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The Conners Season 5 Spoilers, News & Update: Of Missing Minds and Missing Fries Explains Why The Show Appeared To Forget Roseanne


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The Conners Season 5 effectively atones for seeming to disregard Roseanne's legacy by directly addressing the attempts to sideline the character's death on the show.

Impact of Roseanne Barr's Dismissal

The Conners' decision to kill off Roseanne preserved the show's dedication to tackling real-life themes that most family sitcoms avoid.

For Roseanne, transitioning to The Conners was not simple. After Roseanne's successful Season 10 revival, the family sitcom's star, Roseanne Barr, was dismissed by the network for racist remarks, leaving the show without its star. In contrast to the death of John Goodman's Dan in Roseanne Season 9, The Conners kept Roseanne's death in the vague.

When The Conners disclosed that she died of an opioid overdose offscreen, the character's death was handled as sensitively as possible.

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The Conners featured Roseanne's family going through the stages of grief as they rebuilt their lives in the season that followed, and the show was as solid as any version of Roseanne without Roseanne could have been.

Roseanne's death was handled properly in Season 1, but she was rarely discussed in Seasons 2—4 since mentioning the character gave the series a somber, dark tone.

The show's problems began when The Conners Season 2 began to ignore Roseanne totally.

The Conners Season 5 Makes Up For Sidelining Roseanne

As the next generation of the Conner family began to take center stage between Seasons 2 and 4, The Conners shifted its attention more to Mark, Harris, and Mary. But as the spinoff went on, it became increasingly clear that Roseanne's legacy was being ignored, and The Conners Season 5 finally addressed this by bringing Bev back.

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When Jackie told a dementia-stricken Bev that Roseanne had passed away in The Conners Season 5, Episode 8, Of Missing Minds and Missing Fries, this tragic scene effectively acknowledged how much the show had tried to forget about this loss. Jackie and Roseanne's mother had always been cruel to both of her daughters.

When Jackie told Bev that Roseanne had died, the character sobbed as if hearing the news for the first time, allowing The Conners to confess tacitly that the program had been avoiding the subject.

Despite the fact that The Conners Season 5 was already getting better at referencing Roseanne more frequently, this scene allowed both Bev and Jackie to express their sadness more openly than the program has allowed since Season 1.

Overcoming an Unexpected Loss

To continue as a series in the early years, The Conners had to get past Roseanne's death. It quickly went too far, though, and completely forgot about her.

The tragedy of Bev losing her memory allowed The Conners Season 5 to acknowledge Roseanne's legacy, accept that the sitcom did attempt to disregard her, and also provide the character a chance to deal with the sadness they are still experiencing over her passing.

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