"Roseanne" -- Most Realistic Sitcom Ever?

Cafe Society
21

I didn’t know that. I guess there really IS a Joss Whedon show I like!

Roseanne is definitely my favorite live-action sitcom ever, and one of my favorite shows ever. I loved the way it mixed comedy and drama in a genre (family shows) that is not known for giving deep, accurate portrayals of the American family. I even liked the later seasons, although there are some episodes that are just unwatchable (the terrorist episode). At its height though, it was so great and so realistic, and I really identified with Darlene (didn’t all unpopular smart girls who lived in flyover states?) but I also identified with Roseanne and even sort of emulated her because she was just so brash and bossy and didn’t take crap from anyone. I also really liked that their house was messy and they wore the same clothes over and over. Just like real life!

I really wish there was a show like this now, even better if it was a show about people of color living a realistic experience (I think Family Matters was designed as a working-class black show, but talk about derailment) but everyone seems more interested in fantasy and prepackaged “reality” shows nowadays. Sad!

22

SPOILERS (for something that happened nearly 10 years ago…)

In the third-to-last episode of the second-to-last season, Darlene (pregnant) and David get married and Dan suffers a heart attack. The next episode is the family dealing with what happened, while in the final episode of the season, Dan can’t deal with his new restricted diet and exercise plan, Dan and Roseanne have a huge fight (one of those “real” moments you were talking about…) and Roseanne walks out.

In the first episode of the final season, Roseanne is at Jackie’s and gets lost in TV shows, appearing as the female lead character in I Dream of Jeannie, That Girl and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. At the end of that episode, Jackie is watching TV and realizes they’ve won the lottery.

Then it all goes downhill.

The family goes on Jerry Springer,
Dan leaves to take his mentally-ill mother to a hospital in California, while Roseanne and Jackie go to an upscale spa,
a “Moldavian Prince” (played by Jim Varney, of all people) sees Jackie on TV and falls in love,
Roseanne and Jackie go to a high-class New York halloween party with the Absolutely Fabulous women,
everybody but Dan visits some snobby family on Martha’s Vinyard,
everybody but Dan goes on a train ride to Washington D.C. but it gets taken over by terrorists and Roseanne saves the day,
at Thanksgiving, Bev (Roseanne’s mom) reveals that she’s gay,
Bev visits her mom, who says she doesn’t know who Bev’s father is (the most normal episode of the bunch, IMO),
Dan comes back for Christmas (another semi-normal episode),
Jackie finds out Dan fell in love with another woman in California and makes him tell Roseanne,
Dan leaves and Roseanne drives around Lanford binging on fast food,
Roseanne holes up in her room while the family tries to coax her out,
Roseanne and Jackie go to the Lanford Country Club and become friends with Edgar Wellman, Jr., the son of the guy who owned the plastics plant where the two worked at the beginning of the series (normalish),
Roseanne and Wellman develop a little thing for each other,
Dan and Roseanne try to reconciliate and Darlene (pregnant) is taken to the hospital,
Darlene has her baby like four months early and it almost dies,
then two normal episodes where a bunch of random non-important stuff happens,
Dan’s mom is released from the hospital and Dan thinks she might come to Lanford to kill him,
finally, in the last (two-part) episode, Darlene and David’s baby comes home from the hospital, Becky and Mark reveal Becky’s pregnant, Leon and Scott announce they’re adopting a baby, and Roseanne reveals that the whole series was her own writing based upon her character’s life.

So…Roseanne, the comic, created a TV character who created a TV series, which is what we saw.

23

Garfield, I think Moe whooshed you…

24

Eh, probably. It happens more often than you’d think.

Though in my experience it seems that in any Roseanne discussion there always seem to be people who are really not familiar with the final season (or they just saw one episode and so were justifiable confused).

25

::fingers in ears::

MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB, LITTLE LAMB, LITTLE LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMB!!!

26

And then she got to go home to face the surprise party that Dan threw together for her. Brutal. One of my favorite episodes, and the source of one of my personal favorite exchanges:

“She’s so perky I’d like to drive a nail through her head.”

“Well, I can see why you’re in personnel.”

27

And the typical high school stuff like Becky farting front of the class and EVERYONE knowing about it and her siblings rubbing it in; and when the class decides to flip the bird during their yearbook photo (typical teen shenanigans) and The Administration punishes them.

28

I hate that episode! Drives me crazy. The perfect job, they ask you if you have computer skills…for god sake woman…LIE!!! Lie, take the job, go home and get a book and learn how to save files and print etc. over the weekend! (I mean what kind of computer skills would a job like that call for? You’re not programming them.) She could have done the job!!! She could have learned, over a weekend, easy!!! I hate that episode!!!

Of course the fact that I’m getting so emotionally envolved just point out what a good show it was :slight_smile: .

29

That one’s on right now, actually…

30

Just to set the record straight about Tom Arnold’s involvement, he and Roseanne divorced in 1994, three years before the end of the show.

I’m jus’ sayin’, is all.

31

Well, every show is a product of its era. For all its virtures, the show did tend to validate its star’s political beliefs at the expense of its believability, and in this regard was no better than Grace Under Pressure or past-its-prime MASH or Learverse shows. And it was explicitly conceived as the anti-Cosby.

