Nostalgic revivals of old TV shows have been all the rage for a few years now, but even though most Hollywood insiders predicted that the “Roseanne” reboot would be a success, no one thought it would bring in the insane ratings that it did on night one. Kicking off the new adventures of the Conner family saga with a two-episode punch on Tuesday night, ABC racked up more than 18 million viewers – a shocking turn of events when you consider that both the creator and the main character (Roseanne, in both cases) are supporters of President Donald Trump.
Well, shocking for the Hollywood elitists who still think Trump’s victory was some kind of bizarre fluke.
As some conservatives, like Ben Shapiro, have been eager to point out, the reboot is not exactly a “conservative” show, and we don’t mean to pretend that it is. Roseanne Conner doesn’t appear to be a conservative so much as one of the many, many Independents/Democrats in the Midwest for whom Trump was a much wiser choice than Hillary Clinton. Roseanne herself is still the (old-school) feminist that she always was, and the show itself provides a balance of viewpoints. The second episode, for example, made the family’s acceptance of their feminine grandson the primary plot point.
But for a show to even flirt with a BALANCE of political viewpoints is still an enormous departure from what you’ll find anywhere else on the dial. Let’s put it this way – on social media the day after the premiere, you saw both liberals and conservatives hating on the show. That means, to our way of thinking, that Roseanne is doing something right. If you’re pissing off everyone, you probably touched the right nerve.
Maybe we’ll be disappointed as the show goes on and this will turn into some kind of fable as we watch Roseanne Conner slowly come around to seeing the evils of her Trump-supporting ways. But we kinda doubt it, considering that Barr herself is outspoken about her support of the president. Instead, we imagine this show will continue to thread the needle between old-school American values and the encroachment of the modern left, which is increasingly untethered to anything the older generations have seen in this country. In that sense, millions of American families may recognize themselves as they try to come to grips with that pesky Trump supporting uncle or that irritating “Nasty Woman” college daughter.
As it stands now, the show has people talking like no sitcom has in years, and that’s already a big success. Perhaps Hollywood will finally learn that Trump supporters don’t need to be PANDERED to. We don’t need a show that tells us that everything we think is right and everything liberals say is evil. We don’t need that. It’s just nice to see some species of representation that doesn’t paint us as racist demons of an America that needs to die off, already. Is that really so much to ask?
As the ratings proved, there’s a lot of money to be made from simply being fair.
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