In one corner, we have Julia and Mary Jo: pampered, well-rested, stuffed on sundaes. In the other corner, Charlene and Suzanne: beaten with vines, exhausted, and hungry. All we can tell you is there’s gonna be hell to pay when the two collide.
Come back on Thursday for an “Extra Sugar” where we’ll take a closer look at fad diets and eyebrow-raising weight loss treatments.
Some reads y’all:
Come on y’all, let’s get into it!
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Transcript
Salina: Hey, Nikki.
Nikki: Hey, Salina.
Salina: And hello everyone.
Salina: And welcome to Sweet Tea and TV.
Salina: Hey y'all, the podcast where we eat rice cakes.
Nikki: So many rice cakes.
Nikki: All the rice cakes.
Salina: Yeah.
Nikki: But better than Suzanne's rice cakes.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: Was it the last episode when you dropped a little hint that we will be doing, like an updated rice?
Nikki: Okay.
Nikki: I think so.
Salina: Well, we're just like we need to talk about that because you all know the secret, our secret shame, our secret schedule.
Salina: I don't know.
Salina: The fact that we rip off three.
Nikki: This sounds so much worse than it's going to be.
Salina: Yeah, we just secret shame.
Salina: We record three episodes at a time.
Nikki: Because record in the closet.
Salina: We've got the day jobs.
Nikki: Yes.
Nikki: So we record three back to back episodes at least one Saturday a month.
Salina: And you would think that I would be able to remember what we said an hour ago, but I can't.
Nikki: It runs together.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: But it feels like if we introduced and kind of teed up those rice cakes, which have they've been a major plot point this season, this was at.
Nikki: Least our third or fourth reference to.
Salina: Them, at least, right?
Salina: Yeah.
Nikki: There was something recently, I think, when I was putting my notes together for that episode where I said, suzanne's, back on the rice cakes, something pinged in my head that I have seen content before online, where they upgrade rice cakes.
Nikki: Like, they take them a step above, and I just thought, they're such a perfect little platter.
Nikki: Like, it's like a little tiny plate.
Salina: Yeah, that's fair.
Nikki: Surely it's the starting point for something delicious.
Salina: It definitely holds more than a cracker, right?
Salina: Yeah.
Nikki: So I pitched the idea to you that we would do some kind of, like, fun scale up of them.
Salina: Right.
Nikki: And I didn't understand I didn't clearly articulate.
Nikki: You didn't understand my unclear articulation.
Nikki: But what we ended up with through all the muck in the muddle was I brought two treats today.
Nikki: Treats.
Nikki: I think treats is the right word.
Nikki: So that I did a sweet and.
Salina: A savory, a snack on the addendum of our lunch.
Nikki: Oh, my God.
Salina: Yeah.
Nikki: So we ate this delicious southern cobb salad with, like, an entire chicken thigh and a bunch of hard boiled eggs.
Salina: Deviled.
Nikki: Sorry.
Nikki: Yeah, that's what I meant.
Nikki: And pecans and salad dressing and watermelon and cowboy caviar.
Nikki: Caviar and pickled.
Nikki: Okra.
Nikki: And then we finished that and I was like, you know what we need right now?
Salina: A rice cake.
Nikki: We need a rice cake.
Salina: We're on a diet.
Nikki: With, like a yum yum sauce on it and then some avocado and then some smoked salmon, and then top it with just, like, a little sheet of seaweed and then have like, a sushi inspired rice cake.
Salina: It was like a California Asian fusion rice cake.
Nikki: Yeah, it's very good, and I think it's super nutrient dense.
Nikki: If we hadn't eaten all this stuff before that.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: Should we drop in some recipes into our show notes for this one or something?
Nikki: Good idea.
Salina: All right, so in case y'all are hearing this and you're eat, I would like my plate to be.
Nikki: Though.
Nikki: I think she was maybe on to something, but I think Suzanne would have had more success and more happiness in her diet if she had incorporated a little bit more.
Salina: Well, that time she put jelly on top of them, but also not just jelly, because then it's like jelly on cardboard.
Nikki: Right.
Salina: You need a little PB.
Salina: Well, BJ.
Nikki: Excuse me?
Salina: PBJ.
Nikki: BJ.
Salina: Okay.
Salina: I only heard the last two letters.
Salina: Okay.
Nikki: So the second one we did sweet one, and it was a rice cake with a layer of peanut butter.
Nikki: I did smooth peanut butter because normally I prefer crunchy.
Salina: Oh, you could have done crunchy.
Salina: Oh, crunchy on crunchy.
Nikki: I wasn't sure.
Nikki: So it's too much crunch is what I was worried about, because the rice cake itself is crunchy.
Nikki: Then if you have crunchy peanut butter, then you do banana on top, which is obviously a different texture.
Nikki: But then you do a layer of melted chocolate, which hardens in the freezer and becomes a little crunchy.
Nikki: So it was dark chocolate and then a little sprinkle of sea salt.
Nikki: So again, there's some fair nutrient in there.
Salina: And that one was just pretty.
Salina: You need your snack to be a showstopper.
Nikki: It was really pretty.
Salina: It was very pretty.
Nikki: It was hard to cut in half, which we tried to do, but it was good.
Nikki: Someone in the comments on that one suggested doing strawberry instead of banana, which I'm not sure how I feel about.
Nikki: I'm worried that strawberry wouldn't have a great texture, but maybe I don't know.
Salina: I like the banana.
Salina: That was good.
Nikki: Well, I can tell you TikTok is a bevy of resource on rice cake inspiration and everything.
Nikki: As it turns out, rice cakes are still a diet staple.
Salina: Well, it's also fair to say that this would be, like maybe this would be the update.
Salina: A couple of episodes this season we've taken a plot point and been like, but what would happen now?
Salina: And so maybe it would be Suzanne on TikTok.
Salina: Maybe she makes, like, a failed TikTok rice cake recipe.
