TV News: Roseanne Revival Is in the Works With the Original Cast - Update: RENEWED & CANCELLED & BACK - THE CONNERS!
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https://screenrant.com/roseanne-revival-character-guide/2/
D.J. CONNER (MICHAEL FISHMAN)
Roseanne and Dan’s youngest child – and formerly put-upon little brother – is now all grown-up, and is back in Lanford after recently being discharged from a stint in the U.S. military. D.J. also arrives back home with child in tow, that being Mary (Jayden Rey). D.J.’s wife – and Mary’s mother – is African-American, and is still currently serving in the military. D.J. marrying a black woman is an interesting move, as fans will recall that the season 7 episode ‘White Men Can’t Kiss’ centered on D.J. not wanting to kiss a black girl as part of his school play. It would appear that he got over whatever prejudice he might have held as a kid.
D.J. CONNER (MICHAEL FISHMAN)
Roseanne and Dan’s youngest child – and formerly put-upon little brother – is now all grown-up, and is back in Lanford after recently being discharged from a stint in the U.S. military. D.J. also arrives back home with child in tow, that being Mary (Jayden Rey). D.J.’s wife – and Mary’s mother – is African-American, and is still currently serving in the military. D.J. marrying a black woman is an interesting move, as fans will recall that the season 7 episode ‘White Men Can’t Kiss’ centered on D.J. not wanting to kiss a black girl as part of his school play. It would appear that he got over whatever prejudice he might have held as a kid.
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They going to be pushing the gay agenda towards kids with Darlene's "gender-fluid" son 
Roseanne Is Back Wearing a Trump Hat, But Showing Progressive Tendencies
When Roseanne debuted in October 1987, it offered a brash depiction of family life that kept things more real than practically every other sitcom on TV. Roseanne Conner, played by stand-up comic Roseanne Barr, was all the things that good TV moms – or for that matter, “good moms” in general – were not supposed to be. She was loud. She told her husband pretty bluntly when he wasn’t doing his part around the house. She had no qualms about embarrassing her kids in public. And she made it clear that being a wife and a mother was, often, a total pain in the ass. That’s the default position in a lot of present-day comedies about raising kids, from Speechless to Better Things. But when Roseanne – along with Married … With Children and, later, The Simpsons – routinely showed us the less camera-ready side of parenting in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it was revolutionary.
Why I Wanted to Adapt Roseanne for the Trump Era
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More than 30 years later, Roseanne is back for a tenth season on ABC, and has been rebooted in a manner that lightly echoes the way Will & Grace was successfully reincarnated just a few months ago. Like the NBC comedy, Roseannereturns with the same cast, tosses aside previous inconvenient plot developments (Dan Conner: no longer dead!), and focuses its first episode in large part on the impact of Donald Trump’s election. The difference is that, while Will & Grace more or less jettisoned Trump talk after the first episode, the fact that Roseanne Conner voted for Trump redefines her character for the 21st century. On one hand, as a working-class white woman living in the middle of the country, it’s not surprising that she’s a Trump supporter. (The fact that the real Roseanne is pro-Trump also leeches the shock value out of this reveal.) But on the other, Roseanne was always an unabashed pro-choice feminist who presumably would have little patience for pussy grabbers.
“How could you have voted for him, Roseanne?” asks her sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) in the first of two half-hours that air Tuesday night. The two have been feuding ever since the election and still haven’t buried the hatchet, or the pussy hats and Make America Great Again caps that divide them.
“He talked about jobs, Jackie,” Roseanne explains. “He said he would shake things up. I mean, this might come as a complete shock to you, but we almost lost our house the way things are going.”
“Have you looked at the news?” Jackie asks. “Because now things are worse.”
“Not on the real news,” Roseanne shoots back.
Yet when Becky (played by the original Becky, Lecy Goranson) announces that she’s planning to act as a surrogate and donate her own eggs to another couple trying to get pregnant, Jackie points out that it’s Becky’s body, Becky’s choice, and Roseanne can’t help but agree. Apparently it is possible for this woman to still have some progressive views and, also, buy into aspects of what Trump is selling. Which, in ultra-divisive 2018, is a somewhat revolutionary idea, one that will get even more interesting if the sitcom allows Roseanne to continue grappling more openly with her own philosophical contradictions. (ABC provided three episodes in advance.)
In other important ways, Roseanne hasn’t changed at all. It is still funny in the same ways it was always funny, using classic sitcom jokes and storylines to highlight issues of class. When Darlene’s teenage daughter Harris (Emma Kenney) asks, “Can I have some money?” Darlene immediately turns to Roseanne : “I don’t know. Mom, can I have some money?” Then Roseanne looks to the sky: “I don’t know. Can I have some money?”
