“Roseanne’s” final season:
A STAR IMPLODES

No sitcom celebrity has ever been given this
much leeway by a network to self-destruct

By JOYCE MILLMAN Illustration by Zach Trenholm last May, "Roseanne" ended its season with a living room-trashing fight between Roseanne and Dan Conner (played by Roseanne and John Goodman) that left broken knick-knacks, spilled snacks and an upended coffee table in its wake. In the episode's final shot, the camera zoomed in on the Conners' TV set, its glass cracked by a hurled statue of Godzilla. The smashed TV was supposed to be a metaphor for the Conners' marital rift. But it ended up signifying a lot more. Like The Who ending concerts by obliterating their instruments, "Roseanne's" cracked TV screen symbolizes its Godzilla-mighty star's severing of any remaining ties to traditional sitcom form. This season, which is reportedly the show's last, "Roseanne" has played less like a sitcom than a string of under-written and seemingly under-rehearsed skits featuring lots of fantasy sequences (Roseanne as Barbara Eden in "I Dream of Jeannie"! Roseanne posing for Playboy!) and a strange array of guest stars (Jim "Ernest" Varney! Marlo Thomas! Arianna Huffington!) who often crack up in the middle of scenes like Harvey Korman and Tim Conway used to do on "The Carol Burnett Show." As for Roseanne's regular TV family, sometimes Dan and daughter Becky and baby Jerry are there and sometimes they're, like, not. Sister Jackie (the wonderful Laurie Metcalf) has turned from a poignant bundle of neuroses into a mugging, bumbling Barney Fife sidekick. The show is imploding before our eyes. Of course, Roseanne, the producer/writer/director/star, and "Roseanne," the show, have been messing with content all along (or at least since Roseanne wrestled control of the show from its ABC-appointed producers soon after its 1988 debut). And that's what made "Roseanne" the most important family sitcom of its time. Within the framework of your basic TV comedy, Roseanne gave us something that was not basic at all — a sitcom about a family that really could have lived next door. The Conners were fat and loud, their bills were past due, their daughters smoked dope and eloped, the extended family was as dysfunctional as it gets. Their dilemmas went beyond the neatly wrapped up, sugary morality plays of "Family Ties" or "The Cosby Show." On "Roseanne," when a female character worried that maybe she was pregnant, you could damn well bet that she really was pregnant and this wasn't going to be Sitcom Plot No. 75, with some "Ooh, the pregnancy test was wrong!" crap. "Roseanne" stood out among sitcoms because it refused to insult viewers' intelligence. "Roseanne" was, however, more than happy to insult viewers' delicate sensibilities — Roseanne didn't just push people's buttons, God bless her, she held her thumb there and buzzed away. The show brought blue-collar feminism to prime-time and even now, in its erratic state, continues to focus on the big rocks women keep trying to push up the hill: unexpected pregnancies, the demands of motherhood, the frustration of unrealized dreams, the tangled relationships between mothers and daughters and sisters. Roseanne also used her clout to introduce gay and lesbian TV characters to middle America. She laced her show with pro-choice attitude. Most of all, "Roseanne" had the guts to paint an honest sitcom portrait of working-class Americans. During most of the show's run, the Conners were a paycheck away from disaster and openly contemptuous of corporate America. They defied TV stereotypes of "white trash" (a term Roseanne and Dan often gleefully used to describe themselves), showing a hippie-like open-mindedness, a refined sense of ironic humor. The Conners were too smart for the grunt jobs they were stuck with, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't make it to the next level — they weren't even sure what that level was called anymore. They epitomized the vanishing Americans, the disappearing middle class, going down fast as the safety net is ripped away. Ah, but money changes everything. At the beginning of the current season, Roseanne and Jackie won the lottery. And this development has freed them from the drudgery of traditional sitcom form to flit around the country getting into all sorts of surreal mischief. The post-lottery episodes resemble half-hour versions of the often hilarious tags that run behind the show's closing credits (one memorable tag was filmed like an episode of "Cops," another had the two actresses who share the role of daughter Becky re-enacting the old "Patty Duke Show" opening). So, this season, we've had a show built around Roseanne's channel-surfing daydreams of being Jeannie, Mary Richards and That Girl, and one in which she fantasizes she's on "Jerry Springer" talking about how the lottery changed her life. Another episode had Roseanne and assorted other Conners visiting a wealthy repressed society family and teaching them that Emotions are Good. Roseanne is an admirer of the over-the-top British comedy "Absolutely Fabulous" (she produced a script for an American version, but it was reportedly deemed too racy for the networks) and you can see that show's freewheeling, non-linear influence all over this season's "Roseanne"; the nouveau riche Roseanne and Jackie even partied with the "AbFab" girls, substance-abusing "fashion-mag slags" Patsy and Edina (Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders), in "Roseanne's" Halloween episode. But, so far, "Roseanne" hasn't been able to match the razor-sharp wit and sustained lunacy of "AbFab." The laughs aren't there. Instead, Roseanne has been even more in-your-face than usual with her womanpower/ Death To The Diet And Fashion Industry agenda. Watching her, you want to whimper, "Don't hurt me — I'm a fan!" No sitcom star has ever been given this much leeway to self-destruct by a network. You watch, half in morbid fascination, half in awe of her nerve. Slipping the bonds of multi-million-dollar sitcom serfdom, erasing the line between herself and her character, Roseanne/Roseanne Conner has become less like a person than a living cartoon — Empowered Woman. And some of the Empowered Woman stuff has been cool. On the fat-is-a-feminist-issue side, she keeps offering glimpses of her un-Kate Mosslike self in various stages of undress — a bathing suit in a Miss Universe fantasy, a deeply dipped backless gown a la Fran Drescher's infamous "butt-cleavage" outfit from this year's Emmy ceremony. You can almost hear her cackling "Deal with it!" And the November 19 action hero spoof "Roseambo" was vintage Roseanne anarcho-feminist satire. In the episode, Roseanne was taken hostage aboard an Amtrak train by a group of misogynistic terrorists who believed that women should be veiled and silent. Using such weapons as a well-aimed tampon and a set of hot rollers, Roseanne dispensed with the terrorists one by one, spouting female-friendly parodies of Schwarzennegerian tag lines: "Avon calling!" she shrieked after kicking down a door. The "Roseambo" episode was the first (and so far only) new season episode to deliver the big laughs — and look like a finished show, not a dress rehearsal. For better and worse, it was a long way from those Very Special Episodes about Roseanne's recovered memories of childhood abuse and Dan's heart attack. The structure, the boundaries, the limits are gone and if the show's recent Nielsen ratings are any indication, so are the viewers. Roseanne is out of control. And from the looks of it, that's where she wants to be.

Roseanne: Love her or hate her? Discuss, in Table Talk.