Before John Goodman had to suffer through Roseanne’s cooking, he was chomping down on Campbell’s Chunky Soup. Wasn’t the 28-year-old a real beefcake in that 1981 commercial?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1p5GX1qhyg
We are less than two months away from the upfronts and CBS has decided to announce that two of their new dramas will be back for a second season. David Boreanaz’s SEAL Team and Shemar Moore’s SWAT join Young Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory on the schedule for next season.
While both shows have done well, they have done not great. I thought it was going to be an either or, so that makes me wonder what older show will be cancelled to make room for new shows. Will it be Scorpion? Criminal Minds? MacGyver, Madam Secretary? All have had sharp declines this season, so I think at least one of them is in trouble. Maybe more? Then there is Hawaii Five-0 that is in trouble because Alex O’Loughlin said that he was not planning on renewing his contract after this season ended. Therefore, that is a wait and see game because they cannot do the show without him. My gut thinks that they are going to lose an hour of comedy on Monday night. They just do not know how to promote sitcoms, so unless Chuck Lorre is behind it, it is destined to fail.
What do you think of these pickups? What CBS shows are ready to say goodbye to already?
When I heard they were bringing Roseanne back, I was excited. I loved the show back then and I still enjoy watching it in syndication ever now and again. Then I watched three screeners for the revival and I got sad. I thought if Will & Grace could make us feel like no time has passed than Roseanne would do the same exact thing. I was wrong.
What made the original version so great, is that it played for all of America. It was not really political but took on a lot of hot topics that everyone deals with, in their lives. This version is so political and Hollywood, I do not think the fans are going to like it. We are watching scripted television to get away from politics, not to have it shoved down our throats. For example tonight at 8p, Roseanne and Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) have not talked to each other since the election, so they are still fighting over all of the old issues that we have already gotten over.
The 8:30p episode deals with another political issue, Darlene’s son Mark (Sara Gilbert) likes to dress as a girl, but he identifies a boy. Roseanne and Dan (John Goodman) are afraid he will be picked on at his new school and they are right.
Then they deal with the 2 Beckys by having Lecy Goranson playing the oldest Conner child and Sarah Chalke as the upper-class Hipster who wants to hire Becky to be her surrogate. Roseanne and Dan do not agree with her choice and try everything in their power to stop it. The last time around, they would have been all for it.
You get my point. Let’s talk about the Conners now. Roseanne and Dan are getting older and with that comes medical issues. What comes with that? Expensive pills they cannot afford. Roseanne takes some painkillers and that means we will have an episode, where she is addicted to them. These are issues that many Americans can relate to, but it is just so in your face.
I will get to the kids in a second, but I want to talk about what I think is happening off camera. I do not think that Roseanne is as big of a part in the writers’ room as she was the first go around. This time around it feels like it is being written more by Gilbert and Whitney Cummings and that is a bad thing. Gilbert has no sense of humor and Cummings writes one-liners. Therefore, every line feels forced. It does not flow and you barely find yourself laughing with it like you used to. Yes, I am going to say it, I would rather watch the lottery year all over again than the revival. I feel better now.
Gilbert has become the lead, and she is as flat as her chest. She sucks the life out of every scene she is in. We just never noticed it before because she was younger and a better actress back then. Darlene has just moved home from Chicago with her two kids. Harris (Emma Kenney) is a mopey teenager and the spitting image of her TV mom. We do not know what to make of her because they have not given her anything to do just yet. Mark (Ames McNamara) is named for Mark, Becky’s husband, but there is no mention of what happened to him. Becky is childless, single and working as a waitress in a Mexican restaurant. The sisters still fight like when they were teens and it is not cute like it was then. Poor DJ (Michael Fishman) is barely on the show with his mixed-race daughter. His wife is still off fighting overseas and just returned home from service 3 months ago. Their fourth kid is mentioned but never seen. While Jackie’s son is neither mentioned nor seen. And then there is Jackie, the new writers do not know how to write for her. She has no endearing qualities and just comes off as annoying. Metcalfe is so much better than this.
Almost all of them are better than this. Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men), Joss Whedon (Buffy and the Vampire Slayer), Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Kevin Abbott (Reba) and Danny Zuker (Modern Family) all survived working as writers on the original show and look at the shows they created. No one is going to launch a career from this show.
So long review short, this is not the Roseanne we knew and loved. That makes me sad because I really thought it was going to be great and it is dud. I wish I could have given this is a glowing recommendation but I cannot and will not even try.
I would like to add, this review is not all negative because Roseanne is a Trump supporter. It is negative because I think they lost all the heart and soul that the original has and made it extremely political. It used to be the story about a struggling family making the best with what was handed them. Now, it is all about making a political statement. We have social media and the news do that, we do not need this show to do it for us too. If they wanted to do it, then do it like they did before with clever jokes and not just have the characters get on their soapbox in every scene. Get off your high horse, who do they think they are? Roy Moore.
We know that fried chicken and waffles surprisingly taste good together. What happens if you swap out the chicken for a lobster tail, would it still be as yummy? That is what Red Lobster is trying to find out with their new Crispy Lobster and Waffles.
Their Cheddar Bay waffles are served with a crispy buttermilk battered split Maine lobster tail and topped with sweet maple syrup and it just sounds so wrong. We know that lobster goes great with butter sauce, but maple syrup? No! That is against nature.
Now having said that, why do I so want to try it? Somehow mixing foods that should not go together actually like that sounds kind of good to me. Then I try it, and I am like there is a reason why no one ever mixed them together like that before now.
Conan O’Brien decided to treat his employee to a nice bonus and Jordan Schlansky could not even care that his boss is flying them to Italy in a few hours. If they are going to do a whole hour of television in a foreign country, they have to plan for it. That planning is going to go as bad as you would expect it to go.
But there was one huge milestone that finally happened after 23 long years together. The very stoic Jordan Schlansky finally broke out in laughter. That’s right, after nearly two decades, he finally cracked a smile. What got him to do it? A simple staring contest which he lost by smiling like the Joker.
That comment spurred something in Schlansky and he went off on Conan’s face in return. Well, he would not say what he did not like about it until the TBS host threatened that they were not going to Italy anymore. Therefore, what does he not like about that mug? Conan’s skin is dry. Something, we the viewer, don’t see, but now we will be on the lookout for it.
Another thing we need to be on a lookout for is their special episode of Conan Without Borders where they got to Italia on April 11th. I really pray it is a backdoor pilot for a TBS comedy with these men as the stars. I cannot remember the last time I laughed so hard because I was doing spit takes and I was not even drinking anything at the time. They are just so hilarious together. Don’t you just love the way they play with off of each other?