Salina: Just it goes awry somehow.
Nikki: Yeah.
Salina: Maybe I could go for another one on it.
Nikki: That chocolate one, man.
Nikki: Really?
Nikki: I'm going to think about that one for a while.
Salina: That was a good treat.
Nikki: Speaking of treats and being deprived of treats yes, we are up to Designing Women season four, episode 27 called LaPlace San Susie.
Nikki: The IMDb description is Suzanne and Charlene square off against Mary Jo and Julia when they're put on very different diet and exercise programs at a posh health spa.
Nikki: Air date May 21, 1990 we're calling this one Hellacious hot Tub.
Nikki: Hellacious hot mud tub.
Nikki: Cat fight.
Salina: It's a real tongue twister, is it not?
Nikki: It is a challenge that's written by LBT and directed by Iris Dugout.
Nikki: You know what's impressive is I pulled that from Anthony's remarks at the end of the episode.
Nikki: So not only did that man memorize his lines, he memorized that line and said it out loud.
Salina: That's right.
Salina: Well, you don't know how many times he said it.
Nikki: That's true.
Nikki: Probably a million meshach.
Nikki: One time.
Nikki: Just the one time.
Salina: Just the one take.
Nikki: What did you have in terms of general reactions?
Salina: Well, I don't know how you're going to feel about this coming off some of your feedback to the last episode.
Nikki: Okay.
Salina: Go with me for a second and just see maybe I think that this is the best finale that we've seen here's.
Salina: The others we've had, and you tell me what you think.
Salina: Again, not saying that Anthony's couldn't have been the finale.
Nikki: I heard you say it's the best we've seen.
Salina: Best we've seen.
Nikki: So my denominator is three other episodes.
Salina: Bachelor suite where Mary Jo was almost sexually assaulted.
Salina: Now, I'm glad that we had the opportunity to cover that important topic at the time, but the episode itself was fine.
Salina: Reservations for eight.
Salina: That's that very first disastrous group trip where they map out the first draft of Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus.
Nikki: I didn't care for that one.
Salina: And then the last season was Julia Drives Over the First Amendment, where she keeps hitting the bookstand with her car to knock down that pornographic poster.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: Which just started to feel like we were inching up on book banning.
Nikki: I would absolutely love a little more background on how they choose the season finales.
Nikki: I think you started down this path of, like, are they planting seeds for next season?
Nikki: So this episode, we took away some conflict between the women.
Nikki: So we're going to see more of that next season.
Salina: Well, I guess it kind of depends on where you are in the universe of the show.
Salina: Right.
Salina: I think that first season, because we talked about that that episode was actually meant to come in the middle, I think, because sometimes I think they snagged that Charlene one and moved it up to be, like, to come in with the bang to try and save the.
Nikki: Show, which Charlene one when she gets.
Salina: And so I think sometimes it's strategic in that way.
Salina: And these other ones, the way it's turned out to be is, like, what I it's very formulaic.
Salina: Like, I see.
Salina: And I'm watching a reality TV show right now, super proud.
Salina: And at the end of every season, they're basically going on a group trip.
Salina: It's like a foregone conclusion.
Salina: You know, they're headed somewhere.
Salina: And that's what we've done.
Salina: That's what we've done.
Salina: Half the time here is like, we're going this time to this spot.
Nikki: Oh, I see.
Salina: Or we're going to the mountains or something where you're basically getting everybody together and shenanigans.
Salina: Yeah.
Nikki: Okay.
Nikki: Good point.
Nikki: I didn't see this one as a trip episode, but you're totally right.
Salina: Who knew?
Nikki: I think my first general reaction is like an amorphous thought.
Nikki: I don't think I had formed an opinion.
Nikki: It had just sort of rattled in my brain a little bit throughout this season.
Nikki: I wondered if we were ever going to address Charlene's post baby weight loss journey.
Nikki: We've talked a lot about Suzanne and her weight, but we haven't addressed Charlene's, which is interesting.
Nikki: I literally have no opinion other than interesting.
Nikki: If I fold back one layer.
Nikki: I do think it's unusual that a person delivers a baby and we don't have some commentary about their weight.
Nikki: Thinking about the late eighty s and the early 90s, these days, you might get away with it a little bit more.
Nikki: But back then, I mean, the fact that we have an entire episode around weight loss is not surprising to me.
Nikki: And extreme weight loss.
Nikki: And this is the first time we've talked about Charlene.
Nikki: And so I wonder if part of that is because Delta Brooke explicitly had an agreement with LBT that she wanted to address her weight.
Nikki: I think back in season three, and maybe Jean Smart didn't do the same thing.
Nikki: She didn't share that same perspective, and they're trying to be respectful of her.
Nikki: But it was just so interesting to me that we just never have talked about her weight.
Salina: Well, one thing, so something that you said in a recent episode, maybe even last episode, was this idea you couldn't have two pregnant people on the show at once.
Salina: Maybe you can't have two people battling.
Nikki: Weight at the same time.
Nikki: That may be true.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: So, I mean, maybe it's like doubling up on the plotlines was just too much or something.
Salina: But that's a fair point.
Salina: If they had not done it, then I would have been like, great.
Salina: We don't have to necessarily unpack whether or not someone put on 15 pounds.
Salina: It's just so weird.
Nikki: Maybe that's what it is.
Nikki: It's so weird because we've made it half the season with Olivia.
Salina: Right, right.
Salina: So there was never any breadcrumbs.
Salina: Exactly.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: It was just like suddenly we're like, Baby weight.
Salina: Interesting.
Nikki: Suzanne would ask.
Nikki: She asked in one of the recent episodes, like, what happened to my rice cake?
Nikki: And Charlene was like, I may have eaten.
Nikki: And like, it's so matter of fact, like, she's eating it's not like a and, you know, you could eat an entire side of beef.
Nikki: You could eat X, Y and Z.
Nikki: So, yeah, it feels like a total heel turn that now we're talking about her.
