lawtalkin'guy, Nancy was one of the original owners of the restaurant. I believe it was Nancy, Jackie, Roseanne, and Mrs. Harris. Then, didn't Mrs. Harris sell her share to Leon?

I have the same fuzzy memory as you about them giving Leon and Nancy their shares, so maybe we're right!

I'm just catching the rich spa-visit episodes (I didn't see the last season originally) and holy jesus this is bad. They're not even regular sitcom bad, they're... aggressively bad.

I don't even know what she thought she was doing - weird, b and c and d-list guest stars (excepting the Mo Gaffney-level actual talent), who can't deliver a line, aren't even particularly recognizable to the general public and add nothing. It's like she was just showing off, but to no one, because who was really impressed she could get Moon Unit? Todd Oldham appears in one as, brilliantly, a designer. Did that many people know who he was? Would they have recognized that it was really him? Did they CARE? I don't get it at all.

They have no plot. Roseanne goes to a spa and it's not fun and then she's Xena? Wha...? People judged her for being overweight so she hit them a lot? It just seems as if she wrote this stuff herself, way medicated, and everyone was afraid to contradict her. Gah.

I think Roseanne's ninth season was heavily influenced by "Absolutely Fabulous." AbFab was huge about that time (1994, 1995?) and centered around two gaudy, wealthy women who shopped and hob-nobbed with celebrities. Roseanne bought the American rights to the show (thank God it was never made) and featured them in a ninth season episode. I think with the bogus lottery scenario, she finally had her chance to live out her own version of AbFab, with Jackie as her Patsy.

Of course, what's sad is that Roseanne bore a much stronger resemblance to spoiled, self-indulgent Edina Monsoon than Jennifer Saunders, who created, wrote, and acted the role.

I see what you're saying, but I think AbFab had a point, even if it was just irony. There was also pathos behind the baudy schtick, and I think Roseanne just totally lacked any level of self-awareness at that point, or irony, and was just thinking this would somehow make some sort of statement. Rich spa people say she's fat so she pushes them over.

I don't know what she thought she was doing in that she couldn't suddenly become AbFab, and she kept the core of the show and just went way, way off the deep end imo.

Exactly... which is why I love AbFab but hate Roseanne's ninth season. Jennifer Saunders may have been aware of her characters' shortcomings, but Roseanne was too mesmerized by their "fabulousness."

Copious amounts of word to that. I watched an episode last night at about 3AM which I had never seen before - it was just unbearable. And I too thought she was channelling AbFab, and with disastrous results. The PMS/Dan's surprise party is on Oxygen right now, and the dropoff in not only quality but the soul of the show is massive. The last season of "Roseanne" had no relation to every season prior.

At the time these episodes were first being viewed, Todd was a regular guest on "MTV's House of Style." He had a segment called "Todd Time" where he'd show you how to do Martha-esque things like convert a pair of old jeans into a demin mini skirt. And this was back in the mid-nineties when the cult of the designer was still in full swing. So, yes, the audience would have recognized him. Would they have cared? Probably not. Certainly not enough to ignore how shitty that episode was.

The thing that really bugged me was that Todd Oldham was actually one of those rare designers who prided himself on dressing women of all sizes. Queen Latifah, for instance, was regularly dressed by Todd. So to feature him in a cameo as himself giving Roseanne shit about her weight was just wrong on so many levels.

As best I can remember about the shares of the restaraunt, the following is right.

Bev selling her shares to Leon was a great move, and an episode that's been on a lot lately.

And then:


The competitor episode was indeed a stand alone eppy. It was during Roseanne's pregnancy, well before the millions, and she climbed on top the stove, into the heating hood above it to throw fish guts up there so the smell would close them down, and she gets stuck because she's so monstrosly fat with the baby and all. Yeah, it was real funny.
Well, while she's up there, she sees a raccoon come down the hood (or something), and in the end (I think it's over the credits, like them winning the lottery) and we learn that vermin in the kitchen is what gets them closed down. Or maybe that's revealed in the next episode. But I remember that's the plot.



It was in one of the final season episodes, either Nancy or Leon makes a remark to Roseanne that the world needs her to get the hell out of bed (could be the episode where Roseanne's locked in her room after finding out about Dan's affair) because that person and the other one are running the restaraunt by themselves and they need her help to stop thinking only about herself. They even suggest having Roseanne sell to them, and she balks at that point in time.

