Roseanne (1988-1997)

One of the greatest comedies ever. I always loved Laurie Metcalf.

It was a good show, too bad Barr turned out to be a total nutcase.

R1 Yes, she is such a good actress- Roseanne, Lady Bird, JFK, Desperate Housewives, Toy Story, Leaving Las Vegas, Scream 2, and Uncle Buck.

R2 TRUMP FOREVER

It really was the first sitcom to show blue collar working class Americans

All I remember is Barr saying DARLA a lot.

R6 Darlene?

I still love watching it… except for the final seasons.

Laurie Metcalf is an amazing actress.

[quote]It really was the first sitcom to show blue collar working class Americans

Jackie Gleason would like a word with you.

It was a great show in its day, too bad Barr turned out to be batshit crazy! And she went batshit during the run of the show and stayed that way later, but somehow the writers managed to keep things together for a surprisingly long time.

But yeah, it really was hilarious, but it also managed to temper the laughs with streak of genuine darkness, which was far superior to the occasional mawkish attempts at seriousness other sitcoms made. These people were poor and uneducated, and the everyday indignities and difficulties were only rarely sugar-coated. Horrible jobs, kids angry because their parents couldn't afford things, failed businesses, disastrous unintended pregnancies, unfulfilled potential, etc. And they took all that grim reality and made it laugh-till-your-abs-hurt funny! It really was a great show!

Laurie Metcalf's neurotic and easily flustered personality was the perfect foil to Roseanne's brash, tough nature. I think it was a great cast. John Goodman is a great comic actor too. Roseanne was always crazy much like she was in real life.

One of my favorite episodes was when Roseanne, Dan, and Jackie got really high one afternoon when the kids were at school. They get paranoid when DJ gets home and they all hide in the bathroom together. The dialogue in that episode was great as it was in general.

It's one of the few shows I liked until the end. I didn't mind the addition of SB or other changes. Still made me laugh. Hated when Dan died.

The pot episode was a classic. Hilarious.

The 80s were ruled by sappy family sitcoms about affluent families that were superficial and lame - Family Ties, Growing Pains, Mr. Belvedere, the Cosby Show etc. etc. Roseanne blew them all out of the water and made those putrid family comedies go on the decline, after being dominant for a long time. Thank god for that.

r3

r2 turned out? she was always nuts.

I used to love Roseanne it’s heartbreaking to see what she’s become.

I never saw the appeal of this show. What's so funny about ugly stupid lower class people> I never found their trial and tribulations amusing. They were all just a bunch of assholes. And it didn't help that the star of the show was crazy as shit.

strange tidbit.

I don't know of anyone know of anyone that regularly ran into the cast until the Tom Arnold years. Either casually in public or in the scene. Well, except for Sandra Bernhard, Laurie Metcalf and Shelley Winters (well, later Sara would appear in some hot spots.)

They all made "appearances" (Roseanne especially, she promoting something. And John more because of his film work. Laurie did a lot of charity work but also, one of the few celebs that didn't make spectacle of it either) and there were paps, of course, but for the most part when the show was on the air, they seemed to be more discrete or otherwise kept normal lives.

Which was unusual

At the time I thought Roseanne was monstrously fat. Now I think she looks normal.

Same here, R17! I don't understand the appeal of watching boorish lower-class losers which is exactly what Dan and Roseanne were and what their kids turned out to be.

r18 and I gotta add Laurie was someone that actually volunteered, she worked in kitchens, took out trash. Didn't just trade on her name and fame as most celebs do when they "volunteer" - aids charities, family shelters, animal shelters. It wasn't like an everyday thing but periodically, she would show up, work, write a check, do promos if they wanted. And girl had this clark kent thing going on, if she wasn't wearing just a bit of makeup she was virtually unrecognizable. Casually, you'd occasionally catch her at the farmers market. And she did the ocassional play.

[quote]I used to love Roseanne it’s heartbreaking to see what she’s become.

I saw her for the first time on Carson; she was brand new and hilarious. The series was great for a few seasons. I wish her well.

R5- What about The Honeymooners in the 1950's?

R14- I agree, I always thought the Cosby Show was not funny or in any way interesting. The kids were so happy go lucky and reveled in their trendiness and affluence- it rubbed me the wrong way. What's Happening !- that was a funny show.

R23 Re: The Honeymooners - yes, it was great but Roseanne expanded into the real world; Ralph and Alice never left the apartment.

It was such an amazing show in its prime. So many great moments. This one is still one of my all-time fave from the original show.

