“Roseanne” showrunners may think they’re leaning out of politics by focusing more on family next season, but fans shouldn’t worry too much about the series losing its populist luster.
ABC entertainment president Channing Dungey made some waves for telling reporters, “I think that they’re going to stay on the path that they were on toward the end of last season, which is away from politics and toward family.” Dungey, however, also noted in the same interview “that one of the things that was fresh for us with ‘Roseanne’ on the air is that it is focusing (on) a family that is in a different economic status than some of the other family comedies that are on the air.”
Representations of families like the Connors don’t have to feature partisanship to carry strong political implications. There’s much to be accomplished by watching characters like Roseanne struggle to adjust as shifts in the cultural landscape — opioid abuse, changing approaches to gender, surrogacy, the new economy — impact their lives.
Family life is political, but for most people outside the Beltway, it only rarely features partisan debates. That’s why this show’s net value as one of pop culture’s few sympathetic portrayals of a Trump supporter may not be diminished at all.
