5 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

If this were NBC, it would already have a 5 season pick-up. 

Considering how crappy ABC is...... it should renew Roseanne like this instant. There is nothing I watch on ABC anymore.

I'm sure they'll be locking it down shortly.

The EW ratings article had some interesting tidbits:

• According to ABC, this is the highest-rated comedy telecast on any network in nearly four years (since a premiere episode of CBS’ The Big Bang Theory from 2014)
• Also kinda incredible, given how ratings have declined over the years: Roseanne’s return was actually higher among total viewers than its 1997 finale 21 years ago! 

• The Roseanne premiere audience also grew slightly from its first quarter to its second, which is a good sign

• This is Tuesday’s highest-rated entertainment telecast in six years among young adults and ABC’s best results in the time slot since 2006

Edited March 28, 20187 yr by BetterForgotten

yassssssss!

 

SO HAPPY about the ratings!

 

Also glad it grew in the second episode, I was hoping it didn't dip. Good news!

Holy shít.

3 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

The EW ratings article had some interesting tidbits:

• According to ABC, this is the highest-rated comedy telecast on any network in nearly four years (since a premiere episode of CBS’ The Big Bang Theory from 2014)
• Also kinda incredible, given how ratings have declined over the years: Roseanne’s return was actually higher among total viewers than its 1997 finale 21 years ago! 

• The Roseanne premiere audience also grew slightly from its first quarter to its second, which is a good sign

• This is Tuesday’s highest-rated entertainment telecast in six years among young adults and ABC’s best results in the time slot since 2006

The show either had new viewers watching or more of the older viewers returned for the reboot than for the finale. And I was worried the show would drop the second half hour. Glad it gained in viewers.

The little kid playing Mark Jr. is already a star. It's uncanny how much his mannerisms and face remind me of Jennifer Elise Cox - the demented Jan in the Brady Bunch films.

 

 

45 minutes ago, Vee said:

The little kid playing Mark Jr. is already a star. It's uncanny how much his mannerisms and face remind me of Jennifer Elise Cox - the demented Jan in the Brady Bunch films.

 

O.M.G.

 

YES!

 

Perfect comparison!

 

Ames is a great, great find.

 

The actress playing Harris seems fine but hasn't had a lot to do yet, which is also fine. (I've not watched Shameless so I have no idea how she is but she seems perfectly cast and talented)

Edited March 28, 20187 yr by KMan101

So, my thoughts on ep 1:

 

As critics say the pilot is definitely creaky - especially Roseanne, who hasn't had to act in a long time and it shows. And the Barney Fife is turned way up on Jackie, which I didn't care for but which Laurie Metcalf always enjoys. The gaslighting accusation Jackie made was smart though, and has roots in the old show. I thought the treatment of the issue was soft, but realistically I'm not sure how much they could do without getting really ugly and turning people all the way off. So if they want to move on with a more progressive show in spite of Roseanne's complicated politics, so be it.

 

The whole Becky thing comes in out of nowhere but whatever, it's a pilot. I did find it interesting the live audience clearly is cheering for Jackie and booing a lot of Roseanne's Trump lines. The cast, old and new, is what works. I did like the commentary on Roseanne's failed book/Season 9.

 

That's BS about Becky not finishing high school though - I could swear she did. The Becky stuff could easily have been (non-)written for Sarah Chalke, which I didn't like. I hope it improves.

Darlene is softer and a bit more matured but she still has some great lines. She isn't a vicious caricature but she still has some edge. But when she started breaking down talking about having to come home, that got me. They never let Sara do that much on the old show - show that much open vulnerability - and she proved she's still an actual actress. To be the heart of the new show Darlene has to have one, and she does here more than ever because she's grown up.

I'm pretty sure Becky finished high school too. That was an odd line I thought.

 

I didn't find Jackie's Barney Fife impression as bad as it was towards the end of the show. But yeah a lot of it was there. I thought it was toned down some and some moments worked well. But I'll see how they handle it going forward. I don't want her to be a caricature like she became. I do like the gag of her life coach career. She's always amplified herself in her job and been over the top about it.

Yes, that was definitely very Jackie to pump up her latest job.

 

I did like the tender bit with Darlene and Harris worrying about Mark - I was glad Harris isn't all edge. That gets old, it got older in the later years of the old show.

 

Roseanne had her best moment in a creaky beginning of the season with the kid playing Mark - them cuddling and him taunting her reminded me of how she and Michael Fishman used to interact at that age.

That is Darlene's old teacher from the early seasons at Mark's school! Wow. And the scene with him and Darlene at the end was great. The beat Sara Gilbert took controlling her emotions before she told him kids would play with him really got me. She's so good here. And Ames McNamara is preternaturally good. I liked Dan hugging him and playing ball with him.

Reserving judgment on the Becky story until it moves beyond one note. Lecy does still have the comic timing as Becky ranted about having a dentist who doesn't work out of a van.

Edited March 28, 20187 yr by Vee

 

A bad headline for a good interview:

 

 

#Roseanne producer on sitcom not being a liberal "mouthpiece" and Mark's "tricky" story line: https://t.co/aupRqHxRkZ pic.twitter.com/cWeS5W7Xki

— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) March 28, 2018

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The episode started with a joke about Roseanne thinking Dan was dead. Did you feel like you immediately need to address the fact that John Goodman’s character was killed off at the end of season 9?

BRUCE RASMUSSEN: Yeah. We wanted to get it out of the way and it was impossible to do it halfway, so we just wanted to make a joke of it, since it was such a big deal after the original 9. Roseanne was on board doing that as well. It’s like, okay, we are explaining how he’s back and we’re going to move past that pretty quick.

 

Did you always know that would reference Roseanne’s book?

We wanted to give a nod to some of what happened in season 9, the stuff that didn’t really go off the rails, in our opinion. She’s always been a writer in the series, so we at least wanted to give another nod to how she did write the book. We thought it would be fun to have him give her crap for killing him off.

 

How did it develop that Roseanne was a Trump supporter?

When one of my agents called me to bring up me going back on the show, the way he pitched it was “Roseanne in the time of Trump.” Originally I thought, like everybody else, that she would not be a supporter of Trump. But the moment we got in the writers’ room with Roseanne, she really wanted to be a supporter of Trump, not because she is one herself, but there are a lot of people in the Midwest who voted for him. We had debates and discussions. [Writer] Dave Kaplan and I were two of the people who had least understood that there are people who voted for him who aren’t misogynists or racists and who felt betrayed by other administrations. They really believed Trump was going to do something for them. It made sense when we really talked about it.

 

Are you saying a majority of the other writers didn’t agree?
 

Most writers, including me, are more liberal than we are conservative for sure. I’m no fan of Trump at all. Some people were new to the show. We had to keep reminding people that this is not how we feel. It’s how the Conners as real people would react to what they perceive as somebody who might help them out. We are all pretty liberal people so you have to step back and say, let’s not be mouthpieces for what we believe. Let’s deal with who these characters are as people, whether we agree with who she voted for or not.

 

Once you made that decision, did you find it pretty easy to come up with the Trump jokes? Like the one about the Russian dressing?

It was a balancing act. We didn’t want to overwhelm the episode with a lot of politics, and so the jokes about Trump were easier to get from the room than the jokes against Hillary. But we found them. We had to dig deep.

 

Why did you have Jackie choke and vote for Jill Stein?

We just thought it would be funny. The most obvious thing would have been she voted for Hillary. What appealed to me was that while the basis of the argument was political, the real meat of it was Roseanne and Jackie’s relationship, where Jackie is constantly feeling bullied by Roseanne. We thought it would be interesting if Roseanne got so in her head, that Jackie really did second-guess her own way to vote and that’s why she is so mad. She didn’t even vote for the person she wanted. Roseanne has such a hold on Jackie that she panicked.

 

Let’s talk about the character of Mark, Roseanne’s grandson. Whose idea was it for him to dress in non-traditional attire?

It was originally Sara Gilbert’s idea because she knows kids who do that. We did a lot of research. It’s very tricky. We talked to GLAAD people to make it very specific to one kid, not try to make it about everybody. The hardest part about it, weirdly, was the terminology. We’re not saying the kid is trans. He’s not even at that point. My son had a friend who was 5 years old and he dressed like a girl. Ultimately he turned out to be gay, but he wasn’t trans. We didn’t want to put all that weight on the kid. He really is a kid who is non-traditional and right now he wants to dress like a girl. We’re saying, who knows what will ultimately happen?

 

Was there a lot of discussion about how Roseanne and Dan would respond to him?

It’s a great moment when Roseanne sits down and says to the kid, “This is going to be tough.” That point of view was very much pitched by her. It was really great.

#Roseanne Renewal Buzz: A Second Revival Season Is a 'Foregone Conclusion' https://t.co/gpThIbdiWZ pic.twitter.com/VHa75FvVem

— TVLine.com (@TVLine) March 28, 2018

I have to say that it's nice that an actress like Laurie Metcalf at her age is getting such renewed interest and respect for her craft across film, TV, and theater. The show instantly has some level of credibility because she's in the cast. 

Edited March 28, 20187 yr by BetterForgotten