Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Conners season 5, episode 9.
While The Conners season 5 had no idea how to use Katey Sagal’s Louise for some time, the Roseanne spinoff has finally found a way to fit the character into the titular family’s well-defined dynamic. It is never easy for a long-running series to replace one of its lead actors. However, it is significantly harder to pull off this feat when the creators are actively attempting to avoid comparisons between the original character and the newcomer. When the Roseanne revival killed off Roseanne Barr’s character due to the actor’s racist tweets, the show was retooled into The Conners and effectively became Roseanne without Roseanne.
When Roseanne’s husband, John Goodman’s Dan, began dating again, The Conners went out of its way to ensure that his next love interest was not a Roseanne clone. Katey Sagal’s spunky Louise shared Roseanne’s sardonic wit, but that was where the comparisons between the two characters ended. Roseanne was a loving mother devoted to her kids, while Louise had no interest in acting as a maternal figure for Dan’s adult children. This approach allowed viewers to see Louise as a character in her own right and not a Roseanne replacement, but opting out of family activities left Louise without a meaningful role in The Conners. Luckily, Louise finally has a clear purpose now that Darlene and Becky have moved out.
The Conners Has Been Wasting Louise
There is a reason that the early seasons of The Conners effectively erased Roseanne’s memory from existence. Barr was sitcom royalty and, thanks to her chemistry with Goodman, a tricky actor to replace. However, The Conners made a strong choice when the show’s creators cast Sagal. Dan’s second wife is played by a comedic actor who, between Futurama, Married With Children, and 8 Simple Rules, has been a mainstay in successful sitcoms for decades. However, casting the right actor for Goodman’s new love interest was only half the battle. Louise’s character also needed to be integrated into the Conner family dynamic and this was where the spinoff fell short.
In its attempts to not cast her as a Roseanne replacement, The Conners instead ended up wasting Louise. While Jackie’s character arc made Laurie Metcalf’s comic relief character more human and three-dimensional than ever before, Louise’s refusal to be a mother to the Conner children meant it was hard to find a role for her in most episodes of The Conners. It was an admirably believable and brave decision to make Louise a character in her own right who didn’t simply replace Roseanne, but having her distance herself from the family meant that she had no purpose in a series that centered around the exploits of the Conners.
Why Louise Couldn’t Replace Roseanne
When Louise was first introduced, the character needed to be more than a Roseanne stand-in. The circumstances of Roseanne’s tragic death started The Conners on a dark note, and any character who resembled the show’s former heroine would have been a constant reminder of that sad loss. Not only that but negotiating what the Conner family dynamic would look like without Roseanne was already tricky and adding in a new character only made this harder. The only way that Sagal’s Louise could work was if she was nothing like Roseanne, but this unsurprisingly meant she had no role to play in The Conners.
Katey Sagal’s Season 4 Absence Impacted Her Character
To make matters worse for Sagal’s character, her real-life actor suffered a car accident early in the production of The Conners season 4. Fortunately, Sagal was not left with many serious injuries, but the actor was unable to shoot for much of season 4’s production. As a result, Jackie’s character arc received more story focus than the plot might have if Louise was still around, and the first year of Dan and Louise’s marriage saw the pair separated for a lengthy portion of The Conners season 4. The timing was never going to be ideal but, combined with Louise’s lack of a role in the family, this made for an unfortunate situation heading into season 5.
Mentoring Harris Gives Louise A Clear Purpose
Even though The Conners season 4 had little use for Louise, season 5 has since proved that the show can offer her a role that doesn’t involve hijacking Roseanne’s former place in the family. In The Conners season 5, episode 9 “Crumbs and Couch Surfers,” Louise takes it upon herself to inform Harris that her new beau, the stoner poet Kai, is a shiftless freeloader. As any viewer familiar with Harris and Darlene’s endless fights might have predicted, this confrontation ends in catastrophe, but it does eventually result in a chastened Harris swallowing her pride and admitting to Louise that she may have had a point.
This plot allowed Louise to mentor Harris but, crucially, because Harris doesn’t view her as a grandmother, she didn’t feel patronized. Louise and Harris can now bond in the remainder of The Conners season 5 precisely because they aren’t related and Louise doesn’t want to be a substitute grandmother to her, meaning her mentorship comes from a place of friendship and not a familial obligation. The Conners have more than enough family members meddling in their lives, as evidenced by the fact that this plot wasn’t even the first time Becky stuck her nose into Harris’s love life in season 5.
However, as it looks increasingly likely that The Conners season 5 will kill off Bev, it makes sense for the sitcom to offer Louise a more central role. The B-plot of The Conners season 5, episode 7, “Take This Job and Shove It Twice” already pitted Jackie against Louise, and that storyline led Jackie to realize she had unresolved issues with Bev. In this plot, Louise once again made use of her emotional distance from the family by reminding Jackie that she couldn’t simply blow up at her without warning. By leaning into the fact that Louise is new to the titular family, The Conners season 5 has ensured that the character is not only not a Roseanne replacement, but also finally has a purpose of her own in the series.
Episodes of The Conners air Wednesdays on ABC.