I know that they were both popular series while they were on the air but why has The Golden Girls sustained all these years while Designing Women is long forgotten?

Sad for Designing Women. Also, all 4 Golden Girls stayed on thru out the entire run. There were cast changes thru out the run of Designing Women.

Because The Golden Girls has a stable cast and far better writing and a consistent Top 25 show for 6 of its 7 seasons. Oh and a legend in Betty White.

Designing Women never really got off the ground until Season 4. DW also had a revolving door of cast changes towards the end of its run once Delta Burke and Jean Smart left. Not quite as memorable as TGG.

Julia Sugarbaker. That character is too severe and serious for repeated viewing. I couldn't handle having a friend who went off into rants and scolded me all the time. The funniest episodes were the ones that were centered around Delta Burke and Meshach Taylor. I wish they would have had spinoff together.

Julia Sugarbaker. That character is too severe and serious for repeated viewing. I couldn't handle having a friend who went off into rants and scolded me all the time. The funniest episodes were the ones that were centered around Delta Burke and Meshach Taylor. I wish they would have had spinoff together.
Julia was the main reason I could never enjoy the show.

Weren't they on around the sametime? I thought the writing was sharper on TGG and funnier.

The Golden Girls came out in the fall of 1985. Designing Women came out in the fall of 1986.

While not as legendary as Betty White, Bea Arthur had quite a following too. As mentioned earlier, thd moral conscience of DW was also a bit more heavy handed than GG. Starving kids, breast cancer and porn magazine stands were the center of the episodes and dealt with in the most serious fashion. GG took a much more light hearted approach when tackling serious issues (most of the time). DW seemed to also bust at the seams with feminism where GG was just a fun show about ladies making it on their own. There is certainly nothing wrong with an ultra pro-woman show like DW; it just limits the following.

Golden Girls also featured women "of a certain age," which was a first on television. Designing Women showed 30-40-something's, still considered "in the prime" to TV producers and audiences.

I often see Designing Women as a ripoff

I often see Designing Women as a ripoff

From your perspective, exactly how is it a ripoff?

The Golden Girls came out in the fall of 1985. Designing Women came out in the fall of 1986.

That probably had very little (if anything) to do with it.

The important thing is, they're both great shows and every episode is on DVD! :)

From your perspective, exactly how is it a ripoff?

For what it's worth, the Sun Sentinel called it a 'classy Golden Girls rip-off' when it debuted in September 1986.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1986-09-30/features/8602270626_1_design-firm-dixie-carter-linda-bloodworth-thomason

It's pretty hard to laugh at a TV show when the producers and writers are using the show to constantly force their political views down your throat. Golden Girls was great, Designing Women was garbage.

There wasn't much political views on Golden Girls.

There wasn't much political views on Golden Girls.

I know. I was talking about Designing Women.

For what it's worth, the Sun Sentinel called it a 'classy Golden Girls rip-off' when it debuted in September 1986.

Thanks, but not what I was looking for. I specifically quoted Big D In Charge to get their perspective as to why it was ripoff. That article does nothing except give examples of how both shows are similar. If two shows being similar is grounds to declare one a ripoff then there should be plenty of others that qualify as well.

I liked DW, but never got into it to the level I did GG. It wasn't quite as magical as GG at its peak.

The DW creator certainly looked to GG for inspiration, but I wouldn't call DW a "ripoff." It's like when "Friends" became popular- you saw other shows follow that mold/put their spin on it. Post-GG, we had DW, "Living Single," "Sex and the City," "Desperate Housewives," etc. Course, "The Facts of Life" had "The Power of 4," but it didn't start out that way.

I'd say:

1. The Golden cast were uniformly better actors, and the characters felt more real;
2. The Golden writing was faster and more conversational, while Designing was more a series of speeches that could get tedious;
3. Golden was pretty consistent through its run, while Designing dropped off drastically. By about season 3, Designing ' s self - righteousness was approaching MASH levels.

I think that DW also doesn't hold up as well because it was at the end of the day, very much a product of the '80s.

Because The Golden Girls has a stable cast and far better writing and a consistent Top 25 show for 6 of its 7 seasons. Oh and a legend in Betty White.

Designing Women never really got off the ground until Season 4. DW also had a revolving door of cast changes towards the end of its run once Delta Burke and Jean Smart left. Not quite as memorable as TGG.

The production of Designing Women was not a well oiled machine in the end. The Thomasons left the show to concentrate on Evening Shade and then became more concerned with getting Bill Clinton elected than the shows they were producing, which merely became platforms for them to (quite wrongly) broadcast Democrat propaganda.

Delta Burke was an ill women, she was suffering a nervous breakdown, had eating problems and was being hounded by the press - rather than sit her down and tell her she needed help and write her out for half a season (as would happen today) the production outcast her and called 'difficult'.

Annie Potts was promised her pregnancy would be written into Season 6 and it wasn't, she was therefore told to cover it up and had bad storylines written for her that didn't involve her doing much.

And Dixie Carter (a strong Republican) was forced to sprout more and more Democratic political mumbo jumbo in order to convince America to vote for Bill Clinton. All of this she would have found very difficult!

The DW creator certainly looked to GG for inspiration

Can we be sure of this? GG premiered in September 1985; DW premiered only 1 year later. It's already been said that Linda based Julia and Suzanne on their characters in Filthy Rich, and Charlene and Mary Jo on characters from a project they were on together (I've forgotten the name but it's in Delta's book; I'd have to look it up). So it could be just a grand coincidence that the shows have similar personality types.

