“Designing Women” Thursday: Julia’s son Payne comes home from college with “Grandma Moses”

This episode from season one really is Dixie Carter at her best as Julia Sugarbaker.

Her 19-year-old son Payne has come home from college with his new girlfriend: a 41-year-old English professor who’s not only old, but extremely pompous and irritating.

What I love about this episode is how quickly Julia loses her cool, how completely unable she is to hold her tongue. She tells the girls: “She gets on my nerves. And, she snores! She was sawing lumber like you wouldn’t believe. This was snoring like old people do. It might have been a death rattle.”

Julia cannot believe that Charlene (Jean Smart) seems more preoccupied with the fact that Bobby Ewing was back on Dallas than the fact that “my son [has] brought home GRANDMA MOSES!”

Julia keeps pretending to forget the name of the woman whose name is Primrose – Primmy for short – and at one point calls her “Prissy.” Julia then has this suggestion: “How ’bout if I just call you, ‘hey you” ?

In the end, things come to a head and Julia tells Primmy: “We’re going to take this to the woodshed and one of us is not going to come back alive!”