Nikki: Like she has weight to lose.
Salina: Yeah, I was thinking about that a little bit this morning when I was rewatching the episodes.
Salina: That did strike me as, well, this is weird.
Salina: I don't know.
Nikki: I didn't know what to do with it.
Nikki: I think all season long, I think I've been waiting because we've talked about how this is literally a first watch for me in a lot of ways.
Nikki: I don't remember hardly any of these episodes other than us watching them.
Nikki: So for me, somewhere in the back of my head, I was thinking, at what point are we going to talk about Gene Smart?
Nikki: Because we're like, doubling down on Suzanne's weight at this point, to the point where she's only eating rice cakes and getting really angry when someone takes them.
Nikki: Right.
Nikki: And we just never did.
Nikki: So then it totally shocked me when this episode was about just wasn't I wasn't prepared for it.
Salina: Yeah, that's interesting.
Salina: I had one more general reaction, which was basically it's kind of a question.
Salina: Mary Jo and Julia been a little bit of mean girls the last couple of episodes.
Nikki: Okay.
Salina: Yeah, they're kind of getting on my nerves.
Salina: They're pretty snide about winning the Jeopardy game last episode.
Salina: And then here, they haven't been very understanding of the difference of their spa journeys with Suzanne and Charlene.
Salina: They give a little bit of a nod to it and then just as the game comes into play and everything and they become sore losers, they just get mean.
Salina: And when they order those desserts at the end, I'm going to smack them.
Salina: We get more solid mean girl understanding in these cut lines.
Salina: All I know is that you sure have been touchy ever since we got here.
Salina: Touchy in what way?
Salina: Like when you got mad when we laughed at you in exercise class.
Salina: Well, you were rude.
Salina: I don't think there's anything funny about doing the five ballet positions every morning.
Salina: I got it out of a ballerina book that my daddy bought me secondhand when I was a little girl.
Salina: Now I feel really crummy.
Salina: Yeah, well, you should marry Joe.
Salina: Laughing at Charlene just because she's poor.
Salina: Why don't you just call up her mama and daddy and poplar bluff and say, haha, you're poor, and then laugh like a big old donkey on the phone that gets cut.
Salina: Of course I will say you can tell how strongly these characters are written because I don't need you to tell me anymore who they are.
Nikki: Right.
Salina: Like, you just know.
Salina: But yeah.
Salina: So I think that just puts a little bit more color on it to how they were poking at her, too, for I know there was like the baton routine.
Salina: I'm sure that'll come up in the rest of our conversation, but just her trying.
Salina: She is doing something, but we're still going to laugh at her for it.
Nikki: I don't like so that was the thing I didn't like about this episode is how rude in particular that Mary Jo is to Charlene because they're best friends and they have been positioned as the two best friends this whole time.
Nikki: Their time together.
Nikki: Predates Bill.
Nikki: It predates.
Nikki: Maybe.
Nikki: I think even Mary Jo's divorce, they've had a long standing friendship and there are a lot of times that Mary Jo's comments breeze past teasing and into full on bullying.
Nikki: Like she teased Charlene about knowing the first person on the moon.
Nikki: She was like, really?
Nikki: The first person on the moon?
Nikki: You're more likely to know the Elvis statue on Mars or something.
Nikki: Something very mean.
Nikki: Yeah, it's just really mean.
Nikki: That was the thing I didn't like.
Nikki: And then my last general here was just that my thoughts on ending the season with this.
Nikki: So I've spoiled myself multiple times.
Nikki: I don't need to do it again.
Salina: Well, let's talk about those strays then.
Salina: What you got?
Nikki: So I crosswalked Charlene's rapid fire listing of her brothers and sisters with the list she yammered off in Nashville, bound back in season one.
Nikki: Looks like everyone's accounted for.
Nikki: There's a little conversation in the designing women universe that I've been privy to as we're posting things in different places.
Nikki: And I'm looking for stuff that maybe charlene's family tree is not always super consistent.
Nikki: And there are characters introduced that we don't know about or characters that we've never heard of.
Nikki: But in this instance, it looks like it was right.
Nikki: So for what it's worth, my other stray is that in possibly hot take ish area.
Nikki: I agree with Suzanne that miss Phil Pott has a cushy job.
Salina: Oh, I thought you were going to agree that she should be a wet nurse.
Salina: Oh, no.
Salina: I was like, that is a hot take.
Salina: Hot take.
Salina: Nikki coming in that she has a cushy job.
Nikki: She really does.
Nikki: Nannies of newborn babies, I feel like, actually kind of have easy job.
Nikki: Newborns usually are pretty easy, and if it's not your own child you're sort of like removed from it, it's the parents.
Nikki: I imagine that would be difficult to manage because first time parents are always a little something.
Salina: Well, you may have managed a person or two in your life.
Salina: Is it easy?
Salina: So good.
Nikki: So good.
Salina: So I had a lot of Suzanne strays.
Salina: Oh, that was a good one.
Salina: Except, of course, mine was on the wet nurse part because that was weird.
Salina: Suzanne is me trying to speak French and you're.
Nikki: That thought.
Nikki: I honestly had that thought because we've done it a couple of times.
Nikki: Then I was like, do I sound that snotty, though?
Nikki: Do I talk down to you about it?
Nikki: Because I don't intend to.
Salina: It's not you.
Salina: It's French.
Salina: There goes my chance to sponsor France.
Nikki: What's so funny is that my pronunciation is probably terrible to a person.
Nikki: Julia's probably was pretty awful, so I never intend to be snotty about it.
Salina: Well, I think you're just trying to be accurate.
Nikki: I want to be because I just feel silly.
Nikki: I spent so many years learning it.
Salina: The only thing I can compare it to is I know sometimes I try really hard to take the southern accent out of things when I'm trying to say another language because I know how ridiculous that sounds.
Salina: It doesn't mean I'm winning at that effort.