Some of the writers and producers who worked on the original are back for this one, including producer Tom Werner, Bruce Rasmussen, who penned the premiere, and Sid Youngers, who wrote the third episode. But they’re joined by producers, consultants, and writers like Whitney Cummings, Wanda Sykes, and Darlene Hunt, the creator of The Big C and writer of the second episode of Roseanne 2.0, an approach that adds to the sense that this Roseanne is a very carefully designed hybrid of new and old.
Sometimes the carefully designed nature of the show holds it back a bit. Perhaps this is due to the episodes ABC chose to make available to critics – the first two and the seventh, which addresses opioid addiction, were the ones ABC shared – Roseanne seems so driven to advance socially relevant storylines that it doesn’t alway unfold with the same natural ease that characterized the original in its best seasons. (Obviously season nine, in which the Conners won the lottery and, in one episode, Roseanne saves most of her family from an act of train terrorism, was not one of those seasons.)
The writers have to engage in a tiny bit of sorcery to bring the core members of the cast back together again, but it’s mostly believable sorcery. Darlene (Sara Gilbert), now raising two kids on her own, including a non-gender-conforming son (Ames McNamara), moves back in with her parents, partly to make sure they’re taking care of themselves, but mostly to save money. Becky is still in Lanford and working as a waitress, so she drops by the house on a regular basis. So does the Conners’s son D.J. (Michael Fishman), who is recently out of the military and raising his young African-American daughter (Jayden Rey) while his wife continues to serve overseas. As for the second Becky, Sarah Chalke, who took over the role after Goranson left the show in 1992, even she gets to reemerge in a way that’s handled cleverly enough to enable viewers to (mostly) overlook the fact that she was Becky for nearly half of the series’ original run. (Jerry, the Conners’s fourth child, is said to be on a boat somewhere and then, at least in the episodes I saw, never mentioned again.)
Seeing all of these actors working together again is one of the primary pleasures of this reboot. Whether you agree with her politics or not, Barr still knows how to wield sarcasm like a ninja demonstrating mastery over a sword. Also, do you ever stop to think how amazing it is that, for nearly a decade, America was able to watch John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf on a weekly basis in a sitcom? The fact that we get to do it again is just a damn gift. Together, Goodman and Barr instantly reconjure the affection and chemistry that made Roseanne and Dan such a charming team, even when they’re doing banal things, like sorting through all the overpriced medications they have to take. Gilbert, also a producer this time, is not only still gifted with a swift cutdown, but also just the right amount of sensitive in dramatic scenes she shares with McNamara, who plays her son Mark.
As grandparents, Roseanne and Dan are loving, but also occasionally befuddled by their offspring’s offspring. In particular, Dan has a hard time adjusting to Mark’s penchant for wearing skirts and nail polish. Roseanne, on the other hand, may not entirely understand why he dresses the way he does, but she’ll fight to the death for the kid, as she demonstrates while making a pretty pointed speech to Mark’s new classmates.
“I’m counting on you guys to make the new kid feel welcome. And if you don’t, I have ways of finding out about it,” she says, adding, “I’m a white witch.”
The fact that a character on a 2018 sitcom can be pro-Trump and supportive of an LGBTQ middle schooler may seem like a contradiction. But this new Roseanne exists for just that reason: to point out that such contradictions can and do exist in this country.
Like a lot of grandparents in America, Dan and Roseanne also are partially playing parental roles again, which adds another layer to the culturally relevant sense of déjà vu. When Harris talks back to Darlene in tones Darlene once used with her parents, Dan bemusedly notes that it’s been 20 years since he’s seen this movie. “The classics really do hold up,” he says.
Which is true of Roseanne as well, even if it’s reinvented itself a little for the current moment. It may not be quite as good or as groundbreaking as the original, but it holds up.
What Should We Do With Season 9 of Roseanne?
The first thing to say about the ninth season of Roseanne is that it is a mess. Strange, scattered, and self-conscious, the last season of the show is a fundamentally different thing than the eight seasons that preceded it. And because the new Roseanne series is designed as a continuation of the original, season nine hangs around the show’s neck like the proverbial albatross. That albatross, in this case, is a strange retroactive dream sequence season involving death and trips to the Hamptons and at least one scene where Debbie Reynolds play-fights with a lightsaber. So what is the new Roseanne going to do with that? What should we do with it?
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The Enduring Legacy of Roseanne, 30 Years Later
The answer for the new Roseanne is most likely to try as hard as possible to ignore everything about season nine, because it’s a season of TV that actively works to undo every distinctive thing about the identity of the show up until that point. After years of working in uncertain, unstable blue-collar jobs, the Conner family literally wins the lottery. Immediately, a show that’s been about financial stress and the importance of family jettisons the thing that has most defined it from the start. The lottery win doesn’t happen at the end of the show, where it could’ve acted as a strange but conclusive deus exmillions. It happens at the beginning of season nine, forcing the entire final season to become a fundamentally new show, separate from everything that happened before.
