It’s official: ABC announced today that it is going forward with a Roseanne revival, with eight new episodes scheduled to air in 2018. That in itself is nothing new—as the networks roll out their 2017–18 seasons to advertisers this week, the landscape is lousy with reboots, reimaginings, even a series “based on the Israeli format of the same name,” whatever the hell that means. But the fact that the show’s original run ended with the revelation that its final season had been a fantasy cooked up by the title character after the death of her husband leaves the Roseanne revival in a tricky spot: The whole selling point of reviving a classic series is to give nostalgic viewers a chance to reindulge familiar pleasures, but you can’t exactly do that without bringing back John Goodman as the beloved blue-collar patriarch, can you?
ABC’s press release confirms that Goodman will return for the revival, though it doesn’t specify whether or not it will be in zombie form, and it adds a further wrinkle: Both Lecy Goranson, who played the Conners’ eldest daughter, Becky, for Seasons 1 through 5, and Sarah Chalke, who took over the character in Season 6, will be involved as well. In addition to Roseanne Barr, returning cast members include Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert, and Michael Fishman; The Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki, currently one of the highest-paid stars on television, was apparently out of ABC’s reach.
The ABC release specifies that Chalke will play a new character, but given that the original series would occasionally winkingly swap one Becky for another after Goranson left to attend college, we can expect at least some level of metahumor around the simultaneous presence of the two Beckys. (Just call it Roseanne: Covenant.) Although the ABC release points out that the show “broke new ground for its realistic portrayal of a working-class family,” bringing characters back from the dead doesn’t really fall under the heading of realism, unless it’s the magic kind. Good thing there’s no force on earth more powerful than a network’s need to fill a time slot.
