It may seem odd to start a praise for a 12 years dead sitcom with one of the strangest (arguably one of the worst) endings ever for a show (though admittedly a memorable one), but I will.
This is one of the shows where I have to disconnect the artist from the art. I can’t stand Roseanne Barr (or Arnold or whatever she goes by these days). I think she’s a vulgar, obnoxious, megalomaniacal, narcissistic, self-exonerating crybaby, and her off-show antics were a major distraction (not just the National Anthem debacle but her “I wasn’t trying to be offensive” statement and then convenient memories of being molested [memories from her infancy at that] in a well timed bid for sympathy and then the Tom Arnold black comedy and melodrama and you know all the rest). She also had a reputation for being absolutely impossible to work for if you were a writer or director (she couldn’t fire the on-screen actors with ease but she famously went through writers like so much popcorn).
All that said, DAMN but the woman had one of the best sitcoms ever on television. And when you look at the results perhaps her whipcracking with writers and directors paid off. When the show worked it really worked.
My favorite things about it (numbered but in no particular order):
1- The Set
I’ve started several threads on movies and TV sets. To me they’re vital for believability.
Examples of bad sets: Home Improvement and The Cosby Show- families with several kids and no maid [that’s mentioned anyway] and yet the home is clutter free and so spotless that either the mom or dad is an OCD neat freak who spends every hour when not on screen scrubbing or else they have a team of maids. Or Designing Women where it looks like a whorehouse far more than a workplace, or Family Matters and Golden Girls where middle class people have 40,000 square foot houses in which all the furniture is brand new and the bedrooms are all huge and there are as many of them as needed at any time. Then there’s the Happy Days and Mama’s Family style sets which look like a college theatre set.
Examples of good sets: All in the Family, Sanford & Son and most other Norman Lear shows- where the furniture isn’t all showroom quality, there’s actual bric-a-brac and knick knacks, and you can believe the income-to-purchasing-power factor; Edith being a housewife her house is neat and clean but not sparkling, and Fred & Lamont being two unmarried men who live at a junkyard the house is cluttered floor to ceiling, and on both shows the kitchen appliances are old. (Fred Sanford’s kitchen reminds me a lot of my pack rat grandmother’s, right down to the ringer washer.) For a more socioeconomically upscale place, Frasier isn’t bad- it’s sparkling but Frasier’s a neat freak, and pretentious but so’s Frasier.
Anyway, Roseanne had one of the greatest sets in TV history. It’s cluttered. There’s stuff on the stairs. There’s tack stuff on the walls. There are refrigerator magnets holding coupons and pictures of family members. The furniture is old and run down with a couple of nice pieces, and the house is completely believable as one that a blue collar couple in a mid-sized city could afford. It looks lived in.
2- Real People With Real Problems
Very rare for TV. The Connors have financial ups and downs like most families; sometimes they’re doing okay, sometimes they’re having their lights disconnected. Dan’s bike shop has good times and then ultimately goes out of business. Roseanne has to take blue collar jobs in malls with bosses who are not just pricks but believable pricks, and at the same time she’s not exactly employee of the month herself. The kids fighting is believable, none of them are pretty or perfect (Sarah Chalke was a lot prettier than Lecy Goranson but even she’s not going to stop traffic), and they have problems at school sometimes as the victim and sometimes as the agressor.
3- The Talent
This is one of the most talented casts ever assembled. Everyone was perfect both in the regulars and the recurring characters.
John Goodman and Roseanne had fantastic chemistry as two people who were unattractive except to each other perhaps but you also knew they had good sex. They fought but loved each other deeply, and they had romantic moments on blue collar incomes (no romantic weekend at the Waldorf).
D.J. was totally the weak link of the kids and never really that well developed, but his sisters were both great, with Darlene (Sara Gilbert) probably my all time favorite teen character that “I’d have totally been friends with but am so glad I didn’t share a house with”.
Laurie Metcalfe- like all good characters in long running series she evolves, beginning as a jelly spined woman with no direction and becoming far more secure in herself. Also both sinned against and sinning, which was great.
Estelle Getty as the mom- the show actually hit its best moments when she joined the cast. You couldn’t stand her— except when you liked her. Also capable of surprises. The lesbianism revelation was the biggest of course, but I liked the little ones, such as a Christmas episode where she walked into a room where her daughters were stringing Christmas lights on her sleeping mom (Shelley Winters) and cried “What on Earth are you two doing?!” then calmly says “You string lights from the top down!” then helps them decorate her.
(Estelle Getty, Shelley Winters, and Red Buttons (recurring role for a few episodes as Beverly’s boyfriend) were all Oscar winners, which must be a record for a sitcom cast.)
Martin Mull as Leon and Sandra Bernhard as Nancy- how great to have gay characters who not only weren’t stereotypes but weren’t all likeable? Leon wasn’t a designaholic asexual and Sandra was neither butch nor lipstick but herself (and technically bisexual). I didn’t feel a connection anyone on Will and Grace but Leon is someone I could relate to- he fits some stereotypes but is miles away from others and is mainly his own person. (I also liked his showdowns with Roseanne when you realized that while he could be a jerk he was actually good at what he did [restaurant management], and the time her co-owners sided with him was great).
Which reminds me: one of the great things about the show was that in spite of its name it was ultimately less of a star vehicle than an ensemble. Roseanne didn’t always have the best lines of the episode, she wasn’t always right, and some of the best storylines focused on other characters (David & Darlene’s complicated relationship, Jackie and whoever she was with at that time, etc.).
So enough of an intro. Any other major Roseanne fans out there and if so did you have any favorite characters, favorite plotlines, favorite episodes, etc.? Share anything you liked (or didn’t like) about Roseanne.