The lottery win isn’t the only change, either – at the end of season eight, Roseanne’s husband Dan has a heart attack and nearly dies, and then Roseanne leaves him when he comes home and quickly ignores the new diet meant to keep him alive. Most of season nine happens without Dan. He’s off in California caring for his mother, and then Roseanne discovers he’s been cheating on her, and then they reconcile but he’s still not around much.
Instead of the familiar debates about working-class life, or the core focus on the Conner’s marriage, season nine of Roseanne occupies its time with intense, scattered, self-conscious self-reflection. Much of it is preoccupied with television and the process of making television, including parodies of other TV shows (I Dream of Jeannie, The Honeymooners, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show). There’s an episode where the Conners ride a train to D.C. and Roseanne transforms into a Rambo figure in order to take down the terrorist hijackers. Steven Seagal shows up at the end. Late in the season, network executives arrive at Roseanne’s house to try to buy her life rights for TV development; most of the episode is about Roseanne’s frustration that the major networks want to sanitize her life and cable channel execs want to add as much nudity and sex as possible. I’m not even sure those are the strangest episodes, either — that honor might belong to the AbFab crossover Halloween episode, where Roseanne and Jackie attend a fancy NYC party and make friends with Patsy and Edina, who turn out to be members of a Satanic cult.
In the final episode of the series, we find Roseanne sitting in her basement, working on the memoir she’s been trying to write for so long. She narrates the last pages as a voice-over while we watch her sitting at her desk, writing and considering. Then the other shoe drops. Or it’s supposed to be the other shoe, but it feels more like an attempt to perform a narrative version of that memory-erasing flash pen from Men in Black. Dan did not actually recover from his heart attack, Roseanne tells us. He died, and Roseanne was so devastated that she lost months to imagining an alternate version of their life, one where Dan lived and they won the lottery and all kinds of odd things happened. It’s a St. Elsewhere ending, a retroactive declaration that all the bad stuff was a dream. The finale of the show is about Roseanne and Roseanne trying to erase as much of that last season as it can.
This puts the revival in an awkward, essentially impossible, but ultimately freeing place: It gets to ignore the parts of Roseanne’s ending that it doesn’t want to keep (Dan’s death), and keep the parts that it likes (the erasure of the entire ninth season). Except for a few family details like the birth of Becky’s daughter, Harris, the new series is really a revival of Roseanne season eight. Like the finale itself, the revival is another way to erase everything about season nine.
The temptation is to do exactly what Roseanne seems to be hoping we do: forget the whole thing ever happened, and pretend the original show ended right before the moment Dan had a heart attack. From a strict narrative logic standpoint, this is fairly bonkers — we have to keep the whole “the lottery was just a dream” thing, while also ignoring “Dan was dead the whole time.” From the perspective of network TV storytelling, though, it makes much more sense. For most sitcoms in the age of the original Roseanne, every episode is its own miniature stand-alone experiment, and the identity of a series is more about an identifiable status quo rather than any one particular plot development. The revival of Roseanne picks up from an imagined platonic ideal of the end of the last Roseanne, which doesn’t have to have any particular relationship to what actually happened.
But if we ignore season nine of the original series, we discard one of the most transparently self-conscious, candid seasons of television ever made, and with it, a road map to some of Roseanne and Roseanne’s most naked obsessions. Season nine of Roseanne is like a homunculus of Roseanne Barr’s fears and aspirations. It’s a season of TV about what happens when you suddenly have wealth, how to live outside a marriage that’s fallen apart, the strangeness of fad dieting and judgmental luxury spas, and most of all, what it’s like to have your actual self get flattened into and limited by a hugely popular fictional version of yourself. It’s a portrait of someone on TV who is deeply conflicted about the culture of being on TV, while also frantically trying to stay on TV.
If you ignore season nine, you also ignore a locus for one of the central questions of the Roseanne revival. How much of what you’re seeing is Roseanne Barr (whose pro-Trump, deliberately provocative stances have taken over her image), and how much is Roseanne Conner? Barr isn’t the showrunner, and she’s not on the writing staff, but the tension between the two figures feels inevitable. And if you ignore the Roseanne of season nine, you also miss the version of her who literally scolds television executives for misrepresenting her story, the woman who delivers jeremiads against Hollywood and who cheerfully thumbs her nose at the history of women on television.