But by the end of the season, Jackie and Roseanne have "sold" their shares of the restaurant to Nancy and Leon so that those two could have something that was theirs. I dont' remember if they flat out gave them their shares, but yes, lawtalking guy is right, Leon and Nancy become the sole owners at season's end in some form or other. I don't remember Roseanne and Jackie, as millionaires, really selling their shares, unless it was for a dollar, but point is, they gave up the joint.

So, yes, the Lunchbox was still around in the final season. In fact, the Thanksgiving episode, in which Grandma Harris comes out, ends with Roseanne, Jackie, Darlenne and I believe Nancy, giving away Thanksgiving dinner at the diner.


I really hate the episode where Dan supposedly was a member of a rock band, played by Blues Traveler. Didn't they redo the song for the final season?

This ep was on Oxygen today! And as funny as the person who posted about it made it sound, it was HI-larious as delivered by John Goodman! Totally random, and you could see Laurie Metcalf trying to stifle a giggle in the next shot.

Eewww that reminds me of another thing I hated about the last few seasons was the theme song change. It was like a cue for me to change the channel, I hear that new intro and flip right away. Didn't they redo it a couple times, without words and with words? Bah, just thinking about it makes me super mad for some reason.

The final season had words.
The eight season had Photo-morphing around the table.
The final season had words and photo morphing in phot frames, with each character placed over a drawing of a room or a section of the house that represents them:
Dan was the fireplace with his football, as he was a high school football star.
Jackie is over the washer and dryer.
Darlene is the couch.
I forget what DJ is over.
And Sarah Chalke's Becky is over the stove, as her first episode was the one where she wanted to cook Thanksgiving dinner for everyone.
It was a smart opening, but no, they should not have changed it at all. Seeing the fourth kitchen wall, with the window and the magical entrance to the basement in the kitchen that magically moved to the service porch was what I liked best about the opening.

I wonder if the words were always there or if they were written to the music, eight years after the show premired.

I'm a Blues Traveler fan, but was I the only one who HATED that friggin' theme song w/words?

I wouldn't have minded the lyrics so much if they hadn't included the brilliant line, "We're gonna last longer... than the greatest wall in China... or that rabbit with the drum!" Wow... that doesn't sound at all lame.

Roseanne's Blues Traveler connection got even worse when John Popper guest starred as Dan's buddy from high school "Stingray" Wilson. Dan gets all bitchy about missing his chance as a rock star and Roseanne gets indignant about it. They attend a concert at the local Lanford jazz club and Dan gets to perform with his old buddy while Roseanne gets to forgive him. Not to mention when Wackie Jackie comes around insinuating that lyrics from his songs were written about her, complete with nutty overacting when quoting the passages.

I also got kind of a horrified thrill when, at the very end of the series finale, a deep voiced singer belted out the theme song slowly and mournfully to let us know that the show really was ending. The whole "rabbit with the drum!" line really seemed more than out of place at that point.

The refrigerator, for his drawings as a kid. Don't ask me why I suddenly remembered that. And the fact that I had to rush to TWoP to post this proves how pathetic my life truly is.

Schroeder, you were absolutely right about the whole diner thing with Leon and Nancy. They played that episode just last night on Nick at Night. I don't think I had ever seen that whole episode, because man did it suck. Jackie was funny though.

That episode was followed up by the one with James Brolin at the country club. He bugs me so much in that episode because it's so obvious he's reading cue cards. Ugh.

Y'all are too funny. I never watched the last season of this show, and when I saw my first ep from that season last week, and heard the words to the theme song, I thought, "Wha happen????" I also wondered whether the words were always there or whether they just made 'em up for that season.

I did love the morphing, though, especially of Lecy to Sarah back to Lecy again.

I caught last night's N@N episode, too, and I was struck by how cartoonish and loudly over-the-top Laurie Metcalf was. She wasn't like that AT ALL through most of the series, which makes me wonder: Did she think the writing sucked so much that she might as well not waste her time trying to inject subtleties into her performance, or did someone *cough*Roseanne*cough* tell her to act that way because it would be funnier? All it did was make me sad.

