'Roseanne' revival may be happening

[up_the_hampipe]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/roseanne-revival-works-998493

I've got an idea for one of the episodes. What if Dan comes home and Roseanne is washing her big ass in the sink? But it's not Roseanne, it's Roseanne's twin sister.

[JoeyBananaduck]

Hmmm. From a writing perspective, making a viable continuity line from what went before (particularly if we're counting the last season as canon - and why shouldn't we besides because it was awful) to 2017 would be akin to mopping up the toilets of The Bull Inn, Swansea the morning after Balti Bob's Vindaloo night *Special Promo, Pints of Guinness and shots of Jager £1*.

[Brundle-Fly]

I loved this show at the time but like everyone else, thought it was balls as soon as Goodman left and then Lumley & Saunders rocking up killed it stone dead. And as for that season finale. Jesus.

[Twed]

Did Goodman leave? I thought he just died, but was in the last season anyway as part of the fantasy Roseanne was writing to keep herself sane.

[Brundle-Fly]

Did Goodman leave? I thought he just died, but was in the last season anyway as part of the fantasy Roseanne was writing to keep herself sane.

To be honest, I can't really remember. He wasn't in it as much but that's by the by, it just got so self-indulgent by the end.

[Twed]

It was most definitely terrible. For Goodman to be in the revival they'll have to erase the entire season from the canon, surely.

[Brundle-Fly]

It was most definitely terrible. For Goodman to be in the revival they'll have to erase the entire season from the canon, surely.

That would be nice. A revival seems a bit desperate when she so adamantly shut all those doors of reunion opportunity twenty years ago.  I'd love to see the Connors in a Trump world.

[Twed]

Also Roseanne Barr has gone MENTAL.

[up_the_hampipe]

Also Roseanne Barr has gone MENTAL.

She was always mental. Twitter wasn't around in the 90s.

[Rev]

I'd say she's got more normal - she was properly mental in the 90s.

And no, Goodman never really left the series, he was in it throughout, but took a break for a bit late on due to a scheduling conflict.

For my money it's the greatest sitcom of all time, despite everything - 'everything' generally being whenever Roseanne herself had too much creative control.  I'd be happy with them just scratching the final series from the record, as they did reality-bending stuff anyway throughout the original run.  It can't be worse than the final series.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'd say she's got more normal - she was properly mental in the 90s.

Yeah, she's a lot better than she was. Mrs SMBH loves her because Roseanne was a childhood favourite, and she has a lot of sympathy for people who suffer from mental illnesses (which is just as well!), and so I know a lot about her. Which includes watching quite a lot of her 2011 reality tv show Roseanne's Nuts, where she comes across as eccentric but you can kind of understand why she is the way that she is. That said I checked out her twitter feed recently and she was massively against "Crooked Hillary" and said before the election she'd prefer Trump to become president, and it has a lot of bizarre anti-Obama stuff on it too so I have to say I've some concerns about her views.

[McChesney Duntz]

All I hope is that she takes up Norm MacDonald's offer to write on the new series.

[Maurice Yeatman]

John Goodman's out and Russell Crowe's in, apparently.

   

[Kelvin]

Did Goodman leave?

Goodman wanted out, but agreed to feature in a small number of episodes, while he pursued film roles elsewhere. He appears in the first few episodes, to resolve a cliffhanger set up at the end of the previous season, them pops in and out for the first third of the series. Eventually Dan decides to go and visit his mother in the care home where she's staying, then returns towards the end of the series, to reveal he's met another woman and is thinking of leaving Roseanne. They make up, and the series concludes with the revelation that he died of his heart attack in the previous season. 

I thought he just died, but was in the last season anyway as part of the fantasy Roseanne was writing to keep herself sane.

One of the worst things about the finale, is that it doesn't just retcon the last season (post Dan's death), but actually reveals that core elements of the entire show run were false. A couple of particularly egregious examples:

Darlene dated Mark, Becky dated David, but Roseanne (the character) thought they were better suited the other way around, so switched who dated who.

Jackie was really gay, buy Roseanne "always saw her with a man", so made her sister straight. I imagine this was to reflect Barr's own brother being gay, but it still seems an intensely off colour thing to reveal in that way at the end.

For my money it's the greatest sitcom of all time, despite everything - 'everything' generally being whenever Roseanne herself had too much creative control.

It's an absolutely wonderful show, and comfortably one of my all time favourites. At it's peak, its also the best dramatic sitcom I've ever seen. Goodman has to be the best dramatic actor to ever star in a mainstream comedy, and his temper tantrums and occasional breakdowns are on another level, even during the latter series when he's visibly on, or needing, drugs half of the time. 

I don't agree that Roseanne having creative control was inherently the problem, though. The show is absolutely fantastic during the years where she ran it with her then husband, Tom Arnold. It was only later on, as she became more complacent, yet more hungry for ratings, that the show rapidly declined into a shadow of it's former glory. She also fired more and more writers, which probably resulted in them hiring more hacks. Yes, she's directly responsible for the show's appalling latter years, but she's also responsible for overseeing it's heights.

All that said, a reunion show would be terrible, not least because, even if she's less mad now than she was, Barr still remains absolutely fucking bonkers, in the least interesting way.

[Kelvin]

Yeah, she's a lot better than she was. Mrs SMBH loves her because Roseanne was a childhood favourite, and she has a lot of sympathy for people who suffer from mental illnesses (which is just as well!), and so I know a lot about her. Which includes watching quite a lot of her 2011 reality tv show Roseanne's Nuts, where she comes across as eccentric but you can kind of understand why she is the way that she is. That said I checked out her twitter feed recently and she was massively against "Crooked Hillary" and said before the election she'd prefer Trump to become president, and it has a lot of bizarre anti-Obama stuff on it too so I have to say I've some concerns about her views.

She also talked about hating Trump prior to the election. I suspect she's wildly inconsistent on this stuff, although she's also into all that ridiculous pizzagate nonsense, so may have been backing Trump purely as the "not a paedophile" candidate. I know for a fact she's a very vocal socialist, even now, so if she was ever actively "for" Trump it would have been for anti-establishment reasons, I imagine.   

[hewantstolurkatad]

I watched all of Roseanne for the first time a few months back ( I think I even done a thread about why ) and thought it was mostly really good. Think it's hard to argue Roseanne herself wasn't always a bit nuts and the inevitable decline near the end was just exacerbated by some of the shit she done (wasn't the final season basically a retaliation for ABC turning down her US version of absolutely fabulous?)

A reunion seems like a terrible idea to me but I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility of it actually striking a chord with the current economic landscape.

[up_the_hampipe]

So it's officially happening. New Roseanne with the original cast in 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDMhiFGls48

That promo just features old clips, but yeah, there you go.

[Jittlebags]

What if Dan comes home and Roseanne is washing her big ass in the sink?

If she drops a pickled onion in (or a pastrami on rye, or whatever the fuckers eat in the sink there), fishes it out, and eats it, then I'm in.

[Glebe]

Is this going to be an actual episode? Is Dan going to be a ghost?

[poodlefaker]

I never got the "loose meat sandwich" thing. Mince in a bun? Mate.

[Gurke and Hare]

I never got the "loose meat sandwich" thing. Mince in a bun? Mate.

Mince in a thickly buttered roll with brown sauce sounds great.

[Kelvin]

Is this going to be an actual episode? Is Dan going to be a ghost?

It's a short run of episodes, apparently. 8, I think.