Roseanne / YMMV - TV Tropes

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The original series

Alternative Character Interpretation: Dan's father; he presents himself as something of a martyr to his son, explaining that he spent so much time away from his family and allowed his son to think he was an asshole to shift the attention away from the fact his wife was going insane, as he didn't want Dan to remember her as a bad mother. Conversely, Dan's father was just a coward who couldn't deal with his wife losing her mind, and when an out came in the form of his work, he took it and happily abandoned his family because it was easier on himself, making up the excuse later to appease his guilt. The latter interpretation is very heavily hinted as to what Dan actually thinks about his father (The revival pretty much confirmed Big Ed was a terrible father to Dan and had no remorse about it, going as far as keeping Dan away from his "new family").
Base-Breaking Character: Roseanne’s mom, Bev, is in equal parts insufferable and hilarious. Some fans dislike her annoying voice that’s so over-the-top that it even sounds like she’s forcing it, as well as how judgmental she can be. Other fans think of her as an Unpopular Popular Character for those same reasons, and enjoy the comedic moments that come from just how much that quirk and personality trait annoy the other characters In-Universe. She plays the role of an annoying mother very well, to say the least.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Disney World episode is full of them, mostly involving members of the extended Conner family having trouble realizing that various Disney characters aren't actually real.
- The whole "Sweet Dreams" episode in Season 2.
- The season nine Halloween Episode "Satan, Darling" has a newly-rich Roseanne and Jackie at a society Halloween party. While there, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is just standing in the middle of the party like a statue, saying nothing, which causes both sisters to do a double take on more than one occasion. Their reactions to her were similar to the audience's. ^note
- The entire ninth season may possibly count as this now, with the majority of its events, most notably the revelation that Dan died of his heart attack in the finale, having been retconned in the revival.

Designated Villain: The woman Roseanne and Jackie's father was seeing for over two decades, though this is more in the episode where he died. When Roseanne meets her at a bar to try and talk about the last years of his life, Roseanne learns that her dad told her that his kids never appreciated the sacrifices he made for them and storms off in anger. It's assumed that this is mostly because the woman only had Al's side of the story, but it's worth noting that the woman herself is portrayed very sympathetically: she's not a homewrecking monster, and she genuinely seems to want Roseanne to make peace with her father's memory.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Darlene was easily the most popular of the kids, to the extent she became a Breakout Character and the star of the spin-off, The Conners. On top of her Deadpan Snarker personality playing off of her parents well for many humorous moments, she also was more popular than her siblings due to Becky being filled to the brim with Wangst, and DJ lacking the personality and presence of his sisters.
- While unquestionably an Ensemble Dark Horse in the early seasons, she drifts into Base-Breaking Character territory in later seasons for Took a Level in Jerkass reasons, due to some fans still liking her funny and sarcastic personality but other fans disliking how much she treats her boyfriend David like garbage to the extent of borderline Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male behavior, despite David not deserving it since he was consistently nothing but kind and understanding with her (albeit an Extreme Doormat at times.)
Fanon Discontinuity:
- A lot of people have this reaction to the show's final season, and the final episode in particular. Luckily for fans, with the Revival it has been effectively written out of the show's continuity.
- On a much lesser degree, some fans only acknowledge that the Conners have three children, completely ignoring baby Jerry, which effectively ascended to Canon Discontinuity once The Conners premiered.
- Some of the LGBT fanbase only acknowledge Bev Harris and Jackie Harris being gay. Completely ignoring the 2018 revival's retcon of their orientations making them straight again.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Watching Roseanne and Dan yell at Becky for underage drinking is kind of hard to watch after John Goodman admitted he struggled with alcoholism.
  - While being reprimanded for the underage drinking, Becky sarcastically says that having one drink makes her an alcoholic and that she’ll call the 1-800 number. Cut to The Conners and she has indeed become an alcoholic as a way of coping with Mark’s death.
- In the Season Two episode "Fender Bender," there's a played-for-laughs scene where Roseanne comes home from the hospital high and giggly from prescription pain meds. Fast-forward to the spin-off series, where Roseanne is dead from an addiction to prescription pain meds.
- The episode "White Men Can't Kiss", where D.J. refuses to kiss a black girl named Geena for a school play, in light of the racist tweet Roseanne Barr made about Obama advisor, Valerie Jarett.
- This dialogue in "What a Day for a Daydream".
Jackie: Oh, has anybody seen Leon lately? Ever since we won the lottery, he looks like Hell!
