29 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK RECAP: North & South (1985), Episode 3

  1. PB or as you refer Perfect Blonde seems to be 85% properly dresses for the period 1840-1850 year indecision notwithstanding.
    I too remember Luke/Laura but did you know Genie Francis is Mrs Jonathan Frakes?
    Slutty Sister must be a relative of Leghair.

    1. Actually, there were several marriages spawned from the series. In addition to Francis/Frakes (still married), George Hazard/Perfect Blonde are still married; Leslie Ann Down and an assistant camera man are still married; Kirstie Alley and Parker Stevenson (who played Billy Hazard in the 2nd series) married/divorced; Terri Garber (Slutty sister) married a crew member, now divorced. 5 marriages, 3 still married – which is pretty good odds for on-set romances.

  2. Would have enjoyed seeing Real Hollywood Royalty – the late humanitarian Elizabeth Taylor comes to mind. Say as a cameo Elizabeth Cady Stanton or another abolitionist bc the show needed a touch of reality in it. SPOILER ALERT: And I don’t mean Virgilia marriage to an exslave, 😂

  3. Day dresses! Oh my! But still the hair is all over the place—all those half down dos are distracting me from the costumes… but maybe that’s a good thing? Also, what on earth with the opera dress for abolitionist remarks? Women were working really hard to be taken seriously; showing up like that does not help that.

    It took 3 episodes for someone to have the slightest indication of the barest hints of Victorian sexual morality. And the first is totally unbelievable…. you’d have to be unbelievably naive to not know that people who owned slaves raped them. Of course people didn’t always practice the values of their day or that they espoused publicly, but all of a sudden we care about virginity because it’s the little sister?

  4. Ashton, aka Slutty Brunette, aka Terri Garber just MADE this miniseries. She was so delightfully slutty and cruel and witty. She’s like the Ur-Heather, the Foremother of the Plastics, the progenitoress of all the Mean Girls.

    The thing about Northern Mom was this was during they heyday of ABC’s Benson, and teh actress – Inga Swenson – was much better known as the German harridan head maid Miss Krauss that it was so startling to see her, without her bulls**t German accent, being maternal and sensible and wise.

    Kirstie Alley really was so beautiful, huh? She’s not a conventional beauty, but wow. Jonathan Frakes was hella hot too. (Great, now I am going to have Star Trek-themed sex dreams now).

  5. I am enjoying these greatly, although the ponytail cameo on Southern Mom made me wince. (Maybe she raided Plastic Cameo’s jewelry box.) I have to admit my biggest kick came when after the tasteful montage of the tender tryst between Patrick Swayze and Tits the next sentence read, “There is a big explosion at the ironworks.” For a second I thought that was a euphemism. :)

  6. Aha, the Virgilia lurking ominously photo explains the excessive amounts of evening gowns. Clearly they were experiencing an acute shortage of bird cages and thus lowered their necklines to give themselves a place to store their parakeets.

  7. I am a baaaaaaaaad parent. I totally tricked my 16 year old daughter into watching the WHOLE series as it was “educational”.

    I did get her a copy of The Civil War after and Gettysburg.

    She is 25 now. She has never forgiven me. ;)

  8. My mom used the VCR in the 80’s to record the series – so that we could fast forward through all of the boring scenes (especially the battle/war room scenes) and just watched the balls or social events where the big dresses with big hair came out in full force.

    Being originally from the south, my mom, grandmother, sister, and I laughed so hard at the fake, awful, hurt-your-ears’ accents and the over the top acting – looking at you Al-Kay-nah Bent! And we totally cringed at the representation of slavery – cannot see this series ever being rebooted.

    These snark recaps are the best! Thank you!

  9. Thank you so much for suffering through these horrors. I haven’t laughed so hard in months.

  10. Is Virgilia supposed to be a teenager? Because it seems like they’re trying to make Kirstie Alley look younger by putting her in Holly Hobby dresses and putting flowers in her hair (don’t know what was going on with the black opera dress, though). In reality, it just makes me go “huh? why are they dressing that forty-year-old woman like she’s twelve?”
    I can see wanting to cast a specific actress in the role, but then why not just age up her character by ten years?

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