I think that the main differences between both shows is that DW was definitely deeper and better written than GG. It could be far more cerebral and less insult-driven. While GG mostly went for the easy joke, DW went for character moments. At the end of the day however, DW just seems hopelessly dated while GG holds up much better. Shows that deal too much with the current news/fads tend to be less enjoyable in reruns. And DW was absolutely guilty of it with those massive shoulder pads and their need to take on social issues.

"better written"? "went for the easy joke"? Wow...I'd agree you could say that about the later seasons, but certainly not the earlier ones.

I think that the main differences between both shows is that DW was definitely deeper and better written than GG. It could be far more cerebral and less insult-driven. While GG mostly went for the easy joke, DW went for character moments. At the end of the day however, DW just seems hopelessly dated while GG holds up much better. Shows that deal too much with the current news/fads tend to be less enjoyable in reruns. And DW absolutely guilty of it with those massive shoulder pads and their need to take on social issues.


I think you kind of nailed it. DW was more about character archs and how the characters related to each other and the world around them, while TGG, wonderful as it is was always much more broad in its style and at times could even be considered a farcical show. DW always had a sense of trying to convey something deeper.

I think it is those differences that made GG easier for viewers to digest, while DW will always be the forgotten stepsister of 1980's sitcoms.

It's pretty hard to laugh at a TV show when the producers and writers are using the show to constantly force their political views down your throat. Golden Girls was great, Designing Women was garbage.

Designing Women when compared to Golden Girls was perhaps too shrill and preachy in its message. It was one of those shows where it was easy to think that it was more interested in making a statement than being funny. As a result, the whole show just comes off as dated and hamfisted today. Also, Designing Women could be very schmaltzy. Take for instance, the episode (entitled "Nashville Bound") where Charlene believes some guy is some big shot record producer and that he'll launch her singing career.

There wasn't much political views on Golden Girls.

There wasn't much, but it was obvious that Dorothy and Sophia were Democrats. Rose, you couldn't tell, and I always thought Blanche was the conservative of the house despite some of her wild behavior. Watch Blanche on the few occasions that Dorothy tells a Bush or Quayle joke. Her reaction at least one time portrayed her as less than amused, although maybe there's nothing to that.
That Republicans were in the White House for the entirety of the show's run probably just lent itself to the inevitable presidential crack. I wonder how any jokes would have been handled if Golden Girls was still on the air into the Clinton years.

There wasn't much, but it was obvious that Dorothy and Sophia were Democrats. Rose, you couldn't tell, and I always thought Blanche was the conservative of the house despite some of her wild behavior. Watch Blanche on the few occasions that Dorothy tells a Bush or Quayle joke. Her reaction at least one time portrayed her as less than amused, although maybe there's nothing to that.
That Republicans were in the White House for the entirety of the show's run probably just lent itself to the inevitable presidential crack. I wonder how any jokes would have been handled if Golden Girls was still on the air into the Clinton years.

Interesting points. Even Sophia hoped for a "Viable Democrat" in the Questions and Answers episode in season 7 when Clinton was campaigning or about to campaign. The Golden Palace ended in May of 1993 during Clinton's first months in office. However, it's been a while since I've seen the show so I don't know if Clinton or politics in general was mentioned.

No, they weren't. I have a copy of Golden Palace on DVD. There was no mention of Clinton or our government in general, during that one year.

I loved them both. But they were two different shows. I didn't feel DW was any kind of ripoff or clone of GG.

There really aren't many 80's sitcoms that have the lasting legacy of GG. So, I wouldn't say DW didn't fare well later on, just that GG continues to have the younger generation watching (just as it always did.)

GG has always appealed to younger audiences - not to mention gay men.

Even the biggest 80's sitcoms like Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, etc. you don't see on TV much anymore.

As stated before, GG featured legendary actresses who were all (except Estelle Getty) successful in other shows. DW was all relative newcomers or not as established.

I liked the writing on both. But because there were differences. GG was more character driven. DW was more issue driven.

I read elsewhere that Designing Women never aired (either in first-run, syndication or on Netflix or Amazon) or was made available in the UK. And the DVDs are far too expensive to buy (it would cost well over £100 to import them from the US).

I think that Designing Women doesn't have their own Betty White so to speak to help maintain its recognition for a modern audience. The internet has in the past decade or so, has really latched on to Betty White and turned her into a cult hero. Like I said, with all due respect to Annie Potts, Jean Smart, and Delta Burke, they don't exactly have that continued notoriety (although Annie Potts is known as much for her role in Ghostbusters and maybe, more recently, on Young Sheldon as her role on Designing Women) or are as universally beloved as Betty White.

I said before that what likely hurt DS in the long run that it got unnecessarily political (which also makes it dated (in reruns) at the same time), and got more so over time. Plus, the show really took a downturn quality-wise with the departures of Delta Burke and Jean Smart come the last two seasons.

I loved them both. But they were two different shows. I didn't feel DW was any kind of ripoff or clone of GG.

There really aren't many 80's sitcoms that have the lasting legacy of GG. So, I wouldn't say DW didn't fare well later on, just that GG continues to have the younger generation watching (just as it always did.)

GG has always appealed to younger audiences - not to mention gay men.

Even the biggest 80's sitcoms like Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, etc. you don't see on TV much anymore.

Not true. Actually I see plenty of shows from the 80s on TV and they do have a lasting legacy.