Friday, April 28, 2017

Roseanne is baaaack...

Maybe. It isn't officially official yet. But apparently ABC (the original's airers) and Netflix (pro poachers) are vying for a reboot of Roseanne, the 90s classic blue-collar sitcom.

I don't know if you guys remember this show as fondly as I do. It's kind of our Happy Days - the daughter, Darlene (Sarah Gilbert, so funny) was as close to the Fonzie of my childhood as anyone. The definition of unaffected cool, the non-traditional girl who still couples with a cute boyfriend in the program's course. Thinking back, characters like her, and Buttercup on Powerpuff Girls, and Daria of Daria all had the same anti-establishment, tough girl, gender ambiguous thing going on. That was a character type that I think really emerged in TV in the 90s, following Reagan and the reactionary culture of the 80s.

Watching clips of Darlene in her flannels... can I really say that type wasn't an influencer on me? That having the most popular sitcom in the country feature these outspoken, boyish, dgaf females didn't make me feel more comfortable going to school in boy's basketball shorts, rejecting anything pink - my 4th grade rebellion against the gender binary?

I hope this show comes back, and with John Goodman and Roseanne attached (and she herself, such a fascinating figure in gender politics, having been dealt so much derision and disrespect from men throughout her career), it'll no doubt be worth watching. But I think for me, it'll always live in the 90s/early 2000s, giving me (along with Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Full House) my weekly dose of American Family. I wasn't any blue collar Chicago kid, but I connected with this family, and so far as formative sitcoms go, I can appreciate it - plus Roseanne Barr is the homie.





Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. Dean MApril 29, 2017 at 3:12 PM

    Really cool to see that, at 64, Roseanne is able to defy traditional barriers facing older women in Hollywood. As we've seen with Fuller House and Bill Nye's new show, Netflix is all about 90s nostalgia, so this is obviously a play on that as well. Of course one wonders if the reboot would be possible on a traditional network given Roseanne's age and political outspokenness. Although I couldn't get through more than 5 minutes of Fuller House (and I grew up on Full House), it's nice to see Netflix bringing Barr's comedic brilliance back to the spotlight!

    -Dean
    (supplementary post #7)

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 3, 2017 at 3:11 AM

    Wow that's crazy. I had not heard that this show was looking at a reboot. I must admit I never really enjoyed the show--the family was a bit too far from my own and I just couldn't attach myself to any of the characters. But for the sake of gender roles, especially in terms of the character Darlene, it is super cool to see how she and the family managed to survive and thrive so long on a channel like ABC. It really goes to show the shifting of culture in American society from the 80s to the 90s. Hopefully they stick to the model and uniqueness that made them so strong in the 90s.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)