A funny part of the pot episode.

The Hallloween episode in season 2 is one of my all-time favorites, and set the precedent for future Halloween episodes (though none were as good as this one).

R5 Sanford & Son, All in the Family, Good Times,?? Or did you specifically mean rural?

A Nana Mary appearance always made me smile. I loved when Roseanne, Jackie AND Beverly dressed her up in Christmas decorations while she was passed out.

Darlene had so many great lines in the show.

I really love the first three-four seasons. After Becky runs away and gets married it started to drift into soap-y storylines but was still funny for a couple more seasons. I still enjoy the reruns but always check out once Fred becomes a regular and Roseanne wants to have another baby.

Loved the period when Cathy the snob was living next door. And and Roseanne were great together.

Rosanne would never allow the family fortune to improve. It became frustrating and unbelievable.

I always hated when they brought Sarah Chalke is as Becky. Horrible actress.

Sarah C wasn’t remotely believable as a blue-collar girl. It was a strange casting decision.

I didn't watched the last season. So they made Jackie a lesbian in the very end?

Jackie was such a b**** to Fred. She was always ragging on him for not being exciting enough for her. As if she herself was so damn interesting. The poor man couldn't win for losing. Jackie treated Fred worse than Roseanne treated Dan. And that's saying something.

It wasn’t depressing to me - yeah, they didn’t have much but it seemed like the kids were gonna do better. The parents were uneducated but they weren’t dumb and they wanted their kids to do better.

I haven’t watched the new version but it sounds depressing as hell

Jerry and Andy don't seem to exist in the Conners universe.

R32- I disagree. Around the time that Becky left the show and Mara Hobel and her so called HOT older sister and single father moved in is when the show was at it's best- I think that was the 1991/1992 season.

R41 pretty sure that was season 5, the year after Lecy left.

This show is one of my all-time favorites. I even like the later seasons when it became totally over-the-top and campy. There are only a few episodes that are not redeemable: The fantasy episode in Roseanne’s bathroom, the Gilligan’s Island parody, and Roseambo.

And Roseanne didn’t “become” crazy. She was batshit insane from day 1. But that’s always been part of her brilliance.

The Connors is so realistic looking casting wise. They really need some eye candy. Maybe Jerry and Andy could be Cast with very attractive looking actors. Just to mix things up a little.

I like this scene

It’s no coincidence Married… With Children emerged in 1987, Roseanne came out in 1988 and The Simpsons came out in 1989.

The end of the Reagan era.

"Rosanne would never allow the family fortune to improve. It became frustrating and unbelievable."

No, that's absolutely realistic - most poor people's fortunes don't improve, no matter what they do. Both parents had spotty employment in dead-end jobs, and they both tried to break out of the dead end rut the best way they knew how, by starting small businesses. Which failed, as most small businesses do.

Like I said, the who had a hell of a dark undercurrent, and the economics of being working class were part of that.

"It really was the first sitcom to show blue collar working class Americans"

Huh?

It was not realistic that Darlene would stay in Lanford and get knocked up. The whole point of the character was that she had the ambition and drive Roseanne didn’t have. She might not have made it big, but she never would have willingly thrown away her future like she did towards the end of the show’s original run.

R45- The show was so good back then. I forget how good the show was a times.

Still my favorite show of all time.

I really tried with The Conners. I made it midway through season 4 and then gave up. There was always a dignity to the characters in Roseanne, no matter the depths that they were going through. The Conners lacks that same sense. There is one scene in particular where all the characters were searching through the couch for loose coins, and I just thought, who the fuck wrote this? Roseanne Barr would never have allowed that scene to happen.

The show peaked with seasons 3, 4, and especially 5, where was knocking it out of the park almost every single week. Dad's death was really peak television, something that few other comedy series were even trying at the time. Season 6 still has a lot of classics, and season 7 is funny, but there are way too many episodes focused on David. Season 8 is where you start to get real clunkers, and then there's season 9.

I rewatched season 10 last year, and it actually holds up pretty well. Much better than The Conners does.

R49 Are you from a small town? I am. I know SOOOOO many "ambitious" people who want to go away, but they can't. They drop out of junior college, get pregnant, work at the grocery store or DQ, and they are miserable. It is a trap.

I think the show was really good at showing realistic small town. I remember an episode where DJ (?) dates a girl whose parents are dentists. The unspoken class divide was spot on. They were nice people, but it put Dan and Roseanne in an uncomfortable situation. I have witnessed this exact scenario with my own parents.