I admit there’s another reason I’m loath to just throw out the ninth season of Roseanne, in spite of the fact that it is, by pretty much any measure, a bad, bad season of TV. It’s to do with the way it was bad, the weird, gutsy, just-throw-stuff-at-the-wall openness of it, like an improv sketch that took “yes, and…” way too far. Yes! They win the lottery and … Roseanne’s mom comes out at Thanksgiving and Jackie dates a prince and Roseanne summers with some WASPs and, yes, the Rambo train hijacking situation. It’s a sort of TV we’re moving farther and farther away from, a sort of TV that the current emphasis on seriality, completion, totality, and coherence would never allow to happen.
Maybe — probably — that’s a good thing. But there’s something thrilling about firing up a season nine episode of Roseanne and having your hair blown back in surprise and horrified shock. It’s a kind of experimentation I wish fictional TV now did more of, and did with the same devil-may-care joy that Roseanne often approached its oddball ideas. So while I do not resent the Roseanne revival’s choice to disregard almost all of that final season, there’s a part of me that hopes some tiny bit of its careless bravado remains.
Only a tiny bit, though. That season nine episode in the Hamptons is really rocky.
http://www.vulture.com/2018/03/roseanne-season-nine-close-read.html
I just seen this shit earlier today. The excuse for pushing this agenda was terrible. Straight boys aren't putting on skirts. She tried to say the character was too young too be gay or transgender.They going to be pushing the gay agenda towards kids with Darlene's "gender-fluid" son
Meanwhile, they pushing that shit in preschool.
WTF. I'm at the 4:12 mark and this boy is like the boy from Curbed Your Enthusiasm from season 8. I'm getting too fucking old. 
i gotta catch up with mr. goodman on this. dude's real cool af. decent gears of war 4 player too.
Wait he is..? probably also is a good Far Cry 5 player
http://www.indiewire.com/2018/03/roseanne-return-ratings-abc-1201944758/
ABC Boss Admits ‘Roseanne’ Return Ratings Were a Big Surprise, Even To Them
ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said she's not ready to announce a second season yet, but she's pretty optimistic that a renewal is forthcoming.
Michael Schneider
Mar 28, 2018 7:16 pm
@franklinavenue
“Roseanne”
ABC
VIEW GALLERY
52PHOTOS
It was the cackle heard ’round the TV business Wednesday morning: The triumphant return of “Roseanne” stunned executives, including top brass at ABC. Insiders at rival networks predicted a rating as high as 3.0 among adults 18-49, which would have been deemed a huge success. The hour-long return blew up those projections, coming in at a stunning 5.2 rating.
Approximately 18.4 million viewers tuned in to watch the Conner family reconnect, 21 years after the show’s finale. A lot has changed since then — including in the TV biz, where a 5.2 rating for a series episode is a rare commodity (well, outside a few outliers like “The Walking Dead”). The show was the highest adult 18-49 rating for any comedy telecast since the 2014 season opener of CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory.”
“If you deliver a show that connects with audiences, people will come,” ABC entertainment president Channing Dungey told IndieWire. “Every time people say broadcast is dead, something like this happens and shows everyone that there’s a real power in that reach of broadcast in connecting with a wide audience.”
‘Roseanne’ Review
ABC secured nine episodes of the “Roseanne” return, and insiders confirm that the series’ cast has now been locked in for an additional season of at least 13 episodes. Star Roseanne Barr has said in interviews that she’s game for additional seasons in success. Dungey said she was “optimistic” that a second season would happen, but that “I’m not quite ready to pull that trigger at this moment.”
“Roseanne” beat CBS, NBC, Fox and The CW combined at 8 p.m., including huge hits “The Voice” and “NCIS.” The show is also now the top-rated premiere of the season with both viewers and young adults.
Surprisingly, “Roseanne” even performed better with viewers than its May 1997 finale, which averaged 16.6 million viewers on May 20, 1997, and did better than the show’s final 12 telecasts in that last season.
The premiere helped boost “Black-ish” to season highs at 9 p.m., drawing its second largest audience ever (8.7 million viewers), and gave a boost to the 9:30 p.m. premiere of new comedy “Splitting Up Together.”
“Roseanne” is the latest in a series of remakes and reboots that have posted strong numbers — perpetuating the cycle. Fox’s “The X-Files,” NBC’s “Will & Grace” and Netflix’s “Fuller House” are among the series that have returned to huge audiences, leading to multiple-season orders. More, of course, are on the docket for next season, including CBS’ “Murphy Brown” revisit.
“Part of it is, yes certainly if there is a show that was beloved like ‘Roseanne’ was, there is a certain appetite from the audience to come back and reconnect with that family and check in with them how many years later,” Dungey said. “That’s a lot of fun. But I think certainly it helps us from a marketing perspective because you’re letting people know, hey that show that you loved is back. So that’s always a leg up.