Darlene: I know! I saw him the other day and he looked like such a slob I thought he was straight!
Jackie: When's he gonna get over it?
Roseanne: Never. Not as long as I'm alive.
- Considering The Conners sees Darlene and David breaking up again, this dialogue in "The Wedding" is very sad.
Darlene: Well, it's my last morning as a single woman.
Roseanne: Not necessarily. *Looks in Jackie's direction* Right, Jackie?
- When Bev joins AA she accuses Dan of being an alcoholic because he has a keg at his Super Bowl party. These are Played for Laughs. This episode comes across as jarring after John Goodman admitted he was an alcoholic for thirty years.
- In an early episode DJ bites his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun and goes "Bang, bang." Flash forward to 2013 when a child DJ's age was suspended from school for doing the same thing under modern zero-tolerance policies.
- The season 1 episode "Bridge Over Troubled Sonny" has Crystal lamenting her dead husband, Sonny, and wondering what her life would have been like if he'd lived. Once she leaves the room, Roseanne hugs Dan and jokingly tells him "thinking About how differently life would've turned out... if you had lived.". Cut to the original series finale and it's revealed Dan really die from a heart attack, thought it was later undone with a retcon in the 2018 revival.
  - In the season 1 episode, "Dear Mom and Dad", Bev warns a sleep deprived Dan not to sleep on his left side for it's bad for his heart. In season 8, Dan suffers a heart attack.
  - In one episode, Dan goes to DJ's school for the first time. The principal is stunned to meet him, as DJ had told everyone his dad was dead. Cue that finale and...
  - Then he turns out to be alive in the reboot, making this conversation even weirder.
- Dan saying he was having an affair in "Roseanne in the Hood", which was Played for Laughs if you watch the episode's plot becomes less so when he has an affair in the season finale with one of his mother's nurses...but that becomes even more difficult to watch when it's revealed it was just something Roseanne made up in her book after Dan died, stating that his death felt like he was with another woman.
- In one episode, Roseanne scolds DJ very harshly for refusing to kiss a girl in a school play because she is black, explaining that she didn't raise "a little bigot" and further that "black people are just like us." What ultimately got the revival cancelled? Barr herself tweeting messages that included a racial slur against African-Americans.
- The Rodbell commercial episode (which aired in 1992) featured the Conners film the commercial without Roseanne. Fast forward to 2018, where The Conners spin off is happening, without Roseanne.
  - During production throughout the first season, Roseanne would get into vicious spats with show-runner Matt Williams (the first of many infamous clashes that would happen between Barr and the crew). It got to the point where Williams would pitch doing the show without Barr to John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf only for them to refuse every time. Apparently they changed their minds somewhere down the line.
- After Dan's mother is hospitalized in "Lies My Father Told Me," Roseanne and Darlene are cracking jokes while they tell DJ about Dan's mother being crazy. Roseanne says "This is just our way of coping." Dan gets very angry when he overhears them, and tells Roseanne that his mother was great, and "She didn't teach her kids to make jokes about things that aren't funny." In The Conners first episode, Darlene and Becky are making jokes, and Becky asks "Should we be laughing?" In a subtle Call-Back , Darlene replies "Inappropriate laughter is what she taught us."
- The season 2 episode "An Officer and a Gentleman" was conceived backstage as a contingency plan for dealing with Barr's attitude and whether the rest of the cast could carry the show if she ever got the boot. As the numerous examples above detail, it eventually came to just that.
- Late-series episodes like "White Sheep of the Family" and "Becky Howser, MD" that focus on Darlene and Becky's prospects and how Roseanne and Dan are hopeful and proud of the better futures their kids might have become extremely depressing after the revival states all their dreams utterly failed, both their marriages ended, and they wound up trapped in Lanford actually worse off than their parents.
- In "One For The Road", Becky and a friend get drunk from her parents' liquor cabinet and she ultimately tries to downplay the situation, insisting that she's not an alcoholic. Come The Conners, not only is Becky an alcoholic but she also drifts in and out of her denial about it.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In the pilot, Darlene brags to Dan that she struck out a boy named Mark Winstead. Dan starts teasing Darlene about Mark being her boyfriend and starts singing the ‘Sitting in a Tree’ song. He ends it with the lyric ‘then comes Marky in a baby carriage’. Cut to the revival and Darlene has a son named Mark.
  - If one were to take Roseanne’s confessions at the end of the series finale at face value, Darlene would indeed end up with a boyfriend (husband?) named Mark.
