‘Roseanne’ Revival: Everything the Show Needs to Fix Before Season 2

One of the best things about those first few seasons of Roseanne is how well-balanced the show was between the kids and the adults. Not only well-balanced, but the kids (Becky, Darlene, and DJ) and adults (Roseanne, Dan, and Jackie) all had fleshed out personalities. Okay, DJ not so much at first because Michael Fishman was 7. But Darlene and Becky were complicated, and each of them got rich storylines that explored their relationships with each other, their parents, and their own growing pains. They weren’t the perfect smiling kids or precocious schemers viewers were used to seeing on TV.

The revival, taking place twenty years later, took the chance to introduce a new generation of Conner kids: Darlene’s kids Harris (Emma Kenney) and Mark (Ames McNamara), and DJ’s daughter Mary (Jayden Rey). Let me sum up how Season 10 has treated the new kids: I learned that DJ’s daughter’s name is Mary while typing the previous sentence.

The grandkids just haven’t gotten near the attention that the kids got in the original run. Harris and Mark got spotlight episodes, but we still don’t know much about them outside of Harris being a moody high schooler and Mark being gender-nonconforming. Mary, the youngest, is the biggest mystery, as most of her screentime has been as “The Kid Roseanne Is Carrying For A Scene.”

These kids have nailed what little they’ve been given, but they’ve been noticeably absent from the majority of the episodes. Like, why wasn’t Mark in more of the episode where his father David returned? With more episodes in season 11, we gotta spend some time developing these new characters!

Speaking of Becky, Darlene, and DJ, what are they up to? Okay, maybe it’s not fair to ask Roseanne to give more screentime to every member of its huge cast (I think this is the real Full House). And okay, Darlene got a whole lot of attention as she’s the Conner kid that moved back home. But we saw Becky less than Darlene, and DJ only popped up in a handful of episodes.

In Season 11, we gotta get at least one plotline that pulls all three Conner kids together and gives them something fun to do. Some of the best moments in Season 10 have been the ones that paired Darlene and Becky together, older but not necessarily wiser. Seriously, their heart-to-heart in “Darlene v. David” about their marriages was heart-wrenching stuff. But also, how does DJ interact with Darlene’s daughter? Does Becky take Mark shopping? Does Darlene teach Mary some bad words? We got to see the entire cast together at the end of the season finale for a fun scene (even if they were dealing with a flooded basement). There are six characters on this show that need to be utilized way more!

I could easily make the claim that Season 10 takes place in a completely alternate reality. We already know that Season 10 completely ignored Season 9, even going so far as to ignore the way the Roseanne finale undid Season 9. But Season 10 also ignored parts of Seasons 1-8, parts that fans actually have no problem with!

Get rid of the Conners winning the lottery and Dan dying, sure, but why in the world would the show ignore Jackie’s son Andy? Andy was born in Season 6! We’re fine with Season 6! And Season 10 also wrote off the fourth Conner kid, Jerry, who was born in Season 8; it’s explained in the Season 10 premiere that Jerry is off on a fishing boat… and poof, he’s gone!

Then there’s the way Season 10 forgot the number of episodes in the original run where Roseanne was anti-spanking because of her abusive father. Now Roseanne is pro-spanking, even though it betrays everything the show used to stand for, and any conversation about why Roseanne had a change of heart is ignored just like Andy.

Season 11 needs to course correct this revisionist streak. Give us a Jerry episode, or make him a recurring but unseen character. Rewrite reality so that Jackie has a kid again, because Andy was on the show for three years! Stop ignoring the history that no Roseanne fan has a problem with!

Obviously the Roseanne revival has made waves due to both Roseanne the character and Roseanne the celebrity being pro-Trump. I had a problem with that sudden change in Roseanne’s character, and I also had a problem with this season’s Islamophobia episode. But the solution isn’t for the Roseanne revival to avoid politics; the solution is for the Roseanne revival to get into politics the way the old Roseanne did.

The old Roseanne portrayed political issues as the complicated, gray matters they are. Sometimes, oftentimes, Roseanne was wrong, or proven to be not as right as she thought. But other times Roseanne was right, right for standing up for the rights of the underprivileged (of which she herself is one). In the new season, Roseanne picks and chooses who she fights for (her gender-creative grandson, yes; but her Muslim neighbors are definitely terrorists), and the show doesn’t get into it. A few jokes are made, tidy resolutions are offered, and the show moves on.

ABC has been very upfront about how Season 11 won’t get into politics that much, but that’s not the way to go. Doing comedy inspired by the world, comedy with a blue collar and diverse family (yep, Mary and Mark make the Conners diverse now!) is inherently political. And Roseanne has always been political! The show needs to actually tackle these issues with the gravity they deserve. Jackie and Roseanne need to have it out over Trump way more often and the Muslim neighbors need to be recurring characters and not “Very Special” guest stars. Roseanne always reflected the real world in the ’90s; remember how it was one of the first sitcoms to have multiple queer supporting characters? This is what our real world is now. The old Roseanne still made it funny, and the new one can to. It just needs to commit.

If the new Roseanne has made you kinda depressed, you’re not alone. The revival season has veered really close to being one of the most depressing shows on TV. We live in depressing times, and obviously the plight of Middle America (what’s left of it) is no laughing matter. But there’s one phrase from Roseanne’s monologue in the original series finale that stuck with me, and rang through my ears as I watched the new season:

“Dan and I always felt that it was our responsibility as parents to improve the lives of our children by 50% over our own.”

Checking back in with the Conners 20 years later, that… hasn’t really happened. And it’s a bummer to see. It’s a bummer to see Becky widowed and working as a waitress; it’s a bummer to see Darlene separated and out of work, and living with her parents again; and it’s a bummer that DJ’s wife is still overseas and he has to put up with a dysfunctional VA. None of this is inaccurate to life in 2018, not by a long shot, and I do respect Roseanne for sticking to reality in this area (as opposed to Fuller House, where everyone has gone on to have all their dreams come true).

But where’s the hope? Darlene, the Conner with a college degree, could get a real job. She’s a writer and the season finale saw her flexing her creative muscles again, so why not explore the horrors of freelancing or the slow death of local newspapers? Maybe Becky could go back to school and deal with the evaporation of working class jobs. Those are bummers too, but at least they’re the bummers that come with progress! And, just like with the original series, the hope could come from the new kids as they dream big. Focus on the kids, and DJ and Darlene’s mission to improve the lives of their children by 50%. Roseanne knows how to depict the grind of existence better than most shows on TV today, but it also needs to do the harder work of finding hope in the grind.

Where to stream Roseanne