This post contains spoilers for the Roseanne Season 10 finale.
As a longtime fan of the original Roseanne, watching the reboot has been a maddening exercise. Each week, I tune in wondering which show I’m going to get—the version that picks up where the original left off (examining Becky’s heartbreaking struggle to secure her financial future; reuniting Darlene with her absentee ex, David), or the intentionally provocative nouveau Roseanne built specifically to rankle liberal viewers. At its best, the first version—the one that thankfully showed up Tuesday night—is a pretty good but slightly dusty answer to the first Roseanne. But can it make up for the rebooted show’s lower moments, which seem to completely abandon the spirit of the original series?
The past two weeks have brought, without contest, the best installments this revival has produced yet. Last week’s central plot heartbreakingly advanced the Conner family story in a way that felt true to the original series: Darlene gave up on her dreams of being a writer (at least temporarily), while Dan realized that Roseanne has developed an opioid addiction thanks to her bad knee, an injury that had been quietly rumbling in the background of the entire season. This week’s finale was a little sunnier; though Roseanne still has a back-up pill repository, she’ll be able to afford knee surgery after all, thanks to a rare stroke of good luck. And Darlene has started writing again, at least a little. It was a positive note for the season to end on—one that embodies the idea that no matter how many times the Conners get knocked back down, they’ll always keep fighting.
But how do we square that thoughtfulness with the unevenness of the series as a whole—a show that proclaims Roseanne-the-character’s allegiance to Donald Trump even as it shies away from examining what that allegiance might mean, beyond a shallow punchline or two? In the pilot, Roseanne defends her vote for Trump by shrugging, “He talked about jobs!” Roseanne then goes out of its way to assure us that this is the only reason its central character chose the way she did in 2016—not, as the series emphasizes, because she’s even remotely bigoted. Roseanne Conner has a black granddaughter, Mary, whom she loves very much, though we never really get to hear that granddaughter speak. The revival has also shown Roseanne defending her grandson, Mark, who likes to dress in girls’ clothes, and standing up for her Muslim neighbor Fatima at the grocery store—after worrying that Fatima and her husband might be terrorists. She’s not a daring, Archie Bunker type; as Emily Nussbaum wrote in The New Yorker earlier this year, “The show’s repeated theme is always that Roseanne is not that kind of Trump voter: she’s sweet to Mary; she defends Mark against homophobic bullies. You might see this as complexity or as spin. If you’re in a darker mood, you might call it propaganda.”
This Roseanne—or Roseanne—is not one that rings true to fans of the original series. The revival has shown it’s completely willing to abandon backstories established at length in the original series in the interest of making contrived political points—while letting its central character off the hook by consciously distancing her from any truly divisive rhetoric. Even writers from the original series have said that they don’t recognize the Roseanne Conner we see in these episodes; co-showrunner Whitey Cummings, who made an effort this spring to distance herself from Roseanne Barr’s politics, ended up exiting the series last week—ostensibly because, as her colleague Bruce Helford said, she’s “too busy” to return next season.
The series has backed off of overtly political topics in its latter episodes, as its creators promised early on it would—but that effort might have come too late. Thanks especially to the overtly confrontational nature of its star, the new Roseanne’s reputation seems to be inextricably linked to her politics—no matter how unfair some of the show’s writers feel that might be. Tuesday’s episode was a high point for the season—a testament to what this series can still do when it’s not busy making excuses for its star’s ideas. And ABC execs have said that in its second season, the series will focus even more on the Conner family’s day-to-day struggles and less on politics.
It’ll be interesting to see how that shift affects the show’s ratings—which have fluctuated a bit since Roseanne premiered to sky-high numbers in its first few weeks. Earlier this month, the series lost to N.C.I.S. in total viewers—and although it maintained a considerable lead in the coveted 18-to-49 demo, its viewership in that category dropped 26 percent. If persistent, that decline could spell the end of its ratings domination—though by last week, ratings were back up. And either way, it’s unquestionable that the new Roseanne has become the crown jewel of ABC’s line-up, as evidenced by the fact that it was Roseanne Barr herself who got tapped to introduce the network’s president, Ben Sherwood, at its upfront presentation in New York last Tuesday.
“If anyone came to play a drinking game based on how many times we mention Roseanne,” Sherwood joked onstage, “You’re welcome.” But notably, after making a quick, self-deprecating joke, Barr was not given a larger opportunity to speak.
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