- Roseanne has lost a winning lottery ticket with a connection to the number one-hundred and eight.
- In one episode, Roseanne is posing for a sexy photograph for Dan for their anniversary. As she's having second thoughts, she says, "What if the negatives get out, I'll never be President." Roseanne Barr actually did run for President in 2012.
- In some early episodes, DJ is a Creepy Child who destroys his sisters' Barbie dolls. Laurie Metcalf, who plays Aunt Jackie, would go to be the voice of Andy's mom in Toy Story, which features a character who tortures toys.
- In Season 4's "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", Becky says to Darlene "Why don't you just run away?" Could also be Foreshadowing, as Becky does that exact thing a few episodes later.
- In season five, after Dan gets into a fight and the rumor mill gets going, a friend says to him, "We heard you beat up three guys at a bowling alley!"
- In season seven, a young child confesses that he doesn't think DJ likes him, to which Roseanne replies, "That's because you're very boring." She's saying this to a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, now widely recognized as one of the best actors of his generation.
- In "Kansas City, Here We Come," a subplot involved Becky having a horrible boss who calls her a bad name. Trying to avoid saying it in front of DJ, we get this exchange.
  DJ: The "B" word?
  Darlene: Worse.
  DJ: The "F" word?
  Dan: Deej!
  DJ: The "L" word?
  Darlene: What's the "L" word?
  DJ: I don't know, what's the "F" word?
  - Not only did a popular show called The L Word debut years later, but DJ's asking this question to Darlene, whose actress, Sara Gilbert, actually came out as "the L word" later in her life.
- In "Dances with Darlene," Darlene backs out of going to a school dance after her family starts treating her differently when she dresses up for it. Roseanne tells her that there are better ways of getting back at her than that, giving the example that "Becky's boyfriend might have a little brother!" Sure enough, not long after, Darlene begins dating and eventually marries Mark's little brother, David.
- Johnny Galecki starred with a Parsons (Estelle) on this show, and would later star with another Parsons (Jim) on The Big Bang Theory.
- "The Last Thursday in November" and its relentless mocking of white people offended by "political correctness" is downright ironic in light of the circumstances behind the revival's cancellation.
- "Tooth or Consequences" has Bob Odenkirk play a suit-clad conman named Jim^note.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: In "December Bride", Roseanne comments that she was unable to locate a cake topper with two grooms for the wedding of Leon and his partner, Scott.^note These days, not only are there a variety of readily available toppers for gays and lesbians, but biracial LGBTQ couples as well.
Narm: Watching the beginning of the tornado episode with them treating a tornado watch with gallows humor and panic can be rather ludicrous to viewers from Tornado Alley. (For the record, a tornado watch, basically means "Conditions are right for a tornado; stay tuned, one might form. A tornado warning means "A tornado has been spotted, you can panic now" - though it's just as common to go out and watch.) They are vindicated soon after though...
Never Live It Down: The series finale, which revealed that the entire series was a book written by Roseanne and that she had changed numerous details about her life. The revelation that Dan actually did die of his heart attack left many surprised fans completely blindsided. In fact, the entire ninth season may count owning to its jarring Genre Shift, which many saw as too far removed from the blue collar tales upon which the whole series had been built.
- And then the revival retconned that away.
Retroactive Recognition:
- George Clooney is the factory foreman and dating Jackie in Season 1!
  - He would later be replaced by DA Arthur Branch.
- The Chief from Grey's Anatomy is one of Dan's poker buddies!
- The Chief from Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego removes Darlene's appendix.
- David became a brilliant physicist with a quirky roommate.
- Looks like Becky 2 made good on her plan to go to school to become a doctor... or in another universe, a horse surgeon.
- Glenn Quinn is Mark.
- A young Joseph Gordon-Levitt appears occasionally as an acquaintance of DJ's.
- Becky’s principal, as well as Darlene’s OB/GYN became a police Captain.
- Creator Matt Williams later went on to co-create Home Improvement along with fellow writers David McFadzean and Carmen Finestra.
- Joss Whedon wrote five episodes.
- Amy Sherman wrote thirteen episodes, as well as serving as executive story editor. Ms. Sherman is best known as creator and executive producer of Gilmore Girls.
- Danny Jacobson wrote twelve episodes, as well as serving as supervising producer. Jacobson is best known as co-creator and executive producer of Mad About You.
- Chuck Lorre also wrote twelve episodes, as well as serving as co-executive producer.
- Norm Macdonald wrote two episodes.
