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I do say, it’s been a week of Sundays since last we here at The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly last heard from our fairer counterparts, but don’t you worry your pretty little head holes, listener, Season 17’s concluding 1x1s will remedy this sad misfortune with a movie celebrating all the major Christian holidays of the South along with its beauty parlor culture, that is, to let the proverbial cat out the bag or to shoot a literal arrow strapped with fireworks into a tree, STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989) to be commented on by pod regulars without one ounce of Y-chromosome in either of their bodies: Andi and Meg.

Joined by regular host Thomas after his first-time watch, these three explore the teased up big and modishly short hair of the movie’s six main ladies who span the three generations of womanhood, and determine whom among their present friend group fits to each character. There’s the two-time Academy Award-winning Sally Field as M’Lynn, mother to then-nearly-unknown Juila Roberts’ diabetic but baby-crazy character Shelby whose relationship will provide the main drama. But also in M’Lynn’s and Shelby’s respective age brackets, Dolly Parton as the salon owner and logistically-challenged Easter egg mogul Truvy and her young new hire, the desperately abandoned-turned-holly-roller convert Annelle played by a two-eyed, samurai-swordless, and purposely figureless Daryl Hannah who will also get herself hitched and preggers after Shelby’s corresponding life milestones during the flick. And rounding out the six, as the matriarchs, the feisty friends Clairee and Ouiser (not to be confused with the homophonous California rock band Weezer), the former who cares about Olympia Dukakis when we can talk about how Shirley MacLaine who played the latter didn’t wear makeup for the role in order to appear more age appropriate and how the playwright who adapted his play for the screen said he was afraid the locals from his hometown upon which this mildly fictionalize account derives (his diabetic sister died from ongoing complications after childbirth) would identify and be upset when in fact many of the older women vied to claim herself as the basis for the Ouiser character.

The film is directed by someone who got his start as a Broadway choreographer and, reportedly, was less than gentlemanly toward the actresses in the movie. It was shot on location by John A. Alonzo, the lenser of such greats as Harold and Maude, Scarface, The Bad News Bears, and Chinatown.

This episode is no lead petunia. Our two guest-hosting, real-life Southern belles this week explain the movie’s title, the phenomena of home churches, and the veracity of a groom’s cake; take the listener on a food tour of the movie; spill tea from the town where the events of the play and later film occured; and overquote the movie from memory, all this after Meg gives the shortest plot summary of this, and perhaps any prior, season.

Spoiler, there might be cannibalism in Fried Green Tomatoes.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias