During its original run, Roseanne was a lightning rod for a multitude of reasons—not the least of which was Roseanne Conner’s parenting style. She was loud, crass, and more permissive than a traditional sitcom parent, a far cry from the squeaky-clean, 1950s sensibilities the series frequently mocked. One thing she never made a habit of, though, was spanking her children. And her reasoning was extremely well established: as the characters make clear through multiple seasons, Roseanne and her sister, Jackie, were abused by their father. The one time Roseanne was ever shown spanking one of her children, her outburst ended with a tearful apology—which is why the central plot of Tuesday’s installment of the rebooted series felt misguided at best, and like a forced expression of conservative talking points at worst. It’s further evidence that despite any protestations to the contrary, the new Roseanne has a distinct ideology—which is why it’s struck such a chord with right-leaning viewers.
..
“Your generation made everything so P.C.,” Roseanne gripes to Darlene. She’s incensed that Gen X parents won’t spank their kids; instead, she says, “you tell them to go over there and think about what they did wrong. You know what they’re thinking? I can’t believe this loser isn’t spanking me.”
“Let me tell you something,” Roseanne’s husband, Dan, adds. “I wrote a poem for my dad. Then he hit me with a broom. And then he said, ‘This broom will do more for you than any poem.’ And that was the greatest generation.” Eventually, Roseanne shoves her granddaughter’s head in the sink and sprays her with the faucet to teach her a lesson, while Darlene realizes that perhaps she’s given her daughter more leeway than she should have. Throughout all of this, nobody acknowledges the repeated trauma Roseanne and Jackie faced at the hands of their father, who used to discipline them with a belt. And no one mentions the fact that, at least as far as viewers of the original series saw, Roseanne never spanked any of her children, either—save for one incident that ended with an emotional apology from Roseanne to D.J.
..
But Tuesday’s discussion about parental discipline came with politically charged introduction from Barr. As Jen Chaney points out in Vulture, the show’s star introduced the episode on Twitter by saying this: “the next episode shows Harris (my tv granddaughter) calling me a stupid old hillbilly-watch how I handle her and her very liberal mother!” Based on that, it seems like this episode wasn’t meant to show Dan and Roseanne clashing with Darlene about the best way to discipline kids. Instead, it was a more cut-and-dry plot designed to show why Roseanne’s side is right—and why liberal parents aren’t.
If the new series were dedicated to keeping alive the spirit of the old Roseanne, one would think the episode would have played out differently—or at least with a little more nuance. As Chaney wrote, the episode seemed like an unambiguous retort to the “snowflakes” currently raising little snowflakes of their own. “So far, this is a show in which Roseanne never has to admit when she’s wrong, but everybody else does,” Chaney writes, “which makes it harder to believe the show’s end goal is to bridge the distances between decent people who disagree.”
