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Starting with our second Snark Week, I’ve picked a shitty frock flick to recap, because I love sharing the blow-by-blows with you. This year, I asked you to choose what film/series I should recap, and the clear winner was North & South: Book II (1986), the sequel to the be-mulletted and peach-acetate-satin-ified Civil War epic North & South (1985).
In series one, which I recapped a few Snark Weeks ago, we established many of our key characters as the story wended its way to the outbreak of the Civil War. This time, war has broken out! And in case you care, note that I refuse to recap any of the war/battle shit. Read my recaps of episode one and episode two, and now join me:
Northern Mom is hanging out with son Number One and his wife Plastic Cameo. Plastic Cameo wants to have a ball since the family ironworks is making so much money; Northern Mom thinks that’s in bad taste. After mom leaves, Number One stresses about having sold shoddy cannons to the Union army. Plastic Cameo gleefully confesses that she forged older brother George’s name on all the contracts, so he’ll be the one to get into any potential trouble. The two make out and it’s not pretty.


Battles happen; Lincoln enacts the Emancipation Proclamation. Enslaved people begin leaving, including at the Southern plantation. The fired overseer from season 1 turns up, having killed one of the enslaved men for “running away.” The Southern clan is appalled and turns him out. Evil Overseer basically says “I’ll be back.”





Tits Out and Southern Blonde head out to visit the enslaved man’s family, including Semiramis, who are mourning. Southern Blonde says that they hope all the African Americans will stay, because they need them, but if they want to go they will give them papers, which will hopefully avoid another tragedy.
Forrest Whitaker wants Semiramis to take off with him; she refuses. She’s not into Whitaker, but also she has trauma from being raped in season 1 by Evil Overseer, AND apparently she has a thing for derpy Cousin Charles, which, have more taste, Semi. Whitaker sneaks into Southern Mom’s room while she’s sleeping, taking her jewelry, and disappears.Â
More war shit happens. Swayze misses Tits.
Enslaved people are leaving, and Southern Mom is totes cool about it.


Swayze has a sad! He’s very shocked that the formerly enslaved people would leave, telling one of them, “This is your home.” The formerly enslaved man retorts, “This was never our home.” BURN. Swayze complains to Tits that he didn’t realize the war would go on so long, or that their world would change so much. Tits Out is pregnant.

Swayze goes back to the war. Southern Blonde and Tits Out are working the fields with Semiramis and the formerly enslaved people who are left. Everyone is very concerned about Tits working In Her Condition.


Southern Mom is pissed because Southern Blonde and Tits Out are trying to shield her from the realities of war.
Slutty Brunette shows up unannounced! She’s dressed to the nines and bringing all kinds of loot. Southern Blonde pointedly goes back to work in the fields.


At dinner, Slutty Brunette tries to talk Southern Mom into moving to Richmond with her. Southern Mom refuses, saying this is her home.

Semiramis is now dining with the family.
After dinner, Slutty Brunette tries to finagle information about Tits Out out of Semiramis.

After dinner, Tits Out has heard Slutty Brunette is asking probing questions about her. Slutty Brunette says it’s all over Richmond that not only was Tits Out’s mom of mixed ancestry, she was a whooooooore — that last bit was news to Tits. SB tells Tits the only option is for her to leave Swayze so the family can avoid scandal.


Tits leaves a note for Swayze, telling him she must leave him but she always loved him.


Tits has disappeared. Slutty Brunette is triumphant. Semiramis tells SB she’s evil, essentially, refusing to leave when ordered.

Later, Eric? — a formerly enslaved man, who has a big crush on Semiramis and also tried to get her to take off with him — and Semiramis make a sluice that will water the fields. Billy — Northern husband to Southern Blonde — turns up to see his wife. There have been battles, which I refuse to recap or screencap. At one point Billy and derpy Cousin Charles faced off, gun to gun, only to be “saved” by a cannon. Billy is attacked by a deserter but fights him off.
Semiramis warns Billy that Slutty Brunette is here and will probably turn him in (he’s in disguise as a Confederate soldier). She hides him, them goes to get Southern Blonde.

