WhileThe Connersrarely referencedRoseanne’s ending, the spinoff’s season 4 Christmas episode featured a shockingly dark joke about the off-screen event.The Connersseason 7will see the spinoff come to an end, but this is far from the first conclusion for the sitcom franchise.The Connersoriginally began life asRoseanneback in 1988, and the sitcom about a working-class family and their sardonic titular matriarch proved a huge hit until its disastrous final season in 1997.Roseanneseason 9 was so hated that it was retconned in 2017’s season 10 revival, which fared well with viewers.
The Conners’ Banned Christmas Episode Makes 1 Roseanne Story Harder To Understand
The Conners season 5’s Christmas episode was banned for unrelated reasons, but the missing out makes one piece of Roseanne canon deeply confusing.
Although a ratings hit,Roseanne’s revival was swiftly canceled when star Roseanne Barr was fired over racist tweets. The show was then retooled intoThe Conners, a series that would focus on Roseanne’s grieving family in the aftermath of her off-screen death from an opioid overdose.The Conners’ large cast of charactersmeant the spinoff could effectively continueRoseanne’s story without Roseanne. Dropping a show’s title character is a tricky achievement for any series, and sinceRoseannemade TV history throughout the ‘90s, this was particularly difficult forThe Conners. The spinoff took an unusual approach to this issue.
The Conners Season 4’s Christmas Episode Mocked Roseanne’s Death
Dan’s Mattress Was Glibly Discussed By His Children
InThe Connersseason 1, the series was morbidly obsessed with Roseanne’s death. The premiere followed the family’s real-time reactions to the tragedy, makingThe Connersarguably the most notably bleak and brutal network sitcom pilot of all time. However, as the spinoff continued and began to gain an identity of its own, the show quickly tried to forget about its former title character. If season 1 was oddly obsessed with re-litigating the circumstances of Roseanne’s death, season 3 was more interested in pretending that the Conner family never had another member. This became a problem in season 4.
“Yard Sale, Phone Fail, And a College Betrayal,” featured a wildly dark joke that mocked Roseanne’s death.
AlthoughThe Conners’ first Christmas episode saw Jackieaccuse Louise of trying to replace her sister when she began dating Dan in season 2, this understandable fear was soon swept under the rug for good. By the time the pair married in season 4,no one even mentioned Roseanne at Louise and Dan’s wedding, despite Jackie officiating the event. To make matters weirder, the following Christmas outing, episode 8, “Yard Sale, Phone Fail, And a College Betrayal,” featured a wildly dark joke that mocked Roseanne’s death. When Dan worried about getting rid of his furniture, his children intervened.
The Conners Season 4 Struggled With Roseanne’s Legacy
Roseanne’s Spinoff Jumped Between Silence and Tasteless Gags
Becky, Darlene, and DJ played rock paper scissors to get the mattress that they “Were conceived on and Roseanne died on,” and the glib brutality of this line shows just how much the spinoff struggled to get the right tone when mentioning its former heroine. Dan and Louise’s wedding didn’t even involve any mention of Roseanne, but her kids were mocking her death only a few weeks later while discussing whether to throw out her belongings. AlthoughThe Conners’ Thanksgiving episodesaw Jackie and Darlene address Roseanne’s impact on their relationship, the spinoff rarely got this balance right.
Ames McNamara
Mark Conner-Healy
The Connersmentioning Roseanne often felt too sentimental or way too harsh, as evidenced by her children not even flinching at the prospect of sleeping on the mattress she died on. The characters either treated Roseanne as a sainted figure, which didn’t align at all with her spiky, abrasive personality during her life, or talked about her as if her death was a joke to them. While “Yard Sale, Phone Fail, And a College Betrayal,” had its moments, the issue holding the episode back from being a classic festive outing ofThe Connersis exactly this tonal inconsistency in its Roseanne references.
The Conners Season 4’s Christmas Episode’s Best Roseanne Gag Still Worked
Darlene Implied Her Mother Was In Hell
Fortunately,The Connersseason 4’s Christmas episode did feature one perfect joke about Roseanne.When the family eventually decided that they would burn their furniture, Dan noted that it would end up in “Heaven.” This prompted Becky to add that if that smoke went down to Hell, then Roseanne would at last have her furniture back. As controversial asThe Connersseason 4’s “Roseanne in Hell” gagwas, this dark punchline was fitting given the show’s sardonic sense of humor.The Connerswas always bracingly unsentimental in its depiction of dysfunctional families, as was the originalRoseanne.
Roseanne’s often unsparing sense of humor allowed family sitcoms to transition from the idealized, saccharine stories ofFull HouseandThe Cosby Showto something edgier and more imperfect. AlongsideMarried… With Children,Roseannepaved the way for shows likeMalcolm in the MiddleandThe Simpsonsto deconstruct schmaltzy family sitcom tropes throughout the ‘90s and ‘00s. As such, Becky declaring that Roseanne was in Hell was a perfect way to prove that she inherited her mother’s sharp tongue, whereas the kids joking about her overdose just seemed uncharacteristically callous and jarring in an earlier scene from the same episode.
Dan’s Christmas Story Never Made Sense For The Conners Season 4
The Conners Burning Their Furniture Beggared Belief
WhileThe Connersseason 4’s Christmas episode got a good gag out of the twist,Dan burning the old furniture he shared with Roseanne never felt believable. Famously, the Conners are a working-class family living paycheck to paycheck. As such, there was no way that the spendthrift Dan would burn an entire suite of furniture that he could sell, solely so that he felt like he was making a fresh start with Louise. Whilethe ending ofThe Connersis likely to be more upbeat than this bittersweet episode, the six-episode “Farewell event” should learn from it.
The characters ofThe Connersshouldn’t lose empathy for each other.
The Connersis at its best when, like its predecessorRoseanne, the show is exploring the realities of working-class life in America. This inevitably means encountering issues like addiction, overdose, poverty, discrimination, unemployment, and unplanned pregnancy, and the show’s status as a sitcom means the heroes are likely to mock these serious issues. However, the characters ofThe Connersshouldn’t lose empathy for each other. Treating the events ofRoseanne’s ending as a joke led toThe Connersseason 4’s Christmas joke feeling oddly bleak and impersonal, depriving the sitcom of its usual family focus.
According toTVLine,The Connersseason 7’s “Six-episode farewell event” will air in March 2025.
