My idea will take the series in a new direction. Basically Roseanne is killed in-between seasons during an armed robbery by an illegal immigrant. He flees to the nearest sanctuary where he turns himself in and thanks to his high-priced ACLU lawyer the jury there finds him not guilty and state he was only trying to return the gun to Roseanne but accidentally fired 10 rounds into her. Then the man is invited to be the cohost on Hilary Clinton’s new #Resist podcast in San Francisco. The Connors seeking vigilante justice take up arms and drive all the way to California to find and kill him but on the way there in Sacramento an anti-Trump flag burning protest is unknowingly interrupted by a nearby cop who just happens to be passing by on the opposite street and one of the flag burners panics and runs his burning flag to where the rally is keeping all their gasoline which results in a massive explosion killing all the protestors.
Believing this to be another example of police excess Governor Jerry Brown declares that all non-violent crime won’t be prosecuted, resulting in the immediate collapse of the state into violent anarchy as everybody in the state immediately tries to start killing each other. Looking for a patsy Jerry Brown declares that the Connor family were the Russian spies that hacked into Clinton’s private email and gave Trump the election. Now with the entire state hunting them down the Connor family has to fight their way through California until they reach safe-ground in Las Vegas Nevada where Darlene believes that the UFO based at nearby Area 51 is the key to proving their innocence as revealing that should cause the news media cycle to jump ship to that news instead.
Also Kurt Russel stars as Darlene’s new boyfriend Snake Plisken.
I do not know. I have never seen an episode. Such a program ought to address the drug problem in rural America. Factories move overseas, people laid off just as they are about ready to retire, age discrimination, living beyond their means, bankruptcy. For all I know this stuff has already been covered.
Yes, because that actually happens in real life. I know multi-racial people with Trump supporting parents in real life. I have a black family member who WAS married to a white Trump supporter, etc. I don’t know about attacks going on, but since I’ve personally witnessed some in recent memory (which I can’t blame Trump for since he was just some NY “real estate” guy at the time. Should I blame Clinton?), I wouldn’t be surprised. There are plenty of Trumpsters with close gay/minority family members who do act exactly like that with the ignorance and compartmentalization.
Give the show credit? For WHAT? Did you even read my post? I’m saying this show is full of hooey, dragging in ‘liberal preverts’ into a family of tRumpSuckers and them just acting like 'well, that’s fine, those gays/druggies/blacks and Muslims in the big cities are all evil, but if they’re our kin, well, we love ‘em anyway, damned, broken and inferior as they are.’ Such hypocrites. If they were true fans, none of that would have been tolerated. The gay kid: off to conversion camp. The black kid: shunned. And they sit their fat asses on the couch dickering over pills they can’t both afford, laughing at how funny it is they can’t afford health care. If they are at peace with the lack of affordable health care, they should not toe the party line and tolerate the grandkids, otherwise, they are not good 'Muricans.
My idea is that it is going to be very hard for them to make it work. The keystone in “Roseanne” was always … well … ROSEANNE. I couldn’t imagine “Married with Children” without Ed O’Neil, and I can’t imagine “Roseanne” without Roseanne Barr. If they can prove me wrong, the more power to them.
Is this thread full of people who never watched the original show, or remember it accurately?
This isn’t accurate… unless this new version was mentioned in the last two seasons of the original show, which I never watched because they sucked. (By then they did so much retconning at that point it’s quite possible you’re correct and they’d fucked up the backstory again.) Originally, Jackie saw Dan at a football game, and she did have a crush on him, but Dan ignored her and thought she was a pest. He went out with Roseanne, and Jackie hooked up with Dan’s BFF Norbert “Ziggy” Walsh.
Their first meeting was described in–oh the irony!–an episode from the show’s 2nd season, “An Officer and a Gentleman,” which purposely wrote out Roseanne for much of the story due to Roseanne’s fracas with Matt Williams, one of the show’s co-developers.
(Allegedly, Williams had given Roseanne-the-character the line to Dan, “You’re my equal in bed, but that’s it.” Roseanne-the-actor thought this was totally out of character–which it would’ve been, that early in the show, but sadly by the later seasons Roseanne C. had become such a shrew that I can believe she’d say exactly that.)
Anyway, then-sane Roseanne B. had walked out in protest (good for her!), and so for an episode, the writers sent Roseanne Connor on a trip to Moline due to Grandpa Harris having an accident, and Jackie was recruited to take care of the meals/kids/house over the next few days.
Lengthy story put in spoilers just for space:
[spoiler]In the episode, there were a few intimate (not romantic) scenes that pretty much warmed up the relationship between Dan and Jackie, which had previously been one mostly of irritation/resentment.
