Entertainment

The 'Roseanne' Revival Now Has A Teaser & A Release Date, You're Welcome

by S. Atkinson
SFM Entertainment

During the finale of Roseanne — when we discovered that Dan had died of a heart attack — there wasn't a dry eye in the house. So, thank goodness that the Roseanne revival has a premiere date and a teaser, because we need to see how the show magically brought Dan back to life. (Remember, the first photo from the Roseanne revival showed actor John Goodman there along with the rest of the family.) But it's not just about Dan, honestly, Considering the show's focus on the working class struggling to make a living, this is the series we need right now.

According to TVLine, ABC announced that Roseanne would return to television on Tuesday, March 27, at 8/7c. This will be its regular time slot, Tuesday at 8, so get ready to rearrange that book club. The teaser's emphasis on everything being the same — "same couch, same cast, same laugh" — could imply that the new episodes will avoid making the same mistakes the critically-panned final season of Roseanne committed, which Uproxx called "terribly weird." In Season 9, the working-class family won the lottery and spent the season getting up to extremely un-Roseanne-esque activities like competing in beauty pageants, modeling for Playboy, and appearing on The Jerry Springer Show.

This only makes sense in the final episode, when we learn that Dan has died and his wife has been writing a book about them winning the lottery to cope with his death; everything that happens in Season 9 up until this point is pure fiction.

TVLine reported that, according to ABC's press release, Season 10:

"...will explore life, death and everything in between through the relatable, hilarious and brutally honest lens of the Conner household. With the inimitable Roseanne at its epicenter, fresh stories that tackle today’s issues and even more laughs from a brilliant cast and crew that haven’t missed a beat, audiences old and new will celebrate the homecoming of America’s favorite working-class family."

But don't worry, it won't swing too far in the other direction from Season 9, being so nostalgic that it has zero relevance to today. According to a statement ABC released about the Roseanne revival in May 2017, the action will center on "the economic challenges of living pay check to pay check in 2018."

While television revivals are sometimes criticized as being lazy exercises in nostalgia, this poses a great argument as to why it's the perfect time to bring the show back. Since up until Season 9, it always focused on the working-class family's financial struggles, and it makes sense to revive the show for a time in which a lot of Americans are struggling financially. In May 2016, The Atlantic reported that nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency, 47 percent. In October 2016, CNN Money reported that, according to the Federal Reserve Bank's survey that year, 31 percent of Americans say they are struggling to get by or just barely making it.

In a weird way, given its focus on scraping a living, Roseanne may even feel far more relevant now than it did in the '90s, when according to study.com, America was going through an economic boom (which began in 1991, three years after Roseanne began airing) and more than 23.6 million jobs were created. We're living in an era in which a generation of workers are increasingly precarious.

So, don't let anyone snark about this being nostalgia television. This is the show we need to see now — about normal people doing their damnedest to make a living against the odds. And the teaser just reinforces that.