that the performers are all consenting adults. Meanwhile Julia's "Terminator Speech" against porn and bondage and the ending "gag" that Julia runs over the newstand again make her seem retrograde at best.
• Values Resonance: On the other hand, Designing Women was ahead of its time in many ways.
  • Season 1 finale "Bachelor's Suite" is about Mary Jo dealing with a client who constantly sexually harasses her before he ultimately lures her into a private room and tries to rape her. This episode was ahead of its time, as it aired years before the Clarence Thomas hearings brought widespread public awareness to the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace.
  • The series regularly highlights and touches on the casual racism that Anthony deals with on a daily basis, including him being uncomfortable around police officers. The last point now seems far-sighted given not only given the Black Lives Matter movement of the 2010s, but Anthony's fear of police officers was established well before the 1991 Rodney King beating.^note  To be fair, police brutality against blacks was very much a thing in the South and it wasn't nearly as widely documented in the media prior to Rodney King.
  • "Killing All the Right People" is considered to be the series' greatest episode and is still regularly brought up and discussed to this day for how it dealt with the AIDS epidemic.
  • "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?" resonates even stronger today in light of the body positivity and fat acceptance movements that emerged in the 2010s. You could retroactively argue that Delta Burke helped pioneer these movements with this episode and the publicity surrounding it, which was all in response to the tabloids constantly pestering her about her weight.^note Burke gets noticeably chubbier as the series progresses, which made her the butt of jokes and subject to constant heckling from the tabloids. She asked series creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason to write an episode revolving around Suzanne's weight so she'd have a means to respond.

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