I love the actress Julia Duffy, however, this role should have never been allowed to make it past the initial testing stage. I assume they did test Julia as Allison before the audience prior to going forward with her role? Allison's chemistry was all wrong and if a person didn't know better, I think this character was brought on to sabotage the show with the intent to get the network to cancel it.
shareThats really hard to say...with the hitaus between the 1990-1991 and 1991-1992 TV season..I think whoever the powers that be were sorta under the gun to replace Delta Burke..I think the real intent to cancel the show was when CBS moved it from its Monday timeslot to Friday (1992-1993) during its 7th and final season and it nose dived in ratings. The shows final season wasn't that good in terms of script...writing..Julia and Mary Jo characters act very different during the last season compared to previous ones.
Also during the Duffy season (1991-1992) the show ended up in 6th place in for the full season TV ratings
(http://classic-tv.com/ratings/1991-1992-tv-show-ratings.html)
thats the highest DW ever ranked during its entire run for season end ratings ..not saying Duffy was the reason for that..but the safety net of that Monday timeslot and the shows writing was still good...probably helped
I don't think they really tested her. My guess is that coming off her success on 'Newhart' where she was nominated many times for an Emmy, she probably didn't have to even audition. CBS probably suggested her to the Thomasons, and they thought she would make a good contrast to the others.
I think the reason her hiring backfired is because she was TOO much of a contrast-- and she was instantly hated by fans who wanted to see Julia and the others teach her a lesson. So maybe Julia Duffy was overly effective in this role and viewers could not separate a good actress from a character they despised.
Julia Duffy's Allison was too brittle and high strung that the lack of chemistry was very striking.
shareDuring the episodes I saw filmed in season 6, I do have to say that Allison's lines usually got the biggest laughs from the audience. Some of the other jokes would fall flat and they had to 'sweeten' the laugh track in post-production-- but when Allison made one of her brittle comments and the other characters would rip her to shreds, the audience really responded. There was one scene where they get locked in the storeroom and she has to crawl through the vent, and the audience loved that. They loved it when Anthony or Bernice would refer to her bony little butt, or whatever the put down was. I think people loved to hate her.
The Thomasons could easily have kept her on for the last season. In fact, the season she was on the air was the highest rated in the history of the series. I am not giving Julia Duffy all the credit, but again, I think people loved to hate her. The problem I had with the character is that Linda Bloodworth did not give her any real vulnerability like Suzanne had. She was a little too vicious, but Julia Duffy did a brilliant job with what she had to work with...
The Thomasons could easily have kept her on for the last season. In fact, the season she was on the air was the highest rated in the history of the series. I am not giving Julia Duffy all the credit, but again, I think people loved to hate her. The problem I had with the character is that Linda Bloodworth did not give her any real vulnerability like Suzanne had. She was a little too vicious, but Julia Duffy did a brilliant job with what she had to work with...
A huge problem was that Allison had an antagonistic relationship with all of the other characters, and was saddled with that ridiculous "obnoxious personality syndrome" concept as a way of trying to -- I don't know -- make her more sympathetic, perhaps? I think the writers could have explored the cultural clash between the U.S. North and the U.S. South without creating such a divide between Allison and the others. Their differences could have been portrayed as complementary and the foundation for her being integrated into the group.
That said, I suspect that the show was pretty much doomed when both Delta Burke and Jean Smart left. The chemistry between the original four actresses was so strong, and the characters so well-defined, that to lose just one of them would have been difficult to recover from. But losing two actresses at once? Imagine SEINFELD or FRIENDS trying to replace half of their core ensembles. That they managed to keep DW going for two more seasons is remarkable.
Which leads to the fact that season 6 -- the year of Allison -- was the highest-rated season of the series. Clearly, the loss of Burke and Smart, and the problems with the Allison character, didn't result in a decline in viewership. Perhaps Duffy, having been so appealing on NEWHART, was enough of a draw on her own. It would be interesting to see a week-by-week breakdown of the show's ratings during that season.
As for season 7, I agree with those who suggested that moving the show to Friday nights was the network's way of trying to rid itself of the troubled production. Whenever a successful show is suddenly given a bad time slot, I interpret it as a sign that the show has outlived its usefulness to the network. CBS did it with MURDER, SHE WROTE when they moved it opposite ratings powerhouse FRIENDS, and NBC did it to JUST SHOOT ME when they moved it to that ratings graveyard known as Saturday nights.
Yes, networks move shows into bad time slots as a way of justifying a cancellation. They force hit series off the air (for a variety of reasons).
As for Julia Duffy, personally I think the follow-up show 'Women of the House' would have worked better with Alison going to Washington instead of Suzanne. I say this because Suzanne was a little too fun-loving (and likable). But Alison would have stirred things up and butted heads with all the chauvinistic men on Capitol hill.
The obnoxious personality disorder diagnosis that Linda and the writers assigned to the character was not to make her sympathetic but to make her a little more understandable and to excuse some of her callous behavior.
I preferred her character over the dimwit Carlene.
shareCarlene was a very two dimensional character and only worked so well because Jan Hooks is incredibly funny (as a talent). The other reason Carlene worked, was due to the fact she contributed so much humour to the other characters by way of her association and verbal exchanges with them. Alison's conversations all die out quickly. Out of the two characters, Alison is by far the more fleshed out, Carlene was a very lazy botched together character designed to duplicate Charlene.
shareWhat I think is interesting about Allison, particularly her dialogue, is that her humor would probably have been par for the course on The Golden Girls, which was pretty heavily insult-driven.
While the writing on The Golden Girls was by no means bad, it wasn't anything remarkable either, and it was the extraordinary talent of the four leads, who were able to turn fairly mediocre writing on the page into A-level dialogue, that made the difference.