Yeah, I always thought that Darlene was the kind of gal who'd get an abortion if she got accidentally knocked up, and that Roseanne was the kind of mother who might tell her daughter to get an abortion. But I can also see that after several years in a committed relationship with her high school boyfriend she might be persuaded that it'll all be okay if they get married and have the baby, because Lanford is populated with people who firmly believe that and who'll encourage young people to have babies they can't raise.

So I really wish they hadn't taken the show in that direction! If they had to be realistic I'd rather they sent Darlene to Art School and had her find that she couldn't earn a living as an artist, have her take crappy jobs and still try to break into a business dominated by rich kids. But they didn't,.

R51 the thing is, Roseanne had to fight the network on everything in the 90s. That is why the show has aged so well.

There is now nobody to push back, so you have Hollywood elites writing a show they can’t possibly relate to.

It was Becky, not DJ. Sorry

[quote]and Mara Hobel and her so called HOT older sister and single father moved in.

I wish they had some reference to Mommie Dearest or naming her character Christina.

She cast Shelly Fucking Winters! I loved Nana so much.

The show jumped the shark with bringing Leon back and recasting Becky. Sarah Chalke just didn’t have what Lecy brought to Becky.

By season 7 the whole tone shifted and the characters were nasty to each other or just plain crazy like Jackie and Bev. It’s lost it’s warmth.

Fall 1985 to spring 1988 was the height of family sitcoms that embodied Reagan-era ideals: The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Who's the Boss, Growing Pains. Fall 1988 Roseanne comes along and its the total opposite of all those shows. Roseanne is a monster hit from day one and all the Reagan-era ideal family sitcoms decline over the next 4 seasons. Spring 1989, Family Ties ends and Growing Pains is no longer a Top 10 show. Spring 1990, Who's the Boss is no longer a Top 10 show and Roseanne ties The Cosby Show for #1. Spring 1991, The Cosby Show drops from #1 to #5. Spring 1992, The Cosby Show, Who's the Boss, Growing Pains all end.

R59 all boring

Roseanne best years were Fall 1988 to Spring 1993. Declined from Fall 1993 to Spring 1996 and that should've been the end. The last season was not necessary.

Roseanne in the ratings 1988-1989: #2 1989-1990: #1 tied with The Cosby Show 1990-1991: #3 1991-1992: #2 1992-1993: #2 1993-1994: #4 1994-1995: #10 1995-1996: #16 tied with The Nanny 1996-1997: #34

"It depicted real life lower middle class people in the late '80's,"

One nitpick: The Connors were working class, not lower middle class, and they weren't at the upper end of the working class. No, they're in the middle of the working class, looking up at the highly skilled working-class mechanics and contractors who the Connors have to ask for jobs, but better off than the dirt-poor hopeless low end of the working class. The Connors managed to hold their own and pay their mortgage, and if keeping their heads above water was a struggle they never drowned.

R5 All in the Family?

“Mom!?!? You may call her Bev…or Sea Hag.”

This is really entertaining if you are a fan of the show.

I’m fascinated with John’s wig. Just watched an ep from season three and they had taken zero care, just plopping it atop his head. It looked ridiculous.

He wears a wig? I did not know that.

Why was John Goodman laughing so much with the actors who played the gay couple, at R67. At 40:00.

Why did the turtle cross the road?

Just watch the opening scene. It couldn’t look more obvious. (Later at the party it looks much worse.)

I read that he wore a wig because he was filming The Flintstones.

I read thy was season 6. This ep was season three. There were many eps where the wig was apparent.

Darlene was kinda cute in season 7.

As realistic as it is, it's depressing as fuck that Becky and Darlene couldn't get even ONE step higher on the ladder than their parents were.

In one episode Mark was very supportive of Becky's college classes and in another one he fought her on it. Becky can only blame herself for not pursuing a higher degree, she had plenty of chances. Now in her 50s she's finally going to college and sleeping with a professor.

R49, a lot of girls feel that way....until they meet a guy. Then all bets are off. They choose the guy over college. Followed by babies (if that didn't already happen before the wedding). Unfortunately, first love rarely lasts. Then they end up divorced (or stuck in a loveless marriage) with kids to support and no education or job skills.

There was an episode where Roseanne wondered where she might be if she had followed her dream of becoming a writer instead of giving up her dream for a guy (Dan).