Toward the end of the episode, Jackie & Dan are washing the dishes together and after a conversation where Jackie mentions that she’s dating a liar, Dan says she’s too good for the idiots she goes out with, and she deserves better. (This is one of the first compliments Dan’s ever paid her.) Jackie is moved by this and eventually asks Dan teasingly whether he remembered how they met.
Dan claims he doesn’t, and Jackie says–obviously joking/over-the-top, but possibly not entirely–something like, “I actually saw you first, but I let Roseanne have you. You were totally unaware of my budding teenage passions.” Dan feels awkward and moves away a bit, and Jackie teases him for being embarrassed.
Finally Roseanne calls and Dan takes the phone while Jackie starts to leave. Dan suddenly asks Roseanne to hold, and he calls over to Jackie as she puts her coat on: “It was the varsity football game between ___ and ___” (I don’t remember the particulars) “and you and [some friend] were on the sidelines, and you were wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt.”
Jackie stares at him and puts her hand over her heart, clearly moved that she’s not so insignificant–that Dan really does remember the first time they saw each other. He tells her to drive home safely, and she thanks him. Alone, Dan sincerely tells Roseanne how much he misses her. By the end of the episode, Roseanne returns and her family surrounds her, as Jackie watches fondly but a bit wistfully.[/spoiler]
Interestingly, this was supposedly John Goodman’s favorite episode. Nevertheless, when Williams and the other producers privately went to Goodman and Metcalf and asked them if they’d be willing to do the show without Roseanne, both said “fuck off with that!” And rightly so. Thank goodness, the show continued into three more fantastic seasons. Then a couple of decent seasons, and finally two craptastic ones.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much “no.”
One thing I do hope for the reboot is that maybe it’ll force Metcalf into toning Jackie down. Sadly for such a nuanced actress, ever since the sixth season Metcalf turned what was a fantastic role into a shrill caricature. (I kinda date it to Jackie’s pregnancy.)
I sure wish she’d watch some older episodes to recall that Jackie was not always a goofy female Gilligan. She had issues–she had low self-esteem, was often directionless and had bad taste in men. But not this barely tolerable cartoon.
I wonder if this’ll also kick Goodman into a more active role… he’s seemed pretty subdued and ‘out-of-it’ even for low-key Dan.
As saddened as I am by Roseanne-the-person’s descent into nutsoville (because whatever people think of her, she is absolutely responsible for turning a pretty good show into what grew into one of the best sitcoms of all time), I think the change now should be relatively seamless. From the two or three episodes of the new “Roseanne” I saw, Roseanne Connor was actually not as vital to the activities as one would’ve expected. The heavy lifting in the plots was mostly done by Darlene and Becky.
They may lose some of the Trumpniks in their audience, but if the writers focus on what the original show did during its 2nd - 5th seasons (when money was tight and the show was super-honest about the problems people were having juggling bills and paying for stuff), I think this could absolutely work. And while they may lose the far-right, people like me–who’ve avoided the show because of Roseanne and her agenda–may tune back in. We’ll see.
I feel kinda sorry for Roseanne-the-person. She’s off her nut and has tarnished what should’ve been a very proud legacy for her. And now she’s forcibly detached from what was her most personal creation. As her idol would say: Sad!
This would be an interesting move, but there’s a question of limits: Archie, for all his flaws, was not a Klansman. There was even an episode to this effect. These days, well… official administration policy involves separating children from their parents and interning them in camps. That isn’t quite cross-burning and lynching, but it tends to put the line a bit closer, don’t you think?
The GOP has gotten crazier since Bunker’s time. It’s moved from Nixon through Reagan through Dubya to Trump. There’s no room for moderate Republicans anymore because the GOP and the people the GOP actively court drive moderates away. If George Will won’t stomach them anymore, they’ve gone pretty far off the deep end.
And that has consequences for making sympathetic characters: Archie Bunker worked because, in his mind, there was a line between bigotry and hatred which he refused to cross. He was ignorant but he wasn’t mean. It’s no longer possible for someone to support the entirety of GOP policy without crossing that line.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed this. People are praising Metcalf’s performance in the reboot without remembering how much more real and grounded a character Jackie used to be. I think it went along with Roseanne herself becoming more of a caricature as the original show went on, more domineering and full of herself than she had been earlier in the run.
I am glad they’re bringing the show back, chiefly because I always loved Darlene and I especially loved the sparks between Darlene and Becky, and that’s one of the few things the revival has unequivocally done well. I admit I’m pretty happy just watching these familiar, likable characters do their thing. That said, I’m not full of confidence that The Conners will really have the stones to stake out its own identity as a show — it needs to establish a clean break with Roseanne (and “Roseanne”) and retool the writing to suit Darlene. I’m afraid they’re going to try to hew as closely as possible to the old show in order to pacify the existing fans, and it will backfire and it will just feel like a show missing its star.