“But in order for a reboot to be done successfully, I think there needs to be a reason for it to exist. The time is really right, especially what’s going on in our country right now, to bring ‘Roseanne’ back. I think that’s part of why it resonated so much with audiences.”
Because of the Winter Olympics schedule, ABC found itself launching a stockpile of series in March and April — including another reboot, “American Idol.” “Idol” has performed respectably for the network, and “Roseanne” just gave ABC a big boost. But Dungey admitted that “in a perfect world I wouldn’t want to do this many launches so close together.”
ABC will rebroadcast the one-hour premiere on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET. The series stars Roseanne Barr as Roseanne Conner, John Goodman as Dan Conner, Laurie Metcalf as Jackie Harris, Lecy Goranson as Becky Conner-Healy, Sara Gilbert as Darlene Conner, Michael Fishman as D.J. Conner, Emma Kenney as Harris Conner-Healy, Ames McNamara as Mark Conner-Healy, and Jayden Rey as Mary Conner.
Roseanne Barr is an executive producer, along with Sara Gilbert, Tom Werner, Bruce Helford, Whitney Cummings, and Tony Hernandez.
ABC Boss Admits ‘Roseanne’ Return Ratings Were a Big Surprise, Even To Them
ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said she's not ready to announce a second season yet, but she's pretty optimistic that a renewal is forthcoming.
Michael Schneider
Mar 28, 2018 7:16 pm
@franklinavenue
“Roseanne”
ABC
VIEW GALLERY
52PHOTOS
It was the cackle heard ’round the TV business Wednesday morning: The triumphant return of “Roseanne” stunned executives, including top brass at ABC. Insiders at rival networks predicted a rating as high as 3.0 among adults 18-49, which would have been deemed a huge success. The hour-long return blew up those projections, coming in at a stunning 5.2 rating.
Approximately 18.4 million viewers tuned in to watch the Conner family reconnect, 21 years after the show’s finale. A lot has changed since then — including in the TV biz, where a 5.2 rating for a series episode is a rare commodity (well, outside a few outliers like “The Walking Dead”). The show was the highest adult 18-49 rating for any comedy telecast since the 2014 season opener of CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory.”
“If you deliver a show that connects with audiences, people will come,” ABC entertainment president Channing Dungey told IndieWire. “Every time people say broadcast is dead, something like this happens and shows everyone that there’s a real power in that reach of broadcast in connecting with a wide audience.”
‘Roseanne’ Review
ABC secured nine episodes of the “Roseanne” return, and insiders confirm that the series’ cast has now been locked in for an additional season of at least 13 episodes. Star Roseanne Barr has said in interviews that she’s game for additional seasons in success. Dungey said she was “optimistic” that a second season would happen, but that “I’m not quite ready to pull that trigger at this moment.”
“Roseanne” beat CBS, NBC, Fox and The CW combined at 8 p.m., including huge hits “The Voice” and “NCIS.” The show is also now the top-rated premiere of the season with both viewers and young adults.
Surprisingly, “Roseanne” even performed better with viewers than its May 1997 finale, which averaged 16.6 million viewers on May 20, 1997, and did better than the show’s final 12 telecasts in that last season.
The premiere helped boost “Black-ish” to season highs at 9 p.m., drawing its second largest audience ever (8.7 million viewers), and gave a boost to the 9:30 p.m. premiere of new comedy “Splitting Up Together.”
“Roseanne” is the latest in a series of remakes and reboots that have posted strong numbers — perpetuating the cycle. Fox’s “The X-Files,” NBC’s “Will & Grace” and Netflix’s “Fuller House” are among the series that have returned to huge audiences, leading to multiple-season orders. More, of course, are on the docket for next season, including CBS’ “Murphy Brown” revisit.
“Part of it is, yes certainly if there is a show that was beloved like ‘Roseanne’ was, there is a certain appetite from the audience to come back and reconnect with that family and check in with them how many years later,” Dungey said. “That’s a lot of fun. But I think certainly it helps us from a marketing perspective because you’re letting people know, hey that show that you loved is back. So that’s always a leg up.
“But in order for a reboot to be done successfully, I think there needs to be a reason for it to exist. The time is really right, especially what’s going on in our country right now, to bring ‘Roseanne’ back. I think that’s part of why it resonated so much with audiences.”
Because of the Winter Olympics schedule, ABC found itself launching a stockpile of series in March and April — including another reboot, “American Idol.” “Idol” has performed respectably for the network, and “Roseanne” just gave ABC a big boost. But Dungey admitted that “in a perfect world I wouldn’t want to do this many launches so close together.”