Salina: It just means that I realize that me saying something in another language, the way I'd be asking for grits and biscuits just may not have the same ring to it as all.
Salina: Anyways, when they said that, I was like, oh, my god.
Salina: That's totally us.
Salina: The spa trip costs Suzanne $1,000 a day.
Salina: That's $2,321 a day today.
Salina: I'd be pissy, too.
Salina: I'd be like, I need two shrimps for sure.
Nikki: And seemed like she had no idea this is what was going to happen.
Salina: Memorizing a whole game of trivial Pursuit just to win.
Salina: It's not worth it to me.
Nikki: You don't have the competitor spirit.
Salina: I don't.
Salina: I'm not sure I care that much about anything.
Nikki: If I can see I would not cheat.
Salina: Right.
Salina: That's what I'm saying.
Nikki: All I was going to say is if I can see a multiple choice, like written down on a card, I have kind of a photographic memory is not the right word because I would never describe my memory as anything but crappy.
Nikki: But I do have a way about me that if I can see it laid out, I can remember the pattern or something later.
Salina: There is a term for that.
Nikki: I forget what it is.
Nikki: I could do it without like I wouldn't be killing myself to do it.
Nikki: If I were memorizing facts fresh, I would kill myself.
Nikki: But to just look at a card and see something highlighted, I would remember it.
Nikki: Next time.
Salina: Trivial pursuit.
Nikki: It's too much effort, especially.
Nikki: Yeah.
Salina: But again, as a reminder, I have mentioned this was going to be the companion to everything that was kind of getting jinned up in the last episode.
Salina: This idea that Mary Jo and Julia can just sit around sipping on milkshakes, I want to say, by the way, I'm off Suzanne things but at a health spa is like tea, totally ridiculous.
Nikki: Because they wanted to gain weight.
Salina: First of all, there's that.
Salina: Okay.
Salina: And that's whatever.
Salina: Some people are underweight and they need to gain weight, but they're not going to gain you weight on milkshakes.
Salina: I just don't believe it.
Salina: I'm willing to give it a go right now.
Salina: I'll take all the milkshakes.
Salina: The only thing I'll say that I don't like about milkshakes is it goes a little fast for me.
Nikki: Exactly.
Nikki: Agreed.
Nikki: 100%.
Salina: Which would obviously, I guess, lead to my demise.
Salina: What other strays did you have?
Nikki: Just one more or two more depending on how you count it.
Salina: Okay.
Nikki: We had two guest stars in this episode.
Nikki: The two women in the hot tub.
Salina: Sure.
Nikki: So they're mentioned throughout the episode Edie and Marla.
Nikki: They're kind of annoying to the women.
Nikki: So Edie was played by Edie Adams.
Nikki: She did a lot of old Hollywood style movies but was most well known for sultry 1960s cigar commercials.
Nikki: She's the one to me that looked so much like Cindy Lopper.
Salina: Okay.
Nikki: I was so confused because in my mind, I can picture an older Cindy Lopper, but she wouldn't have been older at this time.
Salina: That's right.
Nikki: So there was like, a spacetime continuum break in my brain while I was watching this, thinking it was her.
Salina: I mean, I know which one you're talking about.
Salina: Just you saying that she's kind of, like, eccentric and wild looking, like, in a cool way.
Nikki: Yeah, like cool old lady.
Nikki: Yeah, that really threw me.
Salina: I see that.
Nikki: And then Marla was played by Eileen Barnett.
Nikki: She has a really long career, which, in addition to Designing Women, includes stops on Melrose Place, caroline in the City, Blackish, and Gilmore Girls.
Nikki: In fact, she made a list of actors who played two characters on Could Not, and I didn't write them down.
Nikki: I could not place her.
Nikki: Like, she wasn't a main character in any way.
Salina: Probably just look it up on the Gilmore Girls bookie or something.
Salina: I'm trying to do oh, well, I'm trying to think.
Salina: Oh, I'm glad you looked this up.
Salina: 60s cigar, sexy cigar commercials.
Nikki: What a time.
Nikki: So she played.
Nikki: Oops sorry Mrs.
Nikki: Lehigh.
Nikki: Oh, that's right.
Nikki: Mrs.
Nikki: Leahy on Gilmore Girls and Nanette.
Nikki: Nanette.
Salina: Sounds familiar.
Salina: Was that, like, in a bakery or something?
Nikki: So Mrs.
Nikki: Leahy nanette was in season one, episode three, kill Me Now.
Nikki: And Mrs.
Nikki: Leahy was in season three, episode 13.
Nikki: Happy birthday, baby.
Salina: Just got a hankering to watch Gilmore Girls.
Nikki: I have been thinking that lately, but it's still a little too hot outside, so Kill Me Now is the episode where Rory goes golfing with her grandfather.
Nikki: Do you remember that?
Nikki: In silly hat.
Nikki: And then Happy birthday, baby, is when Rory plans Lorelai's birthday party.
Salina: Okay.
Salina: Yeah.
Nikki: So, yeah, I don't know what character Mrs.
Nikki: Leahy is.
Nikki: Unless in this episode Kill Me Now.
Nikki: She's at Laura Lies Inn.
Nikki: A wedding is stressing everyone out.
Nikki: I wonder if she's related to the wedding.
Salina: Oh, yeah, maybe.
Nikki: Anyway, anytime we have a crossover with Gilmore Girls, I have to mention it.
Salina: Sure, there's no way I'd be able to remember Caroline in the City, but I did love that show.
Nikki: That was really been so long since I've seen it.
Nikki: It would have been probably its very first reruns on Lifetime that I saw it.
Salina: Loved it.
Salina: Saw it in the initial run.
Nikki: Good for you.
Salina: Like every ten year old, let me tell you, I only have one more stray, which is that the needle drop during their mud bath fight was, like, really weird.
Salina: Oh, they don't have a lot of needle drops in this show, but, I mean, I guess maybe at the end of episodes they do help me understand what you mean.