By contrast, the writing on Designing Women was a component unto itself. There just isn't anything on TGG that approaches the level of Suzanne's High School Reunion "Most Changed Award" Speech or Miss Minnie's Dying Speech or Julia's "Night the Lights Went out in Georgia" or Mary Jo's AIDS Speech, at least in terms of the dialogue's power to move (I can only imagine how Linda Bloodworth would have written Rose's "Letter to Gorbachev," which never struck me as a very compelling piece, at least not enough to move a major world leader). It was a testament to the four leads' skill that they could deliver long-winded, complex monologues without coming off as either pretentious or melodramatic.
In a lot of ways, Allison's character and dialogue could have worked into an ordinary "sitcom" but Designing Women was so tailored to "the character" that she just didn't flow or roll with the atmosphere. She wasn't a "character" so much as a "caricature." By that point the writers had gotten lazy, the Thomasons were no longer as involved in the project, and even Pam Norris seemed less involved.
I agree that Jan Hooks did an amazing job with what she had to work with, but for anyone who remembers the movie Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, she only had about 45 seconds in that movie and she totally rocked it. Again, she made the most of what she was given. As an actor I thought she meshed well with the other Women, she just wasn't given a backstory that was the slightest bit believable: remember the audience already knew pretty much everything about Charlene's family, and there WAS NO CARLENE! If the writers had made even the slightest effort to incorporate an existing member of Charlene's family into the storyline, the viewers I think would've been much more accepting of this new character. After all, some of her storylines were ones I still enjoy, like Carlene's new apartment, and she and Alison were both great in Real Scary Men.
shareWhat I think is interesting about Allison, particularly her dialogue, is that her humor would probably have been par for the course on The Golden Girls, which was pretty heavily insult-driven.
While the writing on The Golden Girls was by no means bad, it wasn't anything remarkable either, and it was the extraordinary talent of the four leads, who were able to turn fairly mediocre writing on the page into A-level dialogue, that made the difference.
By contrast, the writing on Designing Women was a component unto itself. There just isn't anything on TGG that approaches the level of Suzanne's High School Reunion "Most Changed Award" Speech or Miss Minnie's Dying Speech or Julia's "Night the Lights Went out in Georgia" or Mary Jo's AIDS Speech, at least in terms of the dialogue's power to move (I can only imagine how Linda Bloodworth would have written Rose's "Letter to Gorbachev," which never struck me as a very compelling piece, at least not enough to move a major world leader). It was a testament to the four leads' skill that they could deliver long-winded, complex monologues without coming off as either pretentious or melodramatic.
In a lot of ways, Allison's character and dialogue could have worked into an ordinary "sitcom" but Designing Women was so tailored to "the character" that she just didn't flow or roll with the atmosphere. She wasn't a "character" so much as a "caricature." By that point the writers had gotten lazy, the Thomasons were no longer as involved in the project, and even Pam Norris seemed less involved.
Ding, ding, ding!! We have a winner!
What you wrote really makes the pieces come together. I remember reading in a women's magazine like Redbook, somewhere around 1986-87, that Duffy did indeed have an option to start her own series. From what I gathered, she was counting on something like a spin-off from Newhart. As we know, that never happened. She did do "Baby Talk" and she was completely miserable in that because that was never really a vehicle for Julia, the voice-over for the baby was the star of that. So perhaps CBS was looking to place her in DW to dispense with Duffy and get them out of any legal trouble.
Julia has always kept quiet about all of this, perhaps she wisely decided in Hollywood, with ratings and ticket sales the king, it would be shooting herself in the foot.
I've always thought the problem with Allison was that the character had the bitchiness of Suzanne, but none of the outrageousness. She was the wet blanket, always scolding the others when they did something crazy. Suzanne would be the catalyst in things that even Lucy Ricardo wouldn't try. Plus the whole stupid OPD plot point. Duffy was given some really insipid lines from day one(seeing eye person--STUPID!).
It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes.
I liked the character of BJ much better than Allison. If Judith Ivy had come on board for both seasons 6 &7 the show would have been so much better the last two years.
shareSome theories that I've heard for why it didn't work out for Julia Duffy on Designing Women:
*The Allison Sugarbaker character was written poorly as a one-dimensional "outsider". You add to the general feeling that Julia Duffy must have felt a tremendous amount of pressure to come in and replace the most popular cast member amongst a shell-shocked set.
*Neither Allison nor Carlene had any of the charm of their predecessors, Suzanne and Charlene: they were written as too one-note. Also, while Julia Duffy and Jan Hooks were great comediennes, both characters were written for laughs only and neither actress could bring out the heartfelt moments regardless.
*By the time she joined, Dixie Carter's Julia had to be right about everything, and Duffy's character was written simply to show how superior Julia was. In reality, Julia Sugarbaker was getting insufferable and preachy and she needed a strongly written foil.
*They started her off on the wrong note, by having her storm in being a complete shrew. People were just immediately turned off. Suzanne could say and do terrible things but she unlike Allison, had a sweetness and an innocence about her. In the beginning both Mary Jo and Charlene were not happy with Suzanne, but Julia, always stood up for her sister, even when she was ashamed of her or disagreed with her. Eventually the others accepted her. This wasn't the case with Allison.
*The one-note joke about Allison and Anthony battling over Suzanne's house went on far too long. It was just racist and, even worse, not funny. Her character never recovered from that start.
*They introduced such a nasty character and in the process, made some of the existing characters nasty (esp. Mary Jo), since they were always getting in the mud with Allison.
*Julia Duffy is a very low-key actress. She doesn't do way over-the-top very well. Dixie Carter, Jean Smart, Annie Potts, and Delta Burke all just seemed larger than life.