ABC will rebroadcast the one-hour premiere on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET. The series stars Roseanne Barr as Roseanne Conner, John Goodman as Dan Conner, Laurie Metcalf as Jackie Harris, Lecy Goranson as Becky Conner-Healy, Sara Gilbert as Darlene Conner, Michael Fishman as D.J. Conner, Emma Kenney as Harris Conner-Healy, Ames McNamara as Mark Conner-Healy, and Jayden Rey as Mary Conner.
Roseanne Barr is an executive producer, along with Sara Gilbert, Tom Werner, Bruce Helford, Whitney Cummings, and Tony Hernandez.
‘Roseanne’ Review: ABC’s Revival Is a Flailing Mess, But Its Politics Aren’t the Problem
Roseanne Barr and John Goodman return to the small screen in a rocky revival that's only consistent in its lack of good jokes.
Ben Travers
Mar 27, 2018 4:40 pm
@BenTTravers
“Roseanne”
ABC / Adam Rose
In an ideal world, the new “Roseanne” could exist on ABC as the conservative-leaning voice of low-income Americans, especially as a counter for the far left, uber-wealthy Pritchetts on “Modern Family.” Over the past decade, America’s Broadcast Company has made it a point to build off its Emmy-winning ratings behemoth, spawning an array of family comedies that highlight the diversity once boasted within that lone, growing, L.A. lineage. In 2018, the new families have qualitatively surpassed their inspiration: “Black-ish,” “Fresh Off the Boat,” “Speechless,” and “The Goldbergs” are all among the elite family comedies — if not all comedies — on television.
But the new “Roseanne” doesn’t try to carve a spot in the existing landscape so much as it lazily settles into comfortable grooves in a very old couch. Sure, it will shout about making America great again and title an episode “Netflix & Pill.” There are honest discussions about health care and what working families have to do to survive these days. One half-hour of the three screened for critics does a better job than the rest in that department, but it doesn’t try all that hard to pull everything together; it’s happy to tell it like it is and leave it at that, just as the series only occasionally bothers to get off the couch and find relevancy.
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Jokes are handled with a similar “sure, why not?” indifference. They’re quick, broad, and many of them feel far too familiar, even if “Roseanne’s” sense of humor is still on point. Aside from the winking references to how the new show rewrites the past — Dan Conner opens the first episode by asking, “Why does everybody always think I’m dead?” in a nod to his character being killed off in Season 9 — an example of a good set-up for a punchline is when the Conners are being grilled about their medical history and Roseanne says, “All of your relatives died from alcoholism. The ones who didn’t drink were killed by the ones who did.”
From a fan’s viewpoint, some of “Roseanne’s” appeal comes simply from saying hello again to friendly old faces. Nostalgia is a crutch leaned on time and time again in these revivals, be it David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson running with flashlights or Eric McCormack and Debra Messing excitedly bickering, but how long can it last when the cast isn’t all that into what’s going on? No one seems particularly excited to be back, and the only actors who bring their A-games are the ones who’ve been working regularly — and well — for the last 20 years: John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf remain a gosh darn delight, and Sarah Chalke does her damnedest, too.
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Metcalf can milk a gleeful chuckle out of the most arcane sitcom joke. (Evidence: a scene where Jackie pretends to know something by immediately repeating what an authority figure says.) Goodman is lively, making unprompted googly eyes for the hell of it or clapping with his elbows to make an unspoken point. He’s fun, and whether that’s because he’s bolstered by Dan’s return to the living or bored with the material he’s given, it doesn’t really matter. Goodman stands out for the right reasons, while his onscreen partner is largely noticeable for the wrong ones.
Barr is early on her reactions and slow with her delivery. The character that bears her name and legacy isn’t as sharp as she needs to be, even when she’s called on to be purposefully slow. (Drunk Roseanne is as comedically off-kilter as sober Roseanne.) Much of the plot plays to her advantage: She and Dan are getting older, but it’s not her age that keeps the comedian from sparking. Every so often, Roseanne laughs the way she does in the original opening credits — with an uncontrollable passion that speaks to her love of family and life — so we know it’s there. But a similar charisma is mostly absent from her performance here.
Not even storylines focusing on Barr’s (and now Roseanne’s) much-discussed political leanings can rile her up enough to make the dialogue properly cantankerous. The first episode digs into the Trump of it all by pitting Roseanne against Jackie, with the former explaining that our Cheeto-in-Chief promised jobs and to “shake things up” while his unnamed opponent was a “liar, liar pants on fire.” Jackie gives almost as good as she gets, but only because neither is actually trying to have a debate. They’re just tossing insults that double as jokes, except they forget to freshen up the material. In the end, nothing is reconciled other than their relationship, as the show backs off its controversial talking point (without ever making one) for the sake of a smooth-running show.