Sitcoms are horrible. I have warm feelings for some because of nostalgia for an era where I was safe in my parents house, knowing if any burglars broke in my father would turn into Popeye and bash their brains in to protect his family. (IRL he wouldn’t have woken up if burglars broke in because he was so drunk). It’s the thought that counts. I did fret a bit about what would happen if the A bomb dropped while I was in school, my father was at work a few towns away and my mother was at my aunts house across town. That’s about it.

Oh…nostalgia thing …tv shows had a Christmas episode every year and a Christmas carol was often sung during the episode. It was quite festive until Mr Magoo’s Christmas and Charlie Brown came along. They were so popular they started an entire industry of animated tv Christmas specials, eventually ending the very special sitcom Christmas episodes where characters sang entire Christmas carols, real trees were decked out in colorful C9 lights and mounds if tinsel, Santa Claus usually showed up and inevitably someone called out, “Hey, guys… look…it’s SNOWING outside!”

Sitcoms told us what birthday parties and Christmas should look like in postwar America. They also made us wonder why we didn’t keep our milk in a glass pitcher in the refrigerator….or why there was no community center in our area where the whole town gathered and prepared for a holiday show.

Roseanne wasn’t groundbreaking in showing slobby families sitting around their houses. Aside from the worst place if all time ….the Honeymooner’s apartment - the 1970s had Archie Bunker and shows like The Super (Richard Castellano), Lotsa Luck (Dom DeLuise), Sanford and Son, and “families” of non related slobby people like TAXI, Chico and the Man.

Roseanne was kind of a return to the wisecracking days of 1970s working class tv shows. It definitely differed in having 2 loser daughters. That wasn’t common on tv. A daughter often dated a dumb boyfriend, but a second daughter would pretty much always be a common sense pedant. Like Patty & Cathy Lane (even though Cathy was a cousin) or Mallory and Jennifer on Family Ties.

I stopped watching sitcoms after the Bob Newhart Show

R5, All in The Family was a funny show depicting real life of blue collar Americans

Good Times, too. James was blue collar.

[quote]a lot of girls feel that way....until they meet a guy. Then all bets are off. They choose the guy over college.

Yeah, but she did choose college over her first love. And it wasn't like David went on to do something great with his life while she was away. He basically mooched off Roseanne and Dan. There was nothing there that was so compelling for her to come back to.

They beat the shit out of the Darlene/David relationship when they should have just stopped it after she left to go to art school. And let's face it, Sara Gilbert doesn't have a whole lot of chemistry with men to begin with.

The casting was great and the show was still in good shape when it entered the awful last season. It did have ups and downs, it it did capture some actual truths about people—-the Laurie Met Alf character is like a lot of women who push away the one chance they have at someone who might treat them well. Becky is like a lot of girls who throw over apparent dreams for a boy. Winters and Parsons were inspired casting, although Bev becoming a lesbian seemed to show they’d run out of things to do with the character.

I gave it a chance but didn't like it. Roseanne and Dan were too loud.

Jerry and Andy should be in the reboot.

[quote] The Connors is so realistic looking casting wise. They really need some eye candy.

DJ looked like Roseanne, but in Lecy, no way. Darlene, maybe, if she were fat.

The eye candy was Sarah Chalke (totally unbelievable) and the guy who played Mark, the boyfriend.

I liked this episode where Roseanne dressed up as a man and hung out at The Lobo bar.

I loved it when it first aired because it was pretty much my life at the time. Rosie and I had a Darlene, a Jackie, a DJ and a David in our family. Also a Beverly but even more crazy. No Becky but our Darlene had shades of her.

On a side note one of my friends was a crew member for most of the run and he told me John Goodman had a cooler of beer right off set. He said Goodman could easily put away a 12 pack in a shooting day.

I think it was realistic for Darlene to get pregnant (even though she's a lesbian) and not get an abortion. It was just a depressing turn of events when things could have, realistically, gone the other way.

Becky was supposed to be a straight-A student and it was realistic that she was dickmatized by the very dumb Mark. However, the relationship was depressing when things, realistically, could have gone a bit better for Becky, even while married to Mark.

Then ... The lottery. Roseanne ran out of ideas.

I also would've been drinking on set if I worked on Roseanne.

Michael Fishman definitely looked like he could've been Dan and Roseanne's son. Sara looked passable as a mixture of Dan and Roseanne's features.

I agree though, Lecy, was a bit of a stretch. There really was no resemblance of Roseanne in her face at all. I suspended my disbelief by just thinking she was one of those rare cases where the kid takes after one parent the most, like 90%, even down to hair color.

[quote]On a side note one of my friends was a crew member for most of the run and he told me John Goodman had a cooler of beer right off set. He said Goodman could easily put away a 12 pack in a shooting day.

