8460 replies to this topic

[kfree9]

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!

[beezer]

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.

Edited by beezer, Jan 1, 2004 @ 2:23 AM.

[Brn2bwild]

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.

[beezer]

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.

[Brn2bwild]

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.

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."

[Toomanyblondes]

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.

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.

Edited by Gustave, Jan 1, 2004 @ 2:38 PM.

[Gustave]

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.

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.

[Schroeder]

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

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

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

And then:

Lawtalkinguy: There was some competitor that threatened their business, but I think that was a one-episode plot and not an ongoing issue. (And if I recall, it was before they won the lottery).

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.

lawtalkin'guy:I thought they gave their shares to Leon (and maybe Nancy? -- For some reason, that rings a bell).

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?

Edited by Schroeder, Jan 2, 2004 @ 6:09 PM.

[TheRealJanBrady]

"Duh, I don't know what they're saying!"

IIRC, this was from the episode where Roseanne takes Darlene's Home-Ec class to the supermarket and teaches them to cook a meatloaf. The pig latin was when Jackie wanted to talk to Roseanne about why DJ needed Twinkies for school (he was being bullied).

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.

[katymo]

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.

[Schroeder]

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.

[Corbinxxa84]

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.

[kfree9]

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.

Edited by kfree9, Jan 5, 2004 @ 9:57 AM.

[TheRealJanBrady]

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.

[Fraoch]

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.

[slaughteredlamb]

I was struck by how cartoonish and loudly over-the-top Laurie Metcalf was.

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."

[Bungalow Joy]

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

[Junkyard Dog]

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.

[Not4Me]

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.

It was widely reported that John Goodman hated working with Roseanne. That's ultimately why he wasn't around for the last season.

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.

[Gustave]

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.

[slaughteredlamb]

I remember watching one of those trashy tell-all TV biographies about Roseanne during the mid-90s

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.

Edited by slaughteredlamb, Jan 6, 2004 @ 1:06 AM.

[Brn2bwild]

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

[aliceac]

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."

[Gustave]

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.

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.

[trippyhop]

the painfulness that is Denny Dillon as Roseanne.

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.

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

[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.

Edited by trippyhop, Jan 6, 2004 @ 6:05 PM.

[TheRealJanBrady]

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?

[Gustave]

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

[lovemesomevos]

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

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.