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Well, what’s left may be easy, but it’s far from smooth. “Roseanne” still needs to iron out exactly what it wants to be: It’s a sitcom that can’t sustain itself on the situations presented or the comedy within them, nor does it effectively blend the two. If the show wants to dig into health care and jobs, it needs to do so in ways that start conversations instead of ending them. Through three episodes, “Roseanne” is too inconsistent to warrant a slot in ABC’s family lineup, let alone the rest of television. It feels like another couch potato that’s ready to birth more couch potatoes, and that’s not a revival worth watching. Heck, that’s not revival at all.
Grade: C
“Roseanne” Season 10 premieres Tuesday, March 27 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
Roseanne Barr and John Goodman return to the small screen in a rocky revival that's only consistent in its lack of good jokes.
Ben Travers
Mar 27, 2018 4:40 pm
@BenTTravers
“Roseanne”
ABC / Adam Rose
In an ideal world, the new “Roseanne” could exist on ABC as the conservative-leaning voice of low-income Americans, especially as a counter for the far left, uber-wealthy Pritchetts on “Modern Family.” Over the past decade, America’s Broadcast Company has made it a point to build off its Emmy-winning ratings behemoth, spawning an array of family comedies that highlight the diversity once boasted within that lone, growing, L.A. lineage. In 2018, the new families have qualitatively surpassed their inspiration: “Black-ish,” “Fresh Off the Boat,” “Speechless,” and “The Goldbergs” are all among the elite family comedies — if not all comedies — on television.
But the new “Roseanne” doesn’t try to carve a spot in the existing landscape so much as it lazily settles into comfortable grooves in a very old couch. Sure, it will shout about making America great again and title an episode “Netflix & Pill.” There are honest discussions about health care and what working families have to do to survive these days. One half-hour of the three screened for critics does a better job than the rest in that department, but it doesn’t try all that hard to pull everything together; it’s happy to tell it like it is and leave it at that, just as the series only occasionally bothers to get off the couch and find relevancy.
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Jokes are handled with a similar “sure, why not?” indifference. They’re quick, broad, and many of them feel far too familiar, even if “Roseanne’s” sense of humor is still on point. Aside from the winking references to how the new show rewrites the past — Dan Conner opens the first episode by asking, “Why does everybody always think I’m dead?” in a nod to his character being killed off in Season 9 — an example of a good set-up for a punchline is when the Conners are being grilled about their medical history and Roseanne says, “All of your relatives died from alcoholism. The ones who didn’t drink were killed by the ones who did.”
From a fan’s viewpoint, some of “Roseanne’s” appeal comes simply from saying hello again to friendly old faces. Nostalgia is a crutch leaned on time and time again in these revivals, be it David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson running with flashlights or Eric McCormack and Debra Messing excitedly bickering, but how long can it last when the cast isn’t all that into what’s going on? No one seems particularly excited to be back, and the only actors who bring their A-games are the ones who’ve been working regularly — and well — for the last 20 years: John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf remain a gosh darn delight, and Sarah Chalke does her damnedest, too.
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Metcalf can milk a gleeful chuckle out of the most arcane sitcom joke. (Evidence: a scene where Jackie pretends to know something by immediately repeating what an authority figure says.) Goodman is lively, making unprompted googly eyes for the hell of it or clapping with his elbows to make an unspoken point. He’s fun, and whether that’s because he’s bolstered by Dan’s return to the living or bored with the material he’s given, it doesn’t really matter. Goodman stands out for the right reasons, while his onscreen partner is largely noticeable for the wrong ones.
Barr is early on her reactions and slow with her delivery. The character that bears her name and legacy isn’t as sharp as she needs to be, even when she’s called on to be purposefully slow. (Drunk Roseanne is as comedically off-kilter as sober Roseanne.) Much of the plot plays to her advantage: She and Dan are getting older, but it’s not her age that keeps the comedian from sparking. Every so often, Roseanne laughs the way she does in the original opening credits — with an uncontrollable passion that speaks to her love of family and life — so we know it’s there. But a similar charisma is mostly absent from her performance here.
Not even storylines focusing on Barr’s (and now Roseanne’s) much-discussed political leanings can rile her up enough to make the dialogue properly cantankerous. The first episode digs into the Trump of it all by pitting Roseanne against Jackie, with the former explaining that our Cheeto-in-Chief promised jobs and to “shake things up” while his unnamed opponent was a “liar, liar pants on fire.” Jackie gives almost as good as she gets, but only because neither is actually trying to have a debate. They’re just tossing insults that double as jokes, except they forget to freshen up the material. In the end, nothing is reconciled other than their relationship, as the show backs off its controversial talking point (without ever making one) for the sake of a smooth-running show.
