Perfect. Julia Sugarbaker is the absolute best.

I know that speech by heart, down to the cadences Dixie Carter performed into it. I loved Designing Women.

That is tied with the Ray Don rant as my all time faves

I have always loved her work and wondered what happened to her career. Such great material, then...nothing.

All of this does explain why CBS’s line up sucked so badly for the last 20 years. I watched a couple seasons of CSI, but other than that, I cannot think of a single show that I have watched on that network since the turn of the century.

Ok, I have some weekend research now. Thank you!

“It’s rich with history that would make European period dramas look like snoozers”

Or acting like some ancient non western continent needed a European to save it from savagery and “Evil” Europeans!

You have piqued my interest. Please go on!

‘Nah, there aren’t enough Scarlett Johansson’s and/or Emma Stone’s to fill the void, which would possibly mean hiring POC. No one wants to see that.’

OMG, so would I! Cambodia is right next door to Vietnam...and yet, did not use Chinese script and were once THE SUPERPOWER in SE Asia. I remember getting sucked into reading about Cambodia and weeping at what was lost or bombed or killed, and being cheered at how so many of Cambodia’s diaspora were coming home and…

Some of which - many of the most fascinating of which - are in our own country, coming out of our own neighborhoods, right here

“Period” doesn’t have to mean European.

When you said this I remembered there was a documentary I had wanted to see about this - thanks for reminding me!
For those who haven’t heard of it, here’s the trailer for “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten”:

I would also take Iran in the time leading up to and during the fall of the Shah. Or any assortment of shows about the women pirates and warlords of SE Asia in previous centuries such as Ching Shih. Speaking of pirates, I would watch the hell out of a show about Grace O’Malley and her ilk.

Me too. But I trust them to ruin it all by casting Keira Knightley or Scarlett Johansson in it.

That is what gets me. Thanks to the internet, I keep seeing stories about amazing women all around the world who did things. Big, bold, adventurous, piss of entire continents of men things.

Period dramas are just about wealthy, aristocratic people and the ‘problem’ of marriageability. Jane Austen is kind of the gold standard here, but no amount of tepid irony saves her work from eventually devolving into tales of happily-ever-after marital bliss for fancy ladies. This is in spite of the fact that she…

She is talking about a specific class of period dramas set in Europe which she stars in. I don’t like them b/c they are often just romantic takes on white history. Oh the King was a naughty little prince. How delightful!?!?

I don’t think that’s why I don’t like them. I think it’s because I think of period dramas as boring, rambling, not relatable.