While The Conners season 7’s ending wasn’t terrible, the Roseanne spinoff did profoundly fail one of the original show’s heroes and its best replacement for the late eponymous heroine. When Roseanne became The Conners, the sitcom’s entire DNA had to shift pretty radically almost overnight. The series had already been through more overhauls than most, thanks to the messy end of its original run and its 2017 revival. Roseanne began life as a grounded sitcom about a working-class family, centered primarily on the perspective of their titular sardonic mother, Roseanne.
As the large cast of The Conners proves, the show’s ambition grew from here. Later seasons of Roseanne turned Mark and David, the love interests of the family’s two daughters, Becky and Darlene, into main characters themselves. Roseanne’s final season largely dropped the family and focused mainly on Roseanne after the Conners won the lottery and became multi-millionaires. This disastrous outing was so poorly received that season 9’s finale retconned everything, revealing the family never really won the lottery and Roseanne’s husband Dan had secretly died of a heart attack a season earlier.
Darlene’s Season 7 Arc Ignored Her Roseanne Dream Entirely
Darlene Wanted To Be A Writer In The Original Show and the Revival
Compared to The Conners series finale, the ending of Roseanne season 9 was a complete mess. The historically unpopular twist only became more ridiculous when 2017’s Roseanne revival retconned this ending, revealing that Dan was still alive and well and season 9’s story was merely the plot of an unpublished novel Roseanne wrote. Roseanne then remained the show’s heroine, even with its expanding cast, throughout the season 10 revival until real-life actor Roseanne Barr’s racist Twitter tirade resulted in her firing. However, this didn’t always mean she was the show’s true focus.
Darlene emerged as the heart of the series after Roseanne’s death thanks to her struggles to parent Harris and Mark while also paying to keep a roof over their heads.
By the time Barr was fired, Roseanne’s potential replacement was already starting to emerge organically from the revival. As noted in a 2018 VanityFair article, Roseanne’s daughter Darlene had inherited her mother’s dreams of becoming a writer and her thwarted existence as an underemployed creative and working mother. Darlene emerged as the heart of the series after Roseanne’s death thanks to her struggles to parent Harris and Mark while also paying to keep a roof over their heads. Her string of unreliable, underpaid jobs proved equally harrowing and hilarious.
Like Roseanne, Darlene was a spiky, sarcastic presence who could make even a hopeless storyline funny thanks to her attitude. Thus, The Conners season 7’s pointless Darlene arc was perhaps the show’s greatest betrayal of its predecessor. Darlene was relegated to the sidelines at the worst time as the show wrapped up with a maudlin plot centered on Roseanne’s memory. Instead of celebrating Darlene’s next step, The Conners season 7 cast its real heroine aside to reminisce on the good old days of its long-gone matriarch.
The Conners Sidelined Roseanne’s Best Replacement At the Worst Possible Time
Darlene Became The Main Character of The Conners In Earlier Seasons
Before season 7 began, Darlene seemed to be in a prime position to finally give professional writing a try. When a fire burned down his family’s hardware store and provided him with a massive insurance payout, Ben bought a magazine as he felt this was a sign to pursue his writing ambitions again. At the same time, Darlene was trapped in a dead-end job as a university cafeteria worker. She resented the role, but it provided her son Mark with a free ride at university.
|
The Conners Cast Member |
Character |
|---|---|
|
John Goodman |
Dan Conner |
|
Laurie Metcalf |
Jackie Harris-Goldufski |
|
Sara Gilbert |
Darlene Conner-Olinsky |
|
Lecy Goranson |
Becky Conner-Healy |
|
Katey Sagal |
Louise Conner |
|
Emma Kenney |
Harris Conner-Healy |
|
Ames McNamara |
Mark Conner-Healy |
While Becky getting a happy ending in season 7 was also important, Darlene’s positive payoff seemed like a done deal. Her loving husband had just bought a magazine and needed new people to work there while, at the same time, Mark announced he was leaving his current university so he could work for a year, save up, and attend the University of Chicago instead. Ben and Darlene collaborating on relaunching the magazine was such an obviously perfect opportunity that the plot seemed almost too predictable. Sadly, that wasn’t its problem.
Darlene’s Storyline Was Worse Than Ignoring Her Completely
Her Romance With Seth Green’s Chad Was Pointless
The issues began when season 7 inexplicably began with Darlene celebrating a promotion at work. Darlene resented working in the university cafeteria, so it was weird to see her embedding herself deeper into this role now that Mark was no longer relying on her. While The Conners season 7 short-changed Harris by failing to focus on The Lunchbox’s new relaunch, the sitcom spinoff failed Darlene in a far more substantial and meaningful way.
It was impossible to see why Darlene chose to waste her time talking to Chad when she could have confronted Ben about his long hours at work or, better yet, worked with him.
For the remaining five episodes of season 7, Darlene’s entire character arc revolved around her flirting with Seth Green’s sad divorcee Chad while drinking at a local bar. Right up until halfway through the finale, Darlene did nothing but banter inanely with a character viewers had never seen before and had no reason to care about. There was never any real threat to her marriage, but it was impossible to see why Darlene chose to waste her time talking to Chad when she could have confronted Ben about his long hours at work or, better yet, worked with him.
The Conners Season 7’s Shift in Focus Let Darlene Down
Darlene’s Final Storyline Shouldn’t Have Focused On Her Love Life
The aimless Chad storyline just drew attention to the lack of focus on Darlene’s career plans, as she was seemingly suddenly content to work as a cafeteria manager provided Ben didn’t spend too long at the office after hours. While Dan’s emotional goodbye in The Conners season 7 was fitting, this subplot was a profound misreading of Darlene’s character arc throughout Roseanne’s original run, its revival, and The Conners. If there was one thing Darlene’s relationship with David taught her, it was not to waste her potential by waiting on a partner to live her life for her.
Related
Jackie’s Surprise The Conners Series Finale Reveal Establishes Its Biggest Unanswered Question
Jackie’s massive revelation from The Conners series finale highlights the biggest unanswered character mystery left behind by Roseanne’s spinoff.
Seeing Darlene go the entire six-episode season without mentioning her writing ambitions was an insult to her character and Roseanne’s legacy. With Mark happily moving to New York and Harris ably running The Lunchbox off-screen, Darlene finally had access to the free time for creative expression that she always wanted. Not only did she squander it at a bar, but she even blamed Ben for pursuing his writing dream instead of whiling away hours with her. Roseanne’s heroine would never have wanted to waste her potential like this, making The Conners season 7’s Darlene storyline its worst misstep.
Source: VanityFair
Enjoy ScreenRant’s primetime coverage? Click below to sign up for our weekly Network TV newsletter (make sure to check “Network TV” in your preferences) and get the inside scoop from actors and showrunners on your favorite series.
7/10
- Release Date
-
2018 – 2025-00-00
- Showrunner
-
Bruce Helford
- Directors
-
Fred Savage, Jody Margolin Hahn, Lynda Tarryk, Bob Koherr, Gail Mancuso, Jude Weng, Michael Arden
- Writers
-
Bruce Helford, Bruce Rasmussen, Emily R. Wilson, Mitch Hunter, Amy Fox, Jana Hunter, Erica Montolfo-Bura, Debby Wolfe, Simone Finch