As far as I can tell, LM's acting started getting more cartoonish after the pot episode. At least in the pot episode, she was supposed to be cartoonish, but afterwards I can only suppose that someone went "Yeah, Laurie? You were so funny when acting high, much funnier than usual. Do that weird screeching voice all the time."

Perhaps Roseanne didn't want a female character with believable flaws. Cuz, y'know, all Womyn are Goddesses and everything.

I have to say, watching the gradual distortion of Jackie's character until she was little more than a buffoon was one of the most painful things about the final seasons of Roseanne.

Laurie Metcalf just became unfunny after the birth of her baby. The only times she was ever funny again was when she played Gilligan and in that 50s episode, where she was supposed to play a cartoonish character.

I finally saw the episodes where Dan confesses to Roseanne that he's an adulterer. Horribly painful to watch, but Roseanne was surprisingly not shrill at all and even Jackie was normal. Looking at it, it's hard to see how in the world the show ever resembled the first 6 seasons.



That doesn't surprise me at all. I remember watching one of those trashy tell-all TV biographies about Roseanne during the mid-90s (it aired around the same time the network idiots bombarded us with multiple Amy Fisher movies). In one of the movies, there's a scene where I believe a network exec has a secret meeting with John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf about getting rid of Roseanne and making them the stars of the show, to which both actors showed interest.

I always felt that Laurie Metcalf's shrill and "wacky" performance toward the end was a reaction to how bad the writing had gotten. Watching her overact is kind of like watching someone running into an old friend who has gotten really ugly and fat. Or a guest at a wedding who hates the bride and the groom but has to attend out of social obligation. You plaster a big smile on your face and gush, gush gush. "Oh...my....God....you look GREAT!!!!!" "That was SUCH a BEAUTIFUL WEDDING!!!!!"

Like, she really couldn't show the audience how much she hated showing up to the set everyday and basically betray a character she worked on for seven + years. So she just hammed it up so no one would see how angry she was.

Ooh, I just saw that on Lifetime about a month or two ago. It practically defined "trashy tell-all TV biographies", and actually managed to show a portrayal of Roseanne that was even more shrill, nasty, ugly, and stomach-ache inducing thanks to the painfulness that is Denny Dillon as Roseanne. I know she's a loudmouth power-hungry bitch, but no one's that two demensional.

Although, the stuff about her as a kid was extremely fasinating, what with the waiting to get hit by cars, mental hospital stays, teenaged pregnacy, and running away.

Was that the one where Roseanne talks to her imaginary identical twin, who is supposed to represent her sub-conscious?

To be fair, Jackie was funny when she played Marcia Clark during the last segment of an episode. I saw it a few weeks ago, and it took me right back to OJ days, and Laurie Metcalf played Marcia so perfectly.

I, too, found the "Dan confesses" episode to be better than expected. I'd heard for years how horrible it was, but I liked how Roseanne underplayed her reaction. The show finally got QUIET again, if only for a few minutes.

I remember when the execs tried to convince the cast to go on with the show without Roseanne. IIRC the news at the time was that John Goodman and LM refused, and were very loyal to Roseanne. Actually, I find that believable b/c this occured in the first season or very soon afterwards, when Roseanne was definitely the heart of the show, and also its draw. She was pretty famous and popular when the show began, and hijacking it away from her seemed like a stupid idea back then. And they were right-- she still had some great years of story in her head/heart back then.

ITA with the AbFab theory. Those painful final episodes really had this tone of "rich trashy people are inherently funny."

I heard the story about the execs going to Goodman and Metcalf in an interview with Roseanne in Vanity Fair justifying why she got rid of Matt Williams, the show's creator. A part of me always believed that the story itself was bullshit. She was just wallowing in self-pity and paranoia.

Didn't Roseanne make a joke about this on the show right after? My memory's fuzzy, but Roseanne was playing another character in a dream/fantasy, and she says something like, "Even worse: Denny Dillon plays ______." The blank space being the name of whoever she was playing at the moment.



