Really Surprised!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

For some strange reason, I always remembered this show. Maybe it was the outrageousness of it all or the fact that parodied Dallas. Anyway, I loved Dixie Carter, Ann Wedgeworth, Nedra Volz, and Delta Burke here more than I liked Dixie and Delta on Designing Women. I love parodies and this show should have been huge but again the demographics probably did not meet with network requirements like they did with Mama's Family and other shows that never made the cut. After all, they wanted a younger, hipper audiences. Now who is getting the last laugh since Blue Collar Comedy is back and in demand more than ever. That was the appeal of Filthy Rich was all the outrageousness about money and social classes. Too bad there were only fifteen episodes, we could have had more.

I was thinking about this today.As others have noted, you had to hear Dixie Carter's deliveries to believe them.I for one felt that Designing Women really wasted what Carter could do. Making Dixie Carter and Delta Burke sisters (of all things!) was one of the worst castings I had ever seen.I believe the show began with Big Daddy (Slim Pickens. I must have stopped watching the show when Forrest Tucker took over, and i have no idea how he was portrayed) had died and the family had gathered to watch his videotape will. This was when he revealed the illegitimate son and the son's wife.They were all funny, including the cardboard son, Charles Frank, as Stanley.Stanley: "Well, Marshall, it seems like your plan has been foiled." Marshall: "I don't like the tone of your voice, Stanley." Stanley repeats himself, imitating a duck this time.Delta would throw herself at the young handsome son, and again, as someone else noted, while he would be bathing in a bubble bath and wearing his cowboy hat.I was recalling one bit with Dixie Carter, as Carlotta. She had been taking a shower and had realized she left the bottle of shampoo she just bought down in the car in the garage, so she ran naked to get it, since no one else was home. She was telling this story to Marshall as she entered the bedroom wrapped in some tarp.As she stood in the garage, the door went up or something, and her hand got caught and the garage door raised up.Marshall: "Did the door open all the way?" Carlotta: "Eleven times, Marshall." Marshall: "Did anyone see you?" Carlotta: "The mailman." Marhsall: "Did he say anything?" Carlotta: "HE SAID HAVE A NICE DAY!!!" This was the opening joke of this episode, but I do recall nothing else was funny in the episode.Filthy Rich had come about as a mid-season replacement or shown over the summer, instead of another show called "Mamma Malone" (pronounced Mah-low-nee, she was Italian).Mamma Malone was shelved and eventually did air later on. It was a shame Malone had been trounced so badly by Filthy Rich's arrival, because truthfully, Mamma Malone wasn't that bad either.Lila Kaye, an English actress, had played the character.Two very good shows that left much too soon. Ah well.

There's no way to italicize Dixie Carter's delivery of the word "serve" with this particular forum, so that I will have to characterize it in prose. When Bootsie Westchester (breathily played by Ann Wedgeworth) worried aloud about what she would have to do if she got "a piece of gristle" at an upscale dinner party, Carlotta Beck (Dixie Carter's never been more caustic and haughty, but fun...) did a slow burn, and said, "We don't (shudder) *serve* gristle."This sums up the basic us vs. them premise of "Filthy Rich." However, there were really two different rivalries for control of the family's wealth. Carlotta and Stanley were the Established, Recognized members of the family, but hated the gold digging Kathleen (Delta Burke, in her first former beauty queen-with-a-penchant-for-tiaras-at-the-dinner-table role), who was married to the recently departed "Big Guy." The second family feud was between these three "legitimate" characters and the "trailer trash" Westchesters, who recently discovered that Wild Bill was the Big Guy's illegitimate son,and was in line for an inheritance, if they could all get along... As a raw parody of "Dallas" and other night time soaps, the show was absolutely perfect in its timing. It appeared as a summer replacement program and was wildly popular. Critics hated it, but audiences demanded that the network put the show in its regular lineup in the fall. Unfortunately, the show couldn't maintain the level of interest that it generated in the slow, dull, dog days of summer. Maybe the show was too "one joke" to sustain extended audience interest, plus the competition was providing new material, and it was no longer the only new fish in the pond. The writing was bawdy, brilliant, and satisfying when U.S. audiences couldn't get enough of oil-rich families fighting and trying to out-maneuver one another. It's a shame that it never got the chance to grow.

I thought Filthy Rick was the beginning of a great pairing with Linda Bloodworth Thomason, Delta Burke and Dixie Carter. I've always thought that anything Dixie Carter did was golden, and she delivered here as the vile Carlotta Beck! :) Carlotta was classy but she was so bent of doing in the Westchesters and she was fantastic! :)And naturally that set her up as the indomitable head of the Sugarbaker Design Firm on Designing Women.Delta's portrayal of Kathleen Beck was the beginning of who would become the one and only Suzanne Sugarbaker! :)And Nedra Volz, (Mother B) was also making an appearance on Designing Women when she played the mother of one of the bone-headed construction workers who were insulting and humiliating the women! :)