Designing Women

Designing Women was a great show! The first 4 seasons were great!

However Linda Bloodsworth also created "Evening Shade" which started in 1990 and had less involvement with DW starting in the beginning of Season 5 and Pam Norris was starting to have more input on the show! Season 5 also was the last year that had the original cast!

The show was nominated for Best Comedy for season 4 & 5 however it lost both years!

Linda Bloodsworth turned over "Designing Women" full time to Pam Norris for the 6th season!

This was also this the year we got Jan Hooks and Julia Duffy! Pam Norris's talent is no where near the talent as Linda! The show began to suffer from Linda's Lack of full time involvement!
Which began with season 5! Pam was lucky to still have the original cast.

The best episode of season 6 as the episode written by Linda . In this episode Mary Jo goes berserk over the Clarence Thomas appointment to the US Supreme Court!

Season 6 Linda Bloodsworth turned over the show full time to Pam Norris!
She became the executive producer and the show runner.


In season 6 the show almost became unwatchable! However it remained in the top 10 because
it will still on Monday night! The following year it was moved to Fridays. The ratings slipped and the show was cancelled once and for all!

Before Season 7 started production CBS decided to kill the show by moving it to Fridays! The ratings however were still good (on Monday Nights) even without Delta Burke!

Season 7 was to be the last! The show was moved to Fridays! The ratings drooped! A few episodes were good however is was a shadow of its former Glory!

Here is Some of the problems season by season

Season 1 1) The Cast were all friends and united a front when CBS kept moving the show! CBS hates women who stand up for themselves! The whole cast even went on "The Late Show-with Joan Rivers" when the show was ranked 16th for the week! The shows ratings were growing each week! However for some reason CBS pulled it from Monday Nights and replaced it with "The Cavanaughs". CBS then put DW on Thursdays at 9:30 it was up against Night Court and rating were poor! CBS pulled the show again and then returned to the 9:00 pm time slot on Sundays! It had a great led-in from "Murder She Wrote" however MSW had an audience that was mostly over 60 and that audience went to bed at 9:00 so DW was pulled again! Soon the "THE VIEWERS OF QUALITY TV" help save the show (THE FIRST SHOW THEY SAVED WAS CAGNEY AND LACEY) and the show was returned to Mondays!

Season 2 The cast was mad because the network was not promoting the show! Delta Burke starts missing work! She doesn't show up or is late from time to time! Her weight also starts to go up!

Season 3 Delta Burke and her weight gain makes the tabloids! Tension rises and Delta thinks the cast is leaking nasty stories about her to the tabloids! (Years later she knows they didn't)

Season 4 Again after the show was doing well at 9:30 on Mondays CBS moves the show again to 10pm on Mondays! Kim LeMaters has 6 comedy shows on Monday! The Famous Teddy Z and Murphy Brown join the CBS Monday line-up! Delta has massive panic attacks this year and has major issues with Linda and Harry! Later Jeff Sagnasty replaces Kim LeMasters and he kills the all comedy night on CBS! He also moves DW to its rightful place on the Monday Night Schedule at 9:30! The highlight of the season is the episode called "They shoot fat Women don't they"! Delta gets an Emmy nomination but loses! Ratings are at an all time high! In fact it does better than "Murphy Brown" and builds on that audience! This was something that went unnoticed in the press! In the summer of 1990 Delta makes news when she gives an interview to a Florida Newspaper say DW is not a happy enviorment!

Season 5 Delta Burke is pushed into the background and the show still holds up in the ratings! She later gives an interview to Barbara Walters and Arsenio Hall saying she isn't happy! The fighting behind the scenes is at an all time high!

Season 6 Delta was to return believe it or not! Columbia Pictures (which owns DW) did hire Judith Hirsh to take over the show! However Linda & Harry pulled out there trump card by having (future) President Bill Clinton (they were all friends and they worked on Bill President Campaign) call Sony HQ and telling them if they fire Linda "he would make sure that foreign company's would have a harder time buying any more American Company's" (in 1989 Sony bought Columbia) So after that call Delta was "let go". Judith Hirsh got a pay-out for not even showing up for one day of work! Delta was replaced by Julia Duffy! Jan Hooks replaced Jean Smart! The show however loses its spark! The episodes were not very good and fans hated
the character of Allison! Julia Duffy was let go at the end of the year.
The show was replaced with "Love & War" the following year! However the show remained in the top 10. This did not stop CBS from moving it to Fridays! The highlight of the year is when Mary Jo goes crazy over the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the US SUPREME COURT. This episode was writen by Linda Bloodsworth!

In season 7 Judith Ivey replaces Julia Duffy but the show has hit a wall! David Steinberg replaced Pam Norris as the show runner but he fails to bring anything of value! The season brings in Sheryl Lee Ralph as Anthony's wife! As talented as Sheryl is she can't save the show! This was the final season!

In 2003 Lifetime has "The Designing Women Reunion"! The cast is reunited for the first time in 12 years! The cast talks about most of the controversy! Its not a reunion episode its just a talk fest! However its fun to watch! Please note one of the biggest honors the show ever got while it was on the air was in 1990 when THE MUSEUM OF BROADCASTING honored the show! This was a huge honor!

Critics always said "DW" was a rip-off of "The Golden Girls". The only thing "Designing Women" in common with "The Golden Girls" was that all the leads were women! Now 20 years later the critics have come around and now say this show is a classic! Fans of the show have known this since 1986.

FYI "Designing Women" is the #5 comedy of all time that aired on CBS! Beating such shows as "Rhoda","Good Times","Murphy Brown",& "One Day at a Time". To this day its hard to find re-runs of "Alice" and "One Day at a Time", & the beloved "Murphy Brown". Maybe its because those shows seem to suffer because they dealt with issues that were important at the time. "Designing Women" However seems timeless.