- April Winchell wrote three episodes.
- Mark Rosewater wrote two episodes. Rosewater later went on to be head of R&D for Magic: The Gathering.
- Bruce Helford was an executive producer. Helford is best known as creator and executive producer of Anger Management and co-creator and executive producer of The Norm Show, The Drew Carey Show, and The George Lopez Show.
  - Penelope Spheeris wrote "Fender Bender." She's best known to punk and metal fans as the director of The Decline of Western Civiliation Parts 1 and 2, and as the director of Wayne's World.
- Carrie Fisher wrote the episode "Arsenic and Old Mom."
- Leonardo DiCaprio was an extra in "Home Ec".
- Tobey Maguire appeared in "Valentine's Day".
- Alyson Hannigan was one of Becky’s friends in “Like a New Job”.
- Steven Hyde time travelled and dated Darlene for a few episodes.
- John Popper wrote and performed the theme song, and appeared as an actor once or twice.
The Scrappy: Becky was considered a rather insufferable character due to her It's All About Me plus Never My Fault attitude, and getting into extreme and unnecessary Wangst frequently throughout the show.
Seasonal Rot: The ninth season. The show had been in decline for some years before then, and opinions vary on when it started, but the last season is generally seen as being by far the worst (the dramatic Genre Shift did not help matters). The controversial and shocking revelation that the whole show was Roseanne's book, and the last season represented Roseanne's decline as an author after the death of her husband rescued it for some people, though for others, it was just the icing on the cake. It's rather telling the revival made it into Canon Discontinuity.
Strawman Has a Point: In "Troubles with the Rubbles," Roseanne's neighbor becomes angry with her after her son runs off to a construction site with DJ while staying at Roseanne's house and badly cuts his arm, while Rosanne never knew where they were. While the neighbor had been condescending and snotty to Rosanne throughout the episode and the show seems to want us to sympathize with Roseanne when she tells her off for being overprotective and judgmental, the neighbor is perfectly justified in calling Roseanne irresponsible for allowing two eight year-olds to wander around town unsupervised when the adult in charge has no idea where they are, particularly when her own child was injured due to Roseanne's negligence.
- In another episode, the mother of one of Becky's friends shows up at the house to blast Dan and Roseanne after her daughter came home drunk (Becky and her friend helped themselves to alcohol from the liquor cabinet). The woman is made out to be a bitch for her completely justified anger at Dan and Roseanne for failing to supervise the kids and for not wanting her daughter to be friends with Becky anymore.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Even being the bratty teenage daughters throughout much of the series (until both became Older and Wiser), Becky and Darlene get hit with this. The former is so obsessed with her love of Mark, she feels nothing for either her father losing his job and the family more or less being broke but super-pissy because Mark now has no job and has to move away.
- Also, even as Roseanne being a know-it-all jerk sometimes (although at the time, she was much nicer and relatable), her attitude in "No Talking" towards her was rather snotty and to everyone in the family, not just her mother.
- Even as a Goth who hated everything, Darlene also had her nasty moments and came off as being difficult just to be difficult, mainly when she cheated on David, who basically worshipped the ground she walked on. Yet in "Snoop Davey Dave" when he reveals that she did drugs in the past, we're supposed to sympathize with her as David has no right to be angry/bitter about their breakup.
Values Dissonance:
- In one episode, Dan describes Roseanne as a person who can only deal with pain by spreading it; while ostensibly to humanize her, it sounds uncomfortably like how one would rationalize/justify the behavior of an emotionally abusive spouse and parent.
- Jokes about David being Ambiguously Gay due to his kind and sensitive nature haven’t aged very well for two reasons. One is that being gay is no longer viewed negatively like it was at the time, and the other is that the expectation for men to be powerful and assertive to prove their manhood is seen as a toxic expectation in the current day rather than the common belief it was at the time.
- While Jackie and Booker’s flirting and eventual dating in season one was completely mutual and innocuous, a boss engaging in this kind of behaviour with a subordinate would certainly raise a few questions in today’s world. Booker does comment that it could be construed as inappropriate on the basis of all work-place relationships being a conflict of interest, but the imbalance of power is never mentioned.
Values Resonance: The realistic focus on the usual challenges and struggles of a working-class American family still remain relevant 20+ years later. Roseanne Barr even said during an interview sometime after the 2008 recession that they're even more relevant than they were back then.
- "Let's Call It Quits" and "Chicken Hearts" has Roseanne being pushed around and leaving two really awful jobs has gained more relevance in light of the Great Resignation.