Salina: My needle drop, like where a song started playing.
Nikki: Okay.
Salina: Yeah, and it was just a really weird one.
Salina: It was, like, out of tone sometimes.
Salina: It's not like they never play music, but it's not necessarily unexpected.
Salina: In Reservations for Eight or something, they play, like, an old country song.
Salina: And it made sense because they're in kind of like a honky tonk looking mountain place.
Salina: And that makes this one.
Salina: You just have to go back and.
Nikki: I'll have to watch it.
Nikki: I don't really remember that.
Salina: It just seems so out of place to me.
Salina: It's really interesting.
Salina: Want to talk about some things that we liked about this one?
Nikki: Yeah, I don't think we can talk about this episode and not talk about the imaginary baton twirling.
Nikki: That was a highlight for me on paper in the script.
Nikki: That must have looked so flat.
Nikki: And it was really Delta Burke's playing of it.
Nikki: It was so geniusly played.
Nikki: From the looks on her face to the way her head tilted.
Nikki: Everything she did was so theatrical and over the top.
Nikki: It was just really well done.
Salina: I don't know if we've ever actually looked up before if that was her talent.
Nikki: Oh, shoot.
Nikki: I should have thought of didn't.
Salina: Well, I'm thinking about it.
Salina: Right.
Salina: Well, I just want to tag on to that as a like that.
Salina: I also just as much as I love seeing her do that, I love anthony was the one who knew that she does it because he watches her do it all the time.
Nikki: All the time.
Nikki: She just does it all the time.
Nikki: The other thing I wanted to say is, the meanness of Julia and Mary Jo notwithstanding, I really do like this unexpected alliance of Charlene and Suzanne.
Nikki: I don't see it coming.
Salina: Not a lot of pair ups.
Nikki: So Suzanne has historically said how she has trouble making female friends and Charlene makes friends with everyone.
Nikki: But there has always been a little bit of a tension, in my opinion, between Charlene and Suzanne.
Nikki: Like, Charlene's, a little put off by.
Salina: Cut, keeps calling her family Hicks.
Nikki: Exactly.
Nikki: No, it's well earned.
Nikki: It's well earned.
Nikki: But they build the tension between the two of them sometimes in a way you don't see Charlene do with other characters.
Nikki: And so I have loved watching this collab, this Suzanne Charlene collab.
Nikki: I like it.
Salina: Yeah, I didn't think about that.
Salina: Yeah, that's cute.
Salina: I just thought this one was full of a lot of zingers that I really liked.
Salina: Charlene's, plea to Suzanne.
Salina: Suzanne, I would appreciate it if you quit referring to me as a big person.
Salina: I happen to have just had a baby.
Salina: And then, Suzanne, on the implications of Charlene telling everyone in their group she's just had a baby.
Salina: Yes, Charlene, I am well aware of that.
Salina: You now have told everyone in our group that you have just had a baby.
Salina: I guess the implication is that just the rest of us are fat and childless.
Salina: And then there's the reservations about the place once she knows what they're up to.
Salina: I mean, I wouldn't have come to this place if I'd known they had it in for big people.
Salina: And then the last line that really got me was her unvarnished thoughts on the spa.
Salina: The problem is, Mary Jo, this is costing me $1,000 a day, and I am not, repeat, not having a good time.
Salina: I didn't know I was going to have to live on raw vegetables and be tortured 24 hours a day and beaten with reeds.
Salina: H***, if I wanted to have this much fun, I could have stayed home and had consuela pistol with me.
Nikki: Oh, my God, she's so angry.
Salina: And you know what I identify with?
Nikki: She is just so mad.
Nikki: And I would be really mad about being starved on something that I'm paying money for when I wasn't expecting.
Salina: Yeah, I only like it when I'm starved, and I know it's coming down the path.
Nikki: Oh, I thought I had an answer for you on the talent.
Salina: I feel like I've maybe she sings.
Nikki: I think she might sing before.
Salina: It's just been a really long time.
Salina: Come on.
Salina: I know some of y'all are real big Delta Burke fans and probably know it, and you may be screaming at the car right now, scream at your.
Nikki: Email and let us know.
Salina: That's right.
Salina: Let us please.
Salina: Maybe we'll keep looking for it depends on what we remember after this.
Nikki: Are you ready to move on things we didn't?
Nikki: I the only thing I can say is just those snobby remarks, the mean girlishness, I think, that you said earlier from Julia and Mary Jo toward Charlene and Suzanne, it's just real mean.
Salina: Yeah, so I agree with that.
Salina: The other thing that was dawning on me this episode is that this show does not like people from outside of the south.
Salina: I don't love that.
Salina: Part of the genesis for sweet tea and TV is that we didn't appreciate being stereotyped.
Salina: But that's pretty much what's happening here in this episode.
Salina: There's running commentary about some of the spa guests that you've already talked about from Beverly Hills.
Salina: There's a whores or us comment that gets tossed about.
Salina: That's intense.
Nikki: Maybe they really don't like Beverly Hills they talk about.
Salina: Well, thank you for saying that.
Salina: So other examples I mean, we've been getting Beverly Hills stories all season.
Nikki: Those clients, the waterbed clients, and it's.
Salina: Not the first time.
Salina: I think there's some previous, maybe at least one comment last season and then the camping episode with the women from New York City who Julia, Mary Jo fought with, only to say, what's the fisticuffs with everyone regionally.
Salina: I just think that's an interesting choice.
Salina: I mean, conflict breeds humor.
Salina: I understand that.
Salina: Also hate the word breeds, so I'm not sure why I decided to use that, but there you go.
Salina: So I do get using that as a genesis to make things funny, but just some of it tonally feels like mean.
Salina: The other thing I didn't like is that this is a little bit of a tee up for this week's, extra sugar.
Salina: But generally, this episode had me thinking.
Salina: A lot about how hard women are on themselves and how hard women can be on other women.
Salina: I don't like that either.
