Today is the day! “Designing Women: Season One” finally out on DVD

I’m sitting here at Java Detour in West Hollywood wondering why the heck it took the California Supreme Court THREE MONTHS to hand down their disappointing ruling upholding Prop. 8. I feel like going home and spending a few hours watching episodes of Designing Women just to cheer myself up and rest up for tonight’s rally.

Oh, did I specify watching Designing Women episodes on DVD! That’s right folks, more than twenty years after their network debut, the entire first season of this classic sitcom starring Delta Burke, Dixie Carter, Annie Potts and Jean Smart is finally for sale.

While I think the show was at its absolute best in seasons three and four, in looking back at the season one episodes, I see how very good they were as well. They included the hilarious one when Julia’s son Payne brings home a much-older girlfriend for the weekend. Julia tells the girls that she heard her snoring: “I think it was a death rattle.” The season also includes Mary Jo’s first date with J.D. Shacklford who would be her love interest for the next four years; the very first episode featuring Bernice Clifton played so memorably by the great Alice Ghostley; an hour-long show dealing with Charlene’s breast cancer scare; and the episode when Julia has a ladies room showdown with the young and beautiful lawyer who has designs on her boyfriend Reese (played by Dixie Carter’s real-life hubby Hal Holbrook).

All 31 episodes are included on a four-disc DVD set.

It’s worth mentioning that while Designing Women went on to last seven seas0ns, it almost did not make it to year two. After initial strong ratings, CBS moved the show to several other time slots and ratings fell. When the show was put on “indefinite hiatus,” a group called Viewers for Quality Television organized fans, petitioned advertisers, and wrote more than 50,000 letters to CBS.

The network finally got some sense and returned the show to its Monday night slot where it thrived for so many years and gave us so many laughs.

Here are some Season One clips:

While I’m all about the ladies on this show, it would not have been the same without Anthony Bouvier (Meshach Taylor) who especially gave Suzanne someone very fun to play off of.