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Well, what’s left may be easy, but it’s far from smooth. “Roseanne” still needs to iron out exactly what it wants to be: It’s a sitcom that can’t sustain itself on the situations presented or the comedy within them, nor does it effectively blend the two. If the show wants to dig into health care and jobs, it needs to do so in ways that start conversations instead of ending them. Through three episodes, “Roseanne” is too inconsistent to warrant a slot in ABC’s family lineup, let alone the rest of television. It feels like another couch potato that’s ready to birth more couch potatoes, and that’s not a revival worth watching. Heck, that’s not revival at all.
Grade: C
“Roseanne” Season 10 premieres Tuesday, March 27 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
ABC Renews Roseanne for 11th Season
Roseanne is back and here to stay. On the heels of its massive premiere, ABC has announced that it will renew the sitcom for an 11th season. “We’re thrilled that America has welcomed the Conner family back into their homes. The show is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it left the air 21 years ago. We can’t wait to see what the Roseanne team has in store for next year,” ABC Entertainment president Cheryl Dungey said in a press release Friday.
Therevival, which premiered on Tuesday night after two decades off the air, was an immediate ratings hit, drawing 18.4 million live viewers. (President Donald Trump even phoned Roseanne Barr, an outspoken Trump supporter, to congratulate her.) The revival stars the original show’s stars — Barr, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, and Sara Gilbert — plus newcomers including Ames McNamara, Emma Kenney, and Jayden Rey. In Vulture’s review, TV columnist Jen Chaney praised the revival for holding up: “Roseanne hasn’t changed at all. It is still funny in the same ways it was always funny, using classic sitcom jokes and story lines to highlight issues of class.”
Hmmm, Here’s Why Donald Trump’s Name Will Never Be Mentioned on Roseanne
Despite the Roseanne revival content mill generally revolving around how the working-class sitcom approaches Donald Trump’s presidency — the first episode was a literal sister show-down between Roseanne and Jackie about the 2016 election — don’t expect to be hearing Trump this, Trump that for the remainder of the season. Mostly because, well, Trump’s name isn’t even mentioned, and that was a strategic choice.
Sara Gilbert, who plays Darlene and executive produces the revival, said on Watch What Happens Live this week. (THR confirmed with ABC that Gilbert’s comment is indeed accurate.)
The rationale for Gilbert and the rest of the creative team, she explained, is that Roseanne “is not” a show about politics. “It’s not about anyone’s position or a policy, it’s really about what happens to a family when there’s a political divide, which is something that I think the entire country can relate to and something we need to talk about,” she said. “With our show, it’s never about ‘doing an issue’ or ‘doing politics.’ It’s, How do these things affect a family unit?” So, while Trump may call Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on the show’s incredible ratings, the political themes will only decrease from here.
Despite the Roseanne revival content mill generally revolving around how the working-class sitcom approaches Donald Trump’s presidency — the first episode was a literal sister show-down between Roseanne and Jackie about the 2016 election — don’t expect to be hearing Trump this, Trump that for the remainder of the season. Mostly because, well, Trump’s name isn’t even mentioned, and that was a strategic choice.
“The Conners aren’t Trump supporters. Roseanne’s character is a Trump supporter — she’s the only one — and we never say his name, actually, in the show,”
Sara Gilbert, who plays Darlene and executive produces the revival, said on Watch What Happens Live this week. (THR confirmed with ABC that Gilbert’s comment is indeed accurate.)
The rationale for Gilbert and the rest of the creative team, she explained, is that Roseanne “is not” a show about politics. “It’s not about anyone’s position or a policy, it’s really about what happens to a family when there’s a political divide, which is something that I think the entire country can relate to and something we need to talk about,” she said. “With our show, it’s never about ‘doing an issue’ or ‘doing politics.’ It’s, How do these things affect a family unit?” So, while Trump may call Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on the show’s incredible ratings, the political themes will only decrease from here.
The Ringer
Published on Mar 29, 2018 The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald unpack the new trailer of the upcoming season of Westworld (1:00), and the return of the beloved 90’s sitcom Roseanne and its bold attempt at political discourse (7:00). Later, Ringer TV critic Alison Herman stops by to discuss the new season of ‘The Americans’ with Andy (20:00)
Published on Mar 29, 2018 The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald unpack the new trailer of the upcoming season of Westworld (1:00), and the return of the beloved 90’s sitcom Roseanne and its bold attempt at political discourse (7:00). Later, Ringer TV critic Alison Herman stops by to discuss the new season of ‘The Americans’ with Andy (20:00)