Pound for pound, I think Mary Tyler Moore and Barney Miller held up a lot better. They realistically showed soul-stifling work environments, marital problems, personal betrayals by beloved characters, and hard decisions with consequences. It’s hard to look at the awful 70s fashions and they’re nobody’s current idea of “edgy,” but these two never ever jumped the shark.

32

Huh?

33

Didn’t John Goodman have a lot of issues with the way Roseanne acted on the set? Everything I’ve read about him suggests that he’s one hell of a guy and hugely professional, but her antics just pushed him to the limit.

I think the show started sucking when Arnie and Nancy hooked up. Arnie was better as Dan’s once in a while poker buddy, not stopping in like the wacky side-kick.

I loved their crazy-ass neighbors. Remember the one woman who was super over-protective of her son, and kept bitching to Roseanne when he came over to play with DJ because he’d get a scratched knee or something?

34

Remember though how it shook out. The interviewer (Muriel) offered her the job, Roseanne called home to tell Dan she got it, Muriel comes back in with her paperwork and only then mentions the computer skills requirement (they use the “Tangerine”…sheesh). I blame Muriel; she should’ve asked if Roseanne had the necessary skills before offering the job.

35

I think my favorite episode came from the last season when Debbie Reynolds played Dan’s psycho mom who was trying to kill him. Reynolds was hilarious in that role; you could tell she was really having fun with it. It was very realistic, too; anyone who thinks otherwise has never answered 911 calls in a blue-collar area.

The last few seasons sucked in general, but there was still always something there; the worries about money, the bratty kids (remember when Darlene and Becky spent all of Mother’s Day trying to butter up Roseanne so she’d let them go to a concert?), the messy house, the cruddy furniture, the cars on their last legs, the dead-end jobs - that’s pretty much how everyone I know lives.

Jim Varney as the prince irritated me, though, except in the Thanksgiving episode where he gets drunk and starts talking like Ernest.

36

Wow, I missed that one completely. Maybe the final season wasn’t the total loss I thought it was.

37

IMHO, Sandra Bernhardt walked in, and the show went straight down the toilet. Not saying Sandra was responsible with that, but it seems that her arrival coincides perfectly with the shark jumping. Up until that point, I was pro-Roseanne all the way. I loved her early stand-up, too; as a SAHM with young kids, I could so relate. And my kids grew up as her kids grew up, and it all hit such a note of reality, with a healthy dose of humor, that I loved it. I also had a huge crush on Dan Goodman. He’s one of those guys I always thought of as being homely, yet incredibly sexy.

38

Can I just say that those episodes where Becky ran off and got married and then Dan wouldn’t speak to her, and she came home and tried to deal with it, they always make me cry like a little girl? Because it’s good to get that off my chest. :slight_smile:

Also the one about Dan’s crazy mom where he goes over to his dad’s house in a screaming rage, that one makes me tear up a bit too.

39

I’m with the OP. I think “Roseanne’s” blend of comedy and drama was just about perfect—unlike most other sitcoms, “Roseanne” could get away with “Very Special”-type episodes because the characters were so well-written, and because the pain and hardship of their lives was never very far from the surface. Standout episodes (in addition to the ones already mentioned) are the one where Jackie and Roseanne sneak into their childhood home, and reminisce about the strap their father hung by the door; the one where Roseanne hit DJ; or the one where Dan had to commit his mother, and realized he couldn’t blame his father for it.

Disagree totally. Having an attitude is hardly the exclusive province of the rich. And Roseanne never, ever hit her kids or threatened to hit them. If you watched the show you knew why.

In fact, re-watching the show on Nick or Oxygen convinces me that Lecy Goranson was the unsung hero of the Roseanne cast. Sara Gilbert got most of the praise, but I think Goranson was at least her equal as an actress. She was given a character who was often very unlikable, but she played her with total commitment and honesty; you may have wanted to smack her one, but she was just as realistic and recognizable as Darlene. She was given far too little opportunity to be funny — she probably had the fewest punchlines of any one — but her later appearances have some great comedic moments. So, props to Lecy.

That said, I’m surprised no one else has picked up on this: “Roseanne”'s Jump the Shark moment was the departure of Sara Gilbert, end of story. It wasn’t just because she was no longer around; with Darlene out of Lanford and fulfilling her dream, the show’s most potent source of tension was dissolved. From there, the humor increasingly revolved around either Roseanne’s ego or the other, minor characters brought in to compensate for the absence of Gilbert and Goranson (Leon, Mark, David, Nancy, Bev).

One last thing: how realistic was “Roseanne”? It even seated the characters around all four sides of the kitchen table. :slight_smile:

40

I love the one where they can’t pay their utility bill, the power goes off and Roseanne says, “Well, middle class was fun.”

The scene where Dan pulls the milk out of the fridge and takes a drink from the carton, gags and has spasms because it’s gone sour, then staggers over and puts the carton back in the fridge.

Dan heads out to the freezer in the garage, chanting: “Grape! Grape! Grape!”
He opens the freezer, peruses the contents, grabs a popsicle, then heads back into the house chanting: “Orange! Orange! Orange!”