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As long as theres been TV, the family has been one of its favorite go-tos.
All week long, Vulture is exploring how its been represented on our screens.
A family sits around a cluttered kitchen table, arguing and roughhousing.
Finally, the man at the table leans over to smooch his wife.
She cheerfully wipes off the kiss, letting loose a peal of bawdy laughter.
That was how America met the Conner family on October 18, 1988.
In its minute-long opening sequence,Roseanneconveys a concrete sense of this rambunctious working-class household.
There are dowdy clothes and bad hair and faded wallpaper.
It signals a family life bound by love but not muddied by sentimentality.
And the shows originality resides above all in the character of Roseanne herself.
No television sitcom had ever revolved around such a fierce, sharp- tongued virago.
Then you gotta get rid of all that macho crap that they pick up from the beer commercials.
You laughedwiththe Conners, notatthem, and the laughter was often accompanied by twinges of empathetic pain.
Rarely had the American working class had such poignantly authentic representatives on TV.
Tell em to drive some of that food over here, she snaps back.
She doesnt miss a beat: Im ordering new children.
Why pretend youd rather change a babys diaper than kick back with a margarita?
Roseanne is often sarcastic and dismissive to her kids.
I have three kids and a job, so I cant be everywhere, Roseanne snaps back.
I gotta trust my kids, and theyre still alive, so I have obviously done something right.
I had three kids, and thats how I lived, Barr told me recently.
I wanted to be a different kind of mother in my real life and on TV.
What do they call it?
The fist in the velvet glove.
Whereas the Roseanne character was kind of like my grandma.
She was a real Jewish matriarch, and she ruled with a wooden spoon.
You did not want to get hit on the upper thigh with that thing.
Thats when things started happening likethe lottery.
I realized I came here literally out of a trailer because Ididntbelieve that.
The Middles roots areRoseannefor sure, Heline says.
We loved the marriage of Dan and Roseanne and the dignity of peopletrying hard.
Copyright 2018 by Joy Press.