Salina: I don't like it.
Salina: Not here for it.
Nikki: No, that one's a toughie.
Salina: Women support women.
Nikki: Tough nut to crack.
Salina: That's right.
Salina: Let's go have pie together.
Salina: Crack all the women and crack some nuts.
Salina: Whatever it takes.
Salina: You want to rate this one?
Salina: Let's do it.
Nikki: My rating scale is dirty, aging Southern bells.
Salina: Mine is war torn, dirty faced, aging Southern bells.
Salina: Pretty good.
Salina: We must have been looking at the.
Nikki: Same thing, so I gave it a four out of five.
Salina: Were you just calculating it?
Nikki: No, I gave it a 4.5, and then I started thinking, and I was like, no, four out of five feels right to me.
Salina: Okay.
Nikki: I feel like it was a funny enough episode.
Nikki: It was light.
Nikki: It took us somewhere other than Sugar Bakers, which is interesting that I registered that but didn't register it as a travel episode.
Nikki: It doesn't matter.
Nikki: But it was just a little change of scenery was really nice, but I talked about the things I didn't like about it.
Salina: Yeah, I gave it a four and a half out of five.
Salina: So my dislikes are more like, universal about just some of the universe that we're building and some things that I wish we wouldn't be doing, but it doesn't necessarily make me go, Screw it.
Nikki: Yeah.
Salina: So I still think that it was good fun.
Salina: It had all the good trappings of the kind of episode I like.
Salina: We left Sugar bakers number one.
Nikki: Thank you.
Salina: We're in a spa, so there's lots of interesting Fodder there alone.
Salina: We've got good conflict between our gals.
Salina: It ends in a funny fight, and they're mad at each other, but it's not so bad that I don't think we can work it out by season five, episode one.
Salina: It's, like, minimal stakes, and that's the kind of fight because I don't want our main cast, like, really fighting.
Salina: That would make me sad.
Salina: So that's it for me, 90s things.
Nikki: Because they really fought in the play, remember?
Salina: Oh, yeah.
Nikki: It was not a good vibe.
Nikki: Yeah, vibes were low key off.
Salina: There were so many things happening.
Nikki: 90S things.
Nikki: Is that what you said?
Salina: Yes.
Nikki: I had the at and T commercial about the GI stationed abroad.
Nikki: The quote, you don't have to be a mama's boy to like the sound of your mama's voice and how that makes Charlene cry.
Salina: Do you find it?
Nikki: No, I didn't I didn't look for it, though.
Salina: Okay, well, that makes it hard.
Nikki: Yeah, that just felt very 90s.
Salina: Absolutely.
Nikki: Today's version would be publix commercials at the holidays, which I know we've talked about here before, but I get a tear every time.
Salina: Yeah, that's generational.
Salina: No, actually, I'm more likely to cry at fake things than real things.
Salina: So commercials, it's rough every time.
Nikki: Those public's ones are rough.
Nikki: Yeah, it'll be like, unexpected.
Nikki: Yeah, the one this year where the implication is the old man lost his family and the little girl outside brings it back in him.
Salina: They'll do anything to sell those groceries.
Nikki: Not to me, suckers, because Kroger's cheaper.
Nikki: But I'll watch the commercial, but I'll watch your commercials, and I'll get my birthday cake there.
Nikki: That's the only 90s thing I had.
Salina: This is just dated.
Salina: Charlene asked her dad on the phone if he got her letter about Suzanne shooting Anthony.
Salina: Good.
Salina: Get that down on paper.
Salina: Every stitch of clothing in that aerobics class, they all look like 90s Malibu Barbies or something.
Salina: And we're just coming out of the 80s, so there's a little of that flavor in there.
Salina: But we are jettisoned towards some peak spandex.
Salina: Peak 90s spandex is about to happen.
Nikki: Perfect southern things, warm Springs, Georgia, which is, I guess, where they went for the spa.
Nikki: It's located about an hour south of Atlanta.
Nikki: And FDR made it famous by having a little white house there, and that was because swimming in the mineral waters was good for his polio stricken legs.
Nikki: He also died there.
Nikki: You can still go tour the little white house.
Nikki: I ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole on FDR.
Nikki: And then there's, like, the Eleanor Roosevelt thing.
Nikki: It just becomes a whole wait, what Eleanor Roosevelt thing?
Nikki: It's just everything about her.
Nikki: Just Eleanor Roosevelt.
Salina: Oh, man.
Salina: They were.
Nikki: They were the original political marriage, I think, and also cousins.
Nikki: And every time you relearn that, it's just surprising.
Nikki: Her name was Eleanor Roosevelt before they got married.
Salina: Want them to be more of just, like, partners.
Salina: Right.
Nikki: But they also had nine children.
Salina: But I like to think maybe that someone else was birthing them in secret.
Nikki: She had quotes about that sex was a thing to be endured, and yet they had nine children or whatever.
Nikki: Send me down a rabbit hole.
Nikki: Why?
Nikki: I got stuck when I saw her last name was Roosevelt before they got married.
Nikki: Yeah, I forgot they were cousins.
Nikki: And I was like, they were that close.
Salina: Very close.
Salina: But wait, but was it first cousins.
Nikki: Don'T look too hard.
Salina: I can't remember.
Salina: It's been a while since I've looked into that history.
Salina: Warm Springs, Georgia, though, is starting to look pretty interesting to me.
Salina: I kind of want to go.
Nikki: It's fascinating that this place lives just an hour south of us.
Salina: I know.
Salina: And that I've never been, and I'm all about some hot springs.
Nikki: Are any of their hot springs still open?
Salina: That's where I was a little off put is it seemed like not in like it didn't seem like maybe you could just waltz into a know maybe they have them dammed up somewhere.
Nikki: Modern vacation movie.
Nikki: National Lampoons vacation when they went into the hot springs.
Salina: Yes.
Nikki: You know, they filmed that movie in Georgia.