Southern Blonde and Billy are ecstatic to see each other. They spend the night in the barn, have passionate embraces, and thoughtful conversations.



Slutty Brunette is out riding, and spots Billy and Southern Blonde. She comes up to give them shit, and Southern Blonde threatens her with a pitchfork while Billy escapes.
Slutty Brunette’s costume is now owned by collector James Kelly, who owns many of the costumes from this film (and is a Frock Flicks reader! Hello James!). He informed us on Facebook that most of the movie gowns are silk, and what appear to be zipper plackets are actually hook & eye tape. I shall tease nonetheless.

Slutty Brunette is headed back to Richmond. She and sister Southern Blonde basically say they hope to never see each other again.


Virgilia is working in the field as a nurse. OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND shows up as a hospital administrator, telling Viriglia that she’s one of the best nurses because she puts the patients first, but that she needs to be more respectful to the doctors — and insinuates that Virgilia doesn’t take care of the Southern wounded. Virgilia is arrogant.


Tits Out is in Richmond. She meets with her lawyer, JAMES STEWART, telling him no one must know where she is. He tells her she has enough money from her father to live on. She says eventually Swayze will divorce her for desertion, but make him promise until that time to never reveal her whereabouts.

Onwards!
Tits must be out! Tits must be out! Inside my heart is breaking, my makeup might be flaking but my tits still stay out! <- Theme Song for Tits Out.
Semi and Southern Blonde seem to have the brains in the Southern Clan with Southern Mom a close second. Southern Brunette will have a bad ending, Hopefully it will disfigure her face. And Tits Out is not very smart. She believes Southern Brunette.
Plastic Cameo isn’t as smart as she believes. Everyone knows George is HONOUR and HONESTY personified.
You win!!!
That photo Swayze’s holding – that looks very not-period and a lot more like this (I think) publicity photo from season 1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4f/da/5e/4fda5e0d5ab4e562d9f4c2818773304d.jpg
(Yeah, yeah, I know it’s probably one of of the smallest offenses here, but still!)
Yup, had the same thought. No one cropped photos that way back then. No one posed like that back then.
How the H— did they get Jimmy Stewart in this turkey?? I still say those colors feel wrong, but I don’t know why.
My mom, who watched “North and South” in the eighties and has only a vague idea of historical fashion, was so annoyed by Lesley Ann Down’s cleavage in Madeleine’s widow’s dress. This was just WTF. I wonder, why the costume designers were so stubborn about Lesley Ann Down having her boobs out. This wasn’t sexy, this was ridiculous.
Southern blonde has decent hair. Northern blonde, too.
Most of those outfits are silk? What perverse mind designed them to look like bad synthetics?
The white fill-in on Southern Blonde’s dress looks like a godet or a gusset or a gore or whatever-g-word designed to widen the dress.
Olivia De Haviland and Jimmy Stewart???
I never saw this and now almost need to for that alone.
Almost, but….
The screencap of Olivia de Havilland is basically the face I’m making as I scroll through these recaps. It’s all just so perplexing! Why so many silks that look like $2 polyester? Why so many alleged hook and eye closures that look like zippers? And I’m starting to be unfazed by the 80s HUGE HAIR, which is frightening…
Omg these images make me long for beachy waves and bangs already
Those sleeves on the traveling dress… bizarre and not in any way flattering. I like her red with black little jacket quite a bit though. I wonder if this series was part of why I have liked that style for a significant portion of my life.
Also the handling of slavery/emancipation is such a mess. They’re such nice people they give the newly-emancipated money and ask them to stay! They just also were happy to own other human beings and force them to do work for decades. facepalm And that is skipping over the great unlikelihood that people who owned other human beings would passively accept emancipation while it’s not even clear that their area is under Union territorial control (seems like it must not be for a Union soldier to have to disguise himself as a Confederate to visit his wife).