The Conners Weirdly Used a Christmas Episode to Joke About Roseanne's Death

While The Conners rarely referenced RoseaneIn the spinoff finale, the spinoff's Season 4 Christmas episode featured a shockingly dark joke about the off-screen event. The Conners Season 7 will see the spinoff come to an end, but this is far from the first conclusion to the sitcom franchise. The Conners originally started life as Roseane in 1988, and the comedy about a working-class family and its sardonic titular matriarch proved to be a runaway hit until its disastrous final season in 1997. Roseane Season 9 was so hated that it was retconned in the 2017 Season 10 revival, which did well with viewers.

Although it reached the audience, RoseaneThe revival of was quickly canceled when star Roseanne Barr was fired over racist tweets. The show was then remade in The Connersa series that would focus on Roseanne's grieving family following her off-screen death from an opioid overdose. The Conners'large cast of characters meant the spinoff could effectively continue Roseanethe story without Roseanne. Ditching a show's title character is a complicated achievement for any series, and how Roseane made TV history throughout the 90s, this was particularly difficult for The Conners. The spinoff took an unusual approach to this question.

The Conners Season 4 Christmas Episode Mocked Roseanne's Death

Dan's mattress was discussed frivolously by his children

In The Conners In the first season, the series was morbidly obsessed with Roseanne's death. The premiere followed the family's real-time reactions to the tragedy, making The Conners arguably the darkest and most brutal network sitcom pilot of all time. However, as the spinoff continued and began to gain its own identity, the show quickly tried to forget its former title character. If the first season was strangely obsessed with re-litigating the circumstances of Roseanne's death, the third season was more interested in pretending that the Conner family never had another member. This became a problem in season 4.

Although The ConnersIn the first Christmas episode, Jackie accused Louise of trying to replace her sister when she started dating Dan in season 2, this understandable fear was soon swept under the rug for good. When the couple got married in season 4 no one mentioned Roseanne at Louise and Dan's weddingdespite Jackie officiating the event. To make things stranger, the following Christmas outing, episode 8, “Garage Sale, Phone Failure, and College Cheating,” featured a totally dark joke that poked fun at Roseanne's death. When Dan became concerned about getting rid of his furniture, his children intervened.

The Conners Season 4 grappled with Roseanne's legacy

The Roseanne spinoff bounced between silence and bad jokes

Becky, Darlene and DJ played rock, paper, scissors to get the mattress they “were conceived and Roseanne died in,” and the brutality of that line shows 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 their children were mocking her death just a few weeks later as they debated whether to throw out her belongings. Although The Conners'The Thanksgiving episode saw Jackie and Darlene address Roseanne's impact on their relationship, the spinoff rarely got that balance right.

The Conners mentioning Roseanne often felt too sentimental or too harshas evidenced by her children not even flinching at the prospect of sleeping on the mattress she died on. Characters either treated Roseanne like a saintly figure, which didn't fit at all with her pointed and abrasive personality during her life, or they 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 problem that kept the episode from being a classic party-fest ride was The Conners it's exactly this tonal inconsistency in his references to Roseanne.

Roseanne's best joke from The Conners Season 4 Christmas episode still worked

Darlene hinted that her mother was in hell

Happily, The Conners Season 4's Christmas episode featured a perfect Roseanne joke. When the family finally decided that they would burn their furniture, Dan noted that it would end in “Paradise.” This led Becky to add that if the smoke went down to Hell, Roseanne would finally get her furniture back. As controversial as The Conners The joke of Season 4's “Roseanne in Hell” was that this dark joke was fitting, given the show's sardonic sense of humor. The Conners has always been refreshingly unsentimental in its depiction of dysfunctional families, as was the original Roseane.

Roseane'The often relentless sense of humor allowed family comedies to move beyond the sugar-coated, idealized stories of Full house and The Cosby Show for something bolder and more imperfect. Next to Married… with children, Roseane paved the way for programs like Malcolm in the middle and The Simpsons to deconstruct sentimental family comedy 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, while the kids joking about her overdose seemed strangely insensitive and shocking 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 impoverished belief

While The Conners Season 4's Christmas episode had a good joke, Dan burning the antique 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 the spendthrift Dan would burn down an entire set of furniture that he could sell, just to feel like he was starting over with Louise. While the end of The Conners will likely be more upbeat than this bittersweet, six-episode episode.”Farewell event”should learn from this.

The Conners is at its best when, like its predecessor Roseanethe show explores the realities of working-class life in America. This inevitably means tackling issues like addiction, overdoses, poverty, discrimination, unemployment, and unplanned pregnancies, and the show's status as a sitcom means the heroes are likely to poke fun at these serious issues. However, the characters in The Conners They must not lose empathy for each other. Treating events Roseanethe end of a joke led to The Conners Season 4's Christmas joke feels oddly dark and impersonal, depriving the comedy of its usual family focus.

Source: TV line