Oops!
This reminds me of a later episode (7x13) when their elderly next-door neighbors make a habit of walking around naked, and the Connors invite them over to politely ask them to stop. When the elderly couple get offended and preachy that they shouldn’t be looking, Roseanne flashes them and yells, “Oh yeah, what color are my eyes?!”
DJ was always a weird kid. I remember an early episode where he’s peeping at Darlene and he gets caught. He goes up to Roseanne and says (from memory, so I hope it’s right)…
DJ: Darlene called me a prevert.
Roseanne: No honey, you’re not a prevert. You’re a pervert.
I still occasionally use “prevert” to this day and it always gets a good laugh from my wife, who was also a big Roseanne fan.
Oh, and put me down as one of the people who had a massive crush on Sara Gilbert.
I use that one two, as well as “skeptible” and “on-juns” (from two kid TV commercials).*
- Also reminds me of the episode of Kate and Allie where Chip (and I’m paraphrasing here), about to go on kiddie date, I believe, discusses it with Kate.
Chip: “[Someone] called me a skinflick.”
Kate (looks at him very confused for a moment): “Nooooo, honey, you’re not a skinflick, you’re a skinflint.”
I preferred the exchange-
:He’s been in there a long time. Maybe he’s really bad at it?
:Or maybe he’s really good.
I liked the one where Becky breaks up with her boyfriend (Mark?) and brings home a clean cut strapping football player who instantly bonds with her dad. Poor Dan, who’s only got his glory days, three women, and a twerpy son, is absolutely thrilled. Then (Jackie?) explains to Dan that this is only a rebound boyfriend. Dan has a line where he says, “Hell, I wanna marry him!”
My favorite moments from that one (again paraphrased- I don’t have the script):
DJ and friends dramatic reenactment of the Founding of Landford (a kid comes out in a Davy Crockett style attire and says “The Founding of Landford”; curtain opens to show DJ in a suit and saying “Did you bring the charter? Then I’ll sign it… as of [whatever the date… something like 1965] Landford is hereby a town”.)
Loretta Lynn ordering a barbecue at the the Lunch Box’s booth only to have to deal with Darlene’s “meat is murder” surliness. (That was one of the episodes when I wanted to slap Darlene.) Loretta listens nicely and tells her “I’ve got daughters of my own, I know their phases, and I actually respect you for standing up for what you believe in…but I gotta show to do so give me my damn barbecue sandwich.”
It’s Lanford.
And make sure you dip the buns in the grease first.
“Oh man, I lost a tooth. It must be in here somewhere.” (to Leon Carp, Health Inspector)
Speaking of Lanford, as somebody who’s lived in several places you’ve never heard of and would have to be referenced by the nearest big city (“It’s about 100 miles south of Atlanta”), I liked seeing such places on a major show. From what I gather Lanford’s probably a city of about 100,000 (big enough to have a couple of major employers and shopping malls and all the chains, but not big enough to have the advantages of a large city) and just far enough away from Chicago not to be considered a suburb or bedroom community (a couple of hours maybe).
Lanford actually reminds me a lot of my hometown, which had a population of 50,000 (and falling) when I was a kid there.
Step By Step was like that. Took place in Port Washington, WI, about 10,000 people and I’m guessing most people more then 100 miles away from it haven’t heard of it.
Hijack: How do they decide where to locate a show? (I’m not talking about the ones set in New York or LA, but the ones set in some small town someplace.)
When Sitcoms are set in the small towns, aren’t the towns “usually” fictional? Like Lanford, Mayberry, Hooterville, Mayfield, and whatever town that Larry, Darryl and Darryl lived in.
When Sitcoms, they are set in metropolitan areas, they are “usually” in real cities. Cheers, Seinfeld, Designing Women, Golden Girls, the MTM show, The Bob Newhart Show, etc.
If you consider Superman and Batman as Sitcoms,
Seinfeld did a great job of inserting NYC into the show- it really couldn’t have been set anywhere else. As for the others, Boston and Atlanta and Miami and Minneapolis were largely interchangeable except occasionally they’d mention a local landmark.
I think with Roseanne they wanted a Ma & Pa Blue Collar America setting so they created a midwest setting that pretty much everyone who wasn’t from NYC or LA could relate to (and even those in NYC and LA had an idea what a smaller city’s like). In real life Roseanne was from a Jewish family in Salt Lake City and then lived in Denver, so Lanford is probably a bit closer to John Goodman’s native small town Missouri (though New Orleans is his adopted hometown).
Though it was based on her standup they really didn’t take a lot from Roseanne’s own past, other than to mention her father was Jewish in one episode. That’s the same episode where DJ finds religion and wants to write Dan’s preacher cousin, and has one of my favorite exchanges. Again I don’t remember the exact quotes, but DJ has asked what religion the family is and it goes something like:
That’s also the episode where DJ asks how the preacher in the family is related.
I never saw an episode, but Goodman later starred as a middle aged father and ex-husband who comes out as a gay man in a very short lived TV show called Normal, Ohio, a fictional town and location also chosen to be as workaday flyover as possible. No idea if it was any good, but if it wasn’t it wasn’t due to lack of talent.
Goodman is currently on Broadway in Waiting for Godot. Thesepics were taken last month. He’s not and never will be a small man or even average size, but he looks a bit slimmer and a LOT healthier these days than when he was on West Wing andcandid shots where he looked like he’d keel over any moment.
I did read an interview with him years ago when he said he had considered gastric bypass but refused. He didn’t think it was healthy- major risks involved always but he thought for him it would be especially so since he didn’t trust himself not to binge (which is really dangerous once you’ve had it).
I disregard the ending of the last episode of the show (which if you haven’t seen it basically cancels everything from about midway through the second season) . It would work better even if she’d just rewritten it from Dan’s heart attack at Darlene’s wedding the year before. So why do you think Roseanne ended the series the way she did season? And is there anybody who liked the ending?
One of the things I like about How I Met Your Mother is that it does the same thing. You never have to wonder, “hrm, where is this show set again?”
That is indeed good news.
On the one hand it made a limited amount of sense to end it that way because the had been several occasions where they had said Roseanne wanted to be a writer – even one episode where they fixed up a corner of the basement for her to write in private. But she never seemed to get around to it or stick with it.
So, from that perspective, for her ultimately to seemed to have “gotten around to it,” and have been writing this all along makes a certain kind fo character and continuity sense.
However, it was a sub-par last season and a lousy copout ending, and considering the “it was all a dream” (in this case, “it was all writings in my journal”) is the ultimate deus ex machina modern television plot device, it just didn’t work because of everything we already knew about the show’s ability to plot an episode (and season) and that fact it felt like they were using it to try to back out of that lousy lottery winnings plotline.
All these posts and nostalgic moment and nobody’s mentioned the various iterations of the gritty theme song.