- In one episode, a politician promises tax breaks to coporations in order incentivize new businesses and hire workers..at non-union wages..."And for that privilege, we get to pay their taxes." Roseanne points out how unfair this policy is when the economy is struggling. This becomes quite prescient in the Trump era and beyond, with a shrinking middle class.
Vindicated by History: As bad as the ninth season is, it's redeemed slightly by the revelation that it was all a fantasy Roseanne escaped into following Dan's death.
The Woobie: David, especially once we meet his mother.

The Revival

Alas, Poor Scrappy: Non-fatal example. While Harris is pretty much no one's favorite character, even her staunchest haters were horrified to see her physically abused by Roseanne shoving her head into the sink and spraying her with water, especially since the original series had established Roseanne as vehemently opposed to using corporal punishment to discipline her kids.
Anvilicious: The reboot comes out of the gate with Barr's pro-Trump views in the writing, and delivers them with all the subtlety of his spray-tan. However, it is balanced out by Jackie's Democratic Clinton-support, and both sides aren't portrayed as necessarily better or worse than the other, and the episode is about the two estranged sisters ultimately looking for a common ground and reconciling.
- On the other hand, Dan and Roseanne's tolerant attitude toward their cross-dressing grandson reflects Barr's progressive tendencies, which had also been on display in the original.
Author's Saving Throw:
- The controversial Sudden Downer Ending of the original series finale is RetConned in the first episode of the revival as just part of Roseanne's book, the implication being that all of Season 9, finale included, is officially Canon Discontinuity.
- After the show's extremely polarizing take on Trump-era politics, it was announced shortly after the show was renewed that the second season would be staying away from political material this time. Unfortunately for them, a hostile Twitter post by Barr herself was enough for ABC to cancel the show before the second season ever started production.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- The episode "Go Cubs", where Roseanne meets her Muslim neighbor and defends her from an Islamophobic cashier, as the racist tweet about Valerie Jarett that got the revival canned was Islamphobic itself.
- Dan's abrupt offscreen death in the finale of the original show in light of John Goodman's confirmation that Roseanne would be killed off in The Conners.
Hilarious in Hindsight: After the show got cancelled, one suggestion was that the show should be retooled without Roseanne Barr, called "Dan" (having John Goodman hang out with Jeff Bridges) and gradually transition into a The Big Lebowski TV series. The former is pretty much what The Conners is.
- The Season Five episode "Good Girls Bad Girls" has a strange boy hitting on Darlene, and she tells him "Hold it, Ponyboy." As of The Conners, Darlene's boyfriend is played by Jay R. Ferguson...who played Ponyboy in 1990's short-lived The Outsiders series.
Overshadowed by Controversy: The revival's success was overshadowed by the title star's outspoken support of Donald Trump. A racist tweet aimed at a former Obama advisor was enough for ABC to end the show. Before the day was out, even the original series had been dropped from its reruns on TV Land, Paramount Network, CMT, and Hulu due to how toxic her name had become (they've come back to all but Hulu as of January 2019).
The Scrappy: It's hard to find anyone who has a positive thing to say about Harris, owing to her consistent bitchiness and lack of charming sarcastic wit her mother had at her age. She seems to have been written solely as critique of modern youth culture and lax parenting methods.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: We're obviously supposed to see her as a whiny brat, but many people find Harris's reaction to her situation pretty understandable. This increased after Roseanne's solution was to shove her head under cold water.
Win Back the Crowd: Due to the fact that the show hadn't been on the air in twenty years and was mirroring Roseanne's real-life support of Donald Trump, the belief was that the reboot would not succeed. However, ratings for the first episode exceeded expectations, and the show brought in 18.2 million total viewers, which was 10% higher than the ratings for the original finale in 1997. Even more impressive was that this happened in both a television and a political landscape that are way more fractured than they were when the show went off the air. Then subverted when it started badly hemorrhaging viewers after the first few episodes, who apparently had their curiosity sated and didn't feel the need to keep watching. Rather embarrassingly, the show had already been renewed for another season on the strength of those opening ratings. Barr posting a racist tweet comparing a former Obama advisor to an ape was the last straw for ABC and led to them cancelling the show.
- A more straightforward example; the much-maligned ninth season and its infamous finale were effectively written out of the series almost entirely, thus allowing for the return of Dan and restoring the series to its more familiar dynamic. This decision remained in place when The Conners eventually succeeded the original series.

YMMV / Roseanne

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