[OT]I don't know if a Roseanne movie did that, but I remember that HBO's "Norma Jean and Marilyn" did that with the Marilyn Monroe bio[/OT]

I was watching some last season episodes over winter break, and one that was painful to sit through was when Prince Carlos of Moldavia (Dynasty, anyone?) fell in love with Jackie and came to sweep her away on a date in Manhattan. It was just... not funny. The only genuinely funny moment for me was when all the Conners were in the carriage and Bev begins singing "The Trolley Song."

But then I did see an episode that was about Bev confronting Nana Mary about her past (I was kinda tripping me out since I had just seen Big Fish, which had almost the same plot) and I really liked it. I enjoyed when the show focused on characters other than Roseanne.

Hey—what's up with the new subheading on the thread? I noticed that the NewsRadio thread has an ever-rotating thread subheading too. What gives?

I simply felt that we should get competitive with the NewsRadio thread.

I know there isn't a general consenus on the words to the theme song but I had to say that [small voice] I always liked the lyrics [/sv] but they in no way made up for the monstrosity of the last season. Also, I never even noticed how the pictures were shown in various places the last season. Guess I was too busy singing ''that in each life some rain falls, but you also get some sun'' *hangs head*.

I will be so freaking relieved when the episodes that are on now are over (or burned forever - Im not picky). James Brolin and Roseanne??!!! Puh leeeeeeeeze.

I realize Roseanne was going thru a rough time personally (mostly from self-inflicted wounds) during the last season but I have to wonder when she is sitting up at night watching this freak show on N@N with the rest of us, if she is horribly, inescapably embarrassed. Probably not, but it's a nice idea to dwell on when I watch her completely punk Dan this last miserable season.

Aha! Carry on, then!

I agree that this final season is horrible: the lotto, the prince, Clown Jackie, and of course the whole character of Dan being ripped to shreds... however, I never saw the series finale, and I'm looking forward to seeing it now, just to see for myself how bad it truly is. I've heard horrible things about it, but I've always missed it in past syndication cycles. Now I'm determined to make sure my trusty Tivo finds and captures it.

From the episodes I've seen lately, I have a question. After winning all the money, could Jackie not afford another outfit besides the black zipper jacket with teal stripe, with lighter shade of teal shirt underneath? 'Cause I swear she's wearing that thing in every episode.

The last moments of the last episode I actually found very poignant. If the season hadn't been infected by her real-life personality disorder it would have made much more sense--that episode after episode leading to the finale was more and more surreal in terms of the characters we'd gotten to know over the years. If only she'd kept her shit to herself I might be arguing that it was an absolutely brilliant series ender.

What would have been even more brilliant is if they could have morphed her back into her Season 3 or 4 appearance.

Body prosthetics and wigs? Oh, totally. Had she done that I'd have been the rickshaw driver of her bandwagon.

She could be like: "I never felt I was very beautiful, so I kept imagining myself having all of this plastic surgery, even though as a working-class housewife, I never could have afforded it." She would have regained a LOT of credit in my eyes if she had done that. Which, of course, she never would.

Yesterday on TBS (I think), it was "A Very Special Roseanne" - the one where DJ doesn't want to kiss a girl in the school play because she's black. (Since when do elementary schools make child actors kiss? Anyway...) While a lot of people found it heavy-handed, I actually thought it was rather brave for Roseanne and Dan to depict themselves as possibly and slightly and subconciously biased. And when Roseanne said that bigots are a burden "...to respectable white trash like us!", I couldn't stop laughing for hours.

How much do I love the fact that several different stations here are playing Roseanne. So while one station maybe playing the crappy older episode that I can't tolerate at all, the other stations are playing the earlier epis that are simply brilliant. Recently, got to see one of my fav episode: the one where Roseanne takes Darlene's home ec class to the grocery store-classic!

Not a fan of that episode because it was extremely heavy-handed. But that quote gives me another reason why I couldn't tolerate the show anymore, too many self-deprecating jokes about being "white-trash". I don't know what kind of bong Roseanne was smoking, but the Connors were so not white trash. Their reveling in their ignorance (well, Roseanne and Dan mostly) and sometimes talking in bumpkin dialect in the later years came off more as posing.

Okay, now I'm ticked. It looks like Nickelodeon isn't going to show the final episode. According to the "upcoming episodes" listed on Tivo, and then confirmed over on Nick's website, the episode aired today with Debbie Reynolds as Dan's crazy mama is it for the crappy final season. Then they're going back to early seasons.

