When I think about family comedies, I think of Roseanne. Roseanne was the first popular sitcom that portrayed a truly dysfunctional family. This was quick a change from the Cleavers and the Bradys. America seemed to love the crazy world of the Conners.
Roseanne was created by Roseanne Barr and became the most watched TV show in 1989, staying in the top four for six seasons. The show ran nine seasons and only dropped out of the top 20 in season nine. These types of statistics are almost unheard of in the television industry.
The show won multiple awards, including Emmys and Golden Globes. Most of the main actors are still famous and working continually. Sara Gilbert (Darlene) is a regular on NBC’s Hit The Big Bang Theory. John Goodman (Dan) has performed consistently in many feature films. Sarah Chalke, the more famous of the two Beckys, stars in Scrubs and appeared for a season of How I Met Your Mother.
The show’s basic plot line was about a working class family of five, just barely getting by. The Conners were not the typical TV family. They dealt with many issues that no other show would touch at the time, such as, alcoholism, drugs, poverty, and obesity. Roseanne herself was a character like none other. She was loud, demanding, sneaky and rude.
The series was set in Lankford, Illinois, a small mid-American town. Throughout the series we watched the kids grow up, get married and have children of their own. We accepted that Roseanne’s sister, Jackie, would never find the man of her dreams, no matter how much Roseanne melted. Roseanne’s mother was a judgmental, lesbian lush and we loved it.
The Conners went through many stages. In the beginning Rosanne worked at a factory and Dan worked doing drywall. Roseanne had many jobs including waitress, shampoo girl, magazine salesman and owner of the Lunch Box. Dan did drywall, owned a bike shop and worked for the city as a mechanic. They even won the lottery in the last season.
We can’t leave out the kids. When the show started Becky was the smart one, Darlene was annoying and D.J. was just plain weird. Becky grew up and started dating bad boy Mark. This changed her whole character. She began to be the bad girl and soon she quit school and got married. Darlene, who was a typical tomboy, grew up and became dark and depressed. She started dating David, Mark’s brother, and moved into the family’s basement. She also quit school but did go to an art college briefly. D.J. Never grew out of his weird state. In the later seasons Roseanne and Dan had a baby named Jerry Garcia.
I loved this show, but was upset at the final episode, because Roseanne tells the audience the whole last season was not really what happened. Roseanne Barr created a show that will forever be influencing other shows, whether they know it or not.
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