Roseanne

"Roseanne" is a milestone in TV sitcoms. It shows a lower class family realistically and the problems and issues they face. It dealt with (for the time) risky issues that you didn't see on TV often. I still remember quite a stir when two separate episodes dealt with one of the girls "becoming" a woman and the son of the family discovering how to "pleasure" himself. Also it had episodes dealing with abortion, gay characters, alcoholism, drug abuse, premarital sex, workplace and sexual harassment, how to deal with elderly parents... None of the characters were squeaky clean or perfect...they all had huge flaws and faults. But all of this was done with realism, great acting and a strong (if sometimes caustic) sense of humor. You saw the characters grow and change over the course of the 9 years it was on the air. It totally fell apart during the last season (egos were going out of control on the set) and ended horribly but the previous eight seasons were just fantastic. And the Halloween episodes were among the funniest ever done for a TV series. Just great all around. If you've never seen it, catch an episode or two--it's worth the effort.

When this show first debuted in 1988, I thought it was one of the worst shows to debut on TV back then. The kids were bratty, Roseanne's voice was aggravating-the list seemed to go on. A few years later, when the reruns started airing in the late afternoon, I really started appreciating the show for what it was: A family just trying to get by, and solve the problems that come up in everyday life. Along with this, Roseanne's witty "one-liners", and "off-the-cuff" humour, really made this show special. This show dissappeared for a couple of years here in Toronto, but it has been picked up again and is still as funny as it was when it first aired.

A highly original take on the tired genre of the American family sitcom. At the time, the gold standard was "The Cosby Show" and "Family Ties", both upper-middle class and completely unrealistic. "Roseanne" was the first high-quality sitcom since the Honeymooners to focus on working-class families. This show took the idea of the 80s family show and stood it on its ear.

It took risks and chances that other shows were afraid to take, discussing subjects like homosexuality, child abuse, alcoholism, and teenage sexuality not just as one-show ideas, but as recurring themes. And though it wasn't successful all of the time, most of the time it was hilarious. I'd rather see a show take tremendous risks and fail than take the safe course and receive middling success.

The last couple of seasons were less than stellar, and the very last season was terrible and marked the first time that Roseanne hadn't been in the top 10 (or top 20) in the ratings consistently since it started. But overall, it had the guts to change its situation every once in a while (Roseanne had, I think, ten separate jobs in nine years) to shake things up and add new elements.

Roseanne was one of the funniest, most original programs on television for a long time. I recommend avoiding the last few years of the show; they're so maudlin and idiotic that they seem more like a (boring/stupid/insulting--take your pick!)parody of themselves than anything else. The actors sleepwalk through their lines as if they're fully aware of how stupid and poorly-written they are, and the last episode is ironically one of the WORST half-hours on TV! (Sort of mirrors the downfall of the Simpsons, really--why can't these wonderful shows just quit while they're ahead?) For a long time, Roseanne was a sweet and realistic portrayal of many American families--fraught with strife and struggle but loving all the same.

A terrifically intense dramedy which features possibly the most realistic familial unit in TV sitcoms, not to mention a marriage between Roseanne and Dan Connor (Roseanne Barr and John Goodman) which is pin-point exact, warm and right--and feels lived in. All non-believers have to do is watch a few episodes: the timing is deceptively shaggy yet perfect, the characters believable, their predicaments immediate. Fully realized by Roseanne herself, who never let her real-life chronicles get in the way of the show. The writing is continually sharp, with dialogue that frequently evokes whole lives, such as in the episode where Roseanne sits in a coffee house after hours talking to a tired waitress who confides about her late husband, "I miss him. It's so quiet. Sometimes I'll turn a football game on, turn it up real loud...and I hate sports. But what'ya gonna do?" Tender moments like this, seemingly throwaway bits, elude some viewers looking for a fast laughter fix; "Roseanne" was always something more, and it aches in laughter and in life's woes.