Why? Whyeeee? I've been patiently watching the bad lottery episodes, in order to get to the finale that I never saw, and now.... denied! Aaaargh.

Pas de problem.

I have a shameful confession to make. I, too, hated the latter seasons. But the voiceover on the final episode where Roseanne is talking about how Dan died, and she couldn't handle it- well, I just cry like a baby, is all. A lonely baby whose mother has been killed by a drunk driver.
But the favourite part of my day is still from 10 to 11 am on the treadmill, working out to Roseanne reruns. If that episode with the Prince comes on though, hell, no, I can deal with Murder She Wrote. Stupid lottery.

Now that others have confessed.... I too cried and sort of liked the final episode. I first caught it a few years ago, so the crushing disappointment of the show's deterioration was long past. I agree that some stuff doesn't make sense if you think it through (Darlene with Mark) but it still sort of worked. And Roseanne's performance was very understated and did make me bawl.

I actually thought it was brave of her to admit (somewhat) that the last season was a fiasco, and turn it into fiction. It showed some uncharacteristic humility on her part. Especially since she was IIRC pissed that ABC cancelled the show. Was she the only human being in the world who thought this show still had a future? Anyway, the ending made her seem pretty resigned to the fact that the show had veered wildly off-track.

Are they really not going to show the final tomorrow on Nick at Nite? I thought they might have just delayed it a day so both parts would be shown in one hour, instead of splitting it between nights.

For that matter, was that the first episode at 11:30pm? Michael Fishman was in it, so maybe it was the 2nd episode, since i hear he wasn't in the 1st episode. Also, where was George Clooney, as he was in the credits, but i didnt see him in the episode.

As for the final, maybe they're holding it for some special "Final Episodes" week promotion. After all, didn't they pull the Halloween and Christmas specials out of the regular run for special showings close to those holidays.

I had missed much of season nine on first airing, sad to see i hadn't missed too many gems that year...

OMG, double word sarah23. That sounds exactly like me! Only difference is that I'm treadmilling from 6-7 pm watching the show on Oxygen.
My personal favorite episode is when Beck-head farts during her student council presentation and she's afraid that her date will cancel on her for it. And Crystal hears about it and shows up with a card for her, and Roseanne and Dan open it up before Becky does and says "They DO make a card for everything".

Totally agreed. I watched the hour-block last night on N@N: The first ep was the one with Debbie Reynolds as Dan's mom, which I'd never seen (and was appalled by throughout--I was embarrassed for DR, and I couldn't understand why the show was treating her mental illness as such a wacky laugh riot when past episodes had done a sensitive, decent job of showing Dan's guilt over the situation); and the second was from S1--Dan gets $500 for a big contract, and he and Roseanne each want to have some fun with the funds (perfume for her, captain's bell for him) insetad of just using it to catch up bills.

The latter episode was a good illustration of Not4Me's comment, above. In the early seasons, I *never* thought D&R were ignorant, white trash, or aspiring to be either--they were just working class people who occasionally struggled to pay their bills and wanted their kids to turn out okay (this episode started with Dan lecturing Darlene about lying so much). Why Roseanne gradually changed the family into crass, screw-the-world, white-trash-wannabes, I'll never know.

I have no idea why when they run reruns, for any show, they tend to skip over the finales. LIke Family Ties. You hardly see that finale. Why?? I wonder.

My guess, for the reason of skipping the finale, is this: the channel the show is running on wants you to keep on watching. Some idiots out there might think they won't be showing them anymore. A bad theory, but it's mine:)

I think you're right, Madcowbell. Many sitcoms in syndication skip the final episode. Especially if the last episode had some kind of big "farewell' resolution like Roseanne's "I imagined the whole last season" speech.

Today I saw the episode where Darlene and David's baby was born. I stopped watching at the end of the 5th season, so I've never seen any of these episodes. Holy crap. It was pretty drekky, but I cried like my dog just died or something. It was so sad when she was all tiny and not healthy, but then *poof* she was all better.

She didn't die or anything later on in a "very special episode" or something shitty like that, did she?

No, they were too busy wrapping up the show itself. The birth of Harris Conner Healey is one of the last episodes before the grand finale, IIRC.