The previous season ended with the revelation that what we had been seeing was a fiction written by the character Roseanne Conner to deal with what had really happened, most notably that Dan had died. So, Justin Kirkland speculates (at Esquire), maybe this season is another fiction, written by one of the characters to process the "true story" events that will be revealed in some later episode. Kirkland gets us started with 3 ideas:
1. "Jerry, orphaned and estranged from his family after Roseanne’s death, is writing his own book."
2. "Roseanne has been institutionalized after failing to escape the mania from writing a parallel universe."
3. "This is an extended nightmare from Aunt Jackie, who is in a coma."
You get the idea, and I'll bet some of you can come up with better examples. Kirkland didn't even get around to imagining the fictional story of all the main characters. I'm sure there's a reason to see the current season as a work of fiction written by Dan or Darlene or Becky. Well, we haven't seen enough of the season to really spin this out, but if you watch tonight, maybe you'll be inspired.
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Perhaps they will all wake up in Bob Hartlye's bed, with the cast of Will and Grace and a big orgy where Aunt Jackie and Grace are wearing pussy hats and burning effigies of Trump on the party side of the mattress.
The last few seasons of the original show were a delusion of the second Becky, who in "real life" is actually Dr. Elliot Reid.
It will turn out to be an alternate reality create by Rosanne to deal with the trauma of Hillary! winning.
They could pull a Blanchot, and arrange things so that two stories communicate illicitly, and break the story frame.
It would be quite something if the Roseanne universe were in some fashion to be linked up to the Tommy Westphall Universe, the product of speculation about the ending of St. Elsewhere in 1988.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Westphall
St. Elsewhere permanently broke the fourth wall, and the roof too. Now every TV series takes place in some Asperger's snow globe.
It's a television program. Specifically, a situation comedy. It's all MAKE-BELIEVE!
It's all just Pamela's dream.
Heh. Liberals. Reality is never a good answer for them. There MUST be some alternate reason their desired outcome did not happen.
e.g. Hillary Clinton is NOT President
Thanks for reminding me of Tommy Westphall Universe.
The final episode of the previous season of "Roseanne" was a few years before the Tommy Westphall Universe hypothesis.
But I think this meta thing of backing away from the ostensible story and seeing a weird "real" story was popular in fiction in the 80s and early 90s to the point of being a cliché.
It was also, earlier, the standard approach to plot on "Twilight Zone" (in things like this). That is to say, it's a science fiction move. So you just take a science fiction mind and apply it to some non-science fiction thing like "St. Elsewhere."
There's also the way the second Bob Newhart show ended by returning Bob to the original show.
Is this the bargaining or denial phase for those who can’t abide 25M people watching a pro-Trump lead character?
Po-Mo hipster BS aside, I highly doubt that Roseanne will continue to play it straight as pro-Trump. Its a shrewd ratings ploy, but fundamentally she and her writers think that any blue collar family that voted for Trump are suckers, who need to be lead to see the error of their ways. The gender-confused grandson will show the way back to the All In the Family/Colbert truth and light. Kareem has it right.
The seventh season of Dallas was all a dream because there were plot elements that couldn't be resolved in any other way. The ending episode of Newhart's show was a riff on this conceit.
Does it matter? The show is already fictional.
In any case, let's suppose a charade is revealed, and that the show turns anti-Trump- the audience then vanishes.
I don't discount the possibility that Barr is anti-Trump- she is clearly smart enough to see the wide and profitable opening of running such a show in the present political environment, and if she has done this, I have to applaud her for doing so- it shows more business sense than you see in almost anyone in Hollywood these days.
I have to applaud her for doing so- it shows more business sense than you see in almost anyone in Hollywood these days.
I wouldn't be surprised to see more of the same. As somebody once said, Imitation is the Sincerest form of Television.
Bob Hartlye = Bob Hartley
The reality is that the pro-Trump stance was used as an attention getting device and it worked. Now it will go back to being a conventional liberal sitcom. Witness the fact that one of the main storylines is the normalizing of deviant behavior.
Darlene's nine year old is portrayed as a cross dresser and it is approved of and supported by everyone in a teachable moment. The only token opposition is from Dan and it is half hearted and weak as he almost immediately accepts the fact that it is a-ok for his grandson to wear a dress to school.
The real deviancy to the Hollywood crowd was the two or three pro-Trump lines and not the contribution to the abuse of a minor.
The pro-Trump veneer is a head fake. It seems to be working. The deplorables are so desperate to get a modicum of approval that they will make this show a hit.
It's too late to put the horse back into the barn. Roseanne has normalized the President, and with him, all his voters.
Dan Conner will wake up, realize it was all a dream, and suggest to Roseanne that she wear more sweaters.
If I were making it a story in the imagination of a character, I would make that character one that played a very minor part in the original series - maybe in one or two episodes. The reveal wouldn't come until several seasons in, but I would have them show up in background shots (in a Hitchcock sort of way) through out the shows up until then. Then people would want to watch the reruns to try and spot this character.
I wouldn't be surprised to see more of the same. As somebody once said, Imitation is the Sincerest form of Television.
From what I can tell the message they're getting is "revive old sitcoms" not "write for the deplorables".
I have no idea how the old series ended. I think the show went on far its due date back when it was on. I think it starts off now, where most people simply remember it, as in the first few seasons when the children were school aged.
I had no idea that 'Jerry' even existed. I thought I watched this show, but I guess I didn't.
The new alternate-reality version will be that this season was the delusion of one of the deplorable kids going through an opioid overdose.
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