Watching reruns at times you can see what a sweaty mess he is (especially the later seasons)

He was also rumored to like the nose candy as well.

Lecy could've been passable as John Goodman's bio daughter. Like, kind of sort of.

I believe Michael Fishman was actually hired because he looked so much like Roseanne. You would definitely believe he was her bio son.

Kathy Bowman's introduction. My god...that sneeze. Gets me every time. haha I wish they kept her on longer as Roseanne's neighbor. They could've had some brilliant episodes written around that dynamic.

Opps..the clip

I loved it when John Collins showed up as Roseanne's cousin.

The Conners going to Disneyland was just painful.

This happened when the show was past its prime, but this was still a classic scene. Laurie was so brilliant.

R62- This is not Europe. In the USA Working Class and Lower Middle Class can be the same thing. On All In The Family The Meathead was filling out a questionnaire- and Gloria said we're middle class and the meathead said - actually Lower Middle Class.

Perhaps the Bunkers and the Conners should be referred to as - Blue Collar.

"Becky was supposed to be a straight-A student and it was realistic that she was dickmatized by the very dumb Mark. "

She didn't marry Mark because she was dickmatized, she married Mark because her parents' financial reverses fucked up her chance to go to college. She would have married Spongebob to get away from home at that point.

R98- Jackie has such a FRAU hairdo in this scene.

I absolutely loathed the way Roseanne ended the show. Darlene and Mark? David and Becky? Jackie, not Bev, was gay? Dan had a heart attack?

It was a travesty and made me mad for watching the last seasons of the show.

Did Darlene and Mark end up together? Did Jackie turn out gay? I don't remember all that.

David being a deadbeat dad was completely out of character.

R103 Roseanne tweaked the ending of the show:

Watching this show should make anyone rush to be sterilized

R17 = Sophia Petrillo, also not watching I Love Lucy

[quote] I loved it when John Collins showed up as Roseanne's cousin.

I thought her cousin was Tom Collins.

No, it was Joan Van Ark.

The Joan Collins episode... That last zinger, pure DL read meat. lol I miss this show.

it was fun to see Joan Collins relatively down to earth

Joan was pretty nasty when she wrote about that episode in her book. She criticized Tom Arnold's tattoo of Roseanne and said that it looked like Brenda Vaccaro.

,,,,

This was hands down one of the best sitcoms ever written. It stayed strong right up until the godawful final season. Roseanne was always insane but she was never a giant racist asshole. I can’t even look at her boneless face anymore.

The reboot could've also been so great and relevant if Roseanne didn't turn MAGA crazy.

If she were still in somewhat sound mind, and could assemble the same quality writing staff, who knows how amazing the reboot could've been as well.

There's a series on Vice called The Dark Side of Comedy, and there's an episode on Roseanne. She is mentally ill/racist/has a brain injury, but it gives some insight into why she was 'difficult' on the set. She would ask for re-writes when the scripts weren't realistic, and she would know, she lived the working-class life. At one point the higher ups tried to edge her out of her own show, you see this in an episode when Jackie and Dan admit they had crushes on each other in high school. They wanted to make Roseanne without Roseanne.

[Quote]Rosanne would never allow the family fortune to improve. It became frustrating and unbelievable.

[Quote]No, that's absolutely realistic - most poor people's fortunes don't improve, no matter what they do. Both parents had spotty employment in dead-end jobs, and they both tried to break out of the dead end rut the best way they knew how, by starting small businesses. Which failed, as most small businesses do.

If I recall, Dan finally got a good, steady union job with the local government, with benefits and everything and he threw it away on his motorcycle shop. Or maybe the union job was after the shop failed, but he threw it away to do a temporary drywall job building a new prison because it paid more.

Either way, the Conners made bad financial choices. At least in Roseanne, the family *wanted* to improve their lot in life. The Conners sequel just upped the poverty porn, and now the family revels in their bad decisions and poverty.

She got her awful bowl hairdo that episode too.

OP, why do you describe this show like you think we've never heard of it?

[quote]The Conners going to Disneyland was just painful.

They went to Disney World.

We all agree winning the lotto was ridiculous for the series, but you gotta admit this scene is still funny as hell.

"DON'T! PANIC!"

R104 - I don’t think it was. David wasn’t exactly motivated to do anything with his life. He was an artsy dreamer. And whipped.

Roseambo was the nadir of the series.

The Conners return to tonight!

I think Rosie O’Donnell taking over as Roseanne would have made this show great.