On Friday, ABC renewed Roseanne for an 11th season, thus fulfilling the network’s post-election promise to spend more of prime time depicting “true realities of what life is like for everyday Americans.”
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The first few, new episodes of Roseanne- resurrected on ABC last week after 21 years in cryostasis-have provoked a discourse so polarized that Donald Trump has advocated in the TV show’s favor. She’s just reaping the ratings as Trump watches along with the rest of us.
Roseanne Barr did not invent this myth, nor did she found its cult. Less so because it presents two aging Trump voters as admirable parents, and more so because it represents the Cult of the Trump Voter, the media faction that rationalizes Trump’s hateful politics, his hateful supporters, and his selfish supporters, to the point of contrivance. Still, Roseanne-and its massive ratings success after two weeks-is a bad sign. Nearly 30 years after Roseanne premiered, TV viewers now live in an age of overabundance, and it seems like it should be easier than ever for Trump’s critics to ignore even the biggest network TV sitcom going, much as TV critics marginalized Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. It’s an old show, recalling an old style, reuniting an old cast to evoke a simpler decade of television.
Forget the characters, forget Roseanne Barr, forget Donald Trump’s endorsement- Roseanne is reactionary by its very design.