What a treat, and what a relief! Designing Women: 20 Timeless Episodes, another pleasant release from Shout! Factory, judiciously ignores seasons 6 and 7, likely because the former was only just released on DVD early last month, and the latter is being released in mid-July. But there’s only so much pain one can endure in essentially the end of Designing Women at the end of season 5, with the firing of Delta Burke, and the departure of Jean Smart, who only serves as a transition in the first episode of season 6 to Charlene’s sister Carlene, played by Jan Hooks. It just wasn’t the same, and the series never recovered.

But here, in 20 episodes, is the beloved Designing Women, such a tight-knit group of women in Delta Burke as beauty queen Suzanne Sugarbaker, with endless stories about her pageantry, Dixie Carter as the strong-willed Julia Sugarbaker, and Jean Smart as Charlene Frazier, office manager of Sugarbaker’s, an Atlanta design firm. My favorite is Annie Potts as Mary Jo Shively, divorced and a single mother, and who I could never take my eyes off of in any of these episodes, unlike season 6 where I was trying to just get through it. She has a smoky, mysterious look that is a bear trap for any man, wanting to get to know her better because of that look, curious about who she is. Just like all the other women, Potts is wonderful in every episode, but her tour-de-force performance is in the episode “Nightmare from Hee Haw,” in which she gets increasingly drunk at a bar full of genuine hicks, and funnier as a result. Even after that, she’s still a blast.

Designing Women CastEveryone works so well together in these episodes. Unlike that fateful sixth season, Alice Ghostley as Bernice Clifton, family friend of the Sugarbakers, is a genuine character, and though Meshach Taylor as Anthony Bouvier is still not as close to the women as they are to each other, he’s entertaining to watch, especially in his zeal over getting a gold credit card.

Dixie Carter is so obviously the rock, the center of Sugarbaker’s and of the women, and here, her indignation over various things in life, especially over a woman putting the Sugarbaker house on the Tour of Historical Homes because it was built on the foundation of an antebellum house, is powerful and incredibly funny. Just watch that monologue in that episode, “A Blast From The Past,” and it’s easy to see why Designing Women was so popular. She was terrific in the sixth season episode, “The Strange Case of Clarence and Anita,” but when she’s airing grievances with conviction in these seasons, it’s much better. Because of Delta Burke and Jean Smart being long gone, it now seems to me that creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason had to lean hard on Julia’s opinions to make a whole episode, whereas in these episodes, it’s just part of the women’s lives. It’s what they know, and they appreciate her for it and are amused by it. That helps when the women feel like a family, and not just co-workers, as those unfortunate later seasons did. Carter’s daughters, Mary Dixie Carter and Ginna Carter, appear as nieces of Suzanne and Julia in the episode “The Naked Truth.” They get their impressive timing from their mother.

Now, here’s a problem. I was excited over this set not only because of Designing Women having the charm that I knew it had, which was tragically lost in those last two seasons, but because I got to see episodes guest-starring Hal Holbrook as Reese Watson, Julia’s lover. I’ve been a fan of his ever since seeing his Mark Twain Tonight! on tape in my 11th grade English class. His last episode was “Nightmare from Hee Haw,” and it got me thinking about Evening Shade, the reason he left Designing Women. That was the Thomasons’ next series (Bloodworth-Thomason and her husband Harry), in which he played Evan Evans.

Paramount, which released the first season on June 24, 2008, strikes me as notoriously tightfisted and protective of its series, unreasonably so. There has been no new release of Evening Shade since then, and The Love Boat, one of my favorite series, has not gotten another release since August 4, 2009. I try to have hope for more seasons of The Love Boat being released, but it’s hard since it’s already been two years. Yet, I wish Paramount would give Evening Shade to Shout! Factory. They’re obviously not doing anything with it, and based on these Designing Women season sets, I’m sure Shout! Factory would treat it with just as much care. 20 Timeless Episodes is of course another cash grab ahead of the final season coming out in July, but what other label would care so much to remind viewers of how good the series was early on? Annie Potts aside (to me, she gets her own pedestal, temple, whatever), Designing Women is so much fun to watch, and historical amnesia helps in this two-disc set. Burt Reynolds and his clan in Evening Shade should get the same consideration. It’s just as warm-hearted as all this.