Salina: Did they?
Salina: Okay.
Nikki: So I wonder if the hot springs they went into I don't know.
Salina: You know, we're getting some though, right?
Nikki: Hot springs?
Salina: Like, some really badass ones where when you say we, you mean LaGrange.
Salina: But it's a reasonable day trip for Georgians, and it's like I should send it to you.
Salina: It looks amazing.
Salina: I can't wait for this thing to come out.
Salina: It's supposed to be, like, European inspired.
Nikki: I'm not fully sure you haven't sent me this.
Nikki: I think you might have.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: And I think there's different themes, so maybe ones I'm going to get this wrong, so I'm spitballing a little bit here, but maybe one area is Venetian and maybe another is Grecian, and it's going to be like a whole thing.
Salina: It's supposed to be like a monstrous facility.
Nikki: It's just crazy to me.
Nikki: I'm looking at Warm Springs now.
Nikki: It's just crazy, perpetually to learn the things that are so close to us.
Nikki: Like, we venture very far to vacation and go to other places, and then you're like, there's Warm Springs.
Salina: That's why I'm trying to do something where, like, one near home, one far away from home, you know what I'm saying?
Salina: When it's coming to the vacationing lately?
Salina: Because there is and especially doing this podcast.
Salina: This is really a tangent, but sorry, all, we're in the Southern thing, so it's okay.
Salina: Especially doing this podcast, there's so many things that we've been learning about here, and it's making me want to venture out and see those things.
Salina: And so that's something I just really appreciate about all this because I think it's made me appreciate the culture much more than maybe I did even coming into the podcast.
Salina: So there's that.
Salina: Anything else you wanted to say about Warm Springs?
Salina: I don't want to go away from that.
Salina: I could go for some naturally heated warm mineral waters right now.
Nikki: I think that would be nice.
Salina: We should do that.
Salina: I need to get a hot tub, and then we should do an episode from the hot tub.
Salina: I don't really have any good reasoning for it except for just comfort.
Salina: I'm like, I'm going to do one while napping.
Salina: Okay.
Nikki: What else did you have in Southern things?
Nikki: They mentioned Ole Miss.
Nikki: That's where Suzanne went to school.
Nikki: That was it.
Salina: Okay, we've talked about this before, but our propensity, particularly as Southern women, to say something like, I hate to be cruel b***, and then proceed with cruel comment.
Nikki: Yeah, it's a thing, but at least we tried.
Salina: We try.
Salina: Suzanne tells Charlene, don't get all huffy.
Salina: I don't know.
Salina: I just sounded oh, and then I think there's literally a reference to Southern bells at some point.
Salina: References we need to talk about.
Nikki: Well, given that each one is only two sentences long, I'm not sure I really have that much to say about them.
Nikki: But I had Flo Joe and Wilma Rudolph.
Nikki: That's who Mary Joe compared Suzanne and Charlene to when they came back from their hike.
Nikki: They are both just, like, really fast runners.
Nikki: Like historically fast track and field runners.
Salina: Yeah, I don't think I realized that.
Salina: Flojo still holds the world record for the 102 hundred meter dash.
Salina: That's something she's held since 1988.
Salina: That's really something.
Salina: I don't know.
Salina: It feels like they both died really young.
Salina: She died at 38, wilma Rudolph at 54.
Salina: But I don't think that if they purposely connected that this is crazy because you get the warm spring reference and that's FDR, wilma Rudolph overcame childhood polio and then goes on to be like this historic runner.
Salina: I don't know.
Salina: That's pretty cool.
Nikki: I think polio was just really common at one point.
Salina: That's correct.
Salina: It was really common.
Salina: I also didn't know that we were old enough to have polio vaccines.
Salina: Do you know that I went and I had to go get my vaccine record recently and it was like, polio vaccine.
Salina: And I was like, how old am I?
Nikki: Old enough to have the vaccine and not polio itself?
Salina: Well, there's a really nice way to put it.
Salina: All I did was feel real old.
Salina: I had one more reference, which is the in mudbath fight is definitely inspired by the Lucy fight when she's stomping the grapes.
Salina: There was something about it that just I'm like, definitely.
Salina: I know it, but there was just something about it that rang true to me.
Salina: And I have to tell you, when I was little, it did look like.
Nikki: That episode, which also makes me think of.
Salina: Like I love that episode so much.
Salina: It made me laugh so hard.
Nikki: Yeah.
Nikki: I wanted to mention St.
Nikki: Louis blues, but only to say that it's a blues standard song.
Nikki: So it's just like one that everybody knows.
Nikki: And it was one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song.
Nikki: And St.
Nikki: Louis blues is what she did.
Nikki: Her baton.
Salina: I don't think I got it right.
Salina: But it's not like that.
Nikki: I listened to it to see if I could remember the melody, but I can't.
Nikki: So it's what she did.
Nikki: Just listen to her do it.
Salina: I could see her doing the movements.
Nikki: Yeah, I don't know.
Salina: Something like that.
Salina: We're not here to sing.
Nikki: We're not here to sing.
Salina: That's not what we're here for.
Salina: Thank goodness.
Salina: All right, well, wrap this thing up.
Nikki: All right, so our next episode then is going to be season four, our finale.
Nikki: Finale.
Nikki: This is the excellent recap of our season that we do that Salina a few episodes ago made sound terrible, but really is going to be great.
Salina: Dude, that is not what I meant.
Salina: What I meant is the people who go back, they literally listen to episode one, and then they break down their episode one, then they listen to their episode two, and then they break down.
Nikki: Although I do think we could do that for season one of our show because you and I might still actually remember some of the tears behind those first few episodes.
Salina: Does that sound like something you want to read on?
Nikki: That sounds fun, but actually so what we do in our finale finale is we think about this season, we talk about the things we learned about the women throughout the season.
Nikki: We talk about the things that we did as we recorded the season and just sort of do a nice little retrospective.
Salina: Nikki makes me do math every season.
