After a twenty-one-year hiatus, Roseanne, the groundbreaking sitcom about the blue-collar Conner family, returns to ABC on March 27. Early reports indicated that the show was a direct response to Donald Trump’s election, and with Roseanne Barr outspoken offscreen about her desire to Make America Great Again, some assumed it would be a piece of prime-time propaganda.
What she’s done instead is remake the show as a kind of 21st-century All in the Family. As Richard Nixon did then, Trump looms large—Roseanne proudly admits to voting for him in the premiere—but the reboot is hardly one-note, and it’s every bit as smart and nuanced in addressing hot-button issues this time around as it was in its original run.
In the first episode alone, the Conners tackle gender fluidity and female reproductive rights, with some of the best lines aimed at Barr herself. “I didn’t mean to imply you were some right-wing jackass,” Roseanne’s liberal sister, Jackie (played brilliantly by Academy Award nominee Laurie Metcalf), tells her by way of apology. “I should have tried to understand why you voted the crazy way you did.”
Getty ImagesOver a multidecade career, Barr has used her brazen alter ego to vocalize the anxieties of her viewers and tip their sacred cows. “Man, she can cut through the grab and get to the truth of what we all way to say,” says Barr’s TV husband, John Goodman, who is returning along with Sara Gilbert as their daughter Darlene, a newly unemployed single mother living with her parents, and the rest of the original cast.
The series—once again filmed in front of a live audience—deftly captures the frustrations that are both a cause and a by-product of our extreme cultural and political polarization. “Nothing real or truthful makes its way to TV unless you ae smart and know how to sneak it in,” Barr once wrote, and the comedian appears to be sticking to that mantra. Roseanne still reflects us: loud, brash, and pissed-off, but with a beating heart.
