My Thoughts on the 1988-1997 TV Show Roseanne

I love TV shows, although only about 40% of what I watch is from the last two decades. My top six favorite shows are Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, The Big Bang Theory, Supergirl, Roseanne, and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. There’s a more complete list of shows I like under the “Movies” part of my profile. This is going to be about Roseanne.

I’ll offer a brief summary of the show and highlight some aspects of it but you can also read that wikipedia page.

This show ran from late 1988 until early 1997 and had ten seasons. I don’t think I’ve seen a single episode of the 10th season and I have probably only seen half of the 9th season. I probably have seen 80% of the episodes, an average of 2.5 times and on average about 15 years ago (I watched most of it as it was originally broadcast and watched a lot of re-runs between 2000 and 2010). I recently got a ridiculously good deal on the entire series on DVD and am going to go through it episode-by-episode.

It’s a hilarious 30 minute (with commercials) sitcom about a working-class liberal-progressive white family in what I think is a large town something like an hour away from Chicago (my brief, non-philosophical definition of liberal is someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Senator Elizabeth Warren; more details are here).

Some of the things that I like about it:

1) It’s progressive economically. There is pro-union stuff and although they get rich from the lottery in the 9th season, they use some of their wealth to help their former co-workers at a factory BUY the factory. There are a few seasons where Dan or Roseanne are small business-owners, but they have practically zero employees and treat them well.

2) It’s anti-racist. Of the very minor characters, about 1/10 are people of color, which kind of sucks, but there’s good anti-racist material. There’s one episode where they address the genocide of American Indians and slavery. Although there’s a small bit that’s pro-prisons, one of the 1-3 episodes that touch on that is also pro-affirmative action. There’s one episode where the Conners confront racism in their family and themselves.

3) It’s anti-homophobic. In an average episode, of the main, recurring and guest characters, about 6-8% are gay (one isn’t identified as gay until towards the end of the series).

4) The recurring character Mark Healy was played by an Irish actor, although he used an American accent because the character is American.

I have placed the Roseanne collection with the other DVDs that I am watching and will be doing reviews of the political issues raised in each episode. I won’t mention those episodes that have nothing political in them.