Roseanne Barr’s return to the top of the ratings was a familiar feeling for the star. But it was also shockingly brief. America in 2018, it turns out, is a very different place to America in 1988. In some ways, at least. In other ways, not much has changed for many blue-collar families, many of whom have been described as President Trump as the “forgotten people.”
The 10th season of “Roseanne” will be its last following Barr’s racist comment[1] on Twitter TWTR, +0.75%[2] directed at Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to Barack Obama. The show-ending controversy in some ways highlights how much has changed — about America and Barr herself alike — since the sitcom first hit the airwaves.
The original series centered on a working-class family living in the fictional town of Lanford, Ill. When the show premiered, Roseanne (played by Roseanne Barr) was a mother of three who worked in a plastics factory. Her husband Dan (John Goodman) made his living as a drywall contractor.
During its run, “Roseanne” focused on the trials and tribulations faced by families in Middle America — it wasn’t uncommon for episodes to center on having the electricity cut[3] or scrimping to pay a child’s college tuition. “Here was a post-Reaganite economic critique with belly laughs — trickle-down sitcommery,” Ken Tucker, then a television critic for the magazine Entertainment Weekly, wrote in a review [4]of the show’s seventh season.
Three decades after the seminal sitcom, “Roseanne,” first appeared on ABC DIS, +0.38%[5] on Oct. 18, 1988 and became a voice of working-class Americans for a generation, it returned[6] to become the No. 1 show on ABC. The March 27 season premiere was a hit, with 18.2 million viewers tuning in[7], and the revival’s full run got such good ratings ABC planned a second season[8].
There is a line — and Roseanne Barr crossed it Tuesday. The network withdrew support for the star with ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey calling her tweet[9] ”abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent” with ABC’s values.
That second season will never happen now, leaving the original cast — Barr, Goodman, Sara Gilbert (Darlene), Michael Fishman (D.J.), Lecy Goranson (Becky) and Laurie Metcalf (Jackie) —...