Has the New Roseanne Completely Forgotten the Old Roseanne ?

During its original run, Roseanne was a lighting rod for a multitude of reasons—not the least of which was Roseanne Conner’s parenting style. She was loud, crass, and more permissive than a traditional sitcom parent, a far cry from the squeaky-clean, 1950s sensibilities the series frequently mocked. One thing she never made a habit of, though, was spanking her children. And her reasoning was extremely well established: as the characters make clear through multiple seasons, Roseanne and her sister Jackie were abused by their father. The one time Roseanne was ever shown spanking one of her children, her outburst ended with a tearful apology—which is why the central plot of Tuesday’s installment of the rebooted series felt misguided at best, and like a forced expression of conservative talking points at worst. It’s further evidence that despite any protestations to the contrary, the new Roseanne has a distinct ideology—which is why it’s struck such a chord with right-leaning viewers.

In the third episode of the rebooted series, Roseanne tangles with her granddaughter Harris, a brat who completely disrespects everyone else in the house. Harris’s mother, Darlene, is hesitant to discipline her daughter, which Roseanne—now a canonical conservative—finds absurd.

“Your generation made everything so P.C.,” Roseanne gripes to Darlene. She’s incensed that Gen X parents won’t spank their kids; instead, she says, “you tell them to go over there and think about what they did wrong. You know what they’re thinking? I can’t believe this loser isn’t spanking me.”

“Let me tell you something,” Roseanne’s husband, Dan, adds. “I wrote a poem for my dad. Then he hit me with a broom. And then he said, ‘This broom will do more for you than any poem.’ And that was the greatest generation.” Eventually, Roseanne shoves her granddaughter’s head in the sink and sprays her with the faucet to teach her a lesson, while Darlene realizes that perhaps she’s given her daughter more leeway than she should have. Throughout all of this, nobody acknowledges the repeated trauma Roseanne and Jackie faced at the hands of their father, who used to discipline them with a belt. And no one mentions the fact that, at least as far as viewers of the original series saw, Roseanne never spanked any of her children, either—save for one incident that ended with an emotional apology from Roseanne to D.J.

It came in Season 6, Episode 11, “The Driver’s Seat,” in which D.J. stole the family car and drove it into a ditch. Wracked with stress from work, Roseanne snaps, yelling at D.J. before violently spanking him. As D.J. flees to his room, Roseanne is visibly shaken as Dan, who knows about Roseanne and Jackie’s history, tries to assure her that what she just did was “not that big a deal.”

“You’re not helping, Dan,” Jackie says. “You didn’t grow up in our house. . . She was out of control; it was just like Dad!” Later on, she says, “These patterns repeat.”

Roseanne agrees. Once she gathers herself, she sits at the table with D.J. and apologizes: “I’m really sorry that I hit you, D.J. I mean, it was totally wrong. I never should have done that, and I am so mad at myself for doing it.” While it was clear that the series understood the historical difference between spanking and the kind of abuse Roseanne and Jackie endured, it also establishes that the relationship between those two actions is too close for Roseanne—who tearfully vows to D.J. that she will never hit him again, “no matter what you do.”

This history makes Roseanne and Dan’s unambiguous support for corporal punishment in the revival more than a little jarring. Even Darlene’s response to her parents’ attitude ignores their shared past, instead taking aim at Dan’s father’s general craziness—something we never really saw during his appearances on the original series. It’s possible that Roseanne and Dan never revealed details of her trauma to Darlene—but Jackie, who sits silently at the table throughout the discussion about Harris, certainly knew about it.

Concentrating so closely on this discrepancy might seem like nitpicking; traditional sitcoms are rife with bad continuity, after all, and the new Roseanne has already demonstrated a willingness to ignore established facts if they get in the way of the story the show wants to tell. But as discussion about the new Roseanne’s place in the TV landscape continues—and as viewers continue to debate how “political” it really is—this omission actually matters a great deal.

The revived Roseanne’s premiere saw sky-high ratings, and the series continued to hold strong in its second week. (Donald Trump even called Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on the premiere’s ratings victory.) Some have attributed its success to the show’s willingness to openly court conservative viewers by showing them a family they can relate to—though the show’s creative team has repeatedly said that the show’s partisan nature has been overstated by the media. Showrunner Bruce Helford has also asked viewers not to conflate Barr’s politics with the show’s aim as a whole.

But Tuesday’s discussion about parental discipline came with politically charged introduction from Barr. As Jen Chaney points out in Vulture, the show’s star introduced the episode on Twitter by saying this: “the next episode shows Harris (my tv granddaughter) calling me a stupid old hillbilly-watch how I handle her and her very liberal mother!” Based on that, it seems like this episode wasn’t meant to show Dan and Roseanne clashing with Darlene about the best way to discipline kids. Instead, it was a more cut-and-dry plot designed to show why Roseanne’s side is right—and why liberal parents aren’t.

If the new series were dedicated to keeping alive the spirit of the old Roseanne, one would think the episode would have played out differently—or at least with a little more nuance. As Chaney wrote, the episode seemed like an unambiguous retort to the “snowflakes” currently raising little snowflakes of their own. “So far, this is a show in which Roseanne never has to admit when she’s wrong, but everybody else does,” Chaney writes, “which makes it harder to believe the show’s end goal is to bridge the distances between decent people who disagree.” It’s that lopsided dynamic that makes it difficult to buy arguments that the new Roseanne isn’t as political or as conservative as it was originally perceived to be. Roseanne Barr and Roseanne Conner might not be the same person, but at the very least, it’s clear that Roseanne-the-character has become a vehicle for conservative talking points—even when they don’t precisely match up to the person she once was. And now, apparently, even Jackie can’t keep her honest.

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