Nikki: I warn her every season that it's coming, though.
Nikki: So she's had all season to do it.
Nikki: And then after that episode, we're going to do our special episode episode where we're going to watch a movie.
Nikki: And I think we know which movie it's going to be.
Salina: I think we do.
Nikki: I'm pretty can I say it?
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: I think we'll do an announcement on social media next week, but that is not going to affect it.
Nikki: I was going to say that's a long time ago.
Nikki: So we're going to watch I think First Wives Club was what the people voted on, what you all voted on.
Nikki: We did a bracket tournament that was really challenging logistically for me to figure out.
Nikki: You should tell I had charts on charts.
Salina: That's why when you suggested it, I was like, that sounds great.
Salina: How do you do that?
Nikki: We had charts on charts.
Nikki: It was a lot.
Salina: Sounds like sports.
Nikki: I think the voting still confused a few people that they got to choose one each bracket.
Nikki: So I think it could be done better.
Nikki: But I did my dead level best.
Salina: It's almost like you were working a full time job and raising two children.
Nikki: In the middle of trying to make a movie.
Salina: Bracket.
Nikki: Fighting for my life.
Nikki: Getting this thing posted on social media.
Salina: Now, will you remind me, have you seen First Wives Club?
Nikki: Okay.
Salina: This is a revisit for both.
Nikki: This will be a revisit.
Salina: Yeah.
Salina: Okay.
Salina: I said great revisit.
Salina: I've seen this movie no less than 60 times.
Nikki: I have probably seen it maybe a dozen times.
Nikki: So less than you.
Salina: That would be like, for our age group that we were so interested in that movie about divorcees.
Nikki: Yeah, kind of.
Nikki: I have such a thing for Bette Midler.
Nikki: Like such a thing.
Nikki: And also Hahn.
Nikki: Okay, so I had like a nine year Diane Keaton, a nine year old Beaches moment.
Salina: Okay.
Nikki: So I think knowing Bette Midler was in it, knowing Goldie Hahn.
Nikki: And I love Diane Keaton.
Nikki: I really do.
Salina: I know.
Nikki: Who does?
Salina: She's a national treasure.
Nikki: I don't know.
Nikki: I've always been like a I don't want to say rom.com because that's not what this is, but like, girly, I just love that girl.
Nikki: Gang girl.
Nikki: Gang stuff.
Salina: Gang sitcom.
Salina: Yeah, and there wasn't that many of them then, so maybe that's part of it, too.
Nikki: Oh, and also probably around this time I went through she what's the Goldie Hawn movie?
Salina: Overboard.
Salina: No.
Nikki: Where she's married to a plastic surgeon and he invents this way to keep her young forever.
Salina: With Bruce Willis and Meryl Streep.
Nikki: Yes.
Nikki: Oh, golly, it's going to kill me.
Nikki: That movie I did probably watch 60 times.
Nikki: That is such a good movie.
Nikki: So this all would have been sort of in that same time period.
Salina: Death becomes her.
Nikki: Death becomes her.
Salina: Thank you.
Nikki: Death becomes her.
Nikki: That is such a good movie.
Nikki: Yeah.
Salina: Really.
Salina: Like a wild ride.
Nikki: It's so crazy and it's inventive.
Salina: At least we are doing different things.
Salina: Dear heaven and stars, not just one.
Nikki: More sequel, but we're not watching that.
Nikki: We're going to watch First Wives.
Nikki: So come back after our finale finale to hear that.
Nikki: So, in the meantime, we'd love everyone to follow along with us and engage Instagram and Facebook at Sweet Teantv.
Nikki: We're on TikTok at Sweet Tea TV Pod on YouTube.
Nikki: We're at Sweet Tea TV 7371.
Nikki: Or just search sweet tea?
Nikki: Ttvp Pod.
Nikki: Our email address is sweettvpod@gmail.com and our website is WW dot sweettv.com.
Nikki: From our website, you can find several ways to support the show.
Nikki: And maybe in this in between time, after we finish up the finale finale and the special episode, if folks could maybe rate and review us wherever they listen to podcasts and share us with friends, please.
Salina: I will take your money.
Salina: But we don't even need your money.
Salina: I mean, we'll take it and we appreciate it, but what we really need is for you to tell people about it, because I cannot stress enough that if you are enjoying it and you rate it and you do those things and you give us a nice review, more people will be able to find us.
Nikki: And if you don't enjoy us and you just don't review us at all.
Salina: Then just don't listen.
Nikki: Just leave us alone.
Salina: Leave us alone.
Nikki: You live in your corner of the world.
Nikki: We'll live in ours.
Nikki: We'll all exist together.
Nikki: Just let us have our thing.
Salina: Right?
Salina: But you don't have to tell us.
Nikki: There's no need to dump on us publicly.
Nikki: You are welcome to send me an email dumping.
Nikki: No, you can't.
Nikki: It's just a nice thing.
Nikki: I feel like if we were a massive podcast that everybody was talking about, I feel like the playing field is a little more level and so then I'll take my lumps.
Nikki: But at this point, while we're really trying super hard, I want no lumps or private lumps.
Nikki: Give me my lumps.
Salina: Private day job.
Salina: So just remember, we're taking lumps all the time.
Salina: Manic Laughter 40 hours of my week is lumps.
Salina: Be kind.
Salina: 40 if you're lucky.
Nikki: 40 if you're lucky, folks.
Nikki: Come back Thursday for extra sugar.
Nikki: What is the very last extra sugar we're giving the people in season four?
Nikki: Salina?
Salina: Oh, we're going out on a high.
Salina: I guess we are going to talk about America's obsession with thinness and weight loss visa vis our thought episode.
Salina: Don't worry, I'll make it light.
Nikki: Always do.
Nikki: No concern at all.
Salina: And you know what that means.
Nikki: What does it mean, Salina?
Salina: Means we'll see you around the bend.
Salina: By Sam.