We can leave out the shoulder pads, though.

Can someone please bring back Designing Women? Franchises that are younger than your average fifth grader are being remade and rebooted, so why not the Sugarbakers? Television is faced with a tragic shortage of kicky broads just being awesome, and Designing Women is the obvious cure (well, ok Golden Girls is probably the actual obvious cure, but there are somethings that one simply doesn't screw around with). Know one could ever quite live up to Dixie Carter, but I'd like to see someone at least try.

I can't really think of a show since the 90s that's really been a bunch of women hanging out and being awesome. Desperate Housewives seems to be (I've seen it about .65 times) having sex/scandals/drinks. All of which has it's place on television and in my heart, and my interest in the show is certainly elevated by the fact that both the late Dixie Carter (Queen of Awesomeness) and John Barrowman have done guest spots, but what makes Golden Girls and Designing Women great is that the dating stuff always felt kind of...secondary.

That's the main reason I can't really support the idea of Sex and the City as having been a full-on heir to the throne. Yes, it had a group of women as central characters, and yes they rejected the idea that a good boyfriend is all it takes for a girl to be happy (though I've read reviews asserting that the new movie has embraced the man-as-ultimate-goal idea pretty strongly), but it seems like - though all of the characters mattered - Carrie and Carrie's relationships were at the core. A lot of major arcs seemed (and I say this having been a fairly casual viewer of the show) to be about the development, growth and failure of serious relationships. Viewers were supposed to know if they wanted an Aidan or a Big. And it's not that that stops it from being a good show, it just stops it from fitting the Designing Women/Golden Girls bill. Seriously, for all the dating that took place on Golden Girls I can't name five boyfriends. I only get to five because I know Miles, Stan (which feels like cheating), George's brother and that guy Leslie Nielsen played. Was it Leslie Nielsen? I think it was, so we're just going to go with it. Even with Designing Women I mostly remember that Hal Holbrook was Reese and Scott Bakula was Mary Jo's ex.

It's not that I'm opposed to manufactured reality TV drama, or scripted salaciousness. Those things are awesome. It's what most of my Sundays are made of. It's just that awesome female characters can get a little sparse, and a new Julia Sugarbaker could do a hell of a lot to change that.

Let's just get this out of the way now...

I'm a nerd. And I need you to understand that I don't mean this in the everyone's-a-nerd-about-something way. You know the people who are like "Oh, I'm such a fashion nerd - I can't bear to leave the house without looking head-to-toe trendy and gorgeous!"? I'm not that girl. (sidebar: that little punctuation party back there can't possibly be correct, but I lack the drive to figure out how to do it properly. I just wanted you to know that I know it's jacked up.) I'm not the person whose nerdy confessions are actually things that make me seem super-cool. I'm the girl whose glasses broke in the middle freshman year, and who hence had to spend months with a broken-off paper clip and a piece of safety pin standing in for the screws.

I'm that kind of nerd.

And at night, right before my I drift off into nerdy dreams about being The Doctor's new companion, and getting to save the world in the season finale Rose Tyler or Donna Noble style (no offense to Martha Jones, but come on - Rose manipulated the space-time continuum, Martha told a story.) I ask the universe for one thing: That Alyson Hannigan work with Joss Whedon again.

It's not that I don't like her on How I Met Your Mother. I think it's a great show, and I think every member of the core cast is integral. But there's got to be a good chunk of time between the filming of seasons, and that would be an excellent time to knock out some sort of Joss Whedon project about a strong, complex, female lead who does...something. To be honest, I don't even care what it is that the character does. She could be an ass-kicking sanitation worker; as long as it's Alyson Hannigan and Joss Whedon, I'm there.

I understand that there may be doubters out there - on HIMYM her character has been mostly centered on comedy (with the exception of the end of season 1) - but have you seen the last chunk of Season 6 of Buffy? Because that needs to happen for you right now. Alyson Hannigan needs to kick ass Joss Whedon style again. The world needs Alyson Hannigan to kick ass Joss Whedon style again. And if it could be alongside Amy Acker and Gina Torres, even better.

Oh, and Alan Tudyk.


Sorry. I'm done now. I promise next time I'm geek out less in my post.
Unless it's after I've seen this week's Doctor Who, in which case all bets are off.