I've been rewatching Roseanne

Well, babe, hate to tell you but the left has become all left wing lunatics since Roseanne’s Planet of the Apes drama.

When are you transitioning and joining Hamas?

Non sequitur and hysterical R1. Roseanne IS a rightwing lunatic though.

FUCK Roseanne.

She’ll never admit it but the best seasons were when she was with Tom Arnold.

OP, I'm sure you'll be pleased to see this recording of your icon Roseanne claiming Joe Biden raped her 25 years ago in a Bergdorf's shoe department dressing room. NO YOU REALLY CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP! (And this was three days ago btw.)

Those last couple of seasons were terrible. The episode when David works at a Disney-style park? God that was awful. When Roseanne gives birth on Halloween and speaks to Jerry Garcia’s ghost? But the following season was worse.

And I agree that the best seasons were when Tom Arnold was working on it with her. There were some nice episodes like the Mother’s Day barbecue in the backyard and all the scenes with Leon and Bonnie at Rodbells.

But it’s all in the past.

I agree OP.

Seasons 3-6 were brilliant and some of the best stuff ever produced by a TV sitcom. The show was more serialized than just about any sitcom before (or after) with the season 4-5 storyline of the family's economic dowturn (to the point where the power was cut off) the best of the continuing storylines. The show was rarely glib. It looked like a real home and therefore a real family.

That first episode of Season Five -starting with DJ lying on the phone to the creditors, to the announcement of the shop closing and Becky asking about Mark, to Darlene inadvertently pushing Becky to leave with Mark by reminding her what a hellhole town they live in, to the fight in the kitchen that really convinces Becky to make the decision she does…. That was masterfully written. You can just feel the tension rising throughout the episode.

R7 - funny, I decided to start with season 3, as I distantly recall the show still finding its legs in the earlier seasons. Looking forward to moving onto the 'middle' seasons soon. I'll definitely be skipping the later seasons in which multiple sharks were jumped.

It’s almost hard to believe those great seasons were shot on an LA soundstage. The cast and setting so fully capture small town poverty.

R9 Yes, I think seasons 1 and 2 are a little bit too cutesy. Besides Roseanne and Jackie quitting their factory jobs in protest, the first two seasons are the least political and therefore less impactful and more humdrum unlike the great middle seasons.

The show also had so many wonderful recurring characters that weaved in and out of the show throughout the seasons. It also didn't have the continuity problems that many other sitcoms had up to this point. However, there were major rewrites on the personalities of Dan's mother and Roseanne's father for instance.

The sad truth though is that Roseanne has always been severely mental ill. In the 90s the manifested in the multiple personalities and the national anthem crotch grab and the power trips and all the manic stunts she pulled. Now, it’s MAGA. But she needed help then, as she does now, it just felt more harmless then.

R12 - She undoubtedly had and continues to have mental health issues, but I don't think those alone can excuse her virulently racist, xenophobic and insanely reactionary far-right behavior.

The 8th season was supposed to be the last which was why lecy goranson came back. The original Jerry Garcia storyline was that Dan and Roseanne were going to have one last hurrah before their daughter was born and go to a Grateful Dead concert. Roseanne would go into labor at the the concert and give birth at the show. Of course that got scrapped with Garcia’s death that summer so you ended up with the horrible Garcia ghost Halloween episode.

I remember reading Roseanne had much more input on scripts and storylines the last 2